More Apple for the day

Will Oremus has a Slate article about the new iPhones:

As I stood in line at my local AT&T store, preparing to plunk down four hundred bucks for Apple’s next big thing, a fear crept into my thoughts: what if the iPhone 6 Plus is too big to fit into my pants pocket? Am I going to have to start carrying a purse?
This, of course, is not a novel problem. Half the smartphone-buying population has been grappling with it stoically for years, because the pockets on women’s clothing tend to be Lilliputian. Only with the growing popularity of “phablets” like the 6 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy Note, however, has the pocket-or-purse dilemma begun to affect men. Predictably, we’re freaking out.
As it turned out, however, I had no problem sliding the iPhone 6 Plus into the pockets of my Uniqlo chinos. One of my colleagues, whose sartorial taste skews toward elfin hipster jeans, had somewhat more difficulty when he tried my new phone on for size. I'm guessing he'll opt for a smaller version.
Yet, just as I began to rejoice that I hadn’t wasted my money on a phone I couldn’t carry, a different drawback became apparent: there’s no easy way to use the device with just one hand. Over the years, I’ve grown blithely accustomed to the notion that operating a smartphone is a single-handed endeavor. Not only can I comfortably cradle the iPhone 5 in my palm, but the tips of my fingers have no trouble reaching the farthest corners of the screen. I’ve even mastered the art of swatting home runs one-handed on my favorite little time-wasting mobile game, 9 Innings Pro Baseball.
No more. Just typing in your passcode to unlock the 6 Plus requires either a second hand or a feat of manual acrobatics. Reaching the top buttons on the home screen— you know, trivial things like “messages”, “photos”, and “camera”— is out of the question, unless you’re Kawhi Leonard.
When Apple announced the 6 Plus, I noted that it had included a feature that allows you to pull the top buttons halfway down the screen by double-tapping the home button. I did not anticipate that I would quickly come to rely on this feature for almost everything I need to do on the phone.
Opening my Gmail app and composing a message used to require just three actions:

Tap to open the app
Tap the “compose” button
Start typing

Now it requires the following finger dance:

Double-tap the home button to bring the Gmail app within reach
Tap to open the app
Double-tap the home button to bring the compose button within reach
Tap the “compose” button
Start typing

That might sound like a small difference. If you use your phone a lot, it isn’t. It nearly doubles the amount of time it takes to complete certain tasks. And while the double-tap feature makes it relatively easy to reach the top of the screen, it remains a struggle to reach the sides without dropping the device altogether. Two of the people I to whom I briefly loaned the phone managed to fumble it within the first thirty seconds.
The obvious solution is simply to use two hands at all times. I get that. The 6 Plus works beautifully in landscape mode, and its spacious screen shines when it comes to reading articles, watching videos, or playing games. Its battery life, reputed to be significantly longer than that of the iPhone 6, was a major selling point for me. Like the Galaxy Note, this is a phone that some people will love even as others mock and eschew it. I have a feeling that my father, who happily sported a bulky Handspring Treo at a time when everyone else was buying Motorola Razrs, will be a fan.
Unlike the Galaxy Note, however (or the Treo, for that matter), the 6 Plus doesn’t come with a stylus, and it wasn’t explicitly marketed as a compromise between a phone and a tablet. No Galaxy Note buyer should be surprised to find that her device is ungainly. Apple addicts, on the other hand, may have been lulled by the company’s marketing to believe that it would never sell them a phone that didn’t feel Mama Bear’s–chair perfect in their palms.
A device that requires two hands is a device that demands your full attention. It’s not a device you can whip out of your pocket and glance at quickly in between other tasks. It’s not a device you can use to quickly scan your email while carrying a grocery bag or hanging onto a subway pole. And perhaps that was Apple’s intention all along: an awkwardly sized phone might be just the incentive some people need to buy a $350 smartwatch.
I’m not ruling out the possibility that I’ll eventually grow dexterous enough with the 6 Plus that its virtues begin to overshadow its limitations. But, at this point, I’m also not ruling out the possibility that I’ll be back in line at that same AT&T store within two weeks to exchange it for something more manageable.

