My position on new Apple hardware

Since a few people have already inquired (assumed?) as to whether I’d be upgrading to the iPhone 5, I’m composing this boilerplate reply.

No, I’m not planning on it, considering I don’t really have the money for it and, even if I did, I’d instead by a replacement for my misplaced iPad 3 (that was a hard $600 to lose).

Looking at features tit for tat:

• Bigger screen: Not adequately compelling for me. Sure, it’s nice, but I don’t need it.
• Better camera: Once again, would be cool, don’t need it.
• Panorama mode: Love the idea of it, but the Autostitch app takes care of my panorama needs and I am pretty sure has some features that the iPhone 5 panorama mode doesn’t have.
  UPDATE: looks like Panorama mode is an iOS feature rather than a hardware feature, and my iPhone 4S is on the approved list.
• Faster CPU: The reason I never upgraded to the iPad 2. I never felt my original was slow, at least not at that time. More recently I have felt that, which is why I bought the iPad 3 and am still praying it might be found. In any case, I don’t feel my iPhone 4S is slow.
• Better battery life: Enticing, but I just recently bought a Mophie Juice Pack Pro. With that, my 4S has gobs more battery life than the iPhone 5 alone.
• 4G LTE: Also enticing, but just as with the CPU, I’ve never groaned about my mobile data speeds, and I’m very often on WiFi with speeds even faster than LTE.
• Thinner form factor: I actually am not fond of too thin of a phone. The aforementioned Mophie case fattens my 4S considerably and I genuinely like the feel of the size.
• New Dock connector: Clearly I’m not looking to deprecate various accessories I already own that fit the legacy connector. I am already contending with this a bit due to the Mophie case availing a mini USB plug instead of the normal dock connector.

That’s pretty much the long and short of it. All other features I wish to have will be available through the iOS 6 update that comes out next week.

PS – Come January, I’ll have earned another $400 in my enrichment allowance. So rather than $600, it’s really just $200 I would need to figure out how to scrape together in order to replace the lost iPad. But all three iPads have been released in March, so if I can wait till January, I’d just wait till March for the 4th generation!