That video at the top of the page is absolutely god awful. I acknowledge that this is a low-quality comment but that cannot go unmentioned. I would believe that the first ten seconds are satirical.
Everyone I know who owns an iPhone XR only got it because they're in some upgrade plan that gives them a new phone every year or two. Nobody actually wants it. There's die-hards who needs the XS because it's the latest and greatest, while those who want something a little cheaper are buying an 8 Plus or original X. I really feel like the XR is a repeat of the original iPhone 7 in that it's a phone with no target audience.
I upgraded to the Xr from the 7 as well, I skipped the initial release of the X last year. I was happy to pay a bit more to get a better camera and the FaceID is 100 times better and faster than TouchID.
I've seen people decry Face ID as a toy in this post. The people who think Face ID is a toy are people who haven't used Face ID. Yes, it has its problems, but it's no toy.
In the grand scheme of things, and in the overall market, everyone you know still comes out to a rounding error. Don't get too caught up in anecdata.
> I really feel like the XR is a repeat of the original iPhone 7 in that it's a phone with no target audience
You're right, there. If people want a high-end iPhone, they'd get the XS. If they want a cheaper phone in the X form factor, they'd get an X. If they don't want the X form factor yet, they'd get an 8. The XR is just… there.
And yet, it's a great phone by itself. Same processor as the XS, meaning a great performance leap over the X, not to mention a vastly improved camera. But it's hard to think of it as premium when it's lacking the OLED screen and Force Touch. It feels so incomplete, like an XS wannabe than its own thing.
Agree about anecdote, but you're off about the X. Apple discontinued the X, so if someone wants a cheaper phone in the X form factor, they're getting the XR. It's unusual for them to discontinue a model after just one year but the X was an anomaly in a lot of ways.
Re: deleting apps on the home screen. I initially had that problem. It's a question of not pushing hard when holding an app icon. Problem solved, reliable 100% once you've retrained your fingers. Not ideal, but there it is.
I use 3D/Force Touch a lot, mainly previewing documents or web pages — especially on Hacker News and reddit where I don't want to keep going back and forwards, potentially polluting my history list with rubbish links.
Aside from the gimmicky actions like shortcuts, it also lets art apps have a basic type of pressure sensitivity on iPhone. That's great for me because I sometimes do little touch-ups and sketches on my iPhone when my iPad+Pencil isn't near me.
I always thought force touch was kind of a dumb feature so I'm happy to do without it. And the XR screen looks great IMO. I'll happily take the extra battery life over a barely perceptibly better screen.
The main thing I'd change about the XR is I'd make it a bit smaller. Other than that it's a great phone.
Re: Force Touch. It is a bit of a dumb feature, but it's been a feature for all the new iPhones (bar the SE) for a few generations; plus, when you get used to it, it's bizarre when it's gone. That it's missing feels sloppy and creates fragmentation in the product lineup that didn't need to be there.
Hi there, I’m one of the people who bought an XR because they wanted one.
I sacrifice a few features which, while nice to have, aren’t really essential (Force Touch, OLED display, better camera), and in exchange I get better battery life and a significantly lower price. Honestly I suspect the XR’s target audience is people who actually think about what they’re buying, while the XS is targeted at the “I must have the best” crowd, and I think as people come up on upgrading that’s going to play out.
I cannot help but think that an iPhone XR mini would have been a great seller if it hit the $450 range. I just don't understand Apple these days, its like they have reverted to the early 90's where they kept jacking the price until even the loyal customers had to exit the ship. I had so believed they would repeat the iPod strategy and start at the top end and slowly squeeze the market by introducing models that filled in the lower price bands.
I think it's the more recent models that people want, and a new budget option would hit that market perfectly. Few people want a phone they know is old, even if only a year or two.
i'd happily pay up to $1200 for a high spec 4" phone.
i'm on an SE. i got this phone fairly late into its life cycle and it was a deliberate choice. my biggest regret is probably not getting a second one before they discontinued it because when my current SE fails i have no idea where to get a replacement.
Look on eBay; there are a lot of SE's available for a good price. It's a great time to buy one and save it for when you need it. At some point the supply will get low enough that the price for a new one will noticeably increase, but we aren't at that point yet.
I'm shocked Apple doesn't fill this market. Many of my friends prefer SE-sized phones. I have friends who aren't upgrading from the SE specifically because they can't get a comparably-sized phone.
I bought my wife the XS, not because it has a fancier display, but purely because it was the smallest model available - and it's still too big for her.
I haven’t understood why Apple doesn’t simply do this. They know from the laptop market that people are more than willing to pay different prices for different t sizes.
Instead of differentiating their phones based on features, they should simply differentiate them based on screen size. That would allow them to meet several price points without making their customers feel like they’re cheap.
I think it's highly likely we'll see the SE return (or it's spritual successor).
Remember, the SE was released outside of the usual iPhone release cycle in March 2016, so I think intent for a longer cycle was clear.
Lots of people predicted between 2 and 3 years before the SE got an update, so if March 2019 passes without an announcement, then who knows what's next.
Also, I think there's a high probability they're trying to work out the kinks in an SE-sized phone that is all screen. I'd be surprised if they released the SE2 and it has a home button.
I’m not being funny. I treat every phone I’ve ever owned as the expensive devices they are. I buy a protective case, don’t put it in my back pocket where it can be bent or broken. I don’t use it while standing over the toilet so it can’t be dropped in. When I drink with friends, I don’t lay my phone on the bar where some drunk can spill beer on it.
It’s more than being able to have the use of a fully functioning device, at trade-in time my phone is worth more because I take of it.
I treat my phones the same, and I thought "I'll never drop this", until you do.
Both times I've dropped the phone getting in or out of the car. First time it landed face first on the garage floor and shattered the screen and the second time it landed on its side and just scratched the case a little.
Hard to know what will happen when you drop your phone.
> Hard to know what will happen when you drop your phone.
I find this is the real problem. I've had phones that I've dropped many, many times, onto hard surfaces, that have come away without a scratch. Then I dropped a Nokia 3 and the screen just flew apart.
Yes, but first one has to know that that this difference exists. Then, there may be other differences that are considered more important by a specific individual. That’s why I asked.
It is not my first time hearing that some individuals may prefer a smaller phone, and you’re correct. I don’t find that difficult to understand.
The iPhone 6 and beyond are too big for my tastes. I reluctantly upgraded to an iPhone 7 after destroying my SE. Even after owning the 7 for over a year, I find it uncomfortably large at times.
Unfortunately even last years models do not support LTE band 71, so they are a poor choice for T-Mobile US customers. No dual SIM support is another reason for many.
I’ve had an SE for almost 3 years and would prefer a similarly sized and priced model for my next phone. I don’t want a giant phone or to pay $1000 for it.
The obvious answer is size. It's not that I can't carry an iPhone 7 in my hands or anything, but I just have no use for the bigger screen, so the extra bulk is literally useless. I still feel like the iPhone SE is the perfect phone form factor, and it's sad that there are basically no options for those of us who want one.
Imagine SE screen size, but edge-to-edge. That thing would be gorgeous — it would almost be as small as the phones we used to have back before smartphones, when anything bigger than about 4" was derided as a 'brick'.
For me, it's the size and headphone jack. Android vs. iOS doesn't matter much, but Apple was the only company still offering a phone that fits my two criteria.
Now I have 3 SEs (one with a broken screen that I'll get fixed, one currently in use, one still in the box) that will hopefully last me a while - maybe the phone market returns to sensible sizes & features in a few years.
I would argue that the iPhone 8 should not exist, but neither should the most recent iPhones. Apple seems to be locked in a system of releasing a new phone(s) every year, but they can't actually deliver something that justifies a new model. This isn't a problem exclusive to Apple, it's just very clear with their product line up.
With the solve down in new features and design Apple could have skipped the iPhone 8, XS and XR. Except of cause "the market" and their stockholders expects new phones, regardless of the need.
A lot of people are locked into two year upgrade plans. When their upgrade is available they want the latest device, not one that's three years old. There are people who already have an iPhone 7 they got at their last contract renewal two years ago! It's pretty simple psychology, "I don't understand why people are confused by this".
What reason is there for the XR to exist other than to be a more affordable, new option compared to the XS? If it's failing at being a more affordable alternative, it's failing.
Buying iPhone 7 or 8, ie a one or two year old phone, practically guarantees that you'll hit the end of the road with iOS major version update availability one or two years earlier, which means you'll have to buy a new phone one or two years earlier. Not sure if the $100 or so that you save is worth losing a year of updates. In other words - adding $100 or so buys you a whole 'nother year or two of usage on your current purchase.
If they offered new phones for a lower price but with the software update support lifetime that matches the flagship phones, then they might have a killer product!
But if you had bought the 5 when the 6 was new, you'd be stuck at iOS 10, which is missing several security updates, two iterations of new emojis, and many apps refusing to install or update by now.
Only when you solely rely on the vendor for updates. While this is the only option on iOS devices this is not the case for Android where several third-party distributions can be used to keep older devices up to date. Some of these offer OTA updates which makes them usable for 'normal' users, i.e. those who want to use the device but are not that keen (or knowledgeable enough) to tinker with them.
Public stats on android usage per version contradict your theory. In overwhelming huge majority, those phones never get updated, ever. Most people don’t search the web for third party distribution. That’s just what the data shows us.
It doesn't contradict the theory. People can update to a later OS if they want to by visiting XDA. Just because they don't doesn't mean it's not possible.
And people who would do that are a tiny rounding error in comparison to the general market.
For 99%+ of the general market, if the update is not available by clicking update in their phone, it doesn't exist and end of support is when the carrier/OEM stops releasing them.
I never said that those people were the majority, nor did I say that everyone does it. Neither did the original poster. all we said was that it is possible to do, and you made the assertion about how many people do it.
That depends on whether the user had enough foresight to check on XDA whether the phone they're going to purchase is supported on XDA. Not all devices are, and most cheaper ones definitely aren't.
The fact that the 5s got iOS 12 is more of an exception than the rule. The 5 stopped at iOS 10, and the 4s stopped at iOS 9, so the general trend should have stopped the 5s at 11.
Aren't Apple OS updates typically tied to actual hardware constraints (vs a x-year obsolescence cycle)? With the 5 and iOS10, Apple stopped supported 32-bit hardware, right? I don't recall a time where Apple just said "that phone is too old and slow" - it's always been "that phone doesn't have [hardware architecture X]".
