Wi-Fi Assist, then, is an attempt to prevent end uses from feeling punished by the failure of the network. But at a high cost to the end user. It salves the pain of being disconnected but puts the user at the mercy of their cellular providers who know all to well how much they are willing to pay to forgo that particular kind of suffering.
The real solution is for the groups at Apple who design, implement and support networking to communicate better with themselves and outside groups, and for management to step out of their very comfortable no-limit data plan mindsets and consider the costs, both emotional and financial, of the decisions they make to their end users.
Here at FlexMonkey Towers, the ever beautiful Mrs FlexMonkey and I love to spend our Sunday mornings luxuriating in bed drinking Mimosas, listening to The Archers omnibus and eating some lovely plums. Being a generous sort of chap, whenever I pull a pair of plums from the freshly delivered Fortnum & Mason's hamper, I always try to ensure she has the larger of the two. However, this isn't always easy, especially after the third of fourth breakfast cocktail.
3D Touch to the rescue! My latest app, the Plum-O-Meter, has been specifically designed to solve this problem. Simply place two delicious plums on the iPhone's screen and the heavier of the two is highlighted in yellow so you can hand it to your beloved without fear of being thought of as a greedy-guts.
Well, it does what it promises to do: it’s waterproof and delivers (more than) a complete battery recharge to the iPhone 6 inside. Additionally, it’s easy to open and close, which I don’t take for granted with waterproof iPhone cases. Expect to compromise a little on sonic performance once your iPhone’s sealed in, but that’s no huge surprise given how most waterproof cases work, nor is the price, which includes a waterproofing premium over Mophie’s otherwise comparably-equipped Juice Pack Air.
What’s at stake here is not so much the final outcome – ie whether old people get care or not. To frame the argument this way would be to stack the deck in favour of Silicon Valley: given enough sensors and data-processing capacity, these companies can and will provide any service – and on terms that beat most incumbent providers. However, when it comes to care, the process can be as important as the outcome, for many values that we hold dear – dignity, for example – are the properties of processes, not their outcomes.
People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives—as long they don’t have to drive one themselves.
Apple, I guess, sees having thin devices with all-day battery life (where all-day means 8 to 10 hours) as a competitive advantage. Having thick devices with more battery life is not important, because it will not trump competitors with devices of the same thickness but with 'only' 8 to 10 hours of battery life.
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Thanks for reading.