They're changing the product positioning in the line so that the most popular model is now the "normal" one, and premium models are a step up from that. Honestly I like it better than giving the high end model the default branding with a worse model below it that most people will actually buy.
If you type the say command into Terminal on a Mac and have it say "iPhone X" or "Mac OS X" it will pronounce it correctly (Ten instead of X). Doesn't relate much to the argument, other than being a neat easter egg.
My company with low 5-digit users hosts an hour-long monthly webinar about product updates. The iPhone is one of the most popular consumer items in the world, I think it’s reasonable for Apple to spend 1.5 hours/year talking about what’s changing
I was hoping for Tile-like trackers. I wonder if they'll show up later this fall in a different event. Would make sense to put it close to the holiday shopping season. Still, would have liked to have seen them today...
1.5 hour just to re-announce Arcade/TV+, and give a small spec bump to iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone. What a waste of time. The only real new feature the iPhone got was Night Mode which is an exact copy of the computational stuff Pixel does with Night Sight, from their description.
Thats why no one talks about it cumulatively. By cumulative logic every new iPhone release is the most interesting ever by definition because its... cumulative.
You don't need a 2 hour long presentation to give small spec bumps. The problem is that everyone now expects this whole yearly circus, and Apple puts on a show even though they only have very incremental improvements to show. It also doesn't help that most of the the cool software features were already announced at WWDC.
Better computational photography with added camera hardware, new immersive audio algorithms, on-CPU changes for optimized ML matrix computations, etc, are not "small spec bumps". If you think they are it's likely because companies like Apple are so incredible at delivering this kind of stuff that it seems routine.
Every one of those features appeared in Chinese & Korean Android phones 2-3 years ago. Neither are these "feats", nor are they unique to Apple. They're already behind the curve on these features.
The only commendable thing is scale, when Apple adds these features they reach 10X in unit sales per SKU compared to the competition.
Will have to try it out but it sounds very much like fluff
> on-CPU changes for optimized ML matrix computations
So faster matrix multiplies are a user-facing feature?
Other than the camera changes, there was no features an average user would be excited over. No new tech like face unlock, animojis, Samsung's audio focus, Pixel's Soli, or other real new features.
> Now we're instead having a discussion about Android phones and Animojis?
Because you & apple during the presentation made is sound like computational photography in phones was something ground breaking and never before seen. Its been in the Pixel phone for years.
No one said it was new. They said it was big for Apple. Yes, Apple is always behind their competitors in many things, but that’s not why people buy Apple.
1. Spec bumps: These are mostly invisible to the consumer, it just gives them a phone that's slightly faster or lasts longer. Faster matrix multiply falls into this category.
2. Features: These are actual changes the user can see and interact with. I named a few examples, both on software (animoji/sound focus) and hardware (face unlock/soli) side.
This presentation had almost none of the latter, other than Dark Mode. I'm not sure why that statement is so hard to understand. None of the stuff you named were really features. No one goes to the store to buy the phone with the slightly faster cpu or better matrix multiplies.
I'm never sure why everything always has to be about "X was slow to do Y, and now they're finally catching up to Z".
It is how it is, just let it be. If you prefer a certain brand then just go with that brand. Otherwise it's just a wasted effort to be trying to brag for one brand you don't even work for that they did something faster than another one.
Other than the 20% faster CPU, 4-5 additional hours of battery life, 2e6:1 contrast ratio, and 30% faster FaceID (which might be the difference between the phone seeming to immediately unlock and pausing briefly)?
If Intel or AMD announces a 20% faster chip it would be met with applause. Now imagine if they announced a 20% faster chip that also used 25% less energy. And it also takes great pictures with three different lenses, recognizes your face, has one of the best screens ever made, and so on. If that's not impressive, what would Apple have to do to be impressive?
what I find odd is Apple appears disconnected from their audience, this was not the first presentation where Tim or others seem to pause waiting for an expected cheer that was not to materialize.
I was hoping for USB-C and no camera bump on the back. Just make the phone 1mm thicker and add some extra battery. I guess that would be too much... We have to live with the "up to 4h" extra battery life that would probably translate in 1h of extra battery in the real world. It's just depressing.
The 11 Pro is 0.4mm thicker than the XS (and the X/XS were 0.6mm thicker than the 7). They're slowly getting there.
> We have to live with the "up to 4h" extra battery life that would probably translate in 1h of extra battery in the real world
Comparing the numbers to the stated numbers for the iPhone XS, "streaming video" has actually gone down by 3 hours. And they removed the "internet use" spec completely. You can now listen to music for 65 hours instead of 60 though.
Potentially controversial: how much more battery do you need? I have an iPhone 8 and it lasts for two solid days (48 hours) if I forget to charge it and one really heavy day if I do charge it.
I agree that a little extra thickness isn’t too bad (and on USB-C), but I’m pretty happy with my battery life. Do I just not use it as much as most people? I’m genuinely curious.
I was hoping to get rid of the notch. I had an iPhone X, I'm typing this on a OnePlus 7. There's a few phones now that have no notches or holes in the screen.
honestly, the XS/XR one was the same for me. I have an iPhone X and there was zero temptation to upgrade to XS/XR and a meh amount to the 11/11 Pro (11R/11S).
I think phone advancement cycles have hit a point where I'm kind of underwhelmed from everyone and that's fine. I just want Apple to come out with one using USB-C instead of Lightning (to match iPad Pro and MacBook Pro and being able to rid myself of my lightning cables), 5G (for future proofing), and maybe in-display fingerprint.
I could go for a model like that and my next upgrades will probably just be the batteries until it bites the dust.
Same. I bought a 7+ when my 6 died, and I hated every minute with that phone. My X is, IMO, the best iPhone I've ever owned, and have no real desire to upgrade. Usually I upgrade every 2 years, on the "S" cycle (the 6 was an aberration), as I cared more about performance than having the latest 'look' phone.
This is probably the first time I haven't felt the hankering at the 2 year mark.
Yep, I've got an iPhone X and feel like it's fine for another year. Although the battery life improvements are supposed to be notable? Personally the next big thing I'm waiting for is USB-C so iPhone 12 it is...
This is me. I'm still rocking an iPhone 7 but use an iPhone X as my work phone. I think the iPhone 11 will get the upgrade for my personal device but I'll probably still with the X for work unless I notice a huge difference in camera quality.
I agree. I have the Samsung S10+ with 3 lenses, wide, normal and zoom. And I end up using the wide angle way more frequently than I thought I would. It's super handy.
An intern’s Unity project presented by a carnival barker who speaks to the audience like their average age is four years old is not a large step out of line of Konami’s expected behavior.
To each their own. The improvements in computational photography like automatically stitching a few pictures together for higher resolution and night mode are pretty incredible. And the improved dynamic range, resolution, and added wide angle lens are nice improvements.
I've updated every 2 years for the past 8 years or so -- even back then I never felt the need to upgrade the very next year, but by 2 years out I've always been pretty excited for the improvements. And this year that still holds, I'm excited to upgrade my iPhone X.
"Incredible" is a pretty big stretch. When you can calibrate the cameras yourself, the math isn't actually that difficult to work out. Also, there are plenty of us that use the phone in a "pro" sense as a mobile computing device, not as a photographer or film director.
I was able about to order an XS Max, so I'm pretty content with better camera/battery/charger, though I imagine if you were already semi-up-to-date there's not really a whole lot new for most users.
Disappointed that there wasn't really a true breakout feature I guess they're still doing the s-cadence even if they got rid of the name.
I'm still rocking a 6s and I'm gonna keep it for the next year I guess, more battery life is nice but can't swing $999 for 4 more hours of battery life. Here's hoping 128gb is standard next year (I currently have the 128gb 6s which was the most expensive at the time).
I just swapped out the deteriorating battery on a 6s for one that has even more capacity than the stock battery did new. It may go up in flames or something next week, but for now it’s a huge upgrade.
If there’s “more capacity” in the same volume it is almost certainly a lie. And sellers that lie may cut corners in other areas. And lithium ion batteries can explode.
I also have an 6s. Haven't found much reason to upgrade. I like the smaller form factor. I guess upgrading to the 7 or 8 may be nice at some point for water resistance (a heavy rain shower killed my SE).
I switched from 6S to XR, and I wasn't expecting much, but oh boy, you don't realize how much of a difference a boost in processing speed and screen size can make. Massive productivity gains, even though I'm primarily a desktop person. That plus the huge battery on the XR fundamentally changes how you think about your phone.
I don't really use my phone much anymore besides for calling, messaging and occasionally checking email. Whatever productivity boost I'll get on my phone doesn't matter much in practice.
Battery life is also no problem. The 6s makes it through the day and I charge it overnight.
For me, the water/dust resistance and better camera was worth the upgrade from 6+ to the 8+. Especially because unremovable first specks had gotten into my 6+ camera, making it basically unusable.
iOS 13 is likely the last iOS your 6s would run despite A9 being good enough. Similarly to Catalina being likely the last macOS running on first retina MBP 2012 that are still good enough and likely will be for a few more years (much faster than latest Airs).
I love my mid-2012 MBP. I expect I’ll have to replace it next summer if I want to run the latest Xcode, which will make me very sad. It amazes me that it’s seven years old, as it runs as well as it did they day I bought it.
I'm looking to get a new one just for the battery life (4 hours more than the xs, which is probably double the 6s). I can browse for ~3-4hrs and can "idle" for 14hrs before 0% on my 6s right now.
On a 6S myself but it's in dire need of replacement (survived multiple drops fine, but a flip on my desk broke the glass and now it's progressively getting worse).
The 11 looked like a fine-ish option (with a 128GB version), but god it's half an inch wider and taller again, and 30% heavier. I guess I'm getting an 8.
Just FYI: Your options are 64gb, 256gb, 512gb. It honestly doesn't seem likely that they'll change that anytime soon as I haven't heard a single person complain about storage in the last 3 years. While nobody felt that 8/16/32gb was enough.
I happen to be using 50gb atm, on a 3.5 year old phone. But the new cameras have higher resolution photos which take up more space. Plus apps are only ever getting bigger, So I would likely have to pay the extra $100 for the 256gb.
That's the 11P, the 11 is 64/128/256. And the 8 is 64/128.
> I haven't heard a single person complain about storage in the last 3 years. While nobody felt that 8/16/32gb was enough.
I've been on 128 since I bought a 6S. I'm using about 80GB currently.
> the new cameras have higher resolution photos which take up more space.
That's a concern for people who use cameras and keep pictures long-term. I've got 2GB of photos on my phone. I really couldn't care less about the camera.
> It honestly doesn't seem likely that they'll change that anytime soon as I haven't heard a single person complain about storage in the last 3 years. While nobody felt that 8/16/32gb was enough.
I'm currently on a 64GB plan with 200GB iCloud subscription, but I share the plan with family. I'm almost at the point where I'll have to upgrade to the 2TB tier (at 3x the price), so I hope they introduce something in between.
