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mavemufc said:

Don’t want a bigger one tbh the 42mm is perfect, not too sure about a re-design either..

CheeseFreeze said:

38mm and 42mm are perfect. I also think they are going to remove the bezels display-wise.

Perfect for you two. But there's a pretty big audience out there, some of whom may want a bigger, and smaller watch (especially if the bezels are going to shrink). The watch is doing well enough that Apple can afford to start customizing a few more options to expand the pool of customers.

fastasleep said:

urashid said:

bobolicious said:

...Dear Santa... ...could you please offer us a round option, in sync with the purity of timeless geometry, the iconography of clocks, the persistence of memory (Dali vs FB ?) and melting fascia...?

I am also looking forward to a round design. The layout of app icons on applewatch was designed to accommodate both square and round shapes. I hope it happens this year.

Yet that's the worst part of the Watch UX — it doesn't work well, at all. I'm trying to imagine how one would design their apps to accommodate both rectangular and circular screens and it makes my brain hurt.

Many developers are already doing it for the Samsung and watchOS now. So that's not likely to be an issue. I'd also expect Apple to do something similar to the iPad when it launched and provide a square window within the round watch to run older apps until a developer can update it. 

wozwoz said:

Your article headline is confused and misleading:  streaming has had almost no effect on physical media sales - physical media sales have basically stabilised for the last 2 years. What streaming IS doing is causing the death of downloads (not physical sales). The old download age is coming to an end.

The market is shifting into two forms:

a) The STREAMING market for those who value CONVENIENCE over quality. This is wiping out the download market. Apple doesn't even sell iPods anymore.

b) The PHYSICAL market for those who want ownership, COLLECT, and value QUALITY (CD resolution or hi-res (e.g. SACD), and vinyl)

While there are hi-res download formats, their sales are a trifle, they cost more than SACDs, and while it may become possible to stream in CD quality or better as a default (without requiring specialist providers), the fact is that 99% of streamed data is low-res lossy data at about 1/8th the data throughput of CD, because most of the streaming market simply does not care: the model is all about convenience.

Yup. Vinyl is at its highest sales in something like almost two decades. But that wouldn't be possible without the broad availability of unlimited high quality wireless connections in the US. The rest of the world is likely a different story. When I go camping, especially in a national park, it's back to the iPod era. That's still true for International travel, and air travel in general. 

I wouldn't pay for Amazon Prime Video as a service. I couldn't tell you the last must see program I watched there, much less looked forward to seeing. However I do use my Prime account for free shipping all the time, and have easily gotten the value out of it, so adding video is the perk which I sometimes avail myself of... I suppose it could work in reverse, but it doesn't seem quite as motivating as they require two different apps. If someone is not using Amazon to buy products in the first place, I'm not sure why watching a TV show on Amazon is going to motivate someone to change their shopping habits. I guess someone might say, "hey we've got free shipping with our video subscription, let's see if we need anything from Amazon"?

DAalseth said:

I was one of those who were not pleased with Apple dropping the headphone jack. I thought dropping the headphone jack was a big mistake because I'd seen a succession of really bad BT devices, mice, keyboards, headphones and earbuds, that dropped connection randomly and continuously. I just did not trust the technology. I did noit think it was ready for prime time. And I did not think there was a NEED to drop the headphone jack. It worked fine.

Fast Forward around three years.

First my SE still has a headphone jack. I'm still using my wired ear buds on occasion. The issue hasn't hit me yet.
However something else has come up. I don't know if BT has gotten better or what, but I'm seeing fewer problems. My BT MagicMouse and MagicKeyboard have been rock solid. We connected my phone to the car stereo system with BT on our trips last summer and it never missed a beat.  I picked up a little BT Sony Speaker for my iPad and it has worked great. The iPad has a headphone jack but I haven't used it in several months. I'm thinking I can now trust BT to work reliably, something I would not do a few years ago. Also because of the BT speaker I use with the iPad, my wired headphones are now semi permanently connected to my iMac. I don't think I'll ever go back to using them in the field. 

So things have changed since Apple dropped the headphone jack. I've come around to feeling like I can trust the connection. In a couple or three years when my SE is due for replacement, my new iPhone will not have a headphone jack. I'll be fine with that. I'll find a set of BT ear buds and they'll do what I need. Time, and technology, marches on.

And once again Apple was ahead of the curve.

I have always been a proponent of dropping the headphone jack. In fact I use an SE with the Lightning adapter, even though it has a headphone jack. I prefer it to plugging my old EarPods into the headphone jack, as it's easier to connect and disconnect.

That said, a lot of the concerns about loss of universal compatibility did pan out. I don't travel with the Lightning adapter, because there's always a risk of losing something I don't use while traveling. And while traveling, I want universal compatibility, starting with the airline entertainment system, to watching a movie on my MacBook on a train, or plugging into someone else's, or public, devices. In fact I was in an airport boutique recently looking at the new Beats Lightning headphones, which have silicone ear gels to seal out external sound, thinking how nice they would be for travel, but I was presented with a conundrum -- buy the latest technology compatible only with my phone, and have no way to use them on my MacBook (as there's still inexplicably no adapter for them), or anything else -- including the inflight entertainment system which was my immediate concern. I could buy the 3.5mm version, but that somehow seems like a step backward, as it still necessitates needing an adapter for my otherwise primary use with the iPhone.

So there's a few more years to go before this all gets sorted out. The AirPods are definitely a future consideration for me for daily use. But again, I have concerns with them when traveling because they aren't universally compatible, and the potential for loss when I'm not always using them. I keep thinking I'm going to figure out a BT transmitter dongle solution to plug into 3.5mm jacks and use with AirPods on airplanes, and elsewhere, but it's just more tech to carry and keep track of, keep charged; and just grabbing my old EarPods is simply easier as I pack at the last minute for a trip, and I know they'll work with everything.

But I still stand behind the removal of the headphone jack on the iPhone -- it is the future, even if it means I'll simply have to be better prepared in the interim. The integration between something like AirPods, my iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple TV and watch is just too convenient to ignore. BT still limits audio quality, but that's a short term problem -- and it's currently good enough for most uses and situations, and most people. The prospect of using a mobile device without wires is simply too intoxicating. The iPhone X gets us 95% of the way there. I never understood why people (like yourself at the time ;-) didn't get that. Now the rest of the world just needs to catch up to Apple!