Rico says there's already an article by Chris Wade about the solution: Apple Pants:

People are lining up all over the world to get their hands on the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But once they have these large new devices, where will they put them? Apple has the answer in a new product that’s nothing short of revolutionary:

And another article, by Will Oremus, invoking the ghost of Steve Jobs:

At a launch event in Cupertino, California, Apple revealed its two newest pocket computers. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch screen that is significantly larger than the four-inch display on the iPhone 5 and 5S. And, as its name implies, the iPhone 6 Plus is bigger still, with a 5.5-inch screen that approaches the size of so-called "phablets" like Samsung's Galaxy Note.
To take advantage of their larger screens, Apple's new phones are designed to be held horizontally in many cases. Some apps will reveal a second display panel when you turn the phone on its side. And for the first time, the phone's home screen will rotate to accommodate a horizontal posture.
Apple CEO Tim Cook called the new phones "the biggest advancement in the history of the iPhone," which sounds like quite a claim until you realize that (a) it's partly just a reference to their size, and (b) Apple executives always heap superlatives on their new devices, even when they aren't particularly revolutionary.
Screen size aside, the new devices look like about as much of an advancement over last year's models as you'd expect. Both are not only larger than their predecessors but pack in more pixels, resulting in what Apple calls a Retina HD display, with resolutions of 1334 x 750 pixels for the 6 and a legitimately impressive 1920 x 1080 for the larger 6 Plus. Both have the capability to record high-resolution, 1080p video at either thirty or sixty frames per second via a front-facing eight-megapixel camera. On the 6 Plus, that camera comes with optical image stabilization to better compensate for your shaky hands. Both phones are also somewhat thinner than the 5S, at 6.8 and 7.1 mm, respectively, versus 7.6 for the previous model. Their glass screens go all the way from one side of the phone to the other, creating almost an infinity-pool kind of effect, with the glass curving at the edges. They're good-looking phones.
Other incremental improvements include:

Support for Voice Over LTE
Wi-Fi calling
An A8 processor that is both faster and smaller than the A7
A barometer that can track your elevation, so that you can see not only how many steps you've taken, but how high you've climbed

Apple claims the new phones' battery life will match or exceed that of the 5S, which would be impressive, if true, given their size.
The new releases are in keeping with Apple's recent history of releasing new hardware whose greatest improvements lie in their technical specifications, rather than entirely fresh features. The strategy has been working so far, with global iPhone sales reaching new heights in the past year, although it has led to some grumbling from those who expect magic and miracles every time out.
The new iPhones will be available starting on 19 September 2014. If you're buying them on contract, prices will range from $199 to $399 for the 6 and $299 to $499 for the 6 Plus, depending on the amount of storage you desire. Without a contract, they'll be exorbitant, as always.
Details and technical specs aside, the success of the 6 and 6 Plus will hinge on consumers' response to their larger screens. "No one's going to buy that," Steve Jobs once sniped about phones whose screens were larger than the original iPhone's 3.5 inches. "You can't get your hand around it."
It's true that phablets aren't for everyone. Still, Apple's rivals have since proven that larger screens hold plenty of appeal in an age where people do more and more reading, typing, and movie-watching on their phones. You can work all the technological wonders you want but, when it comes to screen size, bigger is simply better. The only question is whether it's worth the tradeoff in terms of portability.
Back when people used phones mainly to make calls, Jobs was probably right to go small. It's hard to say whether he would have changed his mind if he were still alive. But Apple clearly has, and that's not a bad thing. With the 6 Plus, Apple has at least tried to help out the small-handed with a new feature that brings the top buttons partway down the screen when you double-tap the home button.
I expect the larger phones will be a hit, just as all of Apple's previous phones have been (with the possible exception of the desultory 5C.) But it will not escape the notice of the gadget-savvy that, after years of accusing Samsung of copying its phones, Apple's newest offerings are following a path that Samsung helped to blaze.
The phones, by the way, were not the only thing Apple introduced, and the other is far more ambitious. It's called the Apple Watch, and I'll have a separate post on it shortly. Until then, you can find the basics here.
One amusing side note for those who were closely following today's proceedings: Apple hilariously botched the live stream of its own event, with the feed repeatedly cutting out and occasionally throwing up unsightly error messages. When it did work, the Apple executives' voices were at times competing with a muddled voiceover from a Chinese translator. In a terse non-apology, the company blamed "exceptionally high demand".

Rico says if you want perfection, you'll have to wait...