Apple bills its latest product as a premium phone and brags endlessly about the supposed build quality

So does Samsung, and HTC for that matter,

Care to show me where any of the Android makers explicitly state they build crap?

But don't you think it's kind of crappy that the iPhone 6 is so flimsy, especially for the price?

If it were flimsy, perhaps , but in reality it's not - some Android phones are worse, and if you pick one up you can tell "flimsy" does not describe it at all.

A single human on Mars could do in a week more than every previous rover on mars put together has accomplished to date.

We've done what we can with the robotic approach, at some point you need humans to take research to the next level rather than inching along for centuries.

Some people will die; some people always have died, will always die. That does not matter.

If you think it's gung-ho, well all I can say is it's side you decided to stop advancing the human race, not all of us share your pitiful lethargy. It's not gung-ho at all, it's a built-in drive that we still in the human race call humanity...

Android phones bend too.

As anyone could have found with Google before they tried to make this a thing about Apple.

Just be aware and it'll be fine, with any phone.

They denied many people had them but eventually fixed it anyway with a free bumper.

That didn't *fix* anything though. As was widely reported at the time, ALL phones lose signal dramatically with a death grip, iPhone or no, even with a case.

I never used a case or bumper with the "Antenna phone" and need had an issue dropping calls.

The free bumper was just PR.

I imagine somewhere in Apple's labs they are testing strengthened cases

Possibly, but I think that will only come into play with the iPhone 6s. I'm sure they will consider it more strongly.

The first mission or two is probably no return anyway so who cares if you can't abort?

I'd still sign on in a heartbeat.

We need to be WAY less cautious about manned space travel again, we aren't going to do much of import at this pace.

Exactly! Glad someone understands.

I'm basically someone who knows what he likes and is also not stupid enough to tie myself to a single party mindset or outlook, instead over time I've learned to think for myself.

It will slowly gain traction among iOS developers, and some will use it for new code, but that doesn't mean it will be dominant by any means.

I don't think you understand, for new projects it pretty much already is.

The fact remains that there are billions of lines of Objective-C code out there. If you honestly think that developers are going to rewrite all those billions of lines of code

Of course not but over time refactoring will rid you of much of that.

I'm not saying all of that is going to be re-written, but within a year I don't think many projects will be started that do not use Swift at the outset.

Now if Apple were to release an Objective-C to Swift translator,

In effect they already do by automatically generating Swift versions of any header files you want Swift to see. That means it's zero cost to call into any existing code from Swift.

If anything, they're usually not cynical enough to adequately model developer apathy and resistance to change..../em

You REALLY do not understand the iOS development community. I would agree with you in any other context, I have been a developer in a lot of worlds, from backend to front end dev. In any other community of developers you would be right; for iOS development you are so, so wrong - primarily because iOS developers are used to constant change anyway, the language changing is just one more change. If it makes you even a little more productive people will use it - and Swift does that quite well.

My predictions are also very, very conservative...

My dealer offers "free" loaner cars, so I don't wait. Of course, that's quite an expensive free rental, but it is convenient. "Valet service" is a thing now at some luxury dealerships, too (they come get your car, do the work, bring it back). But that's all only if you're not watching the price.

Wait, who's president again? I thought we had taken a break from rich old white men? (You forgot Protestant, BTW.)

I wouldn't ever carry a bare phone or one with just a silicone bumper in a front pocket

I have for years without issue.

And that includes the iPhone plus.

Theres simply not enough force to even come close to flexing the phone, much less bending...

Back pockets are I think more worrisome but even there - the Plus (as the tests show) is pretty damn rigid.

70 lbs is easy to bend just moving around in tight pants

Perhaps if you are the Hulk, unlike you I wear a phone AND PANTS all the time and I can verify no such forces are exerted from normal wear (and that includes Jeans which are the Iron Maiden of phone holders).

Executive summary: MONEY GOOD

Summary for everyone else: I have a Plus in my pocket and looking at what should get bent soon, pretty sure it's you,

At the rate Microsoft is going in their mad race to piss off & alienate just about everyone with a high-end workstation (by pushing Windows towards dumbed-down touch-based interfaces), that goal is actually starting to look attainable. Five years from now, one of two things will likely happen:

* Microsoft will have finally pissed off & alienated enough users for some critical mass of high end desktop/workstation power users to decide Windows is annoying them more than making their lives easier, and vendors like Adobe will notice & release their flagship software for Linux (effectively destroying what little market would remain for high-end Windows applications).

* Hedging their bets, companies like Adobe will port their flagship apps to Linux... then port them back to Windows with "kde6.dll" as a dependency. IMHO, this is Microsoft's ultimate nightmare scenario. If the apps high-end workstation users care about are all native KDE apps with equally good Linux versions, there's literally nothing left at that point to keep them chained to Windows. They'd basically be running Linux under a Windows kernel through a compatibility thunking layer anyway. ESPECIALLY if the apps are licensed in a way that allows users to buy the app once, then install & run it under BOTH Windows AND Linux.

Why KDE, and not Gnome? Licensing & logistics. KDE is Apache-licensed, so there's nothing to stop Adobe from bundling an installer for KDEwin directly into their own installers to auto-install it if the user hasn't done so already. And KDE for Windows already exists in beta form (see: http://windows.kde.org/ ).

Five years from now, we might not all be running Linux per se... but most of us will probably be running "Winux" (Windows kernel, Linux UI).

So, if the phones are bending in real world situations, they are by definition defective

Except they aren't.

Apple sold 10 *million* phones over the weekend. Of those, Apple says they have six complaints. And we haven't seen that many pictures from real owners.

So the reality is that the iPhone 6 is not defective, a few have undergone more extreme forces than is reasonable. In the end a large flat object can be broken, that's just physics and no amount of design will change that.

If you plan to put ANY phone through more extreme forces than normal, get an Otterbox and call it a day.

If they only test the phone on the middle, what's the point?

A) Most people with phones in the back pocket would have strain excerpted roughly from the middle, not some offset point.

B) With the 6 Plus the distance from the center to the volume buttons is so small I doubt there would be any change in the results. Forces distributed across the device find the weakest point even if it is offset.