I took his point to be that the hand-size explanation is something made up after the fact to justify the iPhone's 3.5 inch screen. I don't think that's a sensible critique. Apple undoubtedly considered the hand-size issue when choosing the iPhone's screen size.
Clearly Apple's only goal wasn't to release a phone that everyone could comfortably operate. But consideration of hand sizes was undoubtedly a spec, to be balanced against other specs. The engineers probably got some ultimatum along the lines of: "we're only going to have one basic model, to maximize our margin, so figure out the screen size that hits the greatest number of target customers."
The iPhone is a reasonable size for people ranging from teenage girls to guys with pretty large hands. Probably too big for people with child-like hands, and too small for the big guys with massive paws, but very likely hits 90% of the potential market. I don't think the 4.3" Android phones hit the same sweet spot. My girlfriend probably couldn't operate one comfortably with one hand. That's okay for Samsung, which has a segmented product line, but not for Apple.
I don't buy that it's automatically inferior if you can't operate it with one hand. Larger carries trade-offs, smaller carries different trade-offs, and those trade-offs are different for everyone. You can't hit 90% with one size. I'd buy that you can make 90% happy, but not if the people you're marketing to have used decent smartphones in the form factor that hits the "sweet spot" for them.
In addition the arguments attributed to apple are usually void, and usually vain rumors, (see bunches of contradictory iphone5 rumors), they read like early people talking things like, of course god wanted 7 planets, because it is perfect.
average palm size in some asian countries are small and 3.5 inches are already unusable to them. Samsung has in this case even a better strategy, because they offer variations for diversity of sex, age and ethnicities rather than making totalitarian assumptions :-)
i believe apple will release larger screens at some point and all this apple-mind readings will be forgotten even by their writers. And those people will search miracles elsewise.
Clearly Apple's only goal wasn't to release a phone that everyone could comfortably operate. But consideration of hand sizes was undoubtedly a spec, to be balanced against other specs. The engineers probably got some ultimatum along the lines of: "we're only going to have one basic model, to maximize our margin, so figure out the screen size that hits the greatest number of target customers."
The iPhone is a reasonable size for people ranging from teenage girls to guys with pretty large hands. Probably too big for people with child-like hands, and too small for the big guys with massive paws, but very likely hits 90% of the potential market. I don't think the 4.3" Android phones hit the same sweet spot. My girlfriend probably couldn't operate one comfortably with one hand. That's okay for Samsung, which has a segmented product line, but not for Apple.