Last week Apple unveiled the next iteration of their iPhone, which had the usual fanfare. Most of us, even those of us that are iPhone users, weren’t terribly blown away by the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus features. It was all pretty standard (bigger screen, faster processor, better camera, etc). I think the best feature of the new iPhone is the addition of NFC technology (which apparently Samsung already had in their phones). I guess that’s the first sign that Apple is looking a lot like Microsoft this year, playing catch up. If you are not familiar with NFC, it stands for “near-field communication”, which means it basically allows you to use your phone to interact with other systems simply by its proximity (or waving in front of a reader of some sort).
Apple added NFC for its new ApplePay system that only the iPhone 6/6 Plus will have. However, I think the big blunder here is that only POS systems (that’s point-of-sale, not the other acronym) which have the proper upgraded firmware will be able to utilize Apple’s NFC features. So, basically they have created a proprietary feature that if POS manufacturers don’t pay to upgrade their equipment, won’t be able to take advantage of it. My understanding is that Samsung uses a more universal NFC technology. I don’t know why Apple made ApplePay proprietary, seems pretty myopic to me. I mean, that didn’t work out so well for Microsoft!
Many people are screaming for Apple’s head over the whole U2 album. I’m not sure I really understand why people are nerd raging. I understand if the album had been something awful, like Eminem or Kanye West, but U2 is a highly respectable and classic rock band. The album was not downloaded directly to my device, it was in my iCloud. I had to explicitly tell iTunes to download the album so unless it was somehow forced onto folks devices, I’m not sure how people could have unknowingly downloaded the album. If, however, the album really was pushed out to everyone’s phones/iPads, well that is a pretty uncouth thing to do. Also, such a power play (i.e. forcing technology onto their users) is another common Microsoft move.