Apple Influence
You may have heard of a small company named Apple Inc. located at Silicon Valley! You know, the first company in history to reach a trillion-dollar valuation! Yeah, that Apple. Some people hate it, while others love it but no matter your subjective opinion on the company, no one can deny the impact Apple has had in the tech world and the industry as a whole. While the company has impacted everything from phones to PC’s to tablets among others, for the sake of clarity and because I don’t get paid enough to do more of this, we will be focusing solely on the smartphone industry.
If you are reading this on a smartphone, you can thank apple to some extent. Before apple unleashed the first iPhone in 2007, phones were clunky and looked more like a computer; they were not exactly appealing to everyday consumers. Apple was first to release a phone with a simple interface which used our finger as a stylus. The presentation was mind blowing to say the least, apple had broken the barrier of what people thought was possible with a pocket device (You can still look up the video in YouTube, though it may look primitive to some of our younger audience.). It was introduced as a device that was a music player (like the iPod), a phone and an internet browser and smartphones were forever changed for better that day. Today every phone follows the very same basics introduced with that device.
The first device with a touch id was a Toshiba device. It was a well-thought out technology with tremendous potential. However, Toshiba was not exactly well-known for their phone making capabilities thus it was not popular in the smartphone world. All of that changed when Apple bought rights from Toshiba to introduce the technology in their phones. Touch id was first introduced in the iPhone 5s. Since Apple was a well-known and a leader in smartphones, the technology quickly gained popularity and was loved among the fans. Again, Apple created an out-roar in Silicon Valley and every smartphone that were to release in years to come would have this feature and today a phone without touch-id is unthinkable.
Face-id was a technology that was present at the time apple released iPhone X (calling this 10 may cause an uproar, be careful!). Face-identification was present in maybe high-end security devices or with the CIA or the FBI maybe, or was used in the tech industry as a learning and potential future application by enthusiast. But because Apple assembles its own hardware and they do it so tightly, they were able to experiment this tech and closely integrate with their own software. They added some additional hardware in the new iPhones and that read your face very accurately and you didn’t have to raise a finger to unlock the phone. Phones over the years would try to replicate the technology by apple but not all have been successful. Apple popularized this but it is a rather difficult technology. Not everyone who tried has succeed with this technology.
As impressive as it was, the new hardware for face-id took additional space in the phone’s upper space therefore creating the ugly notch trend! Over 70% of the phones the coming year would have the ugly notch in their phones in different variations nice, short, small, super ugly (*coughs pixel 3 XL) etc. This trend has however died by 2020 and smartphone manufacturers have moved away from this, thank god!
The universally standardized 3.5 mm headphone jack was removed from the iPhone 7 because they wanted to waterproof it with more features packed in the phone therefore lacking space inside the device was what they said happened. Doing this, they made sure that they did not have to pay for using the audio port and at the same time released the new wireless earbuds solely manufactured by them and an adapter (sold separately). Other phone companies started to follow this trend that would save a lot of money and sell their own product therefore maximizing profit!
When apple releases a new product, there will be many to criticize and there will be the loyal fans to defend the company, always. Apple products are so very easy to use and they are so well-built, it’s just brilliant. If Apple does it, prepare yourself to be using that in other devices soon enough. Love it or hate it, its just the way it is. Apple single-handedly has been taking on android as you may all know which is an open source project unlike Apple’s IOS. I just wanted to write that, it’s just awesome!
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