By Dave Klein (September 10, 2014, at 7:43 AM)

For the past couple of years, I have been hoping that Apple would resist the pressure to come out with a 5"+ phone.  There are two main reasons for this now-shattered hope.

The first and most significant reason is that it shows that Apple is being directed by their competitors and detractors.  I know that there are some number of iPhone users who wanted a larger phone, though I’d argue that the 4.7 would have sufficed most of them, but the vast majority of noise about Apple’s lack of a giant phone was coming from the phone manufacturers who currently make them, or from the media pundits who inherently hate Apple.  It’s very similar to when you hear political party A saying that party B is doomed unless they do X.  Then party B does X, and it backfires on them, just as party A had hoped.  In other words, don’t take direction from your enemies.  With the iPhone 6 Plus, it appears that Apple is doing just that.  And that scares me.   

The second reason is that they look terrible in use.  I knew that if Apple were to make a ginormous phone, it would be the best-looking one in existence, but what good is being best-in-class when the whole class is hideous?  I’ll grant that there are exceptions to this terrible look.  If you are over 7 feet (2.13 meters) tall and can easily palm a basketball, a 5.5-inch phone might look good on you, but for most of humanity it’s just too big for a phone.  An LTE iPad Micro maybe, but not a phone.

But what’s done is done.  The devices and the screens on them do look amazing, and I’m sure they will sell well, at least in the short term.  I just hope I’m wrong about this being a new means of setting direction at Apple. 

There is one more thing I’ll hope for and that I’ll ask all of you to help with.  One of the things I’ve always noticed about Apple products is that they look really cool, and people using them look really cool.  So, in order to keep that picture from fading, if you do purchase an iPhone 6 Plus, please, use a headset to make calls.  For the sake of Apple’s reputation as the maker of the best-looking devices — in a display and in use — please, for the love of all that is new and shiny, don’t hold the iPhablet up to your head.*

Thanks,
Dave

* Unless you are, in fact, over 7 feet tall.

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