Point being, the cycle isn't known. The iPhone 7 could be supported for many years. Or, hardware design could change in 2019 and even the XS and XR could be obsolete.
How long, though? An Apple device is supported for a mere 5 years after release. The iPhone 7 came out in late 2016, so it has 3 years remaining. And unlike Android, once an iOS device goes out of support it stops being able to update apps or install up-to-date versions thereof, because these always require the latest release of iOS... With Android, even if you don't get that OTA update, the apps will still work and you can often install a modded version of the OS that's kept up to date. It's just so much better.
I'm not confused, I just don't consider iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 anything other than clearance models. This is electronics, buying old models is just insane particularity since they aren't discounted enough over their original prices.
A two model year old phone is only discounted at 15%. I think that about sums up my problem with buying any of them. Even 25% for last years phone is too low a discount.
Who wants a 32gb iphone too, 16gb is barely usable nowadays. The typical app is 500+mb plus the extras it downloads afterwards. Which is a whole other story.
What common apps are over half a gig? Other than heavier mobile games, I don't know of any apps that touch the 0.5gb mark. Even the bloated social network apps are normally in the 100-300mb range...
Consider the iPod: the differentiation was about things people would care about, like size, capacity, portability, style, etc. You weren't made to feel cheap just because you entered at the lower price points. You wanted an iPod Mini, and it made sense that it cost less than the Classic: you were still getting "the best" version of the thing you desired.
Same story with the Mac: buying the iBook didn't make you feel like you were cheaping out, you were making a conscious choice for what you wanted, not buying "last year's PowerBook".
With the phones it's very different. Buying an old phone doesn't make you feel good, it just makes you think "I know this isn't the best, but it's all I could afford", and that's very un-Apple feeling -- especially when you still have to pay quite a lot.
Apple has apparently boxed itself into a corner, though: this is its second attempt to segment the line (the 5c being the first) and both have failed because they didn't feel like different things, they just felt like cheaper ones: the 5c was just a plastic 5S, and the XR is basically an XS with cheaper camera and screen.
So how else can they differentiate? Making a small phone won't really fly - while I'd love an SE-sized XS, the Chinese market they need to win back wants its phones big.
That only leaves the margin to cut, and that's a shibboleth. You can see why they'd much rather focus on services to escape this fix.
The iPhone needs to be split between iPhone Mini, iPhone and iPhone Pro, instead of current model of “last year”, “this year medium” and “this year large”.
As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE.
I also wanted to love the 5C because I actually preferred the design over the metal iPhone, but they hindered it with last year’s specs. I was always hoping they would break out a proper model line from the 5C, but it died with the 6.
How often do people find in practice they have to think about specs at all? I'm typing this on an SE. It is, of course, literally last year's phone (two years) but both when I bought it and now, there's nothing except the camera that doesn't feel well above adequate (and the camera, while missing some neat low light features, is adequate) and there's a few things that feel optimal about it that simply aren't available in current models (form factor, headphone jack, and price).
I never think about specs/performance... much in the same way that I haven't thought of specs for the mid 2012 MBP I bought years ago. What are people doing with their phones that drives a sense that last year's specs aren't good enough?
I don’t think it is the specs or even the real world performance, but rather the unease/sense of compromise you feel spending $450 for an “outdated” phone regardless of the actual user experience.
On the other hand, people can spend $550 for OnePlus 6T, a current generation phone, and feel better about their decision.
Your question reminds me of a humorous quote - "I use Gentoo because I'm a speed freak - I can't stand the thought that some of my packages might not be running as fast as they could be.".
PS: The above quote is just one of the gems from https://funroll-loops.teurasporsaat.org/ - a humorous portal to a lost world from the 90s - 2000s (ie the gentoo subculture).
Fun page, I remember those times. Some of the quotes aren't so ridiculous, like:
>"I notice that my disk does a whole lot of thrashing when I boot up. I have a lot of stuff that gets loaded into memory every time I boot, like X11, ion2, Firefox, Eterm, Thunderbird, etc. It seems to me that putting all of the files necessary to those apps in a contiguous section on the disk and loading that into memory in one shot would be a whole lot faster. Is there a way to do this? Is it stupid?"
That's a good idea! It's kind of what Windows Prefetch feature does.
> What are people doing with their phones that drives a sense that last year's specs aren't good enough?
Wanting to play the new game showcased in the announcement. and other news games that come out, that requires the latest phone to play smoothly and without utterly destroying my battery in under 2 hours.
EDIT: That said, I care less about performance specs and more about physical size, and so I too am still on an iPhone SE
> As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE.
I have an SE and appearance aside I disagree. It had the guts of the current model including touch id and performs quite well for me.
Now, sure, it feels a little bit left behind. Maybe. It's still fast enough to run the apps I want. But, let's face it, all of the updates that the 7/8/Xfoo have had are updates I don't want.
The problem I've got with Apple is that they don't have any new products I want. I just had them replace the battery on the SE (which was a clusterfuck in its own right) and I just bought a refurb 2015 MBP. Granted Apple probably made more money off the sale of a refurb than they would've off of a new unit... but if the lineup hasn't improved in another six years I'm off to Linux on the desktop.
Yeah the SE doesn't have the updated reader, the haptic system or 3D touch. Having gone back and forth between my SE and a 7 for work, I really only miss the 3D touch.
Well put. Also when Jobs returned he drastically simplified the model offerings, one reason being that Apple is supposed to represent high-quality simplicity. Having a ton of model options for the iPhone is not in line with that.
The 5C was much more like the 5 (same CPU, etc) than the 5S. Their previous strategy had been "sell the previous year's phone for cheaper". The 5C was basically the same strategy, except for that one year they put it in a new colorful enclosure.
It was a nice looking phone but a tough sell because the 5S was such a big leap (first 64-bit CPU) over everything else. The 5S is over 5 years old and still supported by the latest iOS.
Yeah, this is right. The interesting thing is that this problem doesn't seem to exist with the Macbook line, where there's clear differentiation: you can get the super blazingly fast monster, or you can get the really tiny one that actually needs to be less powerful in order to fit in the tiny case without having like 10 seconds of battery life. Though the Macbook/Macbook Air thing they just introduced muddies that a little bit...
>So how else can they differentiate? Making a small phone won't really fly - while I'd love an SE-sized XS, the Chinese market they need to win back wants its phones big.
Do you remember, back in the day, when the smallest IBM thinkpads were way more expensive than the less-small IBM thinkpads?
I understand big phones are king if you only have one device. If I wasn't carrying like five devices all the time, I'd also want a giant phone-tablet, and I guess these days, most people don't have computers, and if I didn't have a computer, I'd want a really giant phone. But I am carrying five devices all the time, and I do have desktops everywhere I spend significant time, so I want my phone to be small and easy to operate with one hand.
As far as I can tell, there's a pretty big correlation between having a good income and having multiple devices. What I'm saying is that giant phones can be seen as... kind of the low end of the market.
And it's not like apple needs to stop making giant phones; they just need to make a small phone for the high end. That, or they need to upgrade functionality on the watch to the point where I can just use the watch for everything, but as far as I can tell, app developers are moving in the other direction (Last time I dropped off my phone for repair, I found that lyft had disabled it's watch app, and the uber watch app doesn't work reliably without the phone nearby. I mean, I got the uber watch app working once I got my phone back, but it's just not designed to function as the backup for your transportation app that I wanted. It was kind of annoying; I ended up calling a friend on the watch, 'cause txt messages weren't working, either. Walking around shouting into my watch like I thought i was dick tracy)
Personally, I'm actually pretty happy paying apple prices for a new phone every two years or so, but you've gotta give me a reason. I mean, if you came out with a really nice small phone, I'd even be willing to pay big phone prices for it; I'm not really that price sensitive when it comes to things like my cellphone, but I really don't have a lot of desire to buy the new phones, just 'cause they are all so big, and as far as I can tell, they don't do anything I want any better than my iphone 7. (I don't hate face ID, but as far as I am concerned, it's not any better than the fingerprint)
If Apple came out with a 3d-touch capable iphone SE sized phone with lots of memory and really good cell reception/networking features? Yeah, I could see me paying a grand for it.
I agree totally. But this is partly Apple's bind: a phone like you're describing appeals to rich Westerners with multiple primary devices and that's just too small a market for them now. Their pressing corporate need is to make a device that will help them grow in China, maximising their take from the billions who don't have multiple devices.
In the olden days, when Apple was much smaller, they were ironically freer to just make the best device possible because success would be meaningful in very small markets. The OG iPod saved them despite selling relatively tiny numbers. Nowadays, markets that used to matter significantly to Apple -- education, media, creatives -- are allowed to wither and die because they are a blip on the bottom line.
I don't see what could change that, though. They now prioritise growth/financials/share price over pure products in a very calculating way, but what corporation doesn't? You need an exceptional mandate to do otherwise, and only the Bezos's and Jobs's of the world get those.
So the pity is that as a result we'll continue to see Apple pushing hard into services and (probably) media, because that's where it can smell growth. That might keep the numbers up, but I suspect it's going to transform what Apple is even further away from the "make great products" company we knew into ... something else. (Probably something less great, given their track record with services, tbh.)
too small a market? The US still has a staggering share of world GDP, and the per-capita GDP (remember, PPP doesn't matter from Apple's perspective) is much higher in the USA. I mean, the per-captita GDP in China is under $10K/yr. Not a lot of those people are gonna spend a grand on a phone.
I think this is one of those situations where you count dollars rather than heads.
My understanding is that the "next billion users" push that all the big companies are doing is a bit like putting macs in schools. It is a long-term plan 'cause yes, the developing world is poor right now. maybe those people who are poor now won't be poor in the future, and if they know how to use your ecosystem, that's great for you. It certainly seems like a good idea, but I don't think it's where you make your money today.
I really think if you were serious about that plan, you'd come out with a giant low-end phone; You remember the thinkpad W series? something like that. big and clunky and cheap. Apple needs an iphone 5c level cheap plastic reskin of last year's big phone for that.
It's the problem of subsitutes that matters in the US: what do rich people who want a small premium iPhone do when they can't get one? They likely don't go to Android, there isn't a small phone worth a damn there. They probably buy an iPhone, right? Likely an XS, since that's the smallest of the new phones. Apple isn't losing anything on them.