Not every computer comes with USB C. Pretty much every computer though does come with USB A. And IIRC, male A to male C cables are not allowed per the spec
Male USB-A to male USB-C cables are allowed, what's not allowed is male or female USB-A or USB-B to female USB-C. That is, on a USB-C to legacy cable, the USB-C end is always male.
I get that there's arguably a "general principle of the matter" component here, but the cable that comes with the iPhone is more useful to me than a USB-C version would be. My use cases -- and I doubt I'm an outlier -- are "charge the phone," where it really doesn't matter what the end that plugs into the charger is, and "connect to CarPlay," where my (model year 2019) car has USB-A but not USB-C. If the iPhone shipped with USB-C to Lightning cable and charger, it would be marginally less useful to me -- I'd just have to go buy the USB-A to Lightning cable.
The number of times I've needed to physically connect my iPhone to any of my Macs is, as far as I can recall, zero, and it's been that way for years. Wireless everything has been much, much better for me. The only time I've really used a cable is to do backups before installing beta versions of iOS. (And that backs up to my Mac mini, which -- even in its current updated incarnation -- still has USB-A ports.)
It sounds like the new iPhone 11 Pros will come with USB-C -> Lightning. Since it's supposed to come with a 18W charger, and iPhones use USB-PD, which does not work over USB-A.
After three years, Pixel users still have to refer to a guide [0] or track down a Google Engineer's Amazon reviews [1] to find a 3rd party USB-C cable on Amazon that doesn't have the potential to fry their device [2].
If I were Apple, I'd be hesitant to jump on to USB-C, when Amazon and gas stations around the world are selling $5 cables and chargers that are so out-of-spec that they introduce the very real possibility of damaging devices that will end up at the Genius Bar for an AppleCare+ repair/replacement.
These devices stopped being smart"phones" a while ago. Complaining about the phone not being a major part of these devices (I'm including Android devices too) is missing the wood for the trees.
Of all the reasons not to buy this this one seems a bit silly to me. How is this such a big problem? I have an older iPhone where the camera sticks out as well and I don't even realize it. It has zero effect on day to day use. And if it does cause problems just get a case?
Apple users are finicky and love aesthetics. That's one of Apple's/Ive (before he left) major selling points was simple beauty. A lump on the back is not beautiful, simple, clean or elegant.
And yet way more iPhones with camera bumps have been sold than ones without. Life moves on. In the real world almost everyone uses a case and that negates any camera bump. People will make fun of it for a day or two online, but it just doesn't matter.
I hate cases but Apple is making this less and less tenable over time. Not just the camera bump but also the lower quality glass they use on the screen that easily scratches now. I used to never have a problem up until about the iPhone 7
This is a huge generalization. Close to half of Americans have iPhones, and most because you know, it has iMessage and their friends have iMessage, or you know, because iPhones are vastly more secure and have vastly better support than their competitors, or because they're meant to be simple/easy to use, etc.
To say half of Americans are finicky and love aesthetics because there's no other reason anyone would buy one is a bit of a stretch.
(I'm probably buying an iPhone this year for the first time ever, and I don't really care how it looks, or how good it's photos are, and I'm definitely putting a case on it.)
It is usually offet by the phone cover. It is actually quite clever: SINCE the cover needs to have a hole anyway for the camera, use that hole to sneak a bigger lens. All the while ensuring the hole is facing the camera, since without protrusion the hole may not be exactly in front.
iPhone SE continues to be the best iPhone. Best size, flat camera.
Specs are falling behind but I'm hoping to get another few years before I have to replace it.
Camera bump bothers me less on the phones than it does on the iPad because even a thin case flattens it out. But the iPad's camera bump is the only reason I have a thick case on the back of that. It's either at a desk or in my bag, I'm not going to drop it.
EDIT: I should add that I don't drop my phone because it's small enough that my fingers can actually grip around it. But my asshole of a cat knocked it off the nightstand a couple days ago and cracked the corner of the case, so a properly sized phone isn't a 100% solution to avoiding phone damage. Buying a $1000 phone and not having a case on it is nuts.
My thinking is that the reason why they don't care about the camera sticking out is that people usually have covers on their phones that level this problem out.
If you wear even the thinnest case/skin on your phone, the camera won't be protruding at all. The office apple leather skin on Xs Max makes the phone de facto flat on the back.
I watched the announcement really trying to find an excuse to upgrade. But to be honest there was not a single new feature that I really wanted and that my current iPhone 6S couldn't do. Pity.
Yeah, problem is I want both features and quality. :)
I am 100% sold on Apple devices in terms of quality, reliability and privacy issues. I don't think I'd buy an Android anytime soon. I just wish they had a few more exciting hardware features.
What kind of exciting features were you hoping for? What does Android phones have that is missing on iphones? Beyond 5G which isn't deployed widely yet
Galaxy Note 10+ user here. This limits the availability of screen protectors. Samsung was nice enough to include one pre-installed, but this slows down the fingerprint reader performance.
Perhaps Apple's 3rd party accessory ecosystem and their attention to detail and polish would avoid these issues.
On Android: You can set default apps for certain links (YouTube, browser, mail client, etc). You can leave spaces or add widgets to the home screen. You can plug the phone into a computer and access the file system like a USB drive. Those are all pretty nice. Of course, iMessage, Apple Wallet, and other features are nice on iPhones. Both are different and good in their own ways.
Good. I'm glad to be off the upgrade treadmill from the early days of smartphones, on both the hardware and the OS level. When my current one breaks, I'll upgrade.
If someone comes out with a point-n-shoot that's about as good as a semi-recent iphone camera, does live photos(!), and has backup-over-wifi I'm back on a dumbphone on release day of that device.
You get at least two or three stops more sensitivity if you upgrade from 7 to X. It’s an enormous difference when you need it. You can’t take a picture in broad daylight and say “looks nice and crisp, can’t be better”. Take a photo of something moving, indoors and you’ll see it.
Yes that assumes you have use for the camera. Anyone who doesn’t really has no reason to read new phone launch press releases (since about 5 years ago). They are now cameras with other smart phone features tacked on. Incremental increases to cpu/memory/battery/storage but big improvements to picture quality (such as a full stop or two of sensitivity)
I hear you, I upgraded from the 6S to the XS last year. I love both phones, but the 6S was simpler since I didn't need a dongle for headphones. The jump was great for the screen size, but I hate sacrificing the headphones.
Last year I bought some bluetooth earphones (Bose rather than Apple) and honestly I don't miss wired earphones one bit. In fact it surprised me just how much I don't miss wired earphones.
The biggest annoyance for me is that Nintendo's Switch requires a bluetooth dongle to work with bluetooth earphones despite having it's own bluetooth radio built in.
Are you pairing your earphones with multiple devices ? (your phone and switch ?)
That’s the last point that makes me pause, as pairing/unpairing/switching is a PITA and I have four devices I want to hear audio from. I though only airpods and Beats could switch seemlessly so I am intrigued.
My Bose earphones can be connected to two devices concurrently. However it can be paired to a multitude more devices but not connected to them. Which means if you have 3 devices turned on (eg laptop, Switch and phone) it might only be connected to the laptop and phone. So you either have to switch the connection via the phone app (which isn't the prettiest nor most intuitive of apps but it's "good enough" for what it is) or turn off one of the devices and the earphones will auto-switch to the next available pared bluetooth device.
I don't think there is a way in the Bose app of setting an order of preference for which devices will take precedence (eg when I pared with my laptop, the laptop would take ownership and stop the phone from playing everytime the laptop was turned on - which was rather annoying to say the least). But it was a while ago when I last checked.
So you don't have to pair an unpair all the time but there are some annoying edge cases. However it's still easier than unplugging and replugging the cable.
One thing I will say in favour of wired earphones is that the wire itself is actually rather nice tool for not actually losing your earphone. The bluetooth earphones I have are connected via a cable between the two ear pieces (which goes round the back of your neck) which means I can take the earphones out to talk to someone and not worry about dropping or losing an earpiece. So often on the London underground I see people dropping an AirPod and then scrambling around a busy escalator trying to pick the damn thing up. I dread to think how many people have lost or broken their AirPods directly because of their form factor. So if you're the clumsy sort or struggle to find earphones which stick in your ear, then you might be better off sticking to wired earphone or buying headphones instead.
To be fair when I'm at work I don't use it much and it's connected to Wifi. If I'm traveling and actively using it for hours it definitely doesn't last this long.
Done at the Genius Bar. I replaced the battery because it was even worse and wild shut down due to not enough voltage. It doesn’t do that anymore, but especially in low signal places it drains very very fast.
Waterproofing could perhaps be the main feature, the 6S being the last one who didn’t get it. I also wonder if they increased screen durability, with all the shots of phones getting into purses against keys etc.
Also I feel the camera is getting slower as time goes by, and I already replaced the battery.
I am an iPhone user who refuses to upgrade from my 7+ until this silly notch business is removed. It does not "disappear completely and immediately", especially when viewing landscape mode video content.
Sorry, I was not specific enough. It's a "silly notch" to people who don't use an iPhone with the notch. If you never upgrade, it will remain a silly notch to you forever, while those who do upgrade find that it disappears completely and immediately, as I said.
If you want to watch landscape video, a double tap switches between notched and non-notched views, so you can choose if you care. Most people don't after day one.
I do not own a phone with a notch, but I’m under the impression that most video content is not wide enough for the notch to cut into the video.
I think you have the option of zooming in a bit to remove black bars on edges; with the drawback that corner pixels and the notch area are lost. Same as any other non-16:9 phone
I always thought I'd be bothered by a notch, but when my old phone eventually gave up the ghost I saw a great deal for a Huawei phone with a notch, and I immediately got used to the design. I expected to need at least a few days to acclimatize myself, but it was instant, weirdly enough. Now Now it never even enters my mind until I hear someone talking, or see comments, about notches in phones.
I'm quite sad they have removed 3D Touch from the phones. A minor feature I really enjoy with quick peeking — and bummed to lose that touch information for apps like Procreate Pocket and other drawing tools.
They've probably kept the "long press action" for compat reasons? It's equally undiscoverable. I'm not super sad about this one; it was a weird thing from the beginning. It shouldn't have been introduced at all.
This feature was introduced in 2014. The timing of the removal makes me think it's related to the departure of Jony Ives.
> The timing of the removal makes me think it's related to the departure of Jony Ives
This has been in the pipeline for awhile. The XR already didn't have it, the SE didn't have it, and the iPad never had it. It's the type of feature that can't be truly great until it gets full support across the board, but that never really materialized.
Perhaps Ives met severe resistance internally regarding this feature and the lack at least on iPad can be explained by internal politics? (The SE exception can be explained by cost cutting rationales.)
The lack of 3D Touch on iPad was due to difficulty getting it to work on the large screen (obviously nobody knows that for sure, but those were the rumors years ago).
