Monday, October 08, 2012

"Compared to the iPhone 5, all other products will feel cheap"

Farhad Manjoo:

I’ll go even further: When I pick up the iPhone 5 and examine it closely, I find it difficult to believe that this device actually exists. The iPhone 5 does not feel like a product that was mass produced. In a strange way, it doesn’t feel like it was built at all. This is a gadget that seems as if it fell into the box fully formed. If you run your hands around its face, you scarcely feel any seams or other points of connection; there’s little evidence that this thing is a highly complex device made from lots of smaller things. Instead it just feels like a single, solid, exquisitely crafted piece of machinery, and once you pick it up you never want to put it down.

I've had an iPhone 5 for a couple weeks. It is not only my first smartphone, but the first mobile phone I've had that wasn't an amusing anachronism the day I acquired it. I agree with Manjoo completely. As an object, it is utterly uncanny.

You can easily imagine the precision required to create it would drive its Chinese builders mad.

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