Clarus

I have other ElGato gear like the CamLink and the Key Lights, and they’re mostly good products. But I could not justify a Stream Deck. I don’t think the value is really there. I mean come on, all that money for just 12 buttons? With a USB-A cable that doesn’t plug directly into most current Macs? That the article says needs to be plugged directly into a Mac, when many Macs only have as few as 2 USB-C ports? (I run everything through the USB ports on my hub so I only have to plug 1 cable into my Mac) With no HomeKit integration whatsoever, a big complaint of mine with their wireless Key Lights?

For those who have an iPad or iPhone, there are many better solutions that cost much less. I use Touch Portal, an iOS app offering a fully configurable programmable grid of buttons to control everything from OBS to Photoshop. You can set up many more buttons, they don’t have to be square, and can be much bigger than on a Stream Deck. As an iPad app, it works wirelessly, not using up any USB ports. The article says the StreamDeck doesn’t travel well, but Touch Portal is not a bulky box, it travels as thin as the iPad it is on. Sure there is a Stream Deck app, but Touch Portal is a cheap no subscription price. The iPad is already on my desk, the StreamDeck would compete for the space on my desk. The ONLY thing Touch Portal gives up to Stream Deck is the tactile feel of the real buttons. In all other respects, if you have an iOS  device, an app like Touch Portal is a much better deal.

jbishop1039 said:

My Apple Newsroom notification made it pretty clear it was the 21st. 

That's because of exactly the reason in the story: All newsreaders get the article summary from the metadata, so the May 21 date that was still present in the summary metadata might not be in the actual article.

tzeshan said:

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You also made a factually incorrect statement. Initially the number one carrier refused to work with Apple. Only AT&T participated in the 2007 iPhone. 

This...is exactly why the last paragraph of my post said  “ You might nitpick a point or two here and there.” I kind of figured it was going to happen. Point taken, I should have written “carrier” instead of “carriers”...but that nitpicky point is insignificant, because it doesn’t negate the rest of the post. I’m well aware that the original deal was only with Cingular, who became AT&T. As my post said, when the iPhone got big, the carriers found they did not have the control they usually had, and taking your point into account, it didn’t matter whether they were the one carrier who signed up in the beginning, or the carriers who came on later; it was the same result: Apple’s strategic chess move kept all of them away from control of the OS and apps running on iPhone, an unprecedented move in mobile.

GeorgeBMac said:

Samsung had been making smart phones since the 90's and later the things like the Palm Treo refined the product.  The only thing the iPhone really introduced was the larger screen and replacing the stylus with a finger.

That is factually incorrect. The iPhone introduced several innovations that are not covered by your comment.
The stylus was not merely replaced by “a finger.” The iPhone screen supported multi-touch gestures. That was huge. Nobody else had it. Because, the entire concept of multi-touch was just a tech demo that wowed everybody a year earlier (watch the 2006 TED talk video of it by Jeff Han) and that used an entire table. Everybody who saw that talk assumed multi-touch desktop screens would not be a reality for a few years. Yet 12-13 months later, here is Apple giving you multi-touch...in a handset! A single point stylus cannot match multi-touch.

Some other iPhone innovations were not in the hardware but were purely Apple recognizing that the entire ecosystem needed a major overhaul to really unleash the potential of the device. Before the iPhone, the OS and apps were controlled by the carriers. Nobody thought much about OS updates for their phones, especially major OS upgrades that would radically improve the phone. That came with iPhone, because Apple took the unprecedented step to negotiate ownership and control of the phone OS. The only reason the carriers agreed was they thought the iPhone was going to be some niche that would not affect the industry much, but when the iPhone blew up, the carriers found they did not have control over this hugely successful device, and Apple suddenly had all this leverage that Samsung etc. did not. Similarly, when the iPhone finally allowed apps, Apple took the unprecedented step of wresting apps away from the carriers.

You might nitpick a point or two here and there, but the fact is that with the iPhone you had an overall new combination of innovation found nowhere else: A multitouch display, an OS that would get significant fixes and upgrades, and later a wide selection of third party apps that was not under the control of the any individual mobile carrier.