Former Apple Store employee here! You would be surprised by how people become blind from all the smokes and mirrors of the Apple branding and advertisement.
I remember one day, there was a 40-something years old man, that came in with an iPhone X and switched it for an XS, adding 500 euros.
Only to return 1 week later to switch the XS for an XR with better storage, adding 250 euros.
Only to return 2 weeks later, to switch the XR for an XSmax adding 400 euros more or less.
This gentleman was so brainwashed into FOMO by Apple that threw 1000+ euros out of the window.
One other time, there was another gentleman that clearly couldn't afford an iPhone X. He was so torn when deciding if to buy or not. I tried to give him hints that it was better if he let go of it ("maybe wait next year, your iPhone 5 is still doing the job"), but no, in the end he decided to go for it and we tried to do a 6 months payment plan. His card got rejected. Then we tried with a 10 months payment plan. Rejected. Then we tried with 20 months one. Finally, accepted. He wasn't even happy about that. Was probably thinking about what he was going to have to renounce for that iPhone. I tell you, the whole process was physically painful.
>I remember one day, there was a 40-something years old man, that came in with an iPhone X and switched it for an XS, adding 500 euros. Only to return 1 week later to switch the XS for an XR with better storage, adding 250 euros. Only to return 2 weeks later, to switch the XR for an XSmax adding 400 euros more or less. This gentleman was so brainwashed into FOMO by Apple that threw 1000+ euros out of the window.
Sounds like quite orthogonal to Apple, and relevant to personal issues the single anecdotal example person had, overcompensating by constantly buying gadgets, etc...
There are tons of people with 2, 3, 4, 6+ year old Macs, iPhones, and iPads (my iPad is from 2014 or so and works just fine)...
Yes, what you said is completely true. I am not saying that Apple is evil, I personally own Apple products and I think they're great (but overpriced). I just wanted to point out the length some people go just to have Apple in their pockets. Apple is not evil, but they know what they're doing, and they know that the prestige of their products is used by people to try and neutralize the sense of worthlessness they feel inside.
This manipulation is even more evident now that they are selling phones that are almost identical to the previous generation, bring nothing substantially new to the table, if not new smokes and mirrors. I'm sure that in their headquarters, they now spend less and less time innovating and more and more time refining their selling skills.
Apple stuff lasts, this is not an Apple issue, any of those phones would have been good for several years. I'm only my 3rd iPhone in 9 years (soon to replace it though). Also 3rd iPad in 9 years. My Macbook Air is from 2012. Apple do software updates going quite far back. A lot of Apple's hardware looks exactly the same from generation to generation, so even if you updated, how would anyone know? If customers want to chop and change that's on them, Apple is not forcing it really.
What you said it totally true. But to say that Apple is not forcing is a white lie. It's true that they're not pointing guns at us, but they are smoothly pointing us in that direction. There's a psychological pressure to have the latest tech, otherwise not only your phone, but also you yourself, are outdated and uncool. No kind of manipulation was ever forceful. That's what makes it a manipulation. You think you're doing it, but another person/company slowly brought you to do it.
A lot of people are intelligent and strong enough to resist this brainwash, but a lot of others are not.
The phones from 2012 would still be perfectly functional if the software didn't come with increasingly ridiculous performance requirements. What's the reason for the upgrade? Camera?
With the ability to easily swap batteries, and more efficiently written software, nobody would have to really update their phones. Which is why I guess most batteries are now integrated.
It's a terribly waste just for corporate profits and peoples vanity's sake.
The 2016+ 15" Macbook Pro is at least one very clear exception. Mine has had keyboard (which includes logic board) replaced several times. Screen replaced 3 times. Brand new replacement unit once. Now getting intermittent black screens every 5 mins or so. I paid for an Apple but I got a lemon.
So, basically you replace your phone every two years. That's the rhythm that Apple and cell providers generally aim for (time for new housing design and length of contract). What other expensive item are you replacing as frequently?
I think it's unfair to place the blame entirely on consumers when Apple capitalizes on a culture which places value on having the latest gadgets and gizmos.
Typical consumerism. I have siblings who did the same for a fancy bed. These people are mostly helpless. And you're only an employee.. I'm sure it's not great to try to turn a customer away from a sale right ? Even as a sibling, unless I'm ready to start a family war there's no leverage.
ps: the 40yo man might have sold or made use of the other iPhone. I hope he did not just pile them up in a drawer.
For me personally, working there was a perpetual moral internal debate. I was good at convincing people that were on the edge of buying. On one hand, the more you sell, the higher the commission you get, for you and the whole team.
On the other hand, you have to sell tech that is one of the best, but for the time being, totally overpriced. Therefore, you have to manipulate a lot, and tell half-truths if not blatant lies at times, which is not great either.
This becomes much harder when you have to manipulate a person, that is clearly struggling in their decision because of financial reasons, into buying a phone priced 1000+ euros.
On the inside, I was always screaming "what in the world are you doing!"
The way I operated was this: when a manager was nearby me, I had to act the part, but when I was alone I tried, in a not so explicit way, to clear the fog in their brain and make them get back some reason in their heads. I prefer being able to sleep at night, instead of getting a few more bucks in my check.
To be clear, I like Apple products, and I personally own them ,because I was able to get them used (but brand new) with huge discounts in price, but they are not for everyone.
About the 40yo man, he gave us back his phone each time. The way it works is this: if you bring back a phone, you get an evaluation which is at best (even in perfect condition, got out of the box just a week earlier) half of the initial price tag.
You can get a new phone, give back your old one and pay the difference.
I knew/know this person personally. We all knew him because he was an habitual client. He is working as a professor in high school. So the probability of him being so wealthy to change one iPhone per week are not that high. That said, even if he is, do you think that his behavior would be consider sane? His story is just to point out how the sense of worthlessness in some people is financially exploited by prestigious brand like Apple.
I know that nobody should be stretching themselves financially thin for a newer iPhone. Unless it’s something like an app developer needing to buy a test phone, which this clearly wasn’t.
> "Then we tried with 20 months one. Finally, accepted"
The social pressure for having "an old phone" most have been incredibly high.
Something like that happen to me on university, I had a 5 years old phone with no Whatsapp/Blackberry chat. It made me feel so left behind and even sad sometimes.
The cool thing now is that you can have a brand new 2019 phone with the latest tech for 300/400 euros. So if you want to keep the pace, you can do it without selling your soul. I think it's more about the temporary sense of worthiness that an Apple product can give you.
It's kind of sad really. Businesses prey on the human condition and there's nothing we can do about it because, well, Apple's not really breaking the law and we all like good cellphones.
It plays music, like my iPod did. As well as podcasts. I don't use any apps otherwise that don't come with it from Apple. On the rare occasion someone decides to call me it answers, sometimes (it's slow to answer, but after 3 retries, sometimes the first).
I try to answer text messages on my Mac with Messages.app. It's easier to type.
Not sure I want to upgrade. I was planning on it. I can afford it. Kind of just trying to see how long I can keep it going for fun. I think I've had it for close to 5 years now.
My iPhone 6s, with its weird turning off and on randomly at times and other funky behaviors, was (and will always be) my favorite phone I ever owned! I'm not joking :)
Was it your first job dealing with people? People are funny, and it can be hard to account for their motivations and ways in which they want things and make changes. Ascribing these anecdotes to Apple's advertising/brainwashing program is a little bit silly.
Smartphone hardware is done. There's no significant gain in buying a new smartphone if you have bought one in last 3 years, absolutely nothing if the battery is replaced; there could be even diminished returns if you buy a new smartphone(unavailability of headphone jack, losing metal body, losing faster biometric authentication).
Improvement in camera could be enticing, but the platforms to which the photos, videos are shared would compress them anyways making them all nearly identical. Better frame rates is the only thing which makes a difference. Case in point : MKBHD made a blind test last year and low cost smartphone Mi Pocophone which scored pathetic camera performance in individual reviews came out top in the blind test.
