iPhone 7 Annoyances

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I upgraded to the iPhone 7 a couple weeks ago after realizing that would only cost me sales tax + $1 extra per month. This was because they would reduce my bill by $20/month and finance the purchase of the new phone for $21/month. So I walked out of the store paying $21 (3% Colorado sales tax) and had a brand new $700 phone. I'm not sure why Verizon lowered my bill by $20/month, but I wasn't too eager to ask questions.

I really like the design of the iPhone 7, it is very consistent with very few asymmetries. Previous iPhones had those asymmetric antenna lines, on this one the antenna is invisible. There is, however, one major exception; the giant camera protruding out of the back. This prevents the phone from lying down flat on a flat surface, just like the iPhone 6. And just as annoying. In my opinion, it would have been much better to make the rest of the phone thicker and increase the battery size as well as keep the 3.5 headphone jack. Which brings me to the most annoying part of the iPhone 7.

The iPhone 7 headphones do not work with a Macbook. It's not possible, not even with a dongle. Owning a Mac and iPhone used to feel like being part of a metaphorical club where everything worked together really well. The new headphones are a pretty stark deviance from that seamless ecosystem. I really hope Apple figures these usability things out better in the future, it would be even more annoying to have to learn Android :p

Complaints aside, I still really like the iPhone. As of late it feels just a little bit like Apple has lost their way. Investors might be thinking that too, which could partially explain why APPL is trading at only 15 times earnings. Where almost every other major tech company is more than double that (Microsoft 30x, Google 30x, Facebook 45x, Amazon 170x, with the notable exception of Samsung at only 13x).

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