The market you're really talking about them capturing with a small premium phone is "rich people who have multiple devices and want a small phone and when they can't get one they buy an Android phone or make do with an SE". I'd wager that's small in most terms, certainly in Apple terms -- whether you're talking dollars or heads.
But what do the top-end Chinese consumers do when Apple doesn't have a phone that appeals to them? They buy one of the other flagships that run WeChat, and Apple loses them. That's big in Apple terms, missed-expectations-warning big.
The same went for the MacBook lineup.
I don't want a Retina display, quad core, etc. I'll live with a lower spec for a $999 machine. And as a bonus my battery lasts longer!
By comparison I think the iBook was always a crippled version.
The iBook was fairly comparable to the PowerBook in specs but it weighed more, was larger, and the plastic was less durable than the magnesium case.
For $999 or $800 old/refurbished, it was the only small (5 lbs) laptop you could get with a decent GPU back then. The pentium 4 stuff of the day was huge and power hungry and the Centrino line didn’t support it for some reason.
I advise all relatives + family to never buy a generation back: you're one year closer to being out of support (either de jure or de facto because of speed) for the os, security updates, etc.
Because they're still the same price as they were at launch. It feels really bad paying 90% of the cost of current gen. In some cases Apple increased the price years later on the same product - MacBook Air 2013/2015. Combined with hitting a trillion dollar market cap it really makes the customer wonder.
> Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of product marketing, told CNET in an interview Wednesday that the device has “been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available.”
Keep in mind that the iPhone XR launched on 10/26, a month after the iPhone XS on 9/21.
What Greg Joswiak says is likely true, but you have to account for the fact that peak demand for the XS has already passed by the time the XR is launched, so total XS sales to date could still be more.
And nearly 40% of XS in total were sold during the period where XR were not available. So XR being the most popular phone doesn't paint an accurate whole picture.
I'm wary of these type of claims by Apple. They seem carefully craft such claims to be factual in some twisted sense but not reflective of actual state of things. For example, at every announcement they have claimed that their customer satisfaction is 96%. This is very hard to believe despite of battery gate, headphone jack removal etc. Almost every release they say they broke record which is technically true but they don't mention that this was usual fanboy rush that quiets down within a week, sometime in just couple of days.
Really? Typically it's all the claims by the press pundits (X not selling, Apple losing Y country, etc) that are proven invariably BS after each quarter results conference.
> at every announcement they have claimed that their customer satisfaction is 96%. This is very hard to believe despite of battery gate, headphone jack removal etc.
I think you’re failing to account for the fact that most people just use their phones and enjoy them as long as they work and do what they want it to do. The “gates” and outrage you mention comes from a small and vocal portion of Apple’s customers.
Someone made the point that Apples margins are quite consistent and have been for years. But a larger proportion of their revenue comes from services which are normally very high margin. Which implies that they are actually cutting their margins on hardware - in other words the phones are expensive because they cost more to build, not because Apple are getting greedy.
Then they should offer models that are cheaper to manufacture, like the 5c. I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular and gouge sales of flagship models negating some of their premium branding.
I'm currently on a 6s and see no update path for myself, I would happily sacrifice faceID and some of the higher-end phone materials for a modern paired down iPhone. I have about as much confidence in this appearing though as them fixing the state of the keyboards on the MBP's.
The 5c was essentially an iPhone 5 (the previous years iPhone) in a plastic shell, with some other minor differences. Given that Apple are continuing to sell the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 you could say that the spirit of the 5c lives on (iPhone 7 is $450, vaguely the same price as the 5C).
> I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular...
The 5C was a sales flop. In Australia, the 5S was outselling the 5C by eleven times [1]. Even in China, people were buying the more expensive iPhone rather than the plastic 5C one [2].
Why people thought that the 5C was supposed to be a cheap phone for China is beyond me. Most people in China who can afford iPhones would not want to have "the cheap one".
Competing on price is not in Apple's DNA and that's a good thing for a company that obsesses on providing top end user experience. But eventually all products and innovations become commoditized and providing differentiation becomes harder every day. A primary thing that has kept Apple alive 'n kicking is establishing new product categories and exploit first mover advantage to the fullest. Mac > iPhone > iPad > Watch are things in right direction but they desperately need more arrows. I'm hopping Smart Home, VR and car would be the next product lines where they can change the game. To keep growth rate going they need one iPhone like major product every 15-20 years and new minor product every 3-5 years. Ability to continue creating new product lines seems to be the precondition for sustained growth rate for Apple's business model given the inevitable commoditization cycles and subsequent race to the bottom for margins.
> and that's a good thing for a company that obsesses on providing top end user experience
Do they actually do that though? Feels like BOM reduction exercises like removing the short power cable from their $3000 laptops and headphone dongles from their $1000 phone, laptops still shipping with painfully low space that triggers space warnings on their OS after you add just a few files to them (complete nightmare if you work at a company that cheaps out on laptops).
Feels like the user experience is actually secondary to maximizing ASP and minimizing BOM.
Side by side if I knew nothing about either I'd be hard pressed to tell which was the 800 quid phone and which was the 200 quid phone.
Throw in AndroidOne and recent Android and the experience is largely similar, I mean sure the processor in hers would murder mine in a benchmark but in real world use do I ever care about it, they feel equally fast on a human time scale (and I have a better adblocker).
There was a time that putting an iphone next to a 200 quid phone would have been a laughable comparison not so much anymore.
1- Pricing not only says who can afford your product but also establishes a brand, determines channel, & more.
2- The first key to having low priced offerings is that you have to have a set of partners who are willing to compete on thin margins in order to bring the product to market.
3- When people say Apple needs a cheaper phone there are many questions to answer beyond the get over yourself luxury brand issue.
4- What is distribution constraint? What partner absorbs some cost to leave margin? What is the branding?
5-Easy question — would a cheap phone be sold and supported in Apple stores side by side? How would the rest of the customers feel about more crowds and tougher appointments competing with people who paid half as much? Sell one phone against another—how?
6- Anyone that thinks Apple is unaware of the challenge and has not sketched out ideas, tested them, and thought about them immensely is crazy.
7- What does all this mean? Apple may or may not have a “pricing” or “price point” or “structural” / secular challenge. For sure just releasing a cheap phone doesn’t make all better.
All takes place in context of lots of cheap/bad competitive phones.
Considering Sinofsky's record, I wouldn't necessarily consider him a credible authority on this.
There's an obvious difference between "a cheaper phone" and making the range as affordable as it was five years ago - instead of relying on so-called luxury branding while offering very little extra and annoying customers with product issues (missing headphone jack, BatteryGate, etc) and mediocre software updates.
Apple doesn't have an iPhone problem. Apple has an Apple problem.
It's at least possible (who knows for sure...?) that if Jobs were still alive Apple would have opened up at least a couple of innovative new product lines by now - not just gimmicks like Watch, but new "I didn't know I wanted that, but now I see it I obviously do" products, with supporting services and industry partners, all pitched at the affordable-at-a-push level that Apple products originally lived in.
This is where Cook has failed. There's nothing new on the table. Putting up prices is a short-term tactic. So is "a cheap phone".
What Apple needs is a coherent and impressive long-term strategy, and investors aren't seeing that.
I used to love going to the Apple Store and playing with the new iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, especially soon after a new product launch. Maybe its just me getting older but it doesn't have the same appeal anymore.
I share your experience but I think that all of that shows that they are doing something right, having too many customers is hardly a bad problem to have.
We visited Disney parks in Orlando over the holidays. Jammed to the gunwales with people. They definitely have a problem with being a victim of their own success. A major fall is coming.
Apple is no longer run by techies and has thus lost all its real flavor. The Macbook 2015 era was the pinnacle and we're on the down slope for now. The new Mini that costs 899 to get in the door (any thousands for any reasonably decent config) was just a slap in our faces--a giant FU to Mac users on a budget. The Mini I speced out was over $4000. Sorry, Apple, you're fucking dreaming.
The only this Macs have going for them now is that they aren't Windows-based. iOS is meh, always has been.
There needs to be more players in the smartphone space, quite frankly.
The iPad Pro is worth going to play with in person. But the Mac lineup hasn't been in years.
First it was the Air, "Wow, look how small this laptop is. And it's made of aluminum!" Then it became, "Wow! Look at the Retina display! It's amazing!"
Now it's just like, "Why'd they take off the ports on this laptop? It's a weird brown color. And two of the keys don't work, already."
To make it worse, everything is the same. You can't tell anything apart? Is this the Air? Wait, it's the old Pro? Which watch is this? Is this the XR or the XS? What's the difference?
Same here. Everything in the Apple Store now seems designed to impress me rather than to help me get work done. Battery life gets shorter, keys and ports get removed, prices get higher. But boy do these things look amazing in the store!
I found it interesting that the last time I was in the mall with a friend, we were both more fascinated with the Microsoft store than the Apple store. The Apple store was just bigger, faster, better phones and computers. The Microsoft store had new things. Virtual reality, Surface Hub, Surface Book, etc.
Microsoft clearly took a page out of Apple's book for their stores, but I agree, their retail experience has been enjoyable. I miss the Windows Phone section, though.
Microsoft is sitting on such an amazing ecosystem and it feels like they just don't know how to tie it all together sometimes.
You're saying that Apple needs a Steve Jobs like genius who figures out new world changing product categories and also turns them into real high quality products.
Well of course Apple, and every other company needs that. But hoping for a savior is not a plan.
Regarding point 6, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple had a viable strategy for a lower-priced phones and Jobs just said "never" and Cook is honoring that. I don't know that they did, just that you can't underestimate the potential for powerful people to be irrational.
I vaguely remember from Jobs' biography by Isacson that if you are not willing to cannibalize your own market share with a cheaper product someone else will do that for you. I am not 100% if it was Jobs who said that though.
“One of Job's business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. " If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will," he said. So even though an Iphone might cannibalize sales of an IPod, or an IPad might cannibalize sales of a laptop, that did not deter him.”[0]
The idea being pushed is cannibalization by a better product, not lower prices.
Apple will sell you a new iPhone 7 32GB for $449 [1]
So they already have an offering in that price band. Sure, it's bigger than the iPhone SE, and naturally it doesn't have the prestige of something that costs twice as much, but if you want a new iPhone today and you've got $450, Apple has a product for you.