So, the subscription services are the new lifeline for the hardware manufacturers; included free subscription should add some value to the new customers and if the SW services work; may be compensate for diminishing hardware sales.
"Case in point : MKBHD made a blind test last year and low cost smartphone Mi Pocophone which scored pathetic camera performance in individual reviews came out top in the blind test."
Marques doesn't have kids.
I loved my Redmi Note 4. I even liked the chin, as the buttons were on it - so my usable screen size was actually larger than the Pixel XL that replaced it.
That phone took perfectly acceptable shots with still subjects that I'd have been happy to live with but the shutter lag was terrible. I have six months of mostly blurry photos of my kids solely because the phone couldn't deal with any amount of fast motion so it had to go.
Recently upgraded to a Pixel 3a solely because of Night Sight and for my use case it was a no-brainer as I can't get the time back. I also couldn't give a rats behind about notches and bumps - my phones go straight into bumper cases and 9-glass before they're turned on.
Some people really do need the less-talked-about features that are only of late getting any amount of attention by manufacturers.
Absolutely. I had the same experience with the first Moto G phones - reviews called it amazing quality for the price and had camera samples that were admittedly very nice. There was no way I could get a picture of my dog in that time, or even a group picture with at least one of my friends/family members being blurry - there's always movement with people, even if it's a bit, and youtube testers rarely account for that.
Going from a crappy camera to something like on Pixel3a is truly a leap especially when you are looking photos yourself on the screen.
But say you had bought iPhone 8 (same year as Redmi Note 4) and you share pictures to social media; Pictures from iPhone 11 would be indiscernible to those who see your photos at the other end.
> Smartphone hardware is done. There's no significant gain in buying a new smartphone if you have bought one in last 3 years, absolutely nothing if the battery is replaced;
Graphene battery, foldable display, 5G network, >1TB internal storage, Fingerprint reader at any point on the screen could all kickoff new generational cycle.
But, it will happen in increments and for all the above features to be available in one smartphone which is affordable, will take another 3-4 years and hence my OP comment that current generation is done.
Not that type of blind.
Basically given a scenario, take a picture with n number of phones varying in quality/price. MKBHD the Youtuber then found that a worse quality camera came on top as the "best" quality for twitter/instagram users because that bad quality camera over-compensated with over exposure and some other factors (as far as I recall).
Essentially, camera quality in this day and age doesn't matter, unless you're a "pro" (which I predict 90% of the people who buy the 11 pro aren't)
Case in point: I have a SE and it takes photos fine. I'm not any model or pro, so taking pictures of basic day-to-day events or things is good enough for me.
> MKBHD made a blind test last year and low-cost smartphone Mi Pocophone which scored pathetic camera performance in individual reviews came out top in the blind test.
This simply means that it was a crappy test. As far as I remember, people choose a colour profile that was much more punchy.
Cameras are much, much more than a colour profile. These tech reviewers are fun to watch but I wouldn't base my opinions solely on their work.
He took different pictures of same scene under same settings from about half dozen flagship phones, shared the picture on different social networks and asked people to vote.
This test for real-life camera usage is as objective as it can get. Most people shoot pictures to put on social networks, not to submit for documentary film awards.
While that might be true, the majority of people buying a smartphone are just regular people, not photographers, so they'll favour things like punchy colour profiles.
I've been using a OnePlus 5T since it was launched and I can't think of any reason to upgrade. It's still as fast as the day I got it, the screen is adequate for me, and it does everything I want to do. That it costs literally 1/4th of an iPhone Pro in my country is the icing on top.
It's not done. There is nothing in the market that I want and what I want is achievable. There's a lack of innovation, not a lack of potential for innovation.
> Smartphone hardware is done. There's no significant gain in buying a new smartphone if you have bought one in last 3 years, absolutely nothing if the battery is replaced; there could be even diminished returns if you buy a new smartphone(unavailability of headphone jack, losing metal body, losing faster biometric authentication).
That's true in the Android world as well. When the GPS in my three-year-old LG Stylo 2 finally crapped out so thoroughly (along with a puffed-up battery, perhaps with a built-in antenna being damaged?) that I couldn't ignore it anymore, I wound up getting a Stylo 5.
As it turns out, it has the same Qualcomm 450 SoC as the three-year-old phone it replaced. It's fast enough for my needs, but no speed demon. The only real upgrades are support for more of T-Mobile's LTE bands, a higher-resolution screen, an aluminum frame, a 3500 mAh battery up from 3000, and Android 9; the camera app is improved, and the Bluetooth stack is more up-to-date. Much to their credit, they had the courage to not remove the headphone jack. There is one major downgrade: the inevitable sealed-case, non-removable battery schtick that I really hate. I hope that fad passes by the time I need to replace this one, but there's too much money at stake for the phone manufacturers not to shaft their customers. I better hope the battery doesn't crap out prematurely.
That being said, I like the Stylo 5; the 2 had excellent battery life even when the battery got puffy, and the 5 is even better (at least in my first week of usage). That relatively-anemic 450 SoC is at least power-efficient.
Can't agree with that statement. There is a thing called Moore's law.
The smartphones will continue to grow and accelerate their hardware and software development. This is simply the future. I the next 50 years I think everyone will use just one device and this is more likely to be something like a smartphone.
What Steve Jobs did in his first iPhone presentation can't be done again. He simply set the bar so high that there is no bar anymore, I don't see how other companies will reach them, not because they can't but because they all try to copy them from that point on, instead of trying to innovate like they did.
I can't also really understand why the public is bashing so hard those events expecting miracles, and making statements that Apple is not innovating. What do you want cloaking software making you invisible? Let's be real, also who is that naive to think that even if they have developed something amazing they will release it right away. Things don't work like that in the real world.
Apple and Steve did some truly "breakthrough" product announcements. Steve mentioned this in his iPad announcement. The timing was right, the technology was right, the market was right.
It's possible we're not going to get another one of those remarkable revelations like the iPhone and the iPad in our lifetimes. And that's ok.
The speed of change has been tremendous in the past 100 years and –besides doing a lot of good– also has serious social and ecological repercussions.
Perhaps I'm getting old, but maybe it's a good thing that the pace of change is slowing.
> Smartphone hardware is done. There's no significant gain in buying a new smartphone if you have bought one in last 3 years, absolutely nothing if the battery is replaced; there could be even diminished returns if you buy a new smartphone(unavailability of headphone jack, losing metal body, losing faster biometric authentication).
Yep. I have a BLU smartphone that I bought for $55 bucks off of Amazon. It literally does everything I need and has now lasted me > 2 yrs with no sign of slowing down. I will never understand why people would pay the price equivalent to buying a decently speced out desktop or laptop for a phone when there are so many cheaper alternatives that provide the same features and functionality.
I use my phone so much now that all the actual differences in a more expensive device are significant. Even with the Pro ones it’s a bit like buying a mechanical keyboard. Does it really do anything a £3 OEM keyboard doesn’t? My phone was about the same price as my 3 year old i7 laptop and the processor is faster. It’s a more useful device to me.
I bought a couple of those BLU phones as testers to ensure our apps were usable regardless of device (in an office full of flagship phones this is easy to overlook in “hallway” testing)....I’m not generally a phone snob but I will say that using the BLU phones makes my 4 year old iPhone feel like an ultra luxury rocketship from the future. The difference in performance and quality is remarkable side by side.
> Smartphone hardware is done. There's no significant gain in buying a new smartphone if you have bought one in last 3 years
Agreed. Even a Xiaomi Mi A2 with Android One for 130-150€ is almost on par with these high end phones that cost eight times as much: It's fast enough. It has a gorgeous display. It has a decent camera and it has up-to-date software.
In these times of diminishing returns it's amazing that Apple is able to fetch these prices. It shows us how much of a vendor lockin there is. Perhaps (hopefully) also how much people are willing to pay extra for more privacy.
