| Scoobes said: If Apple had introduced wireless charging and NFC, would they still be fluff? Firstly, Apple has a lot of sway and influence in the smartphone and general tech market. If they introduced NFC and Wireless charging, they'd likely take off. Retailers would be happy to put more NFC payment options and you'd get a small explosion in rival NFC devices. We'd likely also see more apps that make use of NFC; the fragmentation of Android means that it's not necessarily in developers best interest as only a small percentage of devices actually use it. The same with wireless charging. If Apple had actually decided to put it in their phone you'd likely see a lot of wireless charging docks everywhere (you table in coffee shops, resturants, airports etc.)... and Apple would get heaped with praise for this. I'm not sure why you think the wireless charger is useless thanks to the Lightning connector, you could say the same about micro usb. The point is you should have these hubs everywhere and you'll be able to charge it without having to carry a charger around or without necessarily having to go to a locker/charging unit. Whether that actually happens considering Nokia are the ones introducing the tech is anybody's guess. Secondly, Apple have introduced tech that could be considered fluff before anyway. Siri for instance (especially in the UK) is little more than a gimmick, yet spawned numerous alternative iterations from rival app makers (on Android at least... more of that Apple influence). Siri is now considered are fairly useful feature and is being improved upon. Had another company introduced Siri, would it have taken off in the same way? I doubt it. Basically, Apple in many ways can decide how popular a piece of tech becomes. I personally think wireless charging and NFC will gradually grow, yet when/if Apple decide to jump in, it'll take off in a huge way. You'll probably also get a whole load of people praising Apple for popularising them too. |
Agreed 100% on Apple adoption of tech. If they push hard at a tech in the mobile space, that tech is almost surely going to succeed because of the unified platform of the iPhone. On the other hand, Apple may not feel the market is ready for some of that tech and they may not feel like they're ready to exploit it. Either way, the tech is marginal right now and will remain so for the next few years. There is no reason for Apple to jump on board unless they feel they're ready to embrace it whole-heartedly.
The key difference between Lightning and USB is reversibility. Who here has almost broken their Micro USB port trying to jam the plug in backwards? (most of the room raises their hand). Okay, now the rest of you are lying. When the USB consortium made the micro port and I found out it wasn't reversible, I just shook my head. There's. No. Fucking. Reason. For. It. They easily could have developed something like Lightning for Micro USB and I consider it a failure that they didn't do it. I hate proprietary ports like Lightning as much as the next guy but in this case, Apple is providing a clearly superior solution to a stupid problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. That's the difference.
And if you have an easy to plug in reversible port, it negates some of the need for wireless charging, particularly if that wireless charging unit adds bulk to the phone. Does anyone know the speed of inductive charging? I haven't read up enough on the tech to know if it's slower (but I do know it adds a little bulk to the device, just like everything else). Maybe if the tech improves, Apple will jump on board. We know they're not scared of experimenting with new tech (after all, they did things like poke around until Corning dusted off 50 year old tech to give us Gorilla Glass, something they couldn't find a use for in fifty fucking years) but they generally do it only after they've found a solid implementation for said tech. Given their track record over the past decade, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what the future brings.
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