The lack of 3D Touch on XR was due to cost, and apparently their plan to ditch it everywhere.
The lack of 3D Touch on iPhone Pro...that's disappointing. It would have been a great "Pro" feature to offer. A "Pro" feature that allows you to be more productive on your phone. Aside for the video features (which I don't see being used by professionals anyway), what makes this device a "Pro" anything?
Previously, they had the long press action in just a few spots for non-3D Touch phones (like on Control Center icons on the iPhone XR).
I've been on the iOS 13 beta for a while now and I vastly prefer the new context menus (although on my iPhone X I can trigger the context menu with either a long press or 3D Touch).
To clarify: In order to maintain app compatibility with this ill-advised HW feature that they are now abandoning, they will need to do something. I'm guessing they'll probably translate long press events into force touch events for third party apps. Do you have better intel?
Oh, I see what you mean. I would assume that the Peek menu UI will remain supported, or perhaps there will be a compat library that will port it to the iOS 13 context menus. I'm not sure. I also don't know how it would work if a pre-iOS 13 third-party app implemented both 3D Touch and a long press to do different things on the same UI element.
Ive been using iOS 13 and am not liking the haptic touch enhancements like...
1. Now to delete an app from homescreen I have to choose from a menu and then click the X to delete. Inside the menu I usually see "share this app," which for me holds no value.
2. The worst is haptic touch in Safari. While scrolling now Im constantly tapping a link and opening a maddening preview window. Terrible... anyone know how to turn that off?
Thanks and unfortunately I still see a preview menu just not the full preview window.
I don't want to scroll while browsing and have any windows appear unless I click a specified link. With this addition each link I scroll and mistakenly grab brings up this annoying preview menu.
I don't get it ... is this addition helpful to others? Anyone else extremely annoyed by it?
If you keep your finger on the icon a little bit longer after the menu shows up then it will start shaking and you can delete it. No need to use the menu.
I thought it was a pretty good feature although it worked better when it was new and apple were more invested in it.
In particular the three best common uses were moving the cursor for the keyboard, selecting things, and previewing web pages.
1. Felt like they made it slightly worse at some point but still good (though it fails on some websites which try to do weird hacks things)
2. This was great. Selecting things outside the keyboard was broken by a software update a few years ago but the keyboard was still good. (A hidden feature is that if you select a word then press shift, the keyboard recommends capitalising/uppercasing the word. I wish this worked for larger selections, downcasing, quotes and brackets (and I guess ¿? too))
3. Was handy to see what a link had without wasting time (going there then back wasn’t perfect for buggy websites like twitter which break navigation). It also helped unbreak webpages that did weird things with navigation (the pop up was a “new” page which the JS didn’t see as a link click and if you pressed harder then navigation would be successful). It was I think always broken for urls with an anchor (I.e. ending in #foo) and would either not scroll on pop up or lose its place if you opened/new tabbed the page. In a recent version it breaks with high probability by laying out pages with a width of 0 so one cannot see the contents of the page in the pop up.
It was a hidden feature that Apple struggled to communicate (and was hard to describe without physically trying it) was always going to be problematic.
How do you train users? What is the discoverability? It was a legitimate problem when most of your user-base aren't tech nerds and most people aren't reading the manual/help guides.
So you implement an app feature via 3D Touch and users just assume that feature doesn't exist (because they don't discover it). Then you add it twice (3D Touch AND non-3D Touch) and you're now maintaining two things, and have gained little to nothing via 3D Touch.
I liken it to Windows 8's gesture UI failure. If users cannot discover it, it doesn't exist. So you cannot really build much around it because you have to assume user ignorance.
By implementing it at the beginning of a UX paradigm cycle when the numbers of users are small, curious and in learning mode. Like how right-clicking was introduced when the number of Windows users was like 1/1000 of the number of the peak number of Windows users.
You don't implement it during/after peaking of said cycle. That's some crazy level of delusion/arrogance. Turns out not even Apple can do pull that stunt.
Most computer users still don't use middle-click/scroll wheel click, or even the back/forward buttons and they're almost twenty years old.
By simply pointing at another hard to train piece of hidden functionality and saying "what about THIS?!" you haven't really proven anything, except that with enough forced training anything can become common knowledge.
3D Touch is exactly like right click, but they're also competing against implicit training via passed users of Apple's own products, other touch devices, and even other computing (since no other platform has anything like 3D Touch).
They offered no on-screen guide or tutorial when it launched.
Wait what?
I kinda saw it coming with XR.. It’s still bad tho.
3D touch is an _amazing_ feature for power users, and one of the few that markedly differentiated the iphones from competition. Biggest thing is text editing of course, where 3D selection increases productivity _several times_, but potential was even greater if implemented more.
Ironic that they are marketing this one as pro.
I bought a X recently and plan on keeping it for years. If they software disable it with an OS update or some BS i’m gonna be so mad.
Also, I feel kinda stupid saying it but I feel like this is the sort of thing steve Jobs would have pushed harder for
Force press to select a word is still faster that long press by an order of magnitude. Same for the new context menus and keyboard cursor movement.
Second force press to extend selection is much faster and more precise than picking the small markers.
it’s more like force touch is made more consistent overall and blends in instead of being a showcase feature confusingly entirely separate of long press.
I use it even more than before, and still miss it on my iPad. Together with the disappearance of fingerprint unlocking, seeing it disappear is one more factor for me not to upgrade beyond iPhone 8.
Don’t get me wrong, there are compelling reasons to upgrade for me (bigger screen, photography) but for my usage it feels like a significant enough compromise at that price point.
Force press to select a word just doesn’t really work well. I am trying it now in Safari and most of the time the word is selected and the menu pops up and when I release my finger the menu and selection instantly disappear. Other places with force touch actions I’ve found equally buggy.
edit: Oh i played with it a bit more and it seems you have to press gently first, then hard. You can’t press hard straight away or it reinterprets it as a light touch after you let go. That’s quite unintuitive.
The worst part is that they removed it but didn't replace hard press gestures on push notifications with long press gestures.
So now on any phone without 3D Touch, which is all of them going forward, you can't open notification actions in a single gesture. Have to swipe and hit View.
Personally, I absolutely hate 3D Touch. I've never been able to get the hang of the distinction between it and a long press, so something as simple as moving apps around or selecting a character with an umlaut is incredibly frustrating.
The 3D Touch on the keyboard to edit text is absolutely amazing. I use it all the time and saves me a lot of time. I love it. It's a shame that most people don't know about it.
However I don't use any other feature with 3D touch, either because I don't know about it or I find it useful.
The long press doesn't have the same capability. With 3D touch you can also select text by pressing harder on the screen, which is the real magic of that feature.
>11 Pro Max 512GB - $1449
For my fellow Canadians, this is $1,905 CAD before taxes, and about $2,152 after taxes. I think this is the first time I've seen a phone go over $2K, at least in my neck of the woods.
The iPhone 11 isn't actually shown in the link. It's the successor to the XR. It lacks the telephoto camera and the screen looks to be about the same. So if you liked the XR you'll like this one.
The most I've ever gotten out of an Android phone is 2 years, and at that point it's crawling, not receiving updates (OS or security) and seemingly just abandoned by the manufacturer. This thread is full of people declaring no reason to update to this latest batch of iphones. To me, that speaks volumes about the iphone ecosystem.
It is a fair price. I just wish the non-Pro had a 512 GB storage option. I'd like to take my whole music library with me - in its original lossless state this is of course not an option due to size, but even when transcoding to a lossy format for mobile use (which iTunes makes very easy while syncing) I'm still looking at roughly 220 GB and counting. My current 256 GB iPhone is obviously at capacity.
Now my only options are a 1500€ iPhone 11 Pro or an affordable Sony Walkman, but I don't really want to carry around another device.
While I understand the need to make the camera more powerful (and it's one of the iPhone's truly outstanding capabilities), I just can't understand how Apple decided the design of iPhone 11. (not the Pro)
Was that new camera system really needed in iPhone 11? It... well... just literally spoiled the design... I understand the need of iPhone 11 Pro's cameras... but really? the 11?
Most people want a better camera in their next phone. These days it’s the thing that improves most between generations.
Most people buy the XR/11 phone. So obviously the volume phone needs a camera upgrade too. I don’t think most buyers (even of Apple phones) care much about the esthetics and design of the thing.
That camera cluster gives me trypophobia vibes. I feel like some sort of robot insect monster is going to hatch and take over my brain. (and/or this iPhone is an infant robot overlord)
Another iteration of "why bother" gadgets which is definitely cool but do we all really need one? I expect the fad to break in the next decade.
Some studies show that as much as 16% of people experience some level of trypophobia... My spouse has it pretty bad and confirmed it triggers her. Even to me there's something a little disturbing about it.
Judging from other responses here I am in the minority, but I like the camera bump design. The triangular geometry makes sense if you want to have all sensors equidistant to a central point. This also may result in some simplifications (or even optimizations) in sensor fusion algorithms. Putting three cameras in a line makes less sense to me.
I don't think we're arguing the functionality of the design; this is purely based on the phone's aesthetics. (And, for those of us with trypophobia, our opinion on the design is likely due to a deeply rooted instinctual and evolutionary reaction.)
I like to see it as the notch just being a big nice screen with additional screen rectangles added on each side. I don't think you find a lot of people who absolutely love the notch, but I like it now.
Yeah I don't really see it as a notch that's intruding on the screen space but rather bonus screen real estate around the sensor cluster. There was never an iPhone that gave you the screen space the notch currently occupies, so it's not like anything was taken away when the notch was introduced.
Hopefully next year. I'm very happy with my 8+ and don't plan on upgrading until Apple gets rid of the notch and has a 128 GB base model. I could live with the 64 GB base model if they figure out how to bring back Touch ID.
Huawei had a model with one more camera for quite a while, and on my memory different "Uncle Liu Electronics" were making even five and six camera models.
But honestly, that camera module count race is the most ridiculous number game in the industry, far outmatching the megahertz race, core count, and megapixels.
I had just convinced myself that I could probably deal with the size of the X and then they went and got rid of even that one in favor of something even larger as their smallest offering. Bleh
Or at least almost the same size. It looks like the 11 Pro is slightly larger than the X, although thanks for pointing this out as I would not have otherwise guessed that.
The problem is that you're setting up a bit of a reverse Zeno's paradox. Every iteration gets the "oh, it's hardly noticeable", but at some point it will be. I already find the iPhone 8 to be larger than I'd like, but I've come to terms with the size. The X was noticeably larger than that to me, but I realized that I was going to deal with it. And now it's even larger.
Disappointing that the base configuration of the iPhone 11 Pro has 64 GB of storage. If you're going to call it Pro and talk about how you can shoot professional video, you can't ship it with 64 GB of storage.
EDIT: Also, they don't let you jump to 128 GB. You have to go to 256 GB, for $150 more. I can see why they didn't talk about this at the event. People would have booed.