But you’d only make that choice if you really, really want to be in the Apple ecosystem. Especially in China, there just doesn’t seem to be the same drive from consumers, even if it’s likely affected by Chinese government policies regarding cloud services.
I bought the XS recently, but what I really wanted was the SE form factor with the XS internals (sans Face ID). Indeed, ignoring the SE market is Apple’s biggest flaw.
Mine is sitting in bed, when the phone isn't able to isolate my face from the wall close behind me.
Also, recognizing me without glasses (again bed). I've got an alternate face configured, but bed also means low light, and current FaceID doesn't like thatat all.
> bed also means low light, and current FaceID doesn't like thatat all
The Face ID sensor is basically a tiny Kinect (infrared dot grid), so low light shouldn't be a problem. I have the most trouble with it in the morning when I first wake up, usually squinting at the light.
Or maybe the Asian market is not riding the display
's notch hype train? They might view the notch + the high price as opposing factors (I once heard a guy say "why would you pay so much for a phone with a screen that's cut on several places?"). Food for thought.
I bought the X because I wanted an OLED screen iPhone. And I was digging the less bezels. The notch however is irritating me to this day, 14 months in. And the non-rectangular screen (with unconventional aspect ratio) has been an annoyance when watching videos or when playing games.
It's even more absurd seeing how many Android OEMs followed suit with the notch. Seriously though: 3-4mm on the top and 2mm on the bottom is alright. There were phones with slightly larger top/bottom bezels than these and they still managed to even have dual front-facing speakers as well.
We need marketing people who have common sense, not those who try and imitate their way to success.
I agree. The notch simply does not look premium at all. It's the kind of design decision you would see in lower-end phones as a compromise.
The fact that so many Android OEMs followed suit surprised me. The usual chinese iPhone clones going along with it? Sure! But so many 'reputable' companies went for it, it's just incomprehensible.
Anecdotally I just can't imagine someone preferring a notch to no notch (as long as the bezels aren't massive on the alternative). What kind of data were the Android OEMs looking at when they made that decision? Or did they not look at any data at all and simply go with "we better follow Apple on this, just in case".
> Or did they not look at any data at all and simply go with "we better follow Apple on this, just in case".
It looks that way and it looked that way for years. What a shame.
There are still devices with good designs out there -- Sony, Nokia and Xiaomi mostly come to mind -- but the general trend has been "let's all add a notch".
Yes but subjectively, I don't like their designs at all. Especially the screen that curves outward, that has been an endless frustration when I had my S7 Edge a few years ago.
Anecdotally I prefer the notch to a bezel that would take up the same amount of space.
Vast majority of the time, I don't notice the notch. I like the way the 'done' button floats in the upper real estate when modifying apps (wiggle mode).
I would prefer a phone that's a pure wall-of-glass and manages somehow to also have FaceID, and I'm pretty sure Apple would as well but can't manufacture it.
It has a slide-out front camera. So when you are not using the selfie camera, there is no notch and no large bezel. (It does look like the bottom bezel is a bit larger than the top and side bezels, though)
The screen looks gorgeous, I personally will never again own a phone with moving parts of any sort so that's a deal-breaker for me. I'm glad there's still experimentation happening in the space, too many Androids just jump off the same bridge as Apple.
Then you might be interested in the Vivo Nex Dual Display. It has a smaller screen at the back which means that there is not need for a front camera. It comes with neat little features such as the people whose picture is being taken being able to see themselves (and pose) while someone is taking their picture:
I'll say LG's V10 and V20 phones had notches before notches. I still use my V20 myself, and it's interesting to see it how LG went about it. It's huge as a notch, and that allows them a bit more customization in it: it's pretty much an extra widget area, and has a separate backlight from the main screen allowing it to be always on.
And then after that they go with the standard notch everyone else has, and you lose the extra features. Still I do prefer my V40 which has a standard notch as the extra screen space is nice every time I switch back and forth between these phones. The V40 is even slightly smaller than the V20, but with the huge edge to edge screen, doesn't feel like it.
> It's even more absurd seeing how many Android OEMs followed suit with the notch.
Many Android OEMs let you hide it by painting the top bar black, though. It's even more ludicrous than that because Apple actually advertised the iPhone X by releasing a press photo where the notch was hidden due to showing a full-screen image with a mostly black background. Someone actually took Apple to court for deceptive advertising, because of that and other stuff they're quibbling about. But Apple won't allow us users the same freedom when using the device!
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for (i=0;i<elements.length;i++) {
if (getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='fixed' || getComputedStyle(ele
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Put that in a bookmark (it will be all one long line in the bookmark URL field), run it on the page with the banners, the banners disappear (at least in Firefox on Android). YMMV on iOS/Safari.
There were phones with slightly larger top/bottom bezels than these and they still managed to even have dual front-facing speakers as well.
I'd say even 5-10mm of bezel is a good thing, because it helps those with large fingers to hold the phone without fouling the screen.
(Bezels used to be wide for technical reasons; but now that they don't need to be for that reason, it's necessary to consider whether there are other reasons they should remain.)
I've seen a few Nokia and Xiaomi devices in the local stores lately with very slick and small bezel designs. And they still manage to have everything needed (sadly no dual front-facing speakers).
I also looked at an XS Max yesterday for the first time. The notch is reduced compared to an X; not by much but it's definitely less.
I realize many people buy X / XS / XS Max for the bezel-less form factor but I wish us the others (who like rectangular screens and don't mind some bezels) actually had a choice of a high-end iPhone.
Apple obviously thinks about it because the default wallpaper of the new line renders it invisible on the home screen in ads and display models.
FWIW I prefer a notch to a large upper bezel because it's a tidy way to tuck away my notifications and clock, though I don't love the way iOS does it and I don't love when it when apps go full screen in that area.
Tantamount to complaining that it doesn’t come in the proper shade of beige.
It has no effect on utility. It actually compresses fixed UI elements (tray icons, the clock, status indicators) up into corners. Those fixed elements would otherwise require a solid bar to consume 1/20 of the viewing area, and there’s still the physical camera and speaker to consider.
Have fun rationalizing other trivialities. Less obvious is the lack of a reliable button, and the useless face unlock idea.
It’s not the geometry of the pretty blinking lights. It’s that the trade offs it’s intended to integrate with and enable are underwhelming.
Just because you come off strong with your counter-opinion doesn't mean you are right.
There is definitely credence to the thought that the notch is horrendous. I along with my entire household and most of my coworkers are, anecdotally, another example that won't come close to owning something that decides to cut into the screen. It's just so off-putting. There is no getting used to it.
For a phone and company that touts its self as a status symbol and the "pinnacle of design" they have made a couple of really bad design and usability decisions of late, the touchbar being the other egregious example.
The counter-question is: is the consumption of that 1/20 viewing area actually of significant impact to the user?
With the screens on those models rather large anyway, what of the benefit is significant, given it cuts into speaker location and cuts into the display (so videos etc are restricted anyway)?
I was really dubious about the notch design when the X was released, just as I was with dropping the home button and TouchID. However, I got to the point recently of my old iPhone 6 constantly being out of storage, so I upgraded to an XR.
FaceID has blown me away with how good it is, I’d say the success rate for identifying me is better than TouchID was. Doesn’t matter if my phone is sitting at an awkward angle in a cradle, or I’m outside in the rain with wet hands, it’ll usually get me first time.
As for the notch, generally I don’t notice it. If anything it’s kind of nice getting a little extra vertical screen space and having the clock/status tucked away where the bezel used to be. Some people complain about it getting in the way when things are full screen, but by default video and the like doesn’t expand all the way out to the edges, at which point I have basically the same size display as I did with the iPhone 6. The notch is only going to take a chunk out of what you’re watching if you explicitly request that, or if the app you’re using has been built in a way which ignores guidance from the OS on the safe area for displaying UI.
btw, iPhone X useable 16:9 screen space is about 5.2" so it's definitely more than the usual 4.7" of the iPhone 5S / 6 / 7 / 8.
I don't disagree with your points. I eventually found out that the screen is just too small for my taste. I'll buy the XS Max when I am able; or I might wait for the next generation because I still hope Apple goes USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 finally.
My partner has an XR and loves it. Granted she upgraded from a 5, so anything would've been an upgrade, but she likes the button-less X design and excellent camera but had no interest in the super high-end XS.
My wife and I bought an XS (for her) and XR (for me). We both had Nexus 6p and they were at end of life and wanted to get her a nicer phone for Christmas.
Well, after playing with both the XR takes better photos, generally. In addition, the XR gets probably 30% more life on a single charge. Nothing else on the XS is really much better (outside of a couple nice to haves). So now she has the XR and I have the XS.
Would have bought XR if it was smaller. Currently using 7 and even XR is just too large to be called a phone anymore. XS is a monstrosity from my point of view.
Indeed. I upgraded from a 6S, and was going to order a XR, when I finally, in the last minute, actually measured the dimentsions out in comparison to my current phone. Then I basically said WTF and waited for some deal on the XS and bought that. Not really happy, though, as all friends who did the same aren't: it is stilltoo big and too expensive for what it does - and we are in Europe, so the prices are even more ridiculous...
Absolutely agree. I was hoping the XR would work for me, but I went to the Apple Store to try it and it's just far too big for my (reasonably big) hands. So now I have to pay lots more for a phone whose main feature is that it's smaller? No thanks.
The XS uses the telephoto lens for portrait shots whereas the XR has no choice but to use its sole wide angle lens, which makes it look bad but not really because some people prefer the portraits taken with the primary lens.
I'm kind of sorry to see the XR doing so poorly myself because I think it's a great phone and I've been saying for years that Apple needs to get its devices into more hands to expand the market for its services. I don't know what it is exactly about the XR that turns people off but I can afford an XS Max but opted instead for the XR and I don't regret it.
Since the 5C was also a disappointment maybe it's just that people buy Apple because they want a premium phone and a 5C/XR, even with Apple's premium components isn't perceived as such?
Not many people want to pay premium price for a SECOND-best quality. XR is way more expensive than comparable Android devices, and still is not the top device (XS: two rear cameras, oled screen). And at the same time, XS is just too expensive.
The only thing you can trust is that any analysis on this topic is horseshit for at least the next 3 months.
Apple headlines just attract too much attention for god journalism, unless you are versed enough on the topic to be able to spot the relevant facts through the nonsense.