> Improvement in camera could be enticing, but the platforms to which the photos, videos are shared would compress them anyways
Strongly agree, and the reason for that is that is that level of quality is good enough for the 99.99% use case of photography and anything above is simply a waste of storage space.
If you are actually a professional artist, it matters. If you're doing computer vision, it matters. For the other 99.99% of photos, it doesn't matter.
What Apple is selling at this point is just the aspiration that you're in the special 0.01%, or could be.
Yes, the chips and sensors used in modern phone cameras are ridiculously good for the size and cost. And phone cameras started replacing budget and mid-price P&S cameras years ago.
But, Apple's move to a triple camera set-up is really compelling. Not only has the phone replaced the average P&S, it's now replacing higher end P&S. The main argument for a separate P&S these days is a zoom lens. Apple just made that argument moot (superzooms notwithstanding). You can now take landscape, snapshot, and portrait photos natively on the camera without stitching or cropping. That's amazing. Or, at least I think so.
I was considering replacing my wife's older Canon S90 P&S with a new Sony RX100 IV. I probably won't bother - I'll just replace her iPhone 8 with an 11 Pro.
I guess that's why Apple seems to be positioning their Phones for `Pros`. I kind of feel like it's the `Note` equivalent of Galaxy series. And also for the same purpose, the showed videos of Professional Videographer shooting videos with the iPhone 11 Pro. Those are the people who'd probably take out raw video/pic and edit it in Premire or lightroom.
This opens a huge area of business for them, if they can convince ad film makers devices because the current set of filming devices that they use aren't inexpensive.
With Apple these days, Pro means ‘bloody expensive’, and even more so outside the US. The rebrand may help to justify the pricing, but it’s odd to do that with such an incremental update, rather than save it for a year with a bigger design change.
For a lot of the world, a $500 smartphone was a luxury, and a $1500 smartphone (like a $3000+ laptop, or $1000 monitor stand) is an unfunny joke.
While they’re amazing devices, they’re just not replacements for a real computer, being locked down, with no exposed file system, and the imprecision of touch-only input.
There's nothing about sporting a notch that's problematic, except when it comes to OCD.
If it didn't have the notch it would just have a larger bezel on a side, or some BS like a popup camera.
The "camera behind screen" idea barely works (for obvious reasons), and is hardly what would revolutionize mobile hardware. It's an aesthetic concern, not a functional one.
Things that might do that, larger camera sensors (e.g. 1"), week or more long batteries, total voice control, etc.
I get what you are saying but that would still be a pretty incremental update right? It wouldn't make the phone significantly more usable, really only a bit prettier.
I think the point here is that the recent "big" features are all pretty minor things like 60fps screens etcetera, they are really nice but nowhere near as important as the new things we used to have every generation.
The notch is a rather small issue that only affects looks. When the display is off, you don't see it. When the display is on, you usually look at the display, not the notch.
Sure it's not pretty but personally I don't really care.
I think the notch is a lot less annoying than the weight. Maybe I have small weak hands, but I feel a physical strain from using my iPhone XS. Unfortunately you can’t seem to buy a new SE around here.
I mean the notch is basically the symptom of having gone into anti-feature territory. Removal of headphone jack, removal of physical home button, removal of TouchID for face recognition that is much slower, removal of 3D Touch... the iPhone 20 at this rate will just be a slab of metal.
The parent is exaggerating but really, 90% of spotlight on these models is the new camera system but Huawei &co. was offering similar features for a long time.
Eye tracking based scrolling would be something that I'd like; for reading long articles/books. Using regular camera is prohibitively power hungry; not sure if there is research for special purpose cameras for this purpose.
You can almost generalize to computers. It's still crazy the pace of pocket hardware has gone through. But these machines have more oomph than a pixar workstation in the 90s, the vast majority of the users will never even need 50% of that.
Unfortunately we all need the performance due to the unbelievable bloat of the web. And even with my iPhone X a lot of sites are still laggy and unpleasant to use. The state of the web is honestly really sad and makes me feel bad about our entire profession.
I have the same feeling. Sure, manufacturers still try to experiment a little with their folding phones etc., but overall the software and hardware changes very little from one generation to the next.
I bought my last phone over 4 years ago and it wasn't new back then. The only reason I'm thinking about buying a new one is the software version. But it probably won't cost more than $200, because that's already enough to get better hardware than I got 4 years ago for double the price, and I don't have an issue with performance.
Needless to say, I don't quite get how flagship phones still sell so well considering you can do basically everything for a small fraction of the cost. Is there really a mobile game or other app out there which requires top specs? Would such a game even sell enough quantities?
The biggest issue I have with buying a new phone is getting fewer features(!!!). I have a OnePlus 5T and that's the last OnePlus to have a headphone jack. There's nothing that I can "upgrade" to without losing that feature(from OnePlus). And the performance of the 5T is more than enough, so there's literally no reason to upgrade.
I just replaced the battery on my iPhone 6s [purchased in 2017]. Performance is snappy, and the new battery lasts an entire day of use without charging.
To me it seems the hardware innovation shifted from Apple to Google & Asia.
Google is hot with the ML train, they develop and release new state-of-the-art algorithms and improve all aspects of smartphone (videos, pictures, batteries, actions, gestures, keyboards, biometry, security, ...).
On the Asia side, companies are the first to release foldable phones. They are already acquiring user feedbacks and cost insights for the next generation of foldable phone, and Google is a supporting partner, with Android 10 embracing those new phones with new APIs.
I'm looking forward for foldable phones improvements and more Google magic
Regarding Asia, forcing unfinished bleeding edge features into products just to be able to say ”I was first” isn’t innovation, but greediness.
Apple is rarely first to put certain component or piece of technology into their products, but is usually first one to do it properly and create first actually usable product. That’s why pretty much every actual innovation only takes off after Apple has implemented it.
It's been clear for quite some time that terms like "Extreme", "Pro" and "Max" are marketing terms. They are not accurate classifications of how they will be used.
If people feel strongly enough that the name is not accurate, they will have to buy a competing product that fulfills their needs at the price they are willing to pay.
I suppose what would be interesting, but highly proprietary, would be Apple's marketing research information on how the "Pro" marketing term is received by their target consumers.
All that being said, I personally have never bought from Apple, and think the $150 upgrade cost is ridiculous (not to mention the $300 jump from the XR, which is still $300 more than I paid for my Pixel)! So I could say the "Pro" marketing isn't working on me! But overall, they aren't hurting for customers.
"Pro" has been pretty useful, I think, as a marker in Apple's other product lines.
"MacBook Pro" and "iPad Pro" are the ones you buy if you need it for work, because the increased price will pay for itself with increased productivity. But buy the "Air" or basic versions if you are primarily using it for more basic tasks and media consumption.
Not sure the "Pro" distinction will hold up for iPhone, though. I guess it depends if Pro Photographers actually will give up their "Pro" cameras for an iPhone 11 Pro. And I can't think of any other profession where the iPhone Pro will "pay for itself" in productivity increases relative to other iPhones.
“Pro” is not just for productivity but comfort of use as well. As an analogy if you sit on a chair 8 hours a day you’ll want a super nice chair, even if it wouldn’t have direct effects on productivity compared to a just decent one.
For most people relying on a smartphone for work, be it 700 or 1000 the device will pay for itself in a few months at most, so I think the price difference won’t matter much. Better battery performance could be significant though.
I get that's the marketing intent, but the last iteration of MacBook Pros (with the gimmicky taskbar, the fail-prone keyboard, and glued items) has failed on that regard, at least for me. I had to replace the keyboard on mine, and it took Apple 10 days to do it. How is that "pro"?
Twice during this summer, I was not able to share my screen with coworkers using Zoom because my MacBook pro would overheat and throttle the processors. It might be that there's some dust inside the fan (I have a cat) but I am not able to open and clean it up. How is that "Pro"?