Wholeheartedly agree, especially when demoing the ability to film simultaneously on multiple cameras, and the 4K front-facing camera. The 64 GB is really a slap in the face.
Most buyers of these phones will not film simultaneously on multiple cameras. 64GB is for them. If you're going to use that particular feature, you're buying the largest capacity phone you can.
That's just marketing to make sure you buy the more expensive models while base model appears to be somewhat reasonably priced. Usual marketing mindhack.
Oh sure, I think everyone understands and expects this to some extent. But the Pro model should not have the same base storage as the non-Pro model. Especially with all the emphasis on the professional-level cameras on the iPhone Pro.
The sensors on the Pro model is still 12MPs. HEIC can compress the output of these sensors in an hard to imagine way. A movie takes around 60MB per minute in 1080p30. Photos are also somewhat negligible now.
I think it's still an issue for video. Who's buying a $1000+ "pro camera system" to record 1080p30? I'm sure the bitrates for 4K60 are still pretty high.
People who want to take high quality pictures and don’t really care about video.
32GB of video at 4K is still ~2 hours of video at 30fps. I take a fair amount of pictures, but I don’t think I have taken 30 minutes of video in the last 4 years.
I still use my iPhone as a Palm handheld with GSM functionality, like a glorified Treo. While I take a lot of photos, video is a rarity for me. So in my case, 1080p30 is alright.
OTOH, I also have a Sony A7iii so, I'm not confined to my iPhone for imagery if I need something really high quality.
The sensors may have stayed the same, but isn't it taking 3 photos now instead of 1? We don't yet know whether it automatically saves the telephoto, wide, and ultra-wide photos separately, but from the rumors I'd heard it retains them all. Perhaps this is a setting that can be changed, but it means that if you want to use the phone to it's capability, you're going to have a lot more photo storage than before.
A landscape image takes 1.5MB when compressed with HEIC[0]. Even it stores all three of them and uses a bit less compression due to better lenses and sensors, it'll be around 6MB per image. It's very efficient for the resolution if you ask me.
[0]: Inspected a fairly complex sunset shot taken with my iPhone X.
One presentation today made a big deal about "able to record 2 video streams at once (among the 4 cameras)".
Capture rate for multiple streams is one problem. Storage space is another, solved largely by the seamless iCloud integration; get an unlimited data plan or Wi-Fi connection, and the imagery will all just migrate off the device until needed wherever.
The non-pro model looks like the successor to the XR, no telephoto camera, the screen is LCD not OLED with lower PPI, and a cheaper frame (aluminum not stainless steel) and maybe one or two more things I forgot.
Theres also a crazy amount of enterprise purchases who dont care about storage. Everything is stored off device, and an MDM is keeping whats on the device to a minimum.
Companies would still be buying 32GB by the truckfull if it was available. Apple was right to discontinue it because 32GB wasnt enough to run the OS anymore, while also being a usable phone.
Since you cant run a phone without iOS, and stripping the OS down isnt an option, I think they should be legally required to be truthful in advertising and sell it as a 50-55GB iPhone, probably 50 if they plan on using some of the space for device upgrades.
You can remove the icons from the home screen, but it doesn’t actually delete the app from the device storage. They’ve said that’s in case you need or want one of the apps again; it’ll “reinstall” essentially instantly.
> Theres also a crazy amount of enterprise purchases who dont care about storage.
Agreed, but that's what iPhone 11 is for... There's virtually no commercial reason for 95% of enterprise users to have a Pro version.
A Pro version for most of 2020 that can shoot multiple videos at the same time in 4k, with 64gb... I don't know, doesn't sit well with me. I'm all for keeping the base model basic and as low-cost as possible to those who needn't anything more. But then either reasonably price your storage, or create a 128gb option in between, especially if you don't allow SD cards. And especially when Apple is just fine offering 128gb on the 11, but not the Pro... It's a bit much.
Why are you against booing bad things? Are you an APPL investor making a lot of money on these choices? If not, I really can't understand your position here.
You're defining "bad things" to suit you. If you boo the lightning connector, I boo a switch to USB-C. Why make me buy all new cables? Why make me replace my nightstand charger?
Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd.
Only a small subset of the population has any lightning connectors at all. The present standard is usb-c. Using an out-of-date standard is worth booing. It's like if a monitor continued sticking with dvi and never made the move to displayport or hdmi or usb-c.
USB-C is far from the current standard, it's pretty much only used by flagship Android phones and some laptops. I would say far more people have a lightning device than a USB-C device right now.
>I would say far more people have a lightning device than a USB-C device right now.
This seems funny since Android outsells Apple 4 to 1 and Windows outsells Apple 5 to 1, (and Android and Windows use USB-C for phones and laptops respectively). So quick math here would tell you that USB-C penetration is 4 to 5 times more broad than lightning based purely on sales.
EDIT: Also Apple uses USB-C on some laptops, so those numbers would affect it too
But that includes all Androids, for a very long time USB-C was only in the flagship Android phones and even today there are lots of low end Android phones being made that are Micro USB.
Plus, lightning has been out for 7 years in all of Apple's mobile products, while USB-C has only been semi-mainstream for 3-4 years.
If I had to rank connectors by how many devices use them it would probably be Micro USB - Lightning - USB-C
Edit: if we include laptops and other non-mobile devices, I would say that normal USB far surpasses everything else usage wise, USB-C seems to only be in the high end laptops and even then most laptops have some normal USB ports as well.
You must be living in an entirely different universe because everyone I know uses tons of usb-c all day.
How about the most popular noise cancelling headphones, the Sony 1000XM3 (usb-c). I see them everywhere.
Some laptops? More like all laptops. Find me one being sold now without usb-c. They would be a joke. The best tablet, the iPad Pro is usb-c (though yes I know the lower end ones are lightning).
What about the best video gear. All the best mirrorless video cameras like the Panasonic GH5, Sony A7iii, Nikon Z7, Fuji T-X3, BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, all with usb-c. The best webcam out there, the Logitech Brio with usb-c.
Let's talk about specialty gear. The most popular external disk, Sandisk Portable Extreme with usb-c. The most popular mobile hotspot, the Nighthawk mobile router has usb-c. The most popular audio interface, Focusrite, uses usb-c pretty much for all their products now. The best presentation remote, the Logitech Spotlight is usb-c charging.
Me and my friends have flashlights, shavers, toothbrushes, VR headsets and remotes, all with usb-c. Great for travel.
Basically, any good product being released now is usb-c, and has been for the past couple years.
Excuse me? 64GB standard storage for a "PRO" labeled $1000 phone that extensively advertises its professional video capacity is not an arbitrary or personal definition of bad. It's objectively inferior to its competition. It's objectively the lowest storage space of any $1000+ phone on the market.
That you would conflate this discussion to think these are arbitrary opinions seems dishonest.
>"Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd."
It seems like you accept predatory profit-driven business decisions as "status quo" even when competitors offer far better options. I don't get your definition of "status quo" when it's synonymous "worst in class".
The Galaxy Note 10 at $1000 comes standard with 256GB, an upgrade which makes the iPhone cost $1150.
But sure, "status quo", as long as the current state of the market and state of competition isn't considered...
The highest speed consumer M.2 drives go around $180/TB. Apple doesn't pay retail prices. $40 could well be a significant overestimate, especially given it's displacing an existing chip.
Let's not pretend that Apple doesn't charge HUGE premiums for memory/storage.
For the iMac Pro it's $400 to go from 32GB to 64GB of memory. High end memory is around $140 for the same jump. "High performance" - it's the same 2666MHz chips.
Storage? Samsung NVMe prices are around $300 per TERABYTE. Tell more about the high performance silicon Apple is using that is worth $800/TB.
I’m pretty sure they don’t force everyone to shoot lots of multi camera 4K videos just because the model serves their needs in other ways.
About half of the people I help choose phones would be fine with 64 GB, me included. There’s no point making them buy a bunch of flash memory they will never use just to get the better still camera that they want.
> About half of the people I help choose phones would be fine with 64 GB. There’s no point making them buy a bunch of flash memory they will never use just to get the better still camera that they want.
But would you be counseling these people to get the iPhone Pro in the first place? I would guess that most folks who want the Pro would want more than 64 GB.
iCloud storage makes it fairly easy to not keep everything you've ever recorded on your phone, it really depends on the user. Back when you kept all your music and all your photos/video it was more critical to have a ton of storage locally.
Most people buying the expensive model will probably opt for more storage, but for those that don't need it I don't see a problem with offering a lower tier.
iCloud storage costs money. If you want to back up a phone that has 64 GB of storage you're going to pay $36/yr or more. Keep your phone for 2-3 years, and you're paying $70-$100 extra. Might as well quadruple your storage and skip the cloud.
I have no problem with them offering a lower tier either. That's what the non-Pro iPhone 11 is for.
Now you have a giant phone, tons of photos, and no backup. People with the bigger phone are probably more likely to be buying the extra $36/yr, not less.
I back my phone up locally, just like I always have. It's the only way to get a full backup of all app states and data. iCloud only backs up certain data.
Most people arent plugging their phone into a computer, even weekly.
Apple also has created a super terrible backup system, where iCloud and iTunes cant work together. Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud. Maybe I want to go on vacation for a week, without my computer, and then come back and resume local backups. Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??
> Most people arent plugging their phone into a computer, even weekly.
The phones have synced wirelessly for quite a long while now. And with wireless charging on the newer models, doing so is just so damn easy.
> Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud.
Can’t you still rely on iCloud for saving and backing up app data, while retaining the full local sync and backup in iTunes? I don’t recall iCloud being disabled when locally syncing, and am pretty sure apps still save data to iCloud on my devices.
> Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??
Is that really necessary when iTunes can already sync and backup the whole device as it is when you activate the sync/backup process?
Wireless but still needs power, no? And my computer has to be on?
The rest of my complaint is mostly about how complicated a restore becomes if I was using local backup, and then arent home for a while, and need to remerge local and cloud backups. Last I remember, the interface makes you choose one or the other to restore, and then your version history gets all mucked up, as the one you choose becomes the new golden branch.
Not anymore. iCloud backs up app states and data. I restore multiple devices from the cloud regularly and I wouldn’t do so if app meta data wasn’t stored on iCloud.
Although I believe the app developers have to be aware of this and utilise the various storage options correctly - certainly in my latest restore, a whole bunch of apps had lost their state (logins, etc.) Most disconcerting and aggravatingly inconvenient.
I guess we have different ideas of pro users. I'll take the cloud storage / backup any day of the week. If you're really doing the math on $3 a month you probably shouldn't be looking at a $1000 phone regardless of storage capacity.
We do have different ideas of Pro users. I don't know any who use iCloud, which has reliability issues and is inside a walled garden. I'm as big an Apple fan as anyone, but iCloud is a joke.