I must confess I don't know the difference between the iPhone X, XR, XS, XS Max. It all seems very confused and stinks of marketing getting their claws into it. It was simple when they were numbered sequentially. Now I wonder if there will ever be an iPhone 11 as that suggests there can't be a premium on the iPhone X* as people will poo-poo that.
Three of these are easy to understand, especially if you know anything at all about how Apple has been naming iPhones since the beginning of the product line.
The fourth is the XR. Which is, as TFA indicates, a head-scratcher of a product.
This is purely speculation but I wonder if the XR only exists because of fear that they wouldn’t be able to scale up the OLED supply chain enough to satiate total demand for the new model iPhone (and incidentally make a lower cost phone too). Otherwise I too agree, why offer it?
Why is Apple diluting their brand? What happened to the simple product line? iPhone X this and iPhone X that is simply bad marketing. Are there product driven people in Apple anymore?
I wonder if the same thing is happening to Apple as happened to Disney - the visionary founder died, and the company slowly lost its way and became a vehicle for corporate profiteering while resting on the laurels of the visionary's pre-existing ideas.
I don't know about Apple, but you are wrong about Disney.
They may have been meandering for a while but over the last decade (and change), current leadership has made three multi-billion dollar visionary acquisitions that turned the company around and brought it back to its roots as a story teller and creator/curator of American pop culture. Financial results followed the vision not the other way around (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/).
Walt Disney died in 1966. I'm assuming the parent poster meant the tougher times Disney faced between then and the start of the Disney Renaissance in the late 80s.
They didn’t. They’ve been down, they’ve been up (so did Apple btw), down and up again, but as of 2019 Disney is as strong as ever (though we are in the “endgame” of this cycle).
The narrative of vision lost with founder’s death, just doesn’t work for Disney’s history.
Recently I gave up and decided not to watch anything coming from a Disney - no pixar, no starwars movies, nothing. There's simply no point to bother, Disney brand is virtually a guarantee mark of a soulless, meaningless, corporate product with only point of generating cash.
Yes, Disney is still strong, but I believe I'm not the only person that got tired of it.
look at where Disney was going with his futurism and technological/sociological ideas as well though. And they may have done well recently (though I don't really think buying innovation from other companies counts as the company finding direction) but for the longest time they were known for being rent-seekers and just milking the old cartoons and fairytales for everything they could get.
I posted this in another thread, but one thing I think that is hurting the iPhone upgrade cycle is that there are now so many iPhone versions no one can remember which "generation" they all are. Since 2016 we've got iPhone SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, X, XS, XS Max, and XR. With so many versions, I think there is less social pressure (internalized or real) to upgrade because it's not like people even really know how old your phone is by looking at it.
Compare this with everything before, where Apple came out with at most 2 versions a year (a cheaper one and a more expensive one, e.g. the 5c/5s or the 6/6 Plus). In its attempts to grab at lots of different price points Apple is losing what differentiated it and made it special in the first place.
So much this - It's hard to get invested in a product when it's a nebulous cloud rather than a bright point. This is so much like the Performa SKU sprawl that almost killed Apple in the days of old. The problem now is there's no Prodigal Son to swoop back in and kick things into shape.
The XR and XS offering confused me for a long time. Even right now I still don't fully understand the difference.
It is surprising that XR didn't do as well as XS relatively speaking. Then again I feel a lot of people who are extremely loyal to Apple wouldn't hesitate to get the most expensive offering anyways.
The Wife has a iPhone each year and for her needs wanted a bigger screen than the standard 8 should would of happily had a iPhone 8 plus as her new phone but when the XR came along it worked out as more screen than the 8 plus. But the difference between the XR and X's models was the extra memory and Apple service plan (roughly).
The notch she has never mentioned and I have noticed all new adverts with a phone screen in them have a notch in them, I just don't think the regular user notices them that much.
While she noticed a slight speed difference from the 8. I think it was the improved battery life she liked more and hearing the XR seems to be better than the XS further justify's the choice.
Seems like Apple has forgotten who their customers are... instead they are going for people who worry about specs and technology etc.... this is not kind of apple i have viewed in the past.
- It lacks Touch ID which unlocks your phone instantly before meeting your face (need this when sitting idle in traffic). Face ID takes longer.. that's bad UX and possibly dangerous UX which probably has caused some dummies (many out there) to have accidents.
- It's too big ... i can not text with one hand as Ive done with my 8 and all models before.
I don't think the Chinese market slowing down is news for anyone who was paying attention last year.
>The global smartphone market has suffered a drop of 6 percent in overall sale numbers, according to a report on the third quarter of 2018 from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Similar to the drop in smartphone sales in the first quarter of the year, the IDC points at a slowdown in the Chinese market as being one of the primary factors for the global slump.
The XR this year in China is also having exactly the same problem the 6s had when it came out. The 6 (with it's big screen) and X were so attractive that many people upgraded a year early. That means there's a smaller potential market for the XR, just as there was for the 6s. This is disproportionately true in China where distinctive looks are more important than in other markets. Add that in to the economic picture and it's a bit of a perfect storm for Apple. The XR has done fine in other markets.
The iPhone XR is failing because of Apple's arrogance. They shoved in a 720p display into a smartphone in 2018. They even dismissed concerns about it[1]. The other reason is there are too many models in their lineup in a desperate attempt to capture market share - something Steve jobs was against.
The desirability is not there as it used to be, since they're now almost pushed into a price war with other makers in the segments who were already well established before Apple.
Finally, there are simply too many issues surrounding iOS. Either the wifi stops working, or the phone is made to perform too slow in the pretext of battery throttling or something else is compromised. This is unacceptable from a company that reached $1 Tr. I am not kidding you when I tell you guys I know sweatshops that can do better quality code than Apple's iOS. Get your shit together, Apple!
Personally, these last two iPhone generations were a bit overwhelming, confusing and strange. I did upgrade to the X but I honestly say, I didn't even look at this years' offering with any interest. I like the X. I'm happy with it but here's just simply not enough interesting things going on to make the new ones worth checking out. Maybe it's just these two generations -- but this constant push to raise the prices on the higher end to astronomical levels is leaving a pretty sour taste in my mouth...
The Android market on the other hand is something I couldn't resist checking out, it's like the wild wild west out there: all these various companies are constantly in the news with loads and loads of weird and quirky ideas. Now, granted, I did end up switching to iOS because I found the Android offerings inferior, I still can't help but sometimes think about trying out the newest and most interesting on that end. "The grass is always greener on the other side", as they say.
It's also the case that the killer apps are simply not there. Unlike the 2018 iPhones - I really did look at the new iPad Pro and thought to myself that I'd love one since I've been using the first gen 13" Pro ever since it came out and the redesign is cool. On second and third thoughts, though I had to admit to myself that even with the 120hz panel, I wouldn't really gain much in practical terms. And the entry price, which in my country is almost $500 more than the first generation's, really doesn't justify something that's that much of a hard sell..
Now, granted, this is all just my personal opinion and might even change this September if Apple has some surprise queued up for us, who knows?
For now, though, I can't help but feel like that $1500-$2000 for a new tablet and smartphone every year or two is better served as part of my savings account.
The price increase and subsequent quality increase of the X made the purchase make sense given that it would be a longer-lasting phone.. on the 3-4 year timeframe rather than a 1-2 year timeframe. If they didn't refresh the X (kept the name) and just released the larger and cheaper versions, it would have made sense. Given the diminishing returns and higher prices, they should put more time in to make sure they have breakthrough releases. Even Jobs did this with the tick-tock of the 4/4S. The naming scheme is all messed up
I agree with the long term argument, I still love my X and it was my reasoning behind paying the price. I do appreciate the fact that Apple still pays attention to things that are important to users like me, like the whole privacy aspect, keeping as much data on-device as possible. It's great and I try to keep that in perspective. It's hard to deny that for the last few years, they've been making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. Delayed launches, increased prices, good products being discontinued instead of updated, announced products not making an appearance. It would've been unacceptable before Cook, now it seems like it's just part of how they do business nowadays.
Only Apple can name their phone "excess" and price it at $1k+ and still nobody catches on. For those able to count, that's _five times_ what a decent Android Pie handset costs (Nokia 6.1, $200) for nowhere near 5x difference in anything. In fact the Nokia has a phone jack and standard USB-C power. I've been iPhone user since iPhone 1, and I currently have iPhone 8, but even I am contemplating a switch.
This!
I've been an iPhone user since the first version too and am contemplating a switch simply because the price to be in the ecosystem is more than I'm willing to pay. I'm on an iPhone 7 still and when this gives up, I'm going to jump ship
Price _per se_ would not be a concern if competition wasn't there. I just bought an iPad Pro this year. Nothing Android based even comes close. But unfortunately for Apple (and fortunately for us) there is stiff competition in the smartphone space. And Apple will either have to innovate and/or cut prices. Incremental upgrades at triple digit prices aren't going to work.
As a recent XS buyer (upgrade from iPhone 7) my strategy is just going to be waiting 2 or more upgrade cycles before buying again. I still value the ecosystem and trust Apple with my data more than anyone else, especially in the case of iMessage.
I don't think I'll miss anything serious from skipping upgrade cycles. I'm not much of a camera user and Face ID is meh to me so From iPhone 6 to XS I've barely seen any improvements I care about other than water resistance which was a 6 -> 7 upgrade.
Thanks, that Nokia 6.1 looks interesting. I note the mention of how the sides are designed to be gripped securely; my iPhone 8 always feels a bit slippery.
If I could find a suitable replacement for the Apple Watch (which I find very useful) then I'd be very tempted by this.
I don't think there's going to be viable competition to Watch in foreseeable future. Watch 4 is a very strong and "deep" product, far beyond what anybody else can make. That's why they can charge so much for it. But if my iPhone 8 dies, there's no way I'm ever paying $1k for a new phone, even if I have to ditch the Watch.
Unfortunately, I think you're right about viable competition. Google's equivalent seems to be the closest in terms of features but from what I've seen the watches are buggy and slow, as well as having privacy issues.
I've got the latest watch and it is very good, so although the price is high it does not seem particularly unreasonable.
iPhones, on the other hand, give me the impression of being very expensive for what they offer and I find them unsatisfactory in a variety of ways. Currently, I plan to keep the iPhone 8 for as long as I can then decide what to do depending on the state of the market; this will probably involve getting a reasonably-priced Android phone with a custom ROM and some sort of fitness tracker.
