I mean, it works fine. I just went from an iPhone 8 to an iPhone 14 Pro (on a free upgrade). Five years between phones. There was a time when that would have seemed like a quantum leap. From the Nokia N95 to the iPhone 3GS. Or the Nokia 7110 – WAP-enabled, the huge screen and springloaded slider to the much more powerful N95. Now, it’s – well, it’s got the battery life we actually promised for the previous one, there are even more and bigger camera lenses so now it won’t lay flat, and we’ve found new and interesting ways to hide the functions that used to be obvious and easy to reach. And… well, it doesn’t really do anything new, and it does the old stuff pretty much the way it always used to.
I actually really miss the days of Nokia releasing an insane new phone design every six months. Remember the Nokia evening phone for ladies? An evening phone.
Technologically spoiled in 2023? Perhaps. I mean, it’s a great device, right? I think I just miss that sense of – you’ve just spent a crazy amount of money on a device you need for various reasons, here’s a new function you never even thought of, because we work for very rich people who want us to invent these things. Here’s something new. Not just “it’s pretty much the same as your old phone but with a battery you haven’t thrashed out yet and a bigger screen.”
For me, it’s like when air speeds plateaued – takes the same amount of time to fly to NYC today as it did when I first started flying 30 years ago. That slight sadness of “well, nothing new in this space here is going to happen in my lifetime now.” I’ve had pretty much the same piece of glass and metal in a rubber case in my hand for thirteen years, and I guess it’s really not going to change much before I go.
I’ve been poking around this device for days, trying to make it do something new that I haven’t seen before. It’s not going to. Hell. it won’t even re-sync my music from iTunes on the laptop. It’s a weird feeling, to know new iterations of the thing I rely on aren’t actually going to get fresher or even better. Just clean off the factory floor and probably slightly worse at some things.
