The iPhone is Apple's "Porsche 911"

Here’s an opinion piece from a senior, highly connected mobile industry insider, that I think deserves some exposure:

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The iPhone is their 911. Porsche don’t redesign the 911, they would be mad to, they simply refine it, year after year.

The Porsche 911 is a lovely car. You either want one or you don’t. Every year (or so) Porsche update the design of the car, they refine the angles, they polish the interior, they obsess over every detail, they add features that make the car even more of a joy to drive (sometimes they mess around with some part of it that they shouldn’t and get complaints) but they continuously iterate the design and the feel of the car to make the smoothest back wheel drive sports car they can, year after year… and people buy them, year after year. Not everyone buys them though.

That’s what I believe Apple are doing. Refining. Making the best possible touchscreen phone they can.

The iPhone 5 is actually a lovely phone – even though the maps are shocking. Could you imagine buying an A to Z and it being wrong? You’d be furious. Passbook will be a killer app, and the fact that as a developer you don’t need to redesign or recut your icons because the screen is the same width, is actually genius. Not wider and taller like a new Samsung, just taller.

You can see more of the webpage, no fuzzy icons because the screen changed size just increase the part of your app that has the content in it, and keep everything else the same.

Genius.

People haven’t said that enough. Have you seen how many different screen resolutions you now need to support when building apps for Android. It’s too many.

Yet again the point jump, the jump from 4 to 5 is a big one, like the jump from 3 to 4.

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What do you think?

Although I’ve been particularly direct about Apple’s Maps screw-up recently, I certainly agree that the iPhone 5 is a very nice device.

If only everyone could buy a 911 for £49 up front and £45 a month? 😉