Our servers are all linux based and virtualization in mac is spotty (especially if you want to share a Docker-based setup via Zoom on a mildly hot day).
I strongly doubt I will go back to Mac when the time comes for renewing. I really do need to get stuff done, and this machine has gotten in my way too many times.
I don't think any professional photographers will give up their DSLRs or Mirrorless/System Cameras in favor of an image sensor smaller than their fingernails.
Pro photographers that make bank by being instagram influencers will be all over the iPhone Pro. This will completely upend the vlogging industry too.
I vlog with a DSLR and even with an iPhone X most people can’t tell when I use footage from that (running with a dslr is hard, for example). iPhone Pro likely makes better video than my T6i Rebel in many situations. Depth of field is usually where DSLRs shine
> Not sure the "Pro" distinction will hold up for iPhone, though
It does, you need to be able to charge its cost as a business expense to be able to afford it. The "Pro" signals to the tax auditors that Apple approves of this :-)
> All that being said, I personally have never bought from Apple, and think the $150 upgrade cost is ridiculous (not to mention the $300 jump from the XR, which is still $300 more than I paid for my Pixel)! So I could say the "Pro" marketing isn't working on me! But overall, they aren't hurting for customers.
I love it when people complain about the prices Apple charge, especially given the experiences I've had with customer service at Apple, so... story time!
I had an iPhone 5 when it first came out. At the time I was a heavy motorbike rider to and from work. One day when I was riding home it rained heavily (this was in England, so yeah...) and my pocket had been left open. When I got home my iPhone was completely submerged in water for at least 20 minutes.
I took it to Apple the next day and they replaced it for free. Try that with your Pixel... oh that's right, you don't have any stores to take it into world wide. Shame.
Fast forward to only two years ago...
I was in Vienna for Christmas a few years back. We'd gone through Italy to get there. During my time in Italy I noticed my iPhone 6S' battery was dropping quickly. I couldn't work out why. By the time we got to Vienna it would drop by 20% every 15-20 minutes. I found a premium reseller who took it in and replaced the battery in 45 minutes for free. I bought the phone in Australia.
Try that with your Pixel... oh that's right, you have to post your phone to the manufacturer and wait for them to fix it or replace it, a process I know to take weeks. Shame. But you saved $300 though!
I personally don't think it's worth counting the pennies in that manner given the services you're getting outside of the hardware. It's not much of a price hike at all, in the grand scheme of things.
As it turns out, I've never destroyed any of my own phones, so I saved $300 every two years since I started buying smart phones 12 years ago. So $1800. If my phone gets submerged and Google won't replace it, I guess I'll have to buy another phone with my $1800 budget!
Also, when I got my Pixel 3, the back had some waves in the paint. It literally did not matter at all, because I put a case on it, and it couldn't affect functionality at all, but I told them I wasn't happy, and they shipped a new one that did not have the cosmetic imperfections. Try that with your iPhone! Oh yeah, it would probably work.
shrug This isn't a competition. Just be smart with your money (or do with your money as you choose, whether someone else thinks it smart or not!)
Honestly I never really understood the need to chase the newest flagship given the premium price. I probably upgrade about once a year to 18 months, and purchasing the prior model flagship saves me about 60% to 70%. I upgraded to the pixel 2xl shortly after the 3 came out for about $260. Even being able to afford it I just feel I'm getting ripped off at $1000.
You then pay somewhere around 175 to 260 usd per year for your phone. The newest iPhones are about $1000. From my experience, and from others, they last a very long time, and a 4 year cycle can be expected, as well as passing the phones on to their kids and so on. There is also the possibility to sell it used down the line, and the iPhones keep their value much better than any Android phone.
Thus the "expensive" iPhones are $250 or less per year. And they are, in my opinion, usually better than the Android equivalent.
You might say; "but what if I have the same upgrade cycle with iPhones". Well, then you can have a look at what a used version of the last gen iPhone costs. Where I live; it is something like $100-200 less than what it was new. That means; some people are having the newest version of the iPhone for only $100-200 / year. That is, at least, roughly the same price as your are getting (or better, depending on resale value of the specific Android phone), but with the newest version of a more premium product.
In other words. You might be getting ripped off at $260. It all comes down to money over time, not amount at a defined moment, unless the amount is prohibitive.
Real estate agents, industrial photographers, people who make money affiliate marketing, maintaining a (whatever) review channel on YouTube, journalists, heck even sales or running a small business, lots of professional use cases. The difference between good and great is the little things.
The photos I see on real estate listings are horrendously compressed and have a potato-like quality. I have no idea if they were taken 15 years ago on a $10 point and shoot or on a brand new professional DSLR. Only thing you can sometimes tell is that they used a wide-angle lens.
Or you know... bring a camera and be professional.
The idea that apple needs an extra $300 dollars to fit that into my phone, maybe i'll just get two pixel 3s. Or a nice point and shoot.
The 'bare minimum' that the consumer will accept vs 'the average feature set expected' vs 'lets sprinkle in some unicorn dust and charge people up the wazoo' model is getting a little old. Its why I have iPhone 6s, 7s, still in the fleet of devices I support. The consumer and businesses are simply tired of this bs.
Whilst I agree with your premise, the problem is that they explicitly made the distinction that this was for professionals. I can't remember the precise verbiage but when Cook introduced it he said that this was by and for professionals.
Well they specifically said it’s Pro users... and for everyone else who wants the best of what Apple has to offer. They could certainly remove the 64gb entry option and thus increase the base price but then everyone who only needs 64gb is paying more for a feature they don’t need or want. Rather Apple usually waits until part prices make it so they can both reduce the price and this remove the previous entry model which one can assume will happen in a few years.
> It's been clear for quite some time that terms like "Extreme", "Pro" and "Max" are marketing terms. They are not accurate classifications of how they will be used.
The new iPhone Pros appear to mark a shift; it's the same shift the Mac Pro announcement did in June, and was also a source of contention on Hacker News.
Pro at this point is just key for "the expensier/fancier one".
It's hard to name the more expensive version to convey it's better without in turn suggesting the cheaper one is shittier.
"Pro" lets you do that by suggesting that it's for a different audience, allowing consumers of the budget model to save face so to speak (I don't need it because I'm not a professional).
"Pro" probably works great to bring in people trying to elevate their social media quality. It doesn't necessarily mean (in Apple's marketing terminology) actual, legitimate professional industry anymore.
I'd imagine people getting into vlogging and such, or even people who just want to be "that cool and popular" (especially younger people) that would buy in to the "Pro" moniker.
> It doesn't necessarily mean (in Apple's marketing terminology) actual, legitimate professional industry
I made the point elsewhere, but I think that ignores "professionals in the workplace doing this alongside other things". These can easily be "pro" for content creation teams, like editorial staff for capturing Stories from events and the like.
Just because they're not replacements for high-end commercial photography equipment doesn't mean they're not being used as intended by professionals.
Completely agree that their terminology might be skewing, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of their use in a professional context, even if the users aren't "photography professionals" themselves.
I think "Pro" is just admitting that they're running into two tiers now. They released the 8 and the X together, they released the XR and XS together. The iphone has diverged into two products and hopefully they've picked a consistent name to differentiate them - because the difference between XR and XS isn't obvious at all.
“Pro” means more powerful. That doesn’t mean that you buy it if you need it work work. I know Fellows making $1m/year who have a MacBook Air because they prefer the low weight when they’re doing emails etc, and code from a desktop workstation.
If you need a "pro" phone but can't afford the iPhone, you could always get a UMIDIGI A3 Pro, or an ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M2, which are quite a bit cheaper.
Lots of people disappointed in the new iPhone. The reason I see is simple; Apple has long been outsourced a large fraction of its hardware innovation capabilities to other companies rather than having a full vertical ownership of the production line, unlike its competitors (Samsung, Huawei, etc).
