So iPhone 5 preorders went live at 12:01am Pacific last night, which means right about now half the tech blogs I read are refreshing their FedEx tracking pages instead of writing actual posts. I'm not going to do the whole "here's what's inside the new iPhone" rundown, because if you have not seen the specs by now you have been living somewhere without wifi, and also because every single outlet is running that post today. What I actually want to complain about is the connector.
Apple killed the 30-pin dock connector. Its gone, replaced by this new tiny reversible thing they're calling Lightning, and I get why on a design level, the old plug was chunky and it's been basically unchanged since the original iPod back in 2003. Fine. Progress. But I own, by my last count sitting here at my desk, four separate 30-pin accessories: a bedside clock radio, a set of desktop speakers I bought two years ago that I genuinely love the sound of, a car adapter, and a dock that's just been sitting on my kitchen counter charging my old 3GS for ages out of pure habit. Every one of those is now a paperweight unless I buy Apple's $29 Lightning-to-30-pin adapter, and even then I've read that some of the older accessories won't fully work with it because of some digital audio handshake thing that the adapter cant translate properly. So I might be buying a $29 dongle that half-works with a $150 speaker dock. Great.
I'm not even mad about the phone itself honestly, taller screen, LTE, the whole thing looks like a nice upgrade and I'll probably preorder mine on my lunch break if the site ever stops timing out on me (it's been doing that since about 6am my time, presumably because everyone else had the same idea). What gets me is how fast a giant pile of accessories, docks, cables, car mounts, becomes junk overnight because one company decided a decade-old plug wasnt sleek enough anymore. Somewhere there is a landfill or a junk drawer situation forming right now across a few hundred million households and nobody's really talking about that part.
The new EarPods are a smaller story in all this but worth a mention. Apple redesigned the earbuds themselves for the first time in years, they've got this weird angular shape now instead of the round buds everyone complains fall out of their ears constantly (mine included, I've lost track of how many pairs of stock Apple earbuds I've had slip out on a run). Whether they actually stay in better is one of those things you cant know from a press photo, I guess we'll find out in about a week when the reviews start landing.
Also worth noting, quietly, in the shadow of all this: Amazon put out the Kindle Fire HD and a new Paperwhite Kindle last week and that barely got a mention anywhere because Apple sucked all the oxygen out of the room like it always does in September. The Paperwhite in particular sounds like a real improvement, they finally put a front light on the thing so you can read in bed without a lamp, which is something people have wanted for years. I almost bought one on the spot and then remembered I already own two Kindles I barely use because I read on my phone anyway, which, I recognize, is its own small tragedy.
Anyway. I'll update this post or write a follow-up once the preorder actually goes through, assuming Apple's servers survive the day. If you're one of the people trying to order right now, my condolences, and maybe go make coffee instead of hitting refresh every four seconds like I was doing an hour ago.