I've even asked Genius Bar employees exactly how people are supposed to use the iCloud photo backup. They've admitted that they don't really know what to make of the system, which is not transparent with regard to what photos have been downloaded where. It is difficult for the average user to understand how the file-shrinking system works with photos, and which photos exist only in the cloud versus on their machines.
It's an iPhone backup, of course it's a "walled garden". It works really well, maybe you haven't used it in years. I can literally throw my phone into the ocean, walk into an Apple Store and within a short time be right back to where I was. About the only things that get lost are Face ID and Apple Pay, which don't last through any backup because the Secure Element is one way.
Not all iPhone backups are walled gardens. I can back up to my computer, and back that up to various local/cloud drives. I don't want another thing that's wedded to an ecosystem that I might leave at some point.
Also, if I'm already paying for generic cloud storage services, why should I pay for Apple-specific cloud services, at a more expensive price per GB?
Apple seems to keep 128 GB in reserve till the model drops to the base of the lineup. For example, the iPhone 8 is now available w/128GB at $499. Before today, it was available w/256 GB at $749. The 64 GB model dropped in price by $150 from $599 to $449.
Refurb pricing on the iPhone 8 is now $379 (64GB) / $509 (256 GB).
Because the 128 a sweet spot and most people don't have a need for more. The 64 size is just enough to push most intensive users over the hump and in to iCloud subscriptions. I'm sure Apple has all the analytics on how much space is being used by their users and how much iCloud subscriptions would take a hit with an 128 offering.
Good point, although those phones were not called Pro phones. They were top-of-the-line, but it was more understandable to offer a 64 GB version without the Pro moniker.
FWIW, there are other people in the world beside you. And they have different needs and desires. I am one of those people. 64GB is perfect for me. I wouldn't upgrade to 128GB of storage even if it were available.
> FWIW, there are other people in the world beside you. And they have different needs and desires.
Which everyone supports, if there was a reasonably priced 128gb option for the Pro, the complaint wouldn't be as strong. But there isn't such an option. You either use 64, or at least 4x that much (which, after subtracting 14 from the OS, is actually 5x that much). That's just a pretty silly scale, not granular at all.
So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.
There are three tiers. On the 11, the tiers are 64, 128, 256. On the Pro the tiers are 64, 256, 512. If you want to make an entry level model at 64gb, a top tier at 512gb, and one tier in the middle, then that's a logical way to step things up.
> So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.
But this logic works the other way: if you only have a 128gb entry level model, then you are forcing consumers who only need 64gb to buy more storage than they need.
So your real gripe is that there isn't a 128gb tier in between the 64gb and 256gb. But the price difference between those tiers is only $150. So the 128gb tier would be something like $50 or $100 less than the 256gb tier. If your huge problem is that you have to pay an extra 5-10% of purchase price because their storage tiers don't perfectly align with your needs, then maybe you're not the target audience.
And 128gb is not some magic number. What about people who only need 300gb? Why should they be forced to pay for 512gb when they only need an additional 50gb on top of the 256gb? Because you have to split things up somehow, that's why. Things just didn't get split in a way that is convenient for you.
People booed 2 years ago when they announced the price and they booed this year when they announced the Mac Pro pricing, You could hear it when they announced that expensive stand so that’s clearly not true.
The is pure speculation, but I think it could still hold true. Consider that many Apple employees aren't involved with every project, and Apple is known to heavily segment their developers.
So you might be an Apple Fan who happens to be an employee - except you work on idk iMessages or something - you might still be disappointed to see a 1000$ stand, especially from a company you work for.
Given it's a crowded room, I highly doubt employees would be reprimanded for just booing.
There were no previous generations of Pro iPhones. I get that these are replacing the XS and XS Max, but those were not designated Pro. When you put that label on, you have to give all of Pro devices storage to match.
Why would people boo when the new "Pro" models have the same pricing as previous non-"Pro" models? That doesn't make sense. If anything, the "Pro" designation would be expected to cost more.
Of course, it's going to be very obvious to most people that the new iPhone 11 is the direct successor to the XR, and the iPhone Pros are the direct successors to the X, XS, and XS Max.
I think you're reading way to into the naming scheme. They simply ran out of letters and went with Pro to designate the more expensive model. It's still a smartphone, it's not like there is a large market out there for people who make and edit feature films with phones.
The one thing that bothers me is the 2TB max on iCloud storage... I'm not close to hitting it, I think I've used 250 GB, but I'm also not that far away either with all these super HD iPhone features. I wonder if they will add a new plan at some point.
I noticed that recently and am wondering if I would be fine with the lowest storage option in the future. I have 128GB and have never gone above 60GB. I am sitting on 20GB's of local music that hasn't been touched since I switched to streaming music two years ago.
I "downgraded" from a 256GB iPhone X to a 64GB iPhone XS with iCloud subscription. The initial sync to iCloud Photos will take a few days, but after that one can consider the iCloud library to be the source of truth.
The iPhone XS is currently at 55.3GB filled, and I have over 400 apps installed.
128 GB is the sweet spot. I imagine there is a very large glob of users in the 50-75 GB range, which is right there on the border of "64 GB will give you problems".
Getting the Pro model, the next step up is 256 - which is super eye-rolling. The 128 GB model on the regular 11 is perfect.
But who's classifying it as PRO? Professionals definitely aren't, and that's what matters. They aren't walking around with any phone as their main tool. Let Apple call their phones rocket ships if the name fits; astronauts won't care.
i'm inclined to believe that pro is aimed at people willing to drop a ton of money that think they're pro more than they actually do professional work, and that's sort of been a lot of apple's theme around their "pro" products regarding photography
It is just an upgrade to an existing lineup of Xs+Max, but with a reworked naming scheme (similar to iPad vs. iPad Pro). It is about as Pro as Xs+Max were.
Do you see a lot of artists using iPad Pro as their main tool? Me neither, but I do see a lot of them using it as their secondary tool that also doubles as a general-purpose personal computing device. Which is what, I feel, iPhone Pro lineup was made for.
How many professional photographers and videographers do you think are using an iPhone to perform their work? Pro is not a gated marketing term with a legally defined meaning like Champagne.
If they had a 128GB option you could say the same thing about the lack of a 96GB option. There are hundreds of billions of potential storage sizes in this range. Apple has to be practical and choose some very small selection of storage options.
Have iPhone X models appeared in Apple's refurb store before today? I just checked, and they're now available. The new top models seem outrageously expensive to me.
64 GB is just not enough space if you plan to use the camera a lot. I have a 2nd gen Pixel with 64 GB of space and I find myself running out of space often if I end up recording 4K video or enable RAW shots. Mind you, Pixel has unlimited full resolution storage with Google Photos so cloud storage is not an issue; but you need to be in good wifi to utilize that. While traveling, that might not be the case always.
I honestly think all these high end phones focused on camera, should at least start with 128 GB of space. OS and apps are big enough anyway.
I like how Samsung has stuck to its guns on some of the features that Apple and later others dropped, biggest being the external card support, dual sim support and audio jack. Only if they were not hell bent on adding their own customizations, I would have loved to try one.
If they'd stuck everything in it you want and the base price was $1600 people would be complaining about that and it would be a brand shattering headline. Yes, they are marketing people; but they are balancing a lot of constraints -- a little engineers...
I have 64GB Max (for the screen size and zoom lens) and I'm perfectly happy with it. iMessage and Safari don't even need that much. Not everyone has to shoot motion pictures on their phone.
yeah anything less than 512gb should be considered junk and not pro.... because I don't like the cloud. (I am not being sarcastic, those companies are just too greedy..)
I have the XS Max 64 gig and I haven't really had a problem with space and I shoot quite a bit. I am pretty religious with offloading to the cloud, google drive in particular.
Now would I buy another 64 gig again? Probably not, at least with arcade coming and knowing how fast the games eat up space.
This storage hasn't changed for almost a decade now, I'd expect 64GB to have been canned well before something like, say, the headphone jack. Even 128GB is quite low these days.
What? the 2017 iPhone was the first with 64gb base storage as far as I know. 2 years later, it's still the base. Disappointing but not so crazy, especially with the cloud option.
A decade ago we had the 2009 iPhone (3GS) with 8gb base and 32gb max. 64gb didn't exist in the iPhone.
Still I think it'd have been fine to go 64 for the iPhone, but do 128 base for the Pro... Ah well, maybe next year.
I agree. I've been an Android user since 2009 iirc and never owned and iPhone, I am going to buy an iPhone as my next phone due to all the shenanigans Google is doing. Every damn Android phone I've bought lately has Facebook preinstalled, theres other things, but I'm done with it all.
The one thing that kills me about iPhones is the miniscule amount of storage I get. I dont want all my things in the cloud, the cloud is useless to me without access to internet. The cloud is only useful for long-term backup storage if anything.
My phone comes with 64GB and I'm using 58 of that data, I popped in a 64GB SIM card and I'm only using 12 probably cause I filled it up before and wanted to have room for more photos and stuff. I may well buy an iPhone but I want more storage space out of the box, not some cloud solution. It also annoys me that the Macbook Air starts out at 128GB, that gets eaten up so quickly as a developer.
They've got the rest of Google's software preinstalled on the other hand. I don't want every single Google service on my phone, and some of them you can't uninstall.
I was actually surprised at how obnoxious the forced Google Assistant integration was on an Android One phone compared to an Essential Phone, which is about as bloat-free as you can get for Android.
I always loved LG and their G series of phones despite always bundling Facebook garbage, and this time around they added a button for Google Assistant. I disabled that button, too often would I accidentally press it and now my convos go off into the corporate cloud to be lost in who knows what state. Worse yet: I can't repurpose the button. I would love a "Skip Song" button on my phone for when I'm driving.
I am in the same boat. I have an S7 from one of the major carriers that came preinstalled with Facebook. You can disable it, but not uninstall. Also, there is an update to "Facebook Services" which I can't seem to find and disable. I absolutely will not get another phone from Samsung (or others) that comes with Facebook preinstalled.
They have to to make the price point and keep the big profit margin. Same reason the iPhone 11 still has a sub-1080p screen even though it's a 6" screen.
So you don't think they have that money because they were innovative and introduced the iPhone, iPad, iMac, and iPod? You think they have that money because they've made micro improvements?
Wait what? That's so Apple, take a standard feature, claim they pioneered/invented it, and then do it wrong.
I purposely shop for big batteries (over 3500mAh) and my current phone lasts up to 2 days 15 hours on a single charge, and the previous one was similar when new
Year after year of new iPhone's premieres I wonder for how long I'm going to use my iPhone SE - 3,5years has gone and nothing new for me on the horizon :(
I don't care about missing jack, USB-C, cameras and other things - just make it smaller and it will fine by me.
I feel the same, I’ve had an SE since it launched. The devices released since then are just too big. I was hoping we would see something new in that form factor during today’s event.