I don't know. I keep trying Android; I have a few Android devices (around the $600 point) and it just seems too much of a hassle. A lot of it can probably be chalked up to be how fragmented Android has, and how the handset vendors block/break things like updates, but I'm not interested in trying to research my best fit, or fight my way through online resources. There's a handful of features that I'd definitely love seeing, but I don't feel strongly enough about them that I'd deal with that kind of disruption to my life.
That's what's so attractive about this Nokia model in particular (and about other phones under the Android One designation): it has pure Android Pie, without crapware or half-assed vendor customizations, with guaranteed security and OS updates.
This is one of the reasons I bought a Nokia 8 when my Nexus 5X started to boot-loop. However, still no Pie update, kind of feels like they are not as fast as Nexus/Pixel updates used to be.
Yeah, let's see how this goes with the quarterly results.
Historically 90% of pundit/press claims have been proven to be utter BS. If I had a penny for each "Apple is doomed" and "iPhone model XXX not selling" I would have, well, 10s of dollars...
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadIn the grand scheme of things, and in the overall market, everyone you know still comes out to a rounding error. Don't get too caught up in anecdata.
> I really feel like the XR is a repeat of the original iPhone 7 in that it's a phone with no target audience
You're right, there. If people want a high-end iPhone, they'd get the XS. If they want a cheaper phone in the X form factor, they'd get an X. If they don't want the X form factor yet, they'd get an 8. The XR is just… there.
And yet, it's a great phone by itself. Same processor as the XS, meaning a great performance leap over the X, not to mention a vastly improved camera. But it's hard to think of it as premium when it's lacking the OLED screen and Force Touch. It feels so incomplete, like an XS wannabe than its own thing.
I can’t reliably use Trello to move cards or delete apps in home screen.
The app shortcuts are nice but I made do without them for years and now I can invoke them from Siri anyway.
I use 3D/Force Touch a lot, mainly previewing documents or web pages — especially on Hacker News and reddit where I don't want to keep going back and forwards, potentially polluting my history list with rubbish links.
Aside from the gimmicky actions like shortcuts, it also lets art apps have a basic type of pressure sensitivity on iPhone. That's great for me because I sometimes do little touch-ups and sketches on my iPhone when my iPad+Pencil isn't near me.
The main thing I'd change about the XR is I'd make it a bit smaller. Other than that it's a great phone.
I sacrifice a few features which, while nice to have, aren’t really essential (Force Touch, OLED display, better camera), and in exchange I get better battery life and a significantly lower price. Honestly I suspect the XR’s target audience is people who actually think about what they’re buying, while the XS is targeted at the “I must have the best” crowd, and I think as people come up on upgrading that’s going to play out.
Apple ships models that fill the lower price brands. It is the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 which are still supported and being sold.
Apple should make a phone like the SE which is made for the low-mid market, not just discount its old models.
i'm on an SE. i got this phone fairly late into its life cycle and it was a deliberate choice. my biggest regret is probably not getting a second one before they discontinued it because when my current SE fails i have no idea where to get a replacement.
I bought my wife the XS, not because it has a fancier display, but purely because it was the smallest model available - and it's still too big for her.
Instead of differentiating their phones based on features, they should simply differentiate them based on screen size. That would allow them to meet several price points without making their customers feel like they’re cheap.
Remember, the SE was released outside of the usual iPhone release cycle in March 2016, so I think intent for a longer cycle was clear.
Lots of people predicted between 2 and 3 years before the SE got an update, so if March 2019 passes without an announcement, then who knows what's next.
Also, I think there's a high probability they're trying to work out the kinks in an SE-sized phone that is all screen. I'd be surprised if they released the SE2 and it has a home button.
I don't want an 8 because I don't want a phone with a glass back.
iPhone SE was perfect. Metal all round, small, affordable, powerful.
The glass back thing is a matter of taste, sure, but caring what material is inside the case is a bit silly.
The trouble with a glass back is that it can still shatter when dropped even if it has a case on it.
I’m not being funny. I treat every phone I’ve ever owned as the expensive devices they are. I buy a protective case, don’t put it in my back pocket where it can be bent or broken. I don’t use it while standing over the toilet so it can’t be dropped in. When I drink with friends, I don’t lay my phone on the bar where some drunk can spill beer on it.
It’s more than being able to have the use of a fully functioning device, at trade-in time my phone is worth more because I take of it.
Both times I've dropped the phone getting in or out of the car. First time it landed face first on the garage floor and shattered the screen and the second time it landed on its side and just scratched the case a little.
Hard to know what will happen when you drop your phone.
I find this is the real problem. I've had phones that I've dropped many, many times, onto hard surfaces, that have come away without a scratch. Then I dropped a Nokia 3 and the screen just flew apart.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207043
I can't not drop things.
What is this “case” you’re talking about?
Kind regards SE-owner
It is not my first time hearing that some individuals may prefer a smaller phone, and you’re correct. I don’t find that difficult to understand.
Unfortunately even last years models do not support LTE band 71, so they are a poor choice for T-Mobile US customers. No dual SIM support is another reason for many.
SE size, just go edge to edge.
Headphone jack
Now I have 3 SEs (one with a broken screen that I'll get fixed, one currently in use, one still in the box) that will hopefully last me a while - maybe the phone market returns to sensible sizes & features in a few years.
With the solve down in new features and design Apple could have skipped the iPhone 8, XS and XR. Except of cause "the market" and their stockholders expects new phones, regardless of the need.
It was a miniaturised iPhone 6s released while the 6s was ‘current’, and got to ‘low-mid market’ pricing by being discounted as it got older.
What reason is there for the XR to exist other than to be a more affordable, new option compared to the XS? If it's failing at being a more affordable alternative, it's failing.
If they offered new phones for a lower price but with the software update support lifetime that matches the flagship phones, then they might have a killer product!
For 99%+ of the general market, if the update is not available by clicking update in their phone, it doesn't exist and end of support is when the carrier/OEM stops releasing them.
OMG, somebody find me a fainting couch fast!
Point being, the cycle isn't known. The iPhone 7 could be supported for many years. Or, hardware design could change in 2019 and even the XS and XR could be obsolete.
How long, though? An Apple device is supported for a mere 5 years after release. The iPhone 7 came out in late 2016, so it has 3 years remaining. And unlike Android, once an iOS device goes out of support it stops being able to update apps or install up-to-date versions thereof, because these always require the latest release of iOS... With Android, even if you don't get that OTA update, the apps will still work and you can often install a modded version of the OS that's kept up to date. It's just so much better.
Same story with the Mac: buying the iBook didn't make you feel like you were cheaping out, you were making a conscious choice for what you wanted, not buying "last year's PowerBook".
With the phones it's very different. Buying an old phone doesn't make you feel good, it just makes you think "I know this isn't the best, but it's all I could afford", and that's very un-Apple feeling -- especially when you still have to pay quite a lot.
Apple has apparently boxed itself into a corner, though: this is its second attempt to segment the line (the 5c being the first) and both have failed because they didn't feel like different things, they just felt like cheaper ones: the 5c was just a plastic 5S, and the XR is basically an XS with cheaper camera and screen.
So how else can they differentiate? Making a small phone won't really fly - while I'd love an SE-sized XS, the Chinese market they need to win back wants its phones big.
That only leaves the margin to cut, and that's a shibboleth. You can see why they'd much rather focus on services to escape this fix.
The iPhone needs to be split between iPhone Mini, iPhone and iPhone Pro, instead of current model of “last year”, “this year medium” and “this year large”.
As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE.
I also wanted to love the 5C because I actually preferred the design over the metal iPhone, but they hindered it with last year’s specs. I was always hoping they would break out a proper model line from the 5C, but it died with the 6.
I never think about specs/performance... much in the same way that I haven't thought of specs for the mid 2012 MBP I bought years ago. What are people doing with their phones that drives a sense that last year's specs aren't good enough?
On the other hand, people can spend $550 for OnePlus 6T, a current generation phone, and feel better about their decision.
PS: The above quote is just one of the gems from https://funroll-loops.teurasporsaat.org/ - a humorous portal to a lost world from the 90s - 2000s (ie the gentoo subculture).
>"I notice that my disk does a whole lot of thrashing when I boot up. I have a lot of stuff that gets loaded into memory every time I boot, like X11, ion2, Firefox, Eterm, Thunderbird, etc. It seems to me that putting all of the files necessary to those apps in a contiguous section on the disk and loading that into memory in one shot would be a whole lot faster. Is there a way to do this? Is it stupid?"
That's a good idea! It's kind of what Windows Prefetch feature does.
Wanting to play the new game showcased in the announcement. and other news games that come out, that requires the latest phone to play smoothly and without utterly destroying my battery in under 2 hours.
EDIT: That said, I care less about performance specs and more about physical size, and so I too am still on an iPhone SE
iPhone S - 5.8" / 6.8" OLED, Face ID, Stainless Steel, Best Camera, 4x4 Antenna. Tri- Camera
iPhone R - LCD, Under Screen Touch ID? Or Face ID with a larger bezel at top or bottom to save cost. Aluminium, 2x2 Antenna. Double Camera
iPhone E - Basically the traditional iPhone design with Touch ID with slight update in Design. Single Camera
The three model will then just iterate on their own. May be the iPhone E could even be unapologetically Plastic!.
Although I think Apple will just continue its current model until things really break.
I have an SE and appearance aside I disagree. It had the guts of the current model including touch id and performs quite well for me.
Now, sure, it feels a little bit left behind. Maybe. It's still fast enough to run the apps I want. But, let's face it, all of the updates that the 7/8/Xfoo have had are updates I don't want.
The problem I've got with Apple is that they don't have any new products I want. I just had them replace the battery on the SE (which was a clusterfuck in its own right) and I just bought a refurb 2015 MBP. Granted Apple probably made more money off the sale of a refurb than they would've off of a new unit... but if the lineup hasn't improved in another six years I'm off to Linux on the desktop.
IIRC iPhone SE does not have the second generation Touch ID sensor that iPhone 6s does.
It was a nice looking phone but a tough sell because the 5S was such a big leap (first 64-bit CPU) over everything else. The 5S is over 5 years old and still supported by the latest iOS.
Probably means they'll discontinue the non-touchbar MBP in the next round.
MacBook Air has newer processors.