This works very well when most of the required technologies are already there for bringing their idea to the reality so Apple doesn't have to push the state of the art for the manufacturing technologies. Multi-touch, Retina Display, Apple designed SoC were all good examples where this strategy worked out very well.
The trouble is that now most of the low hanging fruits are gone and the rest of innovation opportunities lie within the manufacturer side and require non-trivial investments. For instance, getting rid of notch requires camera under screen technology. This is being developed by Samsung, their competitor. The same thing applies to fingerprint sensor under screen. While all the competitors are shipping 5G in their flagships, iPhone 11 couldn't ship 5G due to their hard dependency on Qualcomm. In short, the current landscape doesn't allow Apple to keep itself on the bleeding edge in the smartphone business.
I'm curious about how Apple will address this problem. Disappointingly, I haven't seen any positive signal to indicate that Apple has a good plan to address this issue. It first tried a high-price, even-more-premium strategy and this turned out to be a disastrous one. Apple now tries to expand into the services business and chooses to be a competitor to its own ecosystem by exercising its dominant position. I'm pretty sure that this plan will work very well, maybe too well sufficient to de-prioritize the iPhone business just enough to keep its marketshare around 3~40% and make no more commitments. I hope I'm wrong.
There will always be lots of people disappointed in the iPhone. We will only know the magnitude of disappointment once financials are posted. Speaking of which, R&D spend shows they are making non-trivial investments. Apple secrecy is what keeps you and I seeing the R&D results before they are ready. "Signals" is not something Apple likes to give, which is probably why you aren't seeing any. I would argue that hardware+software integration is more important than 5G, underscreen fingerprint, or notchless design combined. Apple is the leader in deep integration across hardware and software. Services is just an extension of having a default out of the box experience for the most important experiences on an iPhone. Nothing new here. First it was "notes", "calculator", "stocks", etc. Now they are moving up the services stack to movies, gaming, etc. Next it will be Uber / delivery via Project Titan.
> Speaking of which, R&D spend shows they are making non-trivial investments.
Unfortunately, Apple's R&D spend won't likely enable what they want to do on their phone. A large number of sources consistently suggests that Apple is experimenting various options to get rid of notch, but all those options depends on display manufacturers.
> "Signals" is not something Apple likes to give, which is probably why you aren't seeing any.
Apple definitely wants to prove their iPhone business has more potential to grow; why would they hide the growth potential of the largest business to their investors? The truth is that it doesn't see more potentials on its phone business and this is why Apple is aggressively investing into services business.
> I would argue that hardware+software integration is more important than 5G, underscreen fingerprint, or notchless design combined.
I wouldn't argue on a subjective issue, but just note that iPhone used to have the best hardware, software and their integration during Steve's era, which is not true anymore for hardware and the gap is increasing. As a 10 year iPhone user, this is very disappointing.
Apple's DNA from the get go is being an integrator.
Wozniak knows how to put it together more efficiently and Jobs scoured catalogs to get the best deals and knew where to source in the valley.
The secret sauce is just the Apple way of putting it together and serving it to you.
The clone wars era taught them to stop doing that but those days have been so far spread to now that this we're finding ourselves repeating similar mistakes.
Additionally there was also the Apple era of just rebranding shit for the sake of establishing halos and ecosystems. There were a period of Apple branded Sony monitors and Apple branded printers. They opted out of that and went with the retail option these days. At least they learned from that.
But yes, Apple got bigger. What once was getting chips from Sunnyvale to Cupertino is now getting chips from Shenzhen to Cupertino. And the milestone we've hit now is Apple today announcing a new camera with phone communication abilities.
I'm thoroughly confused by your comment. Was not Apple's FaceID a full year, if not more, ahead of the competition? Sure they didn't sit in cupertino, stitching together components, but they designed an integration of existing components in a way that saved space and made them work in concert in a way no other competitor had. I don't think they're in as much trouble as you make out
Yes, FaceID is another good example of technology that could be brought to the reality without long-term strategical commitments from other big (possibly competing) companies. I'm not saying that Apple is losing its edge on product technology "design". Apple will still remain to be the best here at least for several more years. But it's also still true that the technological bar for manufacturing components is rapidly going up and Apple doesn't have much controls in this area.
My observation is Apple waits for someone else to make the hardware innovation (e.g., camera under screen being the next example of this), then they do a more polished version of that.
You think that Apple isn't working on putting the camera array required for FaceId under the screen? Of course they are. The problem is that it's the whole sensor array that has to go under the screen. Is that workable? Possibly, but I'm not a hardware engineer.
>Apple has long been outsourced a large fraction of its hardware innovation capabilities to other companies rather than having a full vertical ownership of the production line, unlike its competitors (Samsung, Huawei, etc).
Apart from Samsung which does Full vertical ownership, there isn't any other company which does that. And Huawei uses Foxconn as well, OLED from BOE, NAND and DRAM from Multiple Sources etc. There is nothing from Huawei that shows Full Vertical Ownership.
>While all the competitors are shipping 5G in their flagships, iPhone 11 couldn't ship 5G due to their hard dependency on Qualcomm. In short, the current landscape doesn't allow Apple to keep itself on the bleeding edge in the smartphone business.
Apple wasn't the first with 4G, but they drove 4G adoption. And 5G isn't even ready, all current 5G solution on the market are big, bulky and power hungry. But it is great people are driven into these marketing hype, only by doing so they could recoup some of their R&D investment. For Apple, they will move to 5G when it is ready.
Yes it didn't allow Apple to be on the bleeding Edge of Foldable Screen. Look at what happen to Samsung. Bleeding Edge means nothing. Not everything has a first mover advantage. Innovation doesn't just requires Bleeding edge, that is Invention. Innovation requires Invention that brings Value to masses, and for that to happen, pricing is often an obstacle.
Apple hasn't really been on the bleeding edge for a while now. Android phones had bigger screens, wireless charging, quick charging, NFC payment years before the iPhone had those features.
Apple strengths are in integration, design and marketing. Like mentioned, other phones had NFC payments way before the iPhone, but I'd say mobile phone payment really took off when Apple Pay came out. That's the power of marketing and influence at work.
Well on the hand other the Apple FaceID was in fact on the bleeding edge. Apple introduced it two years ago and we're only going to see it on the Pixel later this year. And for SoC performance I don't think any Android phone can surpass Apple's chips from last year. Apple really is on the bleeding edge for some things. You can't expect them to be on the bleeding edge for everything.
I don't think that's true at all. Apple is the only player that has ownership of the most important parts of software, hardware and services. That's why their products are better than their competitors.
Camera under the screen etc. are gimmicks that don't provide real value to customers. On the other hand, having the most performant SoC combined with the most performant software does provide real value.
This is a surprisingly thought-provoking comment and the theory checks out.
Until Apple are able to break out of this mould I feel they'll be stuck at this combination of
a) uninteresting yearly iterations
b) ever increasing base phone prices for little end user gain
I don't thinkt hey're able to paint themselves out of this corner on the smartphone front.
They have iOS as a decent but certainly not impregnable moat for iPhone. Some brand new groundbreaking product will be needed very soon to prevent the Apple stock price from steadily declining. (It already starting plateauing 15 months ago.)
Did the base phone price increase this year? I thought it stayed the same and improved some of the materials used in regards to toxicity and sourcing concerns.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does everyone here also drive a base model Honda Civic because “car hardware is done”? This is a luxury product and people upgrade because it’s fun and feels great to have the fastest phone and fanciest camera. It’s not that big a deal, and it’s definitely not a ripoff.
Personally I drive the top-spec Civic of 15 years ago. I would never own a current luxury item because I don't think it's worth spending my entire life working for a product that will become normal a couple of weeks after I buy it.
Humans are only sensitive to change. A positive change feels good. No change feels normal. A negative change feels awful. A sensible person would try to fill their life with positive change.