How's the SE treating you in 2019? Trying to switch from Pixel to iPhone, but don't want to drop significant money until USB-C, which is rumored in 2020. Figured an SE might be good for me until then
I had to replace my SE battery earlier this year (well, I didn't absolutely need to, I did it because I intend to get another two years out if it). Otherwise mine is still chugging along perfectly well.
Software wise it's a perfectly fine device, definitely some limitations, but only because the processor is a four+ year old design. Some SPA or otherwise heavy webpages cause it to choke (ex: it hates USAToday), but 99% of what I try to do works great. Per Apple and MacRumours, the SE will get iOS 13. No idea how well that will run, but we'll see.
If you can get one in good shape to hold you over you'll probably be happy with it.
Yeah I replaced mine at the Apple Store this year (Apple covered it). Now I get well over a day's battery on it, amazing. Granted, I intentionally avoid installing hefty apps so that would also help achieve this kind of battery life.
Before that it would die in ~2hrs and instantly die in high heat.
I have an SE still, it works completely fine. I don't really use my phone for much besides maps/social media/web browsing so I never felt like i needed a more powerful device. The camera is great.
Get an iPhone 8 instead, probably the best value out there for iPhones.
If you are worried about shelling out money, remember that an iPhone 8 isn't $449, it's $449 minus whatever you sell it for in a year (probably not much less). And it's even less if you just buy it used or Apple refurbished in the first place.
The iPhone SE works fine but the screen size is too small for many apps that get scrunched up pretty badly. You’re using a screen size that a very small fraction of Apple users are still using, which means app developers don’t care to make it work nicely for you.
The camera is bad by modern standards, I can see a big difference even for small 4x6 prints, and Touch ID is the slower 1st generation. It's just really old hardware all around.
On the plus side, it has good battery life, a headphone jack, and it's still an iPhone running full iOS.
> Get an iPhone 8 instead, probably the best value out there for iPhones.
I have an SE and love it, but this. However, consider the deals out there for something like the 7. Metro PCS has the iPhone 7 for $50, I'm sure there are comparable deals out there too.
My understanding is that the iPhone 7 has a few more common hardware issues than the iPhone 8. Apparently a lot of iPhone 7 models are affected by messed up speakers and mics, the audio IC defect. Kind of an important feature.
I’ll admit that’s a pretty big price difference but I wonder if that has to do with the 7’s hardware issues making it a phone to stay away from. Or maybe it’s just old and that’s why it’s cheap.
Ah, maybe hardware issues. I will say, I have an 8 and the camera randomly broke on mine, and when I talked to someone who repairs them, she said that lately many of the 8 cameras have been breaking.
That said, the repair was fairly easy, it was a $30 camera and 20 minutes to repair it.
In addition to Dangus' comment with iPhone 8 you'll also get the same CPU that powers the iPhone X, which will be more than fine for quite a few more years. Furthermore I'm confident it will be supported with major software updates for a long time. It is the sweet spot for customers on a low budget or looking for a small phone. The iPhone SE, as much as I like to form factor, isn't a good new purchase at this point.
The photos used an example don't even look that good. They look heavily photoshopped. If apple really thinks they can overprocess their way into professional photography, they've got another thing coming.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 319 ms ] thread- OS X = "OS ten" - iphone X = "iphone ten" - Xcode = "ex-code"
I can't really think of a 'tech thing' with 'X' in the name that is not pronounced Ecks.
And, really, you lead off with a Frogger game?
Im curious what the sensors are used for. They describe it as “GPS at the scale of your room” which sounds pretty ambitious.
IOW, it's a near-meaningless statement.
What were you hoping for?
The only commendable thing is scale, when Apple adds these features they reach 10X in unit sales per SKU compared to the competition.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
[2] https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/29/stop-apple-listening-siri-rec...
Basically catching up to the Pixel
> new immersive audio algorithms
Will have to try it out but it sounds very much like fluff
> on-CPU changes for optimized ML matrix computations
So faster matrix multiplies are a user-facing feature?
Other than the camera changes, there was no features an average user would be excited over. No new tech like face unlock, animojis, Samsung's audio focus, Pixel's Soli, or other real new features.
I can't keep track.
Because you & apple during the presentation made is sound like computational photography in phones was something ground breaking and never before seen. Its been in the Pixel phone for years.
1. Spec bumps: These are mostly invisible to the consumer, it just gives them a phone that's slightly faster or lasts longer. Faster matrix multiply falls into this category.
2. Features: These are actual changes the user can see and interact with. I named a few examples, both on software (animoji/sound focus) and hardware (face unlock/soli) side.
This presentation had almost none of the latter, other than Dark Mode. I'm not sure why that statement is so hard to understand. None of the stuff you named were really features. No one goes to the store to buy the phone with the slightly faster cpu or better matrix multiplies.
It is how it is, just let it be. If you prefer a certain brand then just go with that brand. Otherwise it's just a wasted effort to be trying to brag for one brand you don't even work for that they did something faster than another one.
It's the corollary to:
> Apple are so incredible at delivering this kind of stuff that it seems routine
If Intel or AMD announces a 20% faster chip it would be met with applause. Now imagine if they announced a 20% faster chip that also used 25% less energy. And it also takes great pictures with three different lenses, recognizes your face, has one of the best screens ever made, and so on. If that's not impressive, what would Apple have to do to be impressive?
> We have to live with the "up to 4h" extra battery life that would probably translate in 1h of extra battery in the real world
Comparing the numbers to the stated numbers for the iPhone XS, "streaming video" has actually gone down by 3 hours. And they removed the "internet use" spec completely. You can now listen to music for 65 hours instead of 60 though.
I agree that a little extra thickness isn’t too bad (and on USB-C), but I’m pretty happy with my battery life. Do I just not use it as much as most people? I’m genuinely curious.
I think phone advancement cycles have hit a point where I'm kind of underwhelmed from everyone and that's fine. I just want Apple to come out with one using USB-C instead of Lightning (to match iPad Pro and MacBook Pro and being able to rid myself of my lightning cables), 5G (for future proofing), and maybe in-display fingerprint.
I could go for a model like that and my next upgrades will probably just be the batteries until it bites the dust.
This is probably the first time I haven't felt the hankering at the 2 year mark.
https://www.polygon.com/2015/12/16/10220356/hideo-kojima-kon...
I've updated every 2 years for the past 8 years or so -- even back then I never felt the need to upgrade the very next year, but by 2 years out I've always been pretty excited for the improvements. And this year that still holds, I'm excited to upgrade my iPhone X.
The consistency builds trust that if I use their digital services, they won’t just change their offerings on a whim.
I'm still rocking a 6s and I'm gonna keep it for the next year I guess, more battery life is nice but can't swing $999 for 4 more hours of battery life. Here's hoping 128gb is standard next year (I currently have the 128gb 6s which was the most expensive at the time).
Battery life is also no problem. The 6s makes it through the day and I charge it overnight.
I don't care for many of the other features because you forget them in your day-to-day use.
The 11 looked like a fine-ish option (with a 128GB version), but god it's half an inch wider and taller again, and 30% heavier. I guess I'm getting an 8.
You know you could have the screen replaced, right...?
I happen to be using 50gb atm, on a 3.5 year old phone. But the new cameras have higher resolution photos which take up more space. Plus apps are only ever getting bigger, So I would likely have to pay the extra $100 for the 256gb.
That's the 11P, the 11 is 64/128/256. And the 8 is 64/128.
> I haven't heard a single person complain about storage in the last 3 years. While nobody felt that 8/16/32gb was enough.
I've been on 128 since I bought a 6S. I'm using about 80GB currently.
> the new cameras have higher resolution photos which take up more space.
That's a concern for people who use cameras and keep pictures long-term. I've got 2GB of photos on my phone. I really couldn't care less about the camera.
I'm currently on a 64GB plan with 200GB iCloud subscription, but I share the plan with family. I'm almost at the point where I'll have to upgrade to the 2TB tier (at 3x the price), so I hope they introduce something in between.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQGJ2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightn...
The number of times I've needed to physically connect my iPhone to any of my Macs is, as far as I can recall, zero, and it's been that way for years. Wireless everything has been much, much better for me. The only time I've really used a cable is to do backups before installing beta versions of iOS. (And that backs up to my Mac mini, which -- even in its current updated incarnation -- still has USB-A ports.)
After three years, Pixel users still have to refer to a guide [0] or track down a Google Engineer's Amazon reviews [1] to find a 3rd party USB-C cable on Amazon that doesn't have the potential to fry their device [2].
If I were Apple, I'd be hesitant to jump on to USB-C, when Amazon and gas stations around the world are selling $5 cables and chargers that are so out-of-spec that they introduce the very real possibility of damaging devices that will end up at the Genius Bar for an AppleCare+ repair/replacement.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/wiki/officialguide/usbc... [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFLICGQRF6BR... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2016/02/03/benson-leung-chromebook-...
For me, the camera is the reason why I do not consider buying an iPhone. Because it sticks out on the back.
I don't know .. for me it's impossible to imagine using a phone that does not have a flat back.
To say half of Americans are finicky and love aesthetics because there's no other reason anyone would buy one is a bit of a stretch.
(I'm probably buying an iPhone this year for the first time ever, and I don't really care how it looks, or how good it's photos are, and I'm definitely putting a case on it.)
Specs are falling behind but I'm hoping to get another few years before I have to replace it.
Camera bump bothers me less on the phones than it does on the iPad because even a thin case flattens it out. But the iPad's camera bump is the only reason I have a thick case on the back of that. It's either at a desk or in my bag, I'm not going to drop it.
EDIT: I should add that I don't drop my phone because it's small enough that my fingers can actually grip around it. But my asshole of a cat knocked it off the nightstand a couple days ago and cracked the corner of the case, so a properly sized phone isn't a 100% solution to avoiding phone damage. Buying a $1000 phone and not having a case on it is nuts.
iPhone 6 and 7 have protruding lenses and they are getting old.
Apple is for quality - which is why you are still happy with your 6S. ;)
I am 100% sold on Apple devices in terms of quality, reliability and privacy issues. I don't think I'd buy an Android anytime soon. I just wish they had a few more exciting hardware features.
TouchID sensor under the screen, getting rid of the notch, USB-C and 5G
... or something unexpected that's so innovative I couldn't have predicted it.
YES
Perhaps Apple's 3rd party accessory ecosystem and their attention to detail and polish would avoid these issues.
They're comparing it to iPhone 6S. And it's not worth their upgrade.
And yeah, entirely for kids.
That assumes you have any sort of use for the camera, otherwise it just makes the phone look freakier and freakier for no reason.
There are plenty of reasons to do so e.g. new IME or security systems, hardware upgrades (e.g. computational engines or dedicated hardware), etc…
The biggest annoyance for me is that Nintendo's Switch requires a bluetooth dongle to work with bluetooth earphones despite having it's own bluetooth radio built in.
