iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: Fantasticly Boring

A little more than a week ago, Apple made some new things. The usual new iPhone came out, but it was also accompanied by a much larger iPhone and the long anticipated Apple Watch. Apple has always made great products, and that has not changed much with the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. The 6 and 6 Plus have bigger and higher resolution 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch displays, faster processors, improved cameras, and come optimized for iOS 8. The Apple Watch works seamlessly with the iPhones, the 5 and newer, and has a "Digital Crown". There's nothing wrong with these products, and they work quite well. Everything's fast, improved, and just works. Two big iPhones are nice, but they are just that. Apple made a good phone, but why didn't they make a great phone?

Apple has been making gorgeous, intuitive, and fantastic products for quite some time. There's no argument about it. Save for the 3G and 3GS, every iPhone has been a beautiful engineering feat. The stark aluminum design of the original iPhone was incredibly durable and classy, the 4 was an adorable glass and aluminum sandwich, and the murdered out black iPhone 5 screamed coolness. And what do we have with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus? They are both premium aluminum and glass devices, but almost anything made with good materials can feel great in hand. The new iPhones do not have the same jewelry-esque look that the 5 and 4 did. The lack of shiny chamfered edges might be why, but the unsightly plastic strips on the back exacerbate this problem. They blend in well on the space grey iPhone, but the white strips on the gold and silver iPhones look extremely cheap. The incredible thinness of the iPhones also make the camera lens stick out, which makes it susceptible to scratching. This was fine on the $299, now $199 iPod Touch, but this is a much different story for the $650 and $750 iPhone flagships. Now you can't put your phone flat on a table, and it sticking out looks a bit cheap. This is a small thing, but Apple is always the one to nail the small things.

When Steve Jobs was at Apple, they always seemed to know what you wanted before you even wanted it. Sure Apple wasn't usually the first to invent it, but they were the first to properly execute it. The OG iPhone revolutionized how we interact with smartphones with multitouch, and the iPhone 4 had one of the highest resolution displays at the time with the Retina display. The 6 and 6 Plus, however do not bring anything new to the table. Like I've said before, there is nothing wrong with a bigger iPhone. It is just that there is nothing great about a new iPhone. Notification widgets are cool and useful, seeing that many more emails is great, but Apple isn't using the new screen real estate. The 6 Plus has a two-pane landscape mode in messaging, but seeing a list of your conversations doesn't do much for anyone. Why not finally add widgets to the home screen? Apple has more than enough resources to make widgets clean, powerful, and not a cluttered mess like on Android. The clock and calendar icons already change in real time, so why not expand upon that? 

To account for the larger displays, Apple put in a new feature where you can just double tap the home button to bring the top menu down to a reachable distance. This is without a doubt useful, but it does not have the same refinement that Apple products usually do. The empty black space above the pulled down menu makes it seem broken, or like there is a problem with it. Yes this is another incredibly small nitpick, but Apple could have again put so much more into this feature. The top half of the display could show your recent applications and offer a killer multitasking experience. Apple has the time and man power to do this, but how can they innovate when they're just playing catch up.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are essentially the products of Tim Cook's vision. Jobs has been gone for a while, and these are the first products that Cook had the opportunity to shock the world with. He says the Apple Watch is just as revolutionary as the iPod, Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and I will voice my opinion on that soon. As for now, we have two new big iPhones. They are both great and the best in many categories, but they do not have a cool factor. Motorola's new Moto X has a premium and interesting design with the leather backs, the HTC One M8 is beautiful, and the LG G3 has the jaw-dropping 2k display. The iPhone doesn't have a cool factor or amazing feature, but that's not a problem. It is more of a disappointment than anything. These are the first iPhones to not have a killer feature, hardware or software. I'll keep loving all the cool things that Motorola, HTC, Google, and the rest of the industry are doing, and that isn't going to stop anytime soon. But when it comes to actually putting my money down, there is only one company that consistently makes the best products. When my contract is up early next year I'll be buying an iPhone 6, and so should you.

Images above from The Verge's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus reviews, and Apple