Next model to be built without home, lock screen buttons
Following the revelation that the new iPhone 7 will come with wireless earbuds and no headphone jack, Apple has announced even more “visionary” design ideas for future releases.
“The whole company feels that we made things too easy for our users by having a headphone jack,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in an interview with the Tomato. “It lets users do too many things at once, like charging the phone while listening to music.”
Cook said that “Removing one key element has made us really examine what other important features we can get rid of in our products.”
Continuing on with this trend, Cook said in a Sept. 12 morning press conference that the next version of the iPhone will come with no home or lock screen buttons so that Apple users can fully appreciate their phone’s wallpaper for the ten minutes it will take for it to lock.
“We’re also looking into making the earbuds even smaller,” said Cook. “We’re hoping to have the Apple headphones be so sleek and refined that they don’t even exist—try losing that!”
But according to Apple’s chief marketing officer Philip Schiller, future products won’t simply be stripped down devices. In fact, the upcoming iPhone 7S will flip closed to protect what will be an actual keyboard. Schiller said the company hopes this new addition will create an entirely new type of phone called the “flip phone”.
In addition to the new physical design, these Apple flip phones will no longer come with data plans or the ability to access Wi-Fi.
After facing another wave of consumer outrage over this latest announcement, Apple executives explained that this new design will help encourage users to spend more time enjoying the new phone interface, along with some of the many mobile games that the phones will come with—like Brick Breaker.
“Hardworking Apple programmers spend years working on operating systems that you people just ignore. Phones are more than just Angry Birds!” shouted one Apple employee in the audience at the Sept. 12 press conference.
Emily Grand, a marketing professor at the University of Ottawa, believes that Apple’s removal of these key features could set off a ripple effect throughout the tech sector.
“If more companies follow this minimalistic approach, who knows where it could end? We could have television sets without colour, and the return of the cassette deck.”
Grand theorizes that the next step would probably be the slowing of Internet speeds and the outright abandoning of mobile networks in favour of using landline connections.
“People would really appreciate websites more if they’re spending half an hour loading one page.”
“Who can tell how far this trend will go? But if we’re all living in log cabins and using horse and buggies decades from now, we’ll be able to say that it started, unbelievably, with the removal of a headphone jack.”