That’s the last point that makes me pause, as pairing/unpairing/switching is a PITA and I have four devices I want to hear audio from. I though only airpods and Beats could switch seemlessly so I am intrigued.
I don't think there is a way in the Bose app of setting an order of preference for which devices will take precedence (eg when I pared with my laptop, the laptop would take ownership and stop the phone from playing everytime the laptop was turned on - which was rather annoying to say the least). But it was a while ago when I last checked.
So you don't have to pair an unpair all the time but there are some annoying edge cases. However it's still easier than unplugging and replugging the cable.
One thing I will say in favour of wired earphones is that the wire itself is actually rather nice tool for not actually losing your earphone. The bluetooth earphones I have are connected via a cable between the two ear pieces (which goes round the back of your neck) which means I can take the earphones out to talk to someone and not worry about dropping or losing an earpiece. So often on the London underground I see people dropping an AirPod and then scrambling around a busy escalator trying to pick the damn thing up. I dread to think how many people have lost or broken their AirPods directly because of their form factor. So if you're the clumsy sort or struggle to find earphones which stick in your ear, then you might be better off sticking to wired earphone or buying headphones instead.
Headphone jack’s ship has sailed anyway, so it’s mostly a matter of making peace with it with decent alternatives.
Also I feel the camera is getting slower as time goes by, and I already replaced the battery.
If you want to watch landscape video, a double tap switches between notched and non-notched views, so you can choose if you care. Most people don't after day one.
Neither 11 nor 11 Pro have 3D Touch.
This feature was introduced in 2014. The timing of the removal makes me think it's related to the departure of Jony Ives.
This has been in the pipeline for awhile. The XR already didn't have it, the SE didn't have it, and the iPad never had it. It's the type of feature that can't be truly great until it gets full support across the board, but that never really materialized.
XR - I dunno.
The lack of 3D Touch on XR was due to cost, and apparently their plan to ditch it everywhere.
The lack of 3D Touch on iPhone Pro...that's disappointing. It would have been a great "Pro" feature to offer. A "Pro" feature that allows you to be more productive on your phone. Aside for the video features (which I don't see being used by professionals anyway), what makes this device a "Pro" anything?
It also doesn't do half as much. E.g. the long-press on the keyboard spacebar only moves the cursor, it doesn't do 3D touch's text selections.
I'm not sure what you mean. From what I can tell, they're introducing the long press action all over the OS, to replace Peek and Pop with "context menus". https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Previously, they had the long press action in just a few spots for non-3D Touch phones (like on Control Center icons on the iPhone XR).
I've been on the iOS 13 beta for a while now and I vastly prefer the new context menus (although on my iPhone X I can trigger the context menu with either a long press or 3D Touch).
1. Now to delete an app from homescreen I have to choose from a menu and then click the X to delete. Inside the menu I usually see "share this app," which for me holds no value.
2. The worst is haptic touch in Safari. While scrolling now Im constantly tapping a link and opening a maddening preview window. Terrible... anyone know how to turn that off?
I don't want to scroll while browsing and have any windows appear unless I click a specified link. With this addition each link I scroll and mistakenly grab brings up this annoying preview menu.
I don't get it ... is this addition helpful to others? Anyone else extremely annoyed by it?
In particular the three best common uses were moving the cursor for the keyboard, selecting things, and previewing web pages.
1. Felt like they made it slightly worse at some point but still good (though it fails on some websites which try to do weird hacks things)
2. This was great. Selecting things outside the keyboard was broken by a software update a few years ago but the keyboard was still good. (A hidden feature is that if you select a word then press shift, the keyboard recommends capitalising/uppercasing the word. I wish this worked for larger selections, downcasing, quotes and brackets (and I guess ¿? too))
3. Was handy to see what a link had without wasting time (going there then back wasn’t perfect for buggy websites like twitter which break navigation). It also helped unbreak webpages that did weird things with navigation (the pop up was a “new” page which the JS didn’t see as a link click and if you pressed harder then navigation would be successful). It was I think always broken for urls with an anchor (I.e. ending in #foo) and would either not scroll on pop up or lose its place if you opened/new tabbed the page. In a recent version it breaks with high probability by laying out pages with a width of 0 so one cannot see the contents of the page in the pop up.
How do you train users? What is the discoverability? It was a legitimate problem when most of your user-base aren't tech nerds and most people aren't reading the manual/help guides.
So you implement an app feature via 3D Touch and users just assume that feature doesn't exist (because they don't discover it). Then you add it twice (3D Touch AND non-3D Touch) and you're now maintaining two things, and have gained little to nothing via 3D Touch.
I liken it to Windows 8's gesture UI failure. If users cannot discover it, it doesn't exist. So you cannot really build much around it because you have to assume user ignorance.
You don't implement it during/after peaking of said cycle. That's some crazy level of delusion/arrogance. Turns out not even Apple can do pull that stunt.
And it’s vastly more discoverable than 3D Touch.
Most computer users still don't use middle-click/scroll wheel click, or even the back/forward buttons and they're almost twenty years old.
By simply pointing at another hard to train piece of hidden functionality and saying "what about THIS?!" you haven't really proven anything, except that with enough forced training anything can become common knowledge.
3D Touch is exactly like right click, but they're also competing against implicit training via passed users of Apple's own products, other touch devices, and even other computing (since no other platform has anything like 3D Touch).
They offered no on-screen guide or tutorial when it launched.
3D touch is an _amazing_ feature for power users, and one of the few that markedly differentiated the iphones from competition. Biggest thing is text editing of course, where 3D selection increases productivity _several times_, but potential was even greater if implemented more.
Ironic that they are marketing this one as pro.
I bought a X recently and plan on keeping it for years. If they software disable it with an OS update or some BS i’m gonna be so mad.
Also, I feel kinda stupid saying it but I feel like this is the sort of thing steve Jobs would have pushed harder for
Second force press to extend selection is much faster and more precise than picking the small markers.
it’s more like force touch is made more consistent overall and blends in instead of being a showcase feature confusingly entirely separate of long press.
I use it even more than before, and still miss it on my iPad. Together with the disappearance of fingerprint unlocking, seeing it disappear is one more factor for me not to upgrade beyond iPhone 8.
Don’t get me wrong, there are compelling reasons to upgrade for me (bigger screen, photography) but for my usage it feels like a significant enough compromise at that price point.
edit: Oh i played with it a bit more and it seems you have to press gently first, then hard. You can’t press hard straight away or it reinterprets it as a light touch after you let go. That’s quite unintuitive.
So now on any phone without 3D Touch, which is all of them going forward, you can't open notification actions in a single gesture. Have to swipe and hit View.
- iPhone 11: $699 (64GB)
- iPhone 11 Pro: $999 (64GB)
- iPhone 11 Pro Max: $1099 (64GB)
11 Pro 512GB - $1349
11 Pro Max 256GB - $1249
11 Pro Max 512GB - $1449
11 128 GB - $749
11 256 GB - $849
The pixel 4 is going to have to come in at quite a good price to stop me from jumping ship to apple.
https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
The most I've ever gotten out of an Android phone is 2 years, and at that point it's crawling, not receiving updates (OS or security) and seemingly just abandoned by the manufacturer. This thread is full of people declaring no reason to update to this latest batch of iphones. To me, that speaks volumes about the iphone ecosystem.
Now my only options are a 1500€ iPhone 11 Pro or an affordable Sony Walkman, but I don't really want to carry around another device.
Was that new camera system really needed in iPhone 11? It... well... just literally spoiled the design... I understand the need of iPhone 11 Pro's cameras... but really? the 11?
Most people buy the XR/11 phone. So obviously the volume phone needs a camera upgrade too. I don’t think most buyers (even of Apple phones) care much about the esthetics and design of the thing.
Another iteration of "why bother" gadgets which is definitely cool but do we all really need one? I expect the fad to break in the next decade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia
On the other hand, I like the weirdness of it.
I don't suffer from trypophobia, yet that camera arrangement is creepy looking. Poor design choice by Apple.
It's the bug-eye phone.
You will learn to love the design flaw. You will win the victory over yourself.
;)
Huawei had a model with one more camera for quite a while, and on my memory different "Uncle Liu Electronics" were making even five and six camera models.
But honestly, that camera module count race is the most ridiculous number game in the industry, far outmatching the megahertz race, core count, and megapixels.
EDIT: Also, they don't let you jump to 128 GB. You have to go to 256 GB, for $150 more. I can see why they didn't talk about this at the event. People would have booed.
They why buy the Pro? Why not just get the normal 11?
32GB of video at 4K is still ~2 hours of video at 30fps. I take a fair amount of pictures, but I don’t think I have taken 30 minutes of video in the last 4 years.
OTOH, I also have a Sony A7iii so, I'm not confined to my iPhone for imagery if I need something really high quality.
[0]: Inspected a fairly complex sunset shot taken with my iPhone X.
Capture rate for multiple streams is one problem. Storage space is another, solved largely by the seamless iCloud integration; get an unlimited data plan or Wi-Fi connection, and the imagery will all just migrate off the device until needed wherever.
Companies would still be buying 32GB by the truckfull if it was available. Apple was right to discontinue it because 32GB wasnt enough to run the OS anymore, while also being a usable phone.
Since you cant run a phone without iOS, and stripping the OS down isnt an option, I think they should be legally required to be truthful in advertising and sell it as a 50-55GB iPhone, probably 50 if they plan on using some of the space for device upgrades.
I use 20 GB on my iPhone SE quite comfortably. It's absolutely enough to be usable.
Agreed, but that's what iPhone 11 is for... There's virtually no commercial reason for 95% of enterprise users to have a Pro version.
A Pro version for most of 2020 that can shoot multiple videos at the same time in 4k, with 64gb... I don't know, doesn't sit well with me. I'm all for keeping the base model basic and as low-cost as possible to those who needn't anything more. But then either reasonably price your storage, or create a 128gb option in between, especially if you don't allow SD cards. And especially when Apple is just fine offering 128gb on the 11, but not the Pro... It's a bit much.
Id maybe bet the other reason they dont offer 128 on the pro is supply chain related, they have all their 128 dedicated to the standard model.
The reason is simple: profit.
There's no excuse for under-speccing a $1000 phone and charging $150 to add a $40 NAND chip to it.
(Looks at Apple's profit margins and revenue)
Oh that's why.
Why are you against booing bad things? Are you an APPL investor making a lot of money on these choices? If not, I really can't understand your position here.
Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd.
This seems funny since Android outsells Apple 4 to 1 and Windows outsells Apple 5 to 1, (and Android and Windows use USB-C for phones and laptops respectively). So quick math here would tell you that USB-C penetration is 4 to 5 times more broad than lightning based purely on sales.
EDIT: Also Apple uses USB-C on some laptops, so those numbers would affect it too
If I had to rank connectors by how many devices use them it would probably be Micro USB - Lightning - USB-C
Edit: if we include laptops and other non-mobile devices, I would say that normal USB far surpasses everything else usage wise, USB-C seems to only be in the high end laptops and even then most laptops have some normal USB ports as well.