Do you remember, back in the day, when the smallest IBM thinkpads were way more expensive than the less-small IBM thinkpads?
I understand big phones are king if you only have one device. If I wasn't carrying like five devices all the time, I'd also want a giant phone-tablet, and I guess these days, most people don't have computers, and if I didn't have a computer, I'd want a really giant phone. But I am carrying five devices all the time, and I do have desktops everywhere I spend significant time, so I want my phone to be small and easy to operate with one hand.
As far as I can tell, there's a pretty big correlation between having a good income and having multiple devices. What I'm saying is that giant phones can be seen as... kind of the low end of the market.
And it's not like apple needs to stop making giant phones; they just need to make a small phone for the high end. That, or they need to upgrade functionality on the watch to the point where I can just use the watch for everything, but as far as I can tell, app developers are moving in the other direction (Last time I dropped off my phone for repair, I found that lyft had disabled it's watch app, and the uber watch app doesn't work reliably without the phone nearby. I mean, I got the uber watch app working once I got my phone back, but it's just not designed to function as the backup for your transportation app that I wanted. It was kind of annoying; I ended up calling a friend on the watch, 'cause txt messages weren't working, either. Walking around shouting into my watch like I thought i was dick tracy)
Personally, I'm actually pretty happy paying apple prices for a new phone every two years or so, but you've gotta give me a reason. I mean, if you came out with a really nice small phone, I'd even be willing to pay big phone prices for it; I'm not really that price sensitive when it comes to things like my cellphone, but I really don't have a lot of desire to buy the new phones, just 'cause they are all so big, and as far as I can tell, they don't do anything I want any better than my iphone 7. (I don't hate face ID, but as far as I am concerned, it's not any better than the fingerprint)
If Apple came out with a 3d-touch capable iphone SE sized phone with lots of memory and really good cell reception/networking features? Yeah, I could see me paying a grand for it.
In the olden days, when Apple was much smaller, they were ironically freer to just make the best device possible because success would be meaningful in very small markets. The OG iPod saved them despite selling relatively tiny numbers. Nowadays, markets that used to matter significantly to Apple -- education, media, creatives -- are allowed to wither and die because they are a blip on the bottom line.
I don't see what could change that, though. They now prioritise growth/financials/share price over pure products in a very calculating way, but what corporation doesn't? You need an exceptional mandate to do otherwise, and only the Bezos's and Jobs's of the world get those.
So the pity is that as a result we'll continue to see Apple pushing hard into services and (probably) media, because that's where it can smell growth. That might keep the numbers up, but I suspect it's going to transform what Apple is even further away from the "make great products" company we knew into ... something else. (Probably something less great, given their track record with services, tbh.)
I think this is one of those situations where you count dollars rather than heads.
My understanding is that the "next billion users" push that all the big companies are doing is a bit like putting macs in schools. It is a long-term plan 'cause yes, the developing world is poor right now. maybe those people who are poor now won't be poor in the future, and if they know how to use your ecosystem, that's great for you. It certainly seems like a good idea, but I don't think it's where you make your money today.
I really think if you were serious about that plan, you'd come out with a giant low-end phone; You remember the thinkpad W series? something like that. big and clunky and cheap. Apple needs an iphone 5c level cheap plastic reskin of last year's big phone for that.
The market you're really talking about them capturing with a small premium phone is "rich people who have multiple devices and want a small phone and when they can't get one they buy an Android phone or make do with an SE". I'd wager that's small in most terms, certainly in Apple terms -- whether you're talking dollars or heads.
But what do the top-end Chinese consumers do when Apple doesn't have a phone that appeals to them? They buy one of the other flagships that run WeChat, and Apple loses them. That's big in Apple terms, missed-expectations-warning big.
By comparison I think the iBook was always a crippled version.
For $999 or $800 old/refurbished, it was the only small (5 lbs) laptop you could get with a decent GPU back then. The pentium 4 stuff of the day was huge and power hungry and the Centrino line didn’t support it for some reason.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-iphone-xr-has-been-its-top-...
What Greg Joswiak says is likely true, but you have to account for the fact that peak demand for the XS has already passed by the time the XR is launched, so total XS sales to date could still be more.
Really? Typically it's all the claims by the press pundits (X not selling, Apple losing Y country, etc) that are proven invariably BS after each quarter results conference.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/08/the-wsj-calling-t...
I think you’re failing to account for the fact that most people just use their phones and enjoy them as long as they work and do what they want it to do. The “gates” and outrage you mention comes from a small and vocal portion of Apple’s customers.
Then they should offer models that are cheaper to manufacture, like the 5c. I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular and gouge sales of flagship models negating some of their premium branding.
I'm currently on a 6s and see no update path for myself, I would happily sacrifice faceID and some of the higher-end phone materials for a modern paired down iPhone. I have about as much confidence in this appearing though as them fixing the state of the keyboards on the MBP's.
The 5C was a sales flop. In Australia, the 5S was outselling the 5C by eleven times [1]. Even in China, people were buying the more expensive iPhone rather than the plastic 5C one [2].
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australian-telcos-struggle...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/apples-iphone-5c-sales-sto...
Do they actually do that though? Feels like BOM reduction exercises like removing the short power cable from their $3000 laptops and headphone dongles from their $1000 phone, laptops still shipping with painfully low space that triggers space warnings on their OS after you add just a few files to them (complete nightmare if you work at a company that cheaps out on laptops).
Feels like the user experience is actually secondary to maximizing ASP and minimizing BOM.
I have a Nokia 6.1 (the black copper one).
Side by side if I knew nothing about either I'd be hard pressed to tell which was the 800 quid phone and which was the 200 quid phone.
Throw in AndroidOne and recent Android and the experience is largely similar, I mean sure the processor in hers would murder mine in a benchmark but in real world use do I ever care about it, they feel equally fast on a human time scale (and I have a better adblocker).
There was a time that putting an iphone next to a 200 quid phone would have been a laughable comparison not so much anymore.
1- Pricing not only says who can afford your product but also establishes a brand, determines channel, & more.
2- The first key to having low priced offerings is that you have to have a set of partners who are willing to compete on thin margins in order to bring the product to market.
3- When people say Apple needs a cheaper phone there are many questions to answer beyond the get over yourself luxury brand issue.
4- What is distribution constraint? What partner absorbs some cost to leave margin? What is the branding?
5-Easy question — would a cheap phone be sold and supported in Apple stores side by side? How would the rest of the customers feel about more crowds and tougher appointments competing with people who paid half as much? Sell one phone against another—how?
6- Anyone that thinks Apple is unaware of the challenge and has not sketched out ideas, tested them, and thought about them immensely is crazy.
7- What does all this mean? Apple may or may not have a “pricing” or “price point” or “structural” / secular challenge. For sure just releasing a cheap phone doesn’t make all better.
All takes place in context of lots of cheap/bad competitive phones.
(1): https://mobile.twitter.com/stevesi/status/108117488690147328...
There's an obvious difference between "a cheaper phone" and making the range as affordable as it was five years ago - instead of relying on so-called luxury branding while offering very little extra and annoying customers with product issues (missing headphone jack, BatteryGate, etc) and mediocre software updates.
Apple doesn't have an iPhone problem. Apple has an Apple problem.
It's at least possible (who knows for sure...?) that if Jobs were still alive Apple would have opened up at least a couple of innovative new product lines by now - not just gimmicks like Watch, but new "I didn't know I wanted that, but now I see it I obviously do" products, with supporting services and industry partners, all pitched at the affordable-at-a-push level that Apple products originally lived in.
This is where Cook has failed. There's nothing new on the table. Putting up prices is a short-term tactic. So is "a cheap phone".
What Apple needs is a coherent and impressive long-term strategy, and investors aren't seeing that.
Apple is no longer run by techies and has thus lost all its real flavor. The Macbook 2015 era was the pinnacle and we're on the down slope for now. The new Mini that costs 899 to get in the door (any thousands for any reasonably decent config) was just a slap in our faces--a giant FU to Mac users on a budget. The Mini I speced out was over $4000. Sorry, Apple, you're fucking dreaming.
The only this Macs have going for them now is that they aren't Windows-based. iOS is meh, always has been.
There needs to be more players in the smartphone space, quite frankly.
Now it's just like, "Why'd they take off the ports on this laptop? It's a weird brown color. And two of the keys don't work, already." To make it worse, everything is the same. You can't tell anything apart? Is this the Air? Wait, it's the old Pro? Which watch is this? Is this the XR or the XS? What's the difference?
Microsoft is sitting on such an amazing ecosystem and it feels like they just don't know how to tie it all together sometimes.
Well of course Apple, and every other company needs that. But hoping for a savior is not a plan.
2.25x multiple
With customisation you can easily reach 3x.
The idea being pushed is cannibalization by a better product, not lower prices.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/908575-one-of-job-s-busines...
So they already have an offering in that price band. Sure, it's bigger than the iPhone SE, and naturally it doesn't have the prestige of something that costs twice as much, but if you want a new iPhone today and you've got $450, Apple has a product for you.
[1] https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-7
Also, recognizing me without glasses (again bed). I've got an alternate face configured, but bed also means low light, and current FaceID doesn't like thatat all.
The Face ID sensor is basically a tiny Kinect (infrared dot grid), so low light shouldn't be a problem. I have the most trouble with it in the morning when I first wake up, usually squinting at the light.
I bought the X because I wanted an OLED screen iPhone. And I was digging the less bezels. The notch however is irritating me to this day, 14 months in. And the non-rectangular screen (with unconventional aspect ratio) has been an annoyance when watching videos or when playing games.
It's even more absurd seeing how many Android OEMs followed suit with the notch. Seriously though: 3-4mm on the top and 2mm on the bottom is alright. There were phones with slightly larger top/bottom bezels than these and they still managed to even have dual front-facing speakers as well.
We need marketing people who have common sense, not those who try and imitate their way to success.
The fact that so many Android OEMs followed suit surprised me. The usual chinese iPhone clones going along with it? Sure! But so many 'reputable' companies went for it, it's just incomprehensible.
Anecdotally I just can't imagine someone preferring a notch to no notch (as long as the bezels aren't massive on the alternative). What kind of data were the Android OEMs looking at when they made that decision? Or did they not look at any data at all and simply go with "we better follow Apple on this, just in case".
It looks that way and it looked that way for years. What a shame.