For what it’s worth, a 2019 base-model Civic includes a backup camera, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist, road departure mitigation, more airbags, and every other safety improvement Honda engineers have come up with since 2004. It’s also more fuel efficient, which would reduce your consumption of fossil fuels.
Are folks running ML training algorithms on their phones? Why does one need the "fastest phone"? How many apps are there for which how fast your phone is even matters? I am not saying people shouldn't buy these phones but the pricing on these things is absolutely insane, it seems people are basically paying an Apple tax on these devices. Even high end devices from other manufacturers are not priced this crazy.
Nearly every road in the world has a speed limit. Car manufacturers still quote top speed and advertise based a cars racing pedigree.
95% of bankers and doctors driving BMW or Mercedes don’t use these features but still pay for them. Same with phones but a $1000 iPhone is far more in reach of aspirational buyers than a $50k German car.
We shouldn't need them, but we do, because the quality of consumer software is very poor these days. To enable "rapid" and "agile" development, where "customer value" is delivered "continuously", developers write under-optimised, resource-hungry software that never gets refactored.
You're absolutely correct that the prices of these phones are insane, but let's be honest here – a base-model Samsung Galaxy S10 is $899.99 MSRP. You can get them on Amazon for $699, which puts them at the same price as iPhone 11. So I'm not quite buying the Apple tax, unless your argument is that Apple is allowing everyone else to charge high prices, in which case you may be on to something.
This is a great point. It’s a premium product that people will buy simply because they like nice things.
I’ll buy one because I like buying new/nice things and the fact that for $1200 I’ll get a lot of value out of it, due to how much I use my phone is an added bonus.
This is definitely not a compelling upgrade for many people.
> Well, I do (although it's a base model Hyundai). I also still use an iPhone SE and will do for the foreseeable future.
I consider myself to have been "tricked by business" (as Macklemore would put it) when I bought a Tesla Model X in 2016. It replaced a 2014 LEAF, and I can honestly say that I regretted it and wished I had kept the LEAF. The difference in cost didn't make up for the difference in overall driving experience and utility for me. I've since traded in the Tesla for cheaper PHEV, and I'm much happier with that now.
I also am still using a Pixel 2. Nothing about anything else on the market today seems compelling enough to convince me to replace it. So I guess I'm joining a chorus on this thread.
Base Model 2014 Mazda 3, because yes, ICE car hardware has nearly peaked. I will continue to row my own gears in a little 40mpg sedan until electric is an attainable option. Same goes for phones. Buy cheap, buy well.
Those are all fair points, and I agree with you on each of them! But they have to do with buying new things in general, not the new iPhone specifically.
If you eat meat, drive a car, fly in planes, live in a big house, have kids, etc., buy all the iPhones you want. It’s not going to make a lick of difference when it comes to climate change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..)
For the first time ever I feel like I just wasted my time watching an Apple product announcement. I'm not saying those products are bad or are poorly engineered or anything like that. I'm just saying the products they showed off today aren't anything I would want.
I have an iPhone 7 Plus and comparing it to the iPhone 11 versions I don't see anything in the latter that I'd upgrade for. The best I could come up with would maybe be the watch but that's only because I have a Series 1 that is probably on its last legs. If I'm being honest, however, when the Series 1 goes I'll probably go back to my $30 Timex. $5/mo for Arcade and TV+ each is a great price but then again, at least for the latter, I'd be paying a little over a third of the price of Netflix for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the content. Sure they'll be adding more but nothing they have now really gets me excited to watch.
I used to so look forward to product announcements because it was like being a kid again. Looking through the Christmas catalog at all the things I'd love to have. Imagining how my life might be better "if I just had that new iPhone!" Now? Meh.
I'm genuinely sad. I feel like it's the end of a very long era.
This is a very routine reply around here to every new iPhone announcement. Would you perhaps be able to elaborate on the features or improvements you did want to see but didn't?
I mean I have an iPhone 8 and what I see are:
- An edge-to-edge screen
- Longer battery life
- Faster processors
- Improved cameras (don't care much myself but it is still improved)
- FaceID
- Updated Wifi and LTE technologies (not sure how much hype that is)
- More durable (apparently) and more water resistant (at least compared to my 8)
- Multiple wireless headphone support (not sure I need this either but it is still a feature others will use)
I don't need to upgrade for any of these things, which is probably a good thing in terms of e-waste, but it is still definitely a clear upgrade from my current phone.
I can't believe we don't have higher refresh rates on iPhones yet. Apple got user experience with touch screens better then anyone else when the iPhone originally launched. Apple brought it to iPad, i'd like to see it in iPhone.
I honestly can't put my finger on it. All those features you listed are great but none of them make me WANT that device. I used to want the new product they announced as soon as they showed it off. Maybe when I hold one in my hands that will change.
I'm still on my iPhone 6, and I am not going to get the 11 either, in fact I have been dabbling with LineageOS on a Xiaomi Pocophone F1 as a second travel phone.
What would make me "upgrade" (not sure if I can really call that an upgrade in the absence of a headphone port).
Must-haves:
1. USB-C
2. 5G support using a single-chip like the Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 baseband chipset (not a separate 4g and 5G chip as with the X50)
3. No more stupid notch
Nice to have:
4. Some sort of anti-slip ridges or grip milled into the casework
The thing I was 100% hoping for but did not expect at all was a new haptic feedback engine. I think the next big thing Apple could improve would be localized feedback. I want to be able to feel a button when I drag a finger across the screen, for example.
There were zero rumors of this, it was just wishful thinking, but man if I didn't dream...
iPhones at this stage feel like cameras first and the rest is standard. I’m also on a 7 Plus. This iteration feels far enough ahead of mine to be worth considering.
The only other update I want is more battery life. They’re thin enough; make them a third thicker with all of that used for battery. Or just thicker so the new camera is flush against the back casing.
Is there any use case where WiFi + Bluetooth hotspot makes more sense than enabling each separately. Bluetooth is a huge battery drain. To avoid this as it is now, I have to select Wifi + Bluetooh, wait for my device to connect via WiFi then go back to settings and disable bluetooth. If I forgot to do so, my battery is gone in a few hours.
With battery life being such a priority, I'm genuinely puzzled as to why this hasn't already been implemented.
I actually don't want an edge-to-edge screen or FaceID, though, and 5S is already a bit bigger than I'd like. So no, it's not a clear upgrade. I'd probably grin and bear it, but it does feel like people don't sell phone's I'd actually like anymore.
By all accounts the phones are amazing and the new video shooting modes are a big step forward. That said after going back to the iPhone se recently I realise that it's the sweet spot phone for me. It does everything I want my phone to do and doesn't feel bloated by loads of amazing tech I'll never use once the novelty wears off.
>I don't need to upgrade for any of these things, which is probably a good thing in terms of e-waste, but it is still definitely a clear upgrade from my current phone.
I don't think anyone doubts the "clear upgrade" part. It's the "need" part we're talking about, here.
Biggest asks for me are putting back touch ID (ideally under screen but on back is fine too), headphone jack, removing the notch, installing custom APKs. They have the means to do all of these things, but don't for ideological reasons that only they seem to hold.
- some type of integrated headset or device to use the new iPhone as a VR/AR headset
- Better battery life. I know they announced this, but the batteries need to be 10-100x better. I can’t use my phone all day without it dying. I should be able to use it for a week without dying
Thought of a few more that would have been good:
- a flip phone option, something really innovative (not a joke)
- a much smaller version of the iPhone. Like an iPhone nano
- a gaming version of the iPhone that had a gpu and could run steam
I know some of these sound like science fiction, but that’s kind of the point for Apple events. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all next level. What have we gotten from Apple in the last 5 years? Headphones? A notification machine for your wrist?
A lot of that is just technological maturity, I think. When smartphones first arrived, there were many, many, obvious upgrades that would make the experience better for the user of the device.
