The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are bigger than their predecessors, and perhaps accordingly they also marked another record breaking launch for Apple. The new iPhones are, for a lot of people, what the company should have launched several years ago, but better late than never, right? So, here we are in the midst of the “big iPhone” year, and from here on out it’s anyone’s guess what the next big thing will be.
After all, the bigger iPhones also check off plenty of other bullet point must-haves, right? The camera? Check. Battery life? Check. (As long as you went for the iPhone 6 Plus.) Display? Check. (No, it isn’t a Quad HD display on either device. Yes, it’s still plenty good enough for human eyes, on both devices.) And so on and so forth, but you get the idea. The iPhones are great devices, unless you hate Apple and iPhones, then they’re garbage and obviously everyone who picked one up is a crazy person.
The launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have almost everything to do with the phones themselves, but there is also a bigger focus for Apple. More so than ever before, the Cupertino-based company has made it obvious, beyond any shadow of a doubt (not that there ever was one), that they want you completely, wholeheartedly embedded within their ecosystem. And not just when it comes to mobile, like your iPhone and iPad, but also when you think about your next laptop or desktop.
Apple wants you to realize that your life can be ridiculously interconnected between devices, and not just by sending messages or picking up where you left off in a web browser. With the launch of the iPhone 6 lineup, and more importantly iOS 8, along with the release of OS X Yosemite, Apple’s making an even bigger push to get people on their own Apple-branded gear, and away from everything else.
That isn’t to say that Apple always hasn’t made reasons in the past to be invested in their ecosystem, because clearly they (and Microsoft and Google along with them) have. But the features tied to those endeavors were pretty straightforward, and not all that inspiring. They were what we expected to have available, just because it’s been around for a bit of time. More than that, though, other apps and services almost make it more worthwhile with their own features, or even pricing, especially when it comes to cloud storage, or even messaging services.
This wasn’t even a problem, so to speak, but Apple decided to throw everything they had it, and now the problem that wasn’t so obvious looks to be just about fixed.
OS X Yosemite is a great looking desktop software, and it has plenty of great features tied into it, but let’s just be honest here: without an iOS-based device to share the happiness, Yosemite is a pretty small update in and of itself. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Not every software update (even a yearly release) has to be the most loaded update ever. But, Yosemite is a glaring example of an update that’s meant to be shared with another update.
Without iOS 8, Yosemite is pretty unexciting.
But, with iOS 8? Wow. Having the ability to answer a phone call from your computer, or reply to a standard text message (and not just a text sent through Apple’s own Messages feature), or start an email on one device and continue it on another, is awesome. It really is. These are things that I thought sounded cool in theory, when Apple initially showed them off, but now that I’ve actually had the chance to try them out? Like I said earlier, this didn’t even feel like a problem, but I’m glad Apple fixed it. Or, more to the point, I’m glad Apple gave me things I didn’t even know I wanted.
(This doesn’t include responding to text messages from my computer. I’ve wanted this for years.)
The question that I have for all of you, is: did it work? Did Apple’s attempt to sway you with their all-inclusive ecosystem, from features shared between desktop software and mobile, convince you to make the switch from whatever you were using before? And I don’t just mean from a mobile perspective. With these new elements, did you decide to switch to an iPhone, get an iPad, and also ditch your Windows-based (or whatever-based) machine to pick up an OS X Yosemite-based Mac? Let me know!