There are still devices with good designs out there -- Sony, Nokia and Xiaomi mostly come to mind -- but the general trend has been "let's all add a notch".
:(
Vast majority of the time, I don't notice the notch. I like the way the 'done' button floats in the upper real estate when modifying apps (wiggle mode).
I would prefer a phone that's a pure wall-of-glass and manages somehow to also have FaceID, and I'm pretty sure Apple would as well but can't manufacture it.
I lack the patience (and at the moment, bandwidth) for most video.
It has a slide-out front camera. So when you are not using the selfie camera, there is no notch and no large bezel. (It does look like the bottom bezel is a bit larger than the top and side bezels, though)
The screen looks gorgeous, I personally will never again own a phone with moving parts of any sort so that's a deal-breaker for me. I'm glad there's still experimentation happening in the space, too many Androids just jump off the same bridge as Apple.
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/features/story/vivo-nex...
And then after that they go with the standard notch everyone else has, and you lose the extra features. Still I do prefer my V40 which has a standard notch as the extra screen space is nice every time I switch back and forth between these phones. The V40 is even slightly smaller than the V20, but with the huge edge to edge screen, doesn't feel like it.
Many Android OEMs let you hide it by painting the top bar black, though. It's even more ludicrous than that because Apple actually advertised the iPhone X by releasing a press photo where the notch was hidden due to showing a full-screen image with a mostly black background. Someone actually took Apple to court for deceptive advertising, because of that and other stuff they're quibbling about. But Apple won't allow us users the same freedom when using the device!
Does losing 5mm at the top the screen to bezel really affect user experience when the phones are huge anyway?
If not, why make it break the display uniformity and separate notification icons...
Having more vertical space also makes it easier to scan my emails or akik an article. It is absolutely worth it.
javascript:(function () { var i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i=0;i<elements.length;i++) { if (getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='fixed' || getComputedStyle(ele elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]); } } })();
Put that in a bookmark (it will be all one long line in the bookmark URL field), run it on the page with the banners, the banners disappear (at least in Firefox on Android). YMMV on iOS/Safari.
I'd say even 5-10mm of bezel is a good thing, because it helps those with large fingers to hold the phone without fouling the screen.
(Bezels used to be wide for technical reasons; but now that they don't need to be for that reason, it's necessary to consider whether there are other reasons they should remain.)
I also looked at an XS Max yesterday for the first time. The notch is reduced compared to an X; not by much but it's definitely less.
I realize many people buy X / XS / XS Max for the bezel-less form factor but I wish us the others (who like rectangular screens and don't mind some bezels) actually had a choice of a high-end iPhone.
I have an X too and seriously I never notice or think about the notch in normal use.
FWIW I prefer a notch to a large upper bezel because it's a tidy way to tuck away my notifications and clock, though I don't love the way iOS does it and I don't love when it when apps go full screen in that area.
Tantamount to complaining that it doesn’t come in the proper shade of beige.
It has no effect on utility. It actually compresses fixed UI elements (tray icons, the clock, status indicators) up into corners. Those fixed elements would otherwise require a solid bar to consume 1/20 of the viewing area, and there’s still the physical camera and speaker to consider.
Have fun rationalizing other trivialities. Less obvious is the lack of a reliable button, and the useless face unlock idea.
It’s not the geometry of the pretty blinking lights. It’s that the trade offs it’s intended to integrate with and enable are underwhelming.
There is definitely credence to the thought that the notch is horrendous. I along with my entire household and most of my coworkers are, anecdotally, another example that won't come close to owning something that decides to cut into the screen. It's just so off-putting. There is no getting used to it.
For a phone and company that touts its self as a status symbol and the "pinnacle of design" they have made a couple of really bad design and usability decisions of late, the touchbar being the other egregious example.
I used to think I'd never want anotched phone. Now I don't even notice it, really. It certainly doesn't put me off.
With the screens on those models rather large anyway, what of the benefit is significant, given it cuts into speaker location and cuts into the display (so videos etc are restricted anyway)?
FaceID has blown me away with how good it is, I’d say the success rate for identifying me is better than TouchID was. Doesn’t matter if my phone is sitting at an awkward angle in a cradle, or I’m outside in the rain with wet hands, it’ll usually get me first time.
As for the notch, generally I don’t notice it. If anything it’s kind of nice getting a little extra vertical screen space and having the clock/status tucked away where the bezel used to be. Some people complain about it getting in the way when things are full screen, but by default video and the like doesn’t expand all the way out to the edges, at which point I have basically the same size display as I did with the iPhone 6. The notch is only going to take a chunk out of what you’re watching if you explicitly request that, or if the app you’re using has been built in a way which ignores guidance from the OS on the safe area for displaying UI.
I don't disagree with your points. I eventually found out that the screen is just too small for my taste. I'll buy the XS Max when I am able; or I might wait for the next generation because I still hope Apple goes USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 finally.
Well, after playing with both the XR takes better photos, generally. In addition, the XR gets probably 30% more life on a single charge. Nothing else on the XS is really much better (outside of a couple nice to haves). So now she has the XR and I have the XS.
ID recommend and XR over the XS for everyone.
Since the 5C was also a disappointment maybe it's just that people buy Apple because they want a premium phone and a 5C/XR, even with Apple's premium components isn't perceived as such?
Apple headlines just attract too much attention for god journalism, unless you are versed enough on the topic to be able to spot the relevant facts through the nonsense.
The fourth is the XR. Which is, as TFA indicates, a head-scratcher of a product.
They may have been meandering for a while but over the last decade (and change), current leadership has made three multi-billion dollar visionary acquisitions that turned the company around and brought it back to its roots as a story teller and creator/curator of American pop culture. Financial results followed the vision not the other way around (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/).
They didn’t. They’ve been down, they’ve been up (so did Apple btw), down and up again, but as of 2019 Disney is as strong as ever (though we are in the “endgame” of this cycle).
The narrative of vision lost with founder’s death, just doesn’t work for Disney’s history.
Yes, Disney is still strong, but I believe I'm not the only person that got tired of it.
Compare this with everything before, where Apple came out with at most 2 versions a year (a cheaper one and a more expensive one, e.g. the 5c/5s or the 6/6 Plus). In its attempts to grab at lots of different price points Apple is losing what differentiated it and made it special in the first place.
https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Models
It is surprising that XR didn't do as well as XS relatively speaking. Then again I feel a lot of people who are extremely loyal to Apple wouldn't hesitate to get the most expensive offering anyways.
While she noticed a slight speed difference from the 8. I think it was the improved battery life she liked more and hearing the XR seems to be better than the XS further justify's the choice.
- It lacks a home button
- It lacks Touch ID which unlocks your phone instantly before meeting your face (need this when sitting idle in traffic). Face ID takes longer.. that's bad UX and possibly dangerous UX which probably has caused some dummies (many out there) to have accidents.
- It's too big ... i can not text with one hand as Ive done with my 8 and all models before.
> has caused some dummies to have accidents
I love the lack of self-awareness...
Though how many millions of dummies are there unfortunately?
>The global smartphone market has suffered a drop of 6 percent in overall sale numbers, according to a report on the third quarter of 2018 from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Similar to the drop in smartphone sales in the first quarter of the year, the IDC points at a slowdown in the Chinese market as being one of the primary factors for the global slump.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-slumps-in-smart...
This has already impacted Samsung's smartphone sales much more strongly last quarter.
>Operating profit in Samsung’s smartphone division dropped 33pc from the same quarter last year to 2.2 tn won.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/31/samsung-re...
The desirability is not there as it used to be, since they're now almost pushed into a price war with other makers in the segments who were already well established before Apple.
Finally, there are simply too many issues surrounding iOS. Either the wifi stops working, or the phone is made to perform too slow in the pretext of battery throttling or something else is compromised. This is unacceptable from a company that reached $1 Tr. I am not kidding you when I tell you guys I know sweatshops that can do better quality code than Apple's iOS. Get your shit together, Apple!
[1] https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/iphone-xr-screen-issues-...
The Android market on the other hand is something I couldn't resist checking out, it's like the wild wild west out there: all these various companies are constantly in the news with loads and loads of weird and quirky ideas. Now, granted, I did end up switching to iOS because I found the Android offerings inferior, I still can't help but sometimes think about trying out the newest and most interesting on that end. "The grass is always greener on the other side", as they say.
It's also the case that the killer apps are simply not there. Unlike the 2018 iPhones - I really did look at the new iPad Pro and thought to myself that I'd love one since I've been using the first gen 13" Pro ever since it came out and the redesign is cool. On second and third thoughts, though I had to admit to myself that even with the 120hz panel, I wouldn't really gain much in practical terms. And the entry price, which in my country is almost $500 more than the first generation's, really doesn't justify something that's that much of a hard sell..
Now, granted, this is all just my personal opinion and might even change this September if Apple has some surprise queued up for us, who knows?
For now, though, I can't help but feel like that $1500-$2000 for a new tablet and smartphone every year or two is better served as part of my savings account.
I agree with the long term argument, I still love my X and it was my reasoning behind paying the price. I do appreciate the fact that Apple still pays attention to things that are important to users like me, like the whole privacy aspect, keeping as much data on-device as possible. It's great and I try to keep that in perspective. It's hard to deny that for the last few years, they've been making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. Delayed launches, increased prices, good products being discontinued instead of updated, announced products not making an appearance. It would've been unacceptable before Cook, now it seems like it's just part of how they do business nowadays.
I don't think I'll miss anything serious from skipping upgrade cycles. I'm not much of a camera user and Face ID is meh to me so From iPhone 6 to XS I've barely seen any improvements I care about other than water resistance which was a 6 -> 7 upgrade.
If I could find a suitable replacement for the Apple Watch (which I find very useful) then I'd be very tempted by this.
I've got the latest watch and it is very good, so although the price is high it does not seem particularly unreasonable.
iPhones, on the other hand, give me the impression of being very expensive for what they offer and I find them unsatisfactory in a variety of ways. Currently, I plan to keep the iPhone 8 for as long as I can then decide what to do depending on the state of the market; this will probably involve getting a reasonably-priced Android phone with a custom ROM and some sort of fitness tracker.
Historically 90% of pundit/press claims have been proven to be utter BS. If I had a penny for each "Apple is doomed" and "iPhone model XXX not selling" I would have, well, 10s of dollars...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/08/the-wsj-calling-t...