This is the golden age of any technology; the lack of something great, and seeing it approach from the horizon, then repeating with the next thing.
Smartphones definitely seem to be converging on a form factor and a feature set. This is what happened to "feature" phones that we all had just before the smartphone became available. Do you remember any features you were dying to have in your next flip-phone? I don't. They had matured.
What will happen after smartphones? It's anyone's guess, and I'd say that whoever is going to invent that new device already has the idea and is trying to get it developed.
Besides just incremental changes, what could people possibly expect from the next version of a smartphone, especially with the technology that we currently have?
I get that 5-10 years ago it was a totally different field, when technology wasn't matured, and everything they announced was something groundbreaking.
But now, besides from the yearly camera and chip improvements, I honestly can't think of anything I would want in a smartphone.
Since you're on an iPhone 7: The jump to FaceID and home-buttonless UI is actually probably bigger than you think. The jump from 7 to X/XR/11 is going to be much bigger than, say, 7 to 8.
By removing the home button, Apple turned iPhone into a device completely controlled by gestures. It's arguably the biggest UX change since the first iPhone, and one that was surprisingly unreported at the time. It makes the phone feel more cohesive, and the initial impression, once you learn the app switching gestures, is vaguely futuristic. FaceID works great, too, and certainly feels futuristic, though on its own it's not really a game changer. It's the integration into the buttonless UX that makes it a worthwhile feature.
(I actually wish there was also a fingerprint sensor, because the FaceID doesn't work well for contactless terminal such as the ones you find in stores -- you have to first hold the phone near the reader, then pick a card, then hold the phone at the right angle for it to recognize your face, then bring it back to the reader. Not ideal, though someone claimed the new phones would do FaceID at steeper angles, so maybe it's gotten better.)
I use my iPhone X regularly at contactless terminals at stores and on the bus. The trick is to double click the lock button first, select a card if you want, then hold it by the reader.
I don’t have any problems with FaceID — it’s more reliable and easier than TouchID for me. I live in a rainy place, though. Obviously a YMMV situation.
With TouchID do you just put your finger on the home button and hold it by the reader?
I have also been doing it this way, until someone told me that you can show your face to phone first and then put it next to the reader. Try it next time, I hope it will save you some seconds.
I wholeheartedly agree. Their problem is in multiple areas: product, design, and presentation.
First and most noticeably they no long have a "master of ceremony" someone that is not only excited by the products but also enthusiastic to show them off to you. This is exemplified with no more "One More thing..."
Second, their designs are old and tired. I don't know if Ive ran out of Braun/Rams designs to borrow from or if the execs fear any major design changes, but Apple has become too comfortable with their design language and unfortunately they are starting to show a lack of taste (looking at you over-sized camera bump)
Third, the products have matured. Apple hasn't really done anything new or exciting with their lineup. Gone are the days you expected to see a new product that is lifestyle changing. Now days you might see a spec bump, or a change in product to make it thinner, but nothing that really stands out as "Wow I've gotta have that". The thing I remember most from the last two announcements were features targeting "influencers" - Animoji's and "Slofies".
Finally, I don't feel apple understands the waning in their product appeal. Be it on price or function, I see a lot less Apple products at coffee shops and colleges these days.
This never happened to you with the past few presentations? I basically haven't seen a new feature I genuinely need since the iPhone 6 (or whatever Mac/iPad was announced since then, for that matter).
Smartphones are pretty much done. The one thing I'd upgrade for is apparently not possible with current technology: A display that works perfectly in sunlight, being illuminated by it instead of trying to compete with it. Other than that? I can't even think of something!
I would give my left arm for an e-ink phone that had Google Assistant or Siri for navigation, and worked with Android Auto / Carplay, an awesome email client, some chat apps, and a good keyboard.
It'd be much easier to use my phone for what I want to use my phone for -- productivity and being connected (and occasionally looking things up online). Instead, my phone successfully hypnotizes me with it's bright colors and videos. More and more, I find myself using my phone not because I actually want to, but because it sneak attacked me with some notification that sucked me into doing something that's just wasting my time.
Also, with e-ink, the battery should last at least a couple of days. And, to your point, you could use it under any lighting conditions -- at least I can with my Kindle Paperwhite.
They need some fresh blood in the C ranks. The presenters themselves don't look like they themselves are actually excited about things they are presenting.
It doesn't help that they have clearly filled the audience with Apple employees who were instructed to whoop and holler and when to do it. I understand the motivations for doing so. A product announcement like this would otherwise be attended by a majority surly journalists, too busy taking notes to exhibit much excitement. But at this point, the whooping and hollering come across as extremely fake--too much so for a company like Apple, in my opinion. I think I'd rather the employees just clap. At least during WWDC there are genuine fans in the audience.
I suspect their strategy of rolling out a different speaker every 10 sentences might be an attempt at scouting for execs who can excite an audience. To whatever degree Apple is exciting anymore, that is.
I'm always wondering what people expect from those "Apple Keynote". Is anyone actually watching Keynotes from other companies? Samsung, LG, Volkswagen or any large companies in the world? No, they don't because it is boring and made with medias as target audience.
I never understood the need for so many people to tune into those Apple live keynotes. It is of course all marketing and slideware.
Hasn’t every iPhone just been a speeds and camera improvement over the previous? With a few random things like TouchId, FaceId, and 3D Touch... but most of what matters is speed and camera.
Maybe that era is one where we could expect major, groundbreaking changes every few years in hardware?
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that today’s hardware is not changing as fast as it was 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago).
Looking at the quality and size of devices now, I can’t imagine much will be different in 15 years until we get to a major re-invention of things; I.e. holographic devices or implanted smartphones, things that you dream about. The screen quality is just so great already that I can’t imagine it being 1000x better - like you might compare an iPhone to a mid-90s gameboy screen or early Nokia candy-bar phone displays & UI.
What can we possibly expect from new devices besides more storage, slightly more pixels, and slightly more powerful processing?
I sort of feel like this, but chalk it up to me getting old and curmudgeonly. You kids with your fancy three cameras and gamey movie thingy, get off my lawn. Back in my day we had a phone with a browser and email and Netflix and were happy about it.
I browsed the responses to the parent comment looking to see if anyone had presented this angle.
The first iPhone at "everyone had"[1] came out a little over 11 years ago.
I'd hazard a guess most people who were in their ~mid 20's back in 2008 is now in their ~mid 30's, and have probably lost a lot interest in "new and shiny thing".
I'm swiftly approaching 40, and what gets me excited has changed dramatically in the past decade.
We'll see how long the line up is on release day, that'll give as an indicator of how out of touch us old folk are.
1. iPhone 3G available in 22 countries for as compared the original iPhone available in only 7 countries, according to the Wikipedia articles for each
Readit News
Sounds like quite orthogonal to Apple, and relevant to personal issues the single anecdotal example person had, overcompensating by constantly buying gadgets, etc...
There are tons of people with 2, 3, 4, 6+ year old Macs, iPhones, and iPads (my iPad is from 2014 or so and works just fine)...
Dead Comment
With the ability to easily swap batteries, and more efficiently written software, nobody would have to really update their phones. Which is why I guess most batteries are now integrated.
It's a terribly waste just for corporate profits and peoples vanity's sake.
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ps: the 40yo man might have sold or made use of the other iPhone. I hope he did not just pile them up in a drawer.
for some people, a dinner out costs $2k.
that is why you should never judge your clients.
same thing for the other gentleman.
you don't know their stories, or their backgrounds.
The social pressure for having "an old phone" most have been incredibly high.
Something like that happen to me on university, I had a 5 years old phone with no Whatsapp/Blackberry chat. It made me feel so left behind and even sad sometimes.
Commodities seem harmless, but brainwashing people to buy moderate quality products at luxury prices is horrifying.