How about the most popular noise cancelling headphones, the Sony 1000XM3 (usb-c). I see them everywhere.
Some laptops? More like all laptops. Find me one being sold now without usb-c. They would be a joke. The best tablet, the iPad Pro is usb-c (though yes I know the lower end ones are lightning).
What about the best video gear. All the best mirrorless video cameras like the Panasonic GH5, Sony A7iii, Nikon Z7, Fuji T-X3, BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera, all with usb-c. The best webcam out there, the Logitech Brio with usb-c.
Let's talk about specialty gear. The most popular external disk, Sandisk Portable Extreme with usb-c. The most popular mobile hotspot, the Nighthawk mobile router has usb-c. The most popular audio interface, Focusrite, uses usb-c pretty much for all their products now. The best presentation remote, the Logitech Spotlight is usb-c charging.
Me and my friends have flashlights, shavers, toothbrushes, VR headsets and remotes, all with usb-c. Great for travel.
Basically, any good product being released now is usb-c, and has been for the past couple years.
Excuse me? 64GB standard storage for a "PRO" labeled $1000 phone that extensively advertises its professional video capacity is not an arbitrary or personal definition of bad. It's objectively inferior to its competition. It's objectively the lowest storage space of any $1000+ phone on the market.
That you would conflate this discussion to think these are arbitrary opinions seems dishonest.
>"Boo changes you don't like, okay, fine. Boo the status quo? That's... odd."
It seems like you accept predatory profit-driven business decisions as "status quo" even when competitors offer far better options. I don't get your definition of "status quo" when it's synonymous "worst in class".
The Galaxy Note 10 at $1000 comes standard with 256GB, an upgrade which makes the iPhone cost $1150.
But sure, "status quo", as long as the current state of the market and state of competition isn't considered...
For the iMac Pro it's $400 to go from 32GB to 64GB of memory. High end memory is around $140 for the same jump. "High performance" - it's the same 2666MHz chips.
Storage? Samsung NVMe prices are around $300 per TERABYTE. Tell more about the high performance silicon Apple is using that is worth $800/TB.
About half of the people I help choose phones would be fine with 64 GB, me included. There’s no point making them buy a bunch of flash memory they will never use just to get the better still camera that they want.
But would you be counseling these people to get the iPhone Pro in the first place? I would guess that most folks who want the Pro would want more than 64 GB.
Most people buying the expensive model will probably opt for more storage, but for those that don't need it I don't see a problem with offering a lower tier.
I have no problem with them offering a lower tier either. That's what the non-Pro iPhone 11 is for.
Apple also has created a super terrible backup system, where iCloud and iTunes cant work together. Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud. Maybe I want to go on vacation for a week, without my computer, and then come back and resume local backups. Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??
The phones have synced wirelessly for quite a long while now. And with wireless charging on the newer models, doing so is just so damn easy.
> Its very dumb that once I switch to local, that I lose iCloud.
Can’t you still rely on iCloud for saving and backing up app data, while retaining the full local sync and backup in iTunes? I don’t recall iCloud being disabled when locally syncing, and am pretty sure apps still save data to iCloud on my devices.
> Why cant iTunes use iCloud as part of its version history??
Is that really necessary when iTunes can already sync and backup the whole device as it is when you activate the sync/backup process?
The rest of my complaint is mostly about how complicated a restore becomes if I was using local backup, and then arent home for a while, and need to remerge local and cloud backups. Last I remember, the interface makes you choose one or the other to restore, and then your version history gets all mucked up, as the one you choose becomes the new golden branch.
Don't you charge your phone, in range of your computer?
Although I believe the app developers have to be aware of this and utilise the various storage options correctly - certainly in my latest restore, a whole bunch of apps had lost their state (logins, etc.) Most disconcerting and aggravatingly inconvenient.
I've even asked Genius Bar employees exactly how people are supposed to use the iCloud photo backup. They've admitted that they don't really know what to make of the system, which is not transparent with regard to what photos have been downloaded where. It is difficult for the average user to understand how the file-shrinking system works with photos, and which photos exist only in the cloud versus on their machines.
Also, if I'm already paying for generic cloud storage services, why should I pay for Apple-specific cloud services, at a more expensive price per GB?
Refurb pricing on the iPhone 8 is now $379 (64GB) / $509 (256 GB).
Whatever, this doesn't bother me so much about their phones. The non-upgradable storage in their laptops is a much bigger issue.
iPhone 11 (non pro) is available in 64/128/256GB capacities.
https://www.apple.com/iphone-11-pro/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-11/specs/
Which everyone supports, if there was a reasonably priced 128gb option for the Pro, the complaint wouldn't be as strong. But there isn't such an option. You either use 64, or at least 4x that much (which, after subtracting 14 from the OS, is actually 5x that much). That's just a pretty silly scale, not granular at all.
So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.
Meanwhile the 11 gets 128, just not the Pro.
There are three tiers. On the 11, the tiers are 64, 128, 256. On the Pro the tiers are 64, 256, 512. If you want to make an entry level model at 64gb, a top tier at 512gb, and one tier in the middle, then that's a logical way to step things up.
> So you squeeze tons of consumers to take too little because they don't want to pay for a 5x jump when they need 2x, or squeeze them into doing just that and overpaying, or squeeze them into a cloud subscription. It's not matching the product to the needs in the way that they could.
But this logic works the other way: if you only have a 128gb entry level model, then you are forcing consumers who only need 64gb to buy more storage than they need.
So your real gripe is that there isn't a 128gb tier in between the 64gb and 256gb. But the price difference between those tiers is only $150. So the 128gb tier would be something like $50 or $100 less than the 256gb tier. If your huge problem is that you have to pay an extra 5-10% of purchase price because their storage tiers don't perfectly align with your needs, then maybe you're not the target audience.
And 128gb is not some magic number. What about people who only need 300gb? Why should they be forced to pay for 512gb when they only need an additional 50gb on top of the 256gb? Because you have to split things up somehow, that's why. Things just didn't get split in a way that is convenient for you.
So you might be an Apple Fan who happens to be an employee - except you work on idk iMessages or something - you might still be disappointed to see a 1000$ stand, especially from a company you work for.
Given it's a crowded room, I highly doubt employees would be reprimanded for just booing.
I would imagine that would be a pretty big deal with stern words with HR / management or worse if caught
Of course, it's going to be very obvious to most people that the new iPhone 11 is the direct successor to the XR, and the iPhone Pros are the direct successors to the X, XS, and XS Max.
The 64GB on the device effectively houses installed apps and an effective cache of thumbnails and downloaded content.
I have the 256 GB config and the needle basically never moves up from about 45 GB.
The iPhone XS is currently at 55.3GB filled, and I have over 400 apps installed.
Getting the Pro model, the next step up is 256 - which is super eye-rolling. The 128 GB model on the regular 11 is perfect.
Do you see a lot of artists using iPad Pro as their main tool? Me neither, but I do see a lot of them using it as their secondary tool that also doubles as a general-purpose personal computing device. Which is what, I feel, iPhone Pro lineup was made for.
No. Apple offers storage upgrade in 2x increments so 96GB would make no sense, and they do offer 128GB on several models.
It's more asshole design than clever.
I doubt it, those events get gasps and thunderous applause over the most basic features that competitors have had for a while.
If I'll decide to shot professional video, it will be more suitable device like Go Pro or Sony, depends from type.
"Pro" label completely lost his sense today, just ignore it.
I honestly think all these high end phones focused on camera, should at least start with 128 GB of space. OS and apps are big enough anyway.
I like how Samsung has stuck to its guns on some of the features that Apple and later others dropped, biggest being the external card support, dual sim support and audio jack. Only if they were not hell bent on adding their own customizations, I would have loved to try one.
[EDIT: "brand" instead of "branch"]
Now would I buy another 64 gig again? Probably not, at least with arcade coming and knowing how fast the games eat up space.
A decade ago we had the 2009 iPhone (3GS) with 8gb base and 32gb max. 64gb didn't exist in the iPhone.
Still I think it'd have been fine to go 64 for the iPhone, but do 128 base for the Pro... Ah well, maybe next year.
The one thing that kills me about iPhones is the miniscule amount of storage I get. I dont want all my things in the cloud, the cloud is useless to me without access to internet. The cloud is only useful for long-term backup storage if anything.
My phone comes with 64GB and I'm using 58 of that data, I popped in a 64GB SIM card and I'm only using 12 probably cause I filled it up before and wanted to have room for more photos and stuff. I may well buy an iPhone but I want more storage space out of the box, not some cloud solution. It also annoys me that the Macbook Air starts out at 128GB, that gets eaten up so quickly as a developer.
No. What they actually said :-
>Every damn Android phone I've bought lately has Facebook preinstalled, theres other things, but I'm done with it all.
I want a smartphone that has a camera and not a camera that had a smartphone.
while enabling an unprecedented leap in battery life to easily get through the day
I purposely shop for big batteries (over 3500mAh) and my current phone lasts up to 2 days 15 hours on a single charge, and the previous one was similar when new
I don't care about missing jack, USB-C, cameras and other things - just make it smaller and it will fine by me.
Software wise it's a perfectly fine device, definitely some limitations, but only because the processor is a four+ year old design. Some SPA or otherwise heavy webpages cause it to choke (ex: it hates USAToday), but 99% of what I try to do works great. Per Apple and MacRumours, the SE will get iOS 13. No idea how well that will run, but we'll see.
If you can get one in good shape to hold you over you'll probably be happy with it.
Before that it would die in ~2hrs and instantly die in high heat.
If you are worried about shelling out money, remember that an iPhone 8 isn't $449, it's $449 minus whatever you sell it for in a year (probably not much less). And it's even less if you just buy it used or Apple refurbished in the first place.
The iPhone SE works fine but the screen size is too small for many apps that get scrunched up pretty badly. You’re using a screen size that a very small fraction of Apple users are still using, which means app developers don’t care to make it work nicely for you.
The camera is bad by modern standards, I can see a big difference even for small 4x6 prints, and Touch ID is the slower 1st generation. It's just really old hardware all around.
On the plus side, it has good battery life, a headphone jack, and it's still an iPhone running full iOS.
I have an SE and love it, but this. However, consider the deals out there for something like the 7. Metro PCS has the iPhone 7 for $50, I'm sure there are comparable deals out there too.
I’d also be worried about the 7 audio IC issue.
Price wise an iPhone 7 Renewed on Amazon is only ~$250-260 (128gb) versus an iPhone 8 which is around ~$400 (64gb).
I’ll admit that’s a pretty big price difference but I wonder if that has to do with the 7’s hardware issues making it a phone to stay away from. Or maybe it’s just old and that’s why it’s cheap.
That said, the repair was fairly easy, it was a $30 camera and 20 minutes to repair it.