iHave an iSsue with this

I'm beginning to wonder if this is turning into an anti-Apple blog.

I hoped this wouldn't happen so soon. I actually had myself so convinced that it wouldn't happen that it stopped bothering me. I even brought myself to the point where I picked up my wife's Macbook Air to tinker around in Garageband. Let's back up a bit.

Sony's Playstation was released in 1995 ('94 in Japan). The Playstation 2 came out in 2000. The Playstation 3 in 2006. A little bit of first grade mental math suggests that Sony is pretty comfortable with a 5-6 year console lifespan. With that in mind, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe that the PS4 should be right around the corner, although Sony has expressed their desire for the PS3 to have a 10-year lifespan. That is beside the point.

The point that I'm trying to make is that as soon as a Playstation is put on store shelves, analysts and consumers are not going to immediately speculate about the gaming console's next iteration. Six years is a long time and it's impossible to tell what kind of hardware we'll have that far down the road. Cue the Apple rant:

The iPhone 5 came out on September 21, 2012. The image attached to this post is a screenshot which I took today which, near as I can determine, is the first article regarding the forthcoming iPhone on that particular news outlet. By my count, that was a whopping 52 days of whining about how the new connector doesn't work with the old alarm clock docking stations before building the hype over the new iBoughtTheSamePieceOfAluminumAndGlassAsLastYearBecauseIAmATool. Oh, did I just say that out loud?

Here's the issue: (time for slightly more analysis and slightly less rant) new iPhones - and new smartphones in general - coming out on a yearly basis is a problem. The mobile device market has become over saturated with infinite variations on the same theme. A new phone is created and released every instant the technology improves. What that gives us is something that is slightly better than what we had before. Think of the Playstation 1 (if you can remember). Imagine if Sony released the PS1.2 when they figured out how to make games load more quickly. Then the PS1.5 when they managed to squeeze in a couple more polygons to make the graphics a bit more shiny.

Instead, they waited until they had enough to truly wow their audience. For that, I am grateful. For Apple's approach, I am outraged. iPhone 5: 0.00002-inch larger screen, new controversial connection port, and new map app (which doesn't quite work as expected).

More to the story, due to the decreased lifespans of mobile devices, the price of said devices will not be cheap. Ever. Consider a brand new product: years of research and development have gone into the product and on launch day the price is the highest it will ever be. A year, year and a half down the road, the price begins to slide lower. Towards the end of the product's life, the cost is now a shadow of what it originally was. The reson for this is because the costs of R&D have been made up and the manufacturing processes have been streamlined. Churn out a new product well before the previous has been given a chance to begin to die and you lose those advantages. Anyway...

TL;DR - Chill out, Apple nuts. Don't obsess over the iPhone 6 or 5s or whatever they decide to call it. Just be content with your iPhone 5 and enjoy the feeling of pretending to be better than the rest of us.