It plays music, like my iPod did. As well as podcasts. I don't use any apps otherwise that don't come with it from Apple. On the rare occasion someone decides to call me it answers, sometimes (it's slow to answer, but after 3 retries, sometimes the first).
I try to answer text messages on my Mac with Messages.app. It's easier to type.
Not sure I want to upgrade. I was planning on it. I can afford it. Kind of just trying to see how long I can keep it going for fun. I think I've had it for close to 5 years now.
Dead Comment
Improvement in camera could be enticing, but the platforms to which the photos, videos are shared would compress them anyways making them all nearly identical. Better frame rates is the only thing which makes a difference. Case in point : MKBHD made a blind test last year and low cost smartphone Mi Pocophone which scored pathetic camera performance in individual reviews came out top in the blind test.
So, the subscription services are the new lifeline for the hardware manufacturers; included free subscription should add some value to the new customers and if the SW services work; may be compensate for diminishing hardware sales.
Marques doesn't have kids.
I loved my Redmi Note 4. I even liked the chin, as the buttons were on it - so my usable screen size was actually larger than the Pixel XL that replaced it.
That phone took perfectly acceptable shots with still subjects that I'd have been happy to live with but the shutter lag was terrible. I have six months of mostly blurry photos of my kids solely because the phone couldn't deal with any amount of fast motion so it had to go.
Recently upgraded to a Pixel 3a solely because of Night Sight and for my use case it was a no-brainer as I can't get the time back. I also couldn't give a rats behind about notches and bumps - my phones go straight into bumper cases and 9-glass before they're turned on.
Some people really do need the less-talked-about features that are only of late getting any amount of attention by manufacturers.
But say you had bought iPhone 8 (same year as Redmi Note 4) and you share pictures to social media; Pictures from iPhone 11 would be indiscernible to those who see your photos at the other end.
I am excited about the possibility of graphene based batteries. https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-batteries and https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-develops-battery-mat...
Which could be as early as 2020-2021 if the leaks are correct https://www.techspot.com/news/81435-samsung-rumored-readying... my current phone will last me until then.
More about that https://www.wired.co.uk/article/graphene-batteries-supercapa...
It seems this graphene tech can be used for other things too, the future looks exciting.
• https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-solar-panels
• https://www.techpowerup.com/253839/amd-says-not-to-count-on-...
• https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/16-bit-risc-v-proces...
But, it will happen in increments and for all the above features to be available in one smartphone which is affordable, will take another 3-4 years and hence my OP comment that current generation is done.
Edit: 1TB
Well yes, all cameras look the same if you do a "blind" test. :)
Essentially, camera quality in this day and age doesn't matter, unless you're a "pro" (which I predict 90% of the people who buy the 11 pro aren't)
Case in point: I have a SE and it takes photos fine. I'm not any model or pro, so taking pictures of basic day-to-day events or things is good enough for me.
This simply means that it was a crappy test. As far as I remember, people choose a colour profile that was much more punchy.
Cameras are much, much more than a colour profile. These tech reviewers are fun to watch but I wouldn't base my opinions solely on their work.
This test for real-life camera usage is as objective as it can get. Most people shoot pictures to put on social networks, not to submit for documentary film awards.
That's true in the Android world as well. When the GPS in my three-year-old LG Stylo 2 finally crapped out so thoroughly (along with a puffed-up battery, perhaps with a built-in antenna being damaged?) that I couldn't ignore it anymore, I wound up getting a Stylo 5.
As it turns out, it has the same Qualcomm 450 SoC as the three-year-old phone it replaced. It's fast enough for my needs, but no speed demon. The only real upgrades are support for more of T-Mobile's LTE bands, a higher-resolution screen, an aluminum frame, a 3500 mAh battery up from 3000, and Android 9; the camera app is improved, and the Bluetooth stack is more up-to-date. Much to their credit, they had the courage to not remove the headphone jack. There is one major downgrade: the inevitable sealed-case, non-removable battery schtick that I really hate. I hope that fad passes by the time I need to replace this one, but there's too much money at stake for the phone manufacturers not to shaft their customers. I better hope the battery doesn't crap out prematurely.
That being said, I like the Stylo 5; the 2 had excellent battery life even when the battery got puffy, and the 5 is even better (at least in my first week of usage). That relatively-anemic 450 SoC is at least power-efficient.
The smartphones will continue to grow and accelerate their hardware and software development. This is simply the future. I the next 50 years I think everyone will use just one device and this is more likely to be something like a smartphone.
What Steve Jobs did in his first iPhone presentation can't be done again. He simply set the bar so high that there is no bar anymore, I don't see how other companies will reach them, not because they can't but because they all try to copy them from that point on, instead of trying to innovate like they did.
I can't also really understand why the public is bashing so hard those events expecting miracles, and making statements that Apple is not innovating. What do you want cloaking software making you invisible? Let's be real, also who is that naive to think that even if they have developed something amazing they will release it right away. Things don't work like that in the real world.
Apple and Steve did some truly "breakthrough" product announcements. Steve mentioned this in his iPad announcement. The timing was right, the technology was right, the market was right.
It's possible we're not going to get another one of those remarkable revelations like the iPhone and the iPad in our lifetimes. And that's ok.
The speed of change has been tremendous in the past 100 years and –besides doing a lot of good– also has serious social and ecological repercussions.
Perhaps I'm getting old, but maybe it's a good thing that the pace of change is slowing.
Yep. I have a BLU smartphone that I bought for $55 bucks off of Amazon. It literally does everything I need and has now lasted me > 2 yrs with no sign of slowing down. I will never understand why people would pay the price equivalent to buying a decently speced out desktop or laptop for a phone when there are so many cheaper alternatives that provide the same features and functionality.
Agreed. Even a Xiaomi Mi A2 with Android One for 130-150€ is almost on par with these high end phones that cost eight times as much: It's fast enough. It has a gorgeous display. It has a decent camera and it has up-to-date software. In these times of diminishing returns it's amazing that Apple is able to fetch these prices. It shows us how much of a vendor lockin there is. Perhaps (hopefully) also how much people are willing to pay extra for more privacy.
[1]:https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/apple...
Strongly agree, and the reason for that is that is that level of quality is good enough for the 99.99% use case of photography and anything above is simply a waste of storage space.
If you are actually a professional artist, it matters. If you're doing computer vision, it matters. For the other 99.99% of photos, it doesn't matter.
What Apple is selling at this point is just the aspiration that you're in the special 0.01%, or could be.
Yes, the chips and sensors used in modern phone cameras are ridiculously good for the size and cost. And phone cameras started replacing budget and mid-price P&S cameras years ago.
But, Apple's move to a triple camera set-up is really compelling. Not only has the phone replaced the average P&S, it's now replacing higher end P&S. The main argument for a separate P&S these days is a zoom lens. Apple just made that argument moot (superzooms notwithstanding). You can now take landscape, snapshot, and portrait photos natively on the camera without stitching or cropping. That's amazing. Or, at least I think so.
I was considering replacing my wife's older Canon S90 P&S with a new Sony RX100 IV. I probably won't bother - I'll just replace her iPhone 8 with an 11 Pro.
This opens a huge area of business for them, if they can convince ad film makers devices because the current set of filming devices that they use aren't inexpensive.
For a lot of the world, a $500 smartphone was a luxury, and a $1500 smartphone (like a $3000+ laptop, or $1000 monitor stand) is an unfunny joke.
While they’re amazing devices, they’re just not replacements for a real computer, being locked down, with no exposed file system, and the imprecision of touch-only input.
I'm as sure as I agree with this statement that this can be a historic comment about smartphones until the next breakthrough happens :)
If it didn't have the notch it would just have a larger bezel on a side, or some BS like a popup camera.
The "camera behind screen" idea barely works (for obvious reasons), and is hardly what would revolutionize mobile hardware. It's an aesthetic concern, not a functional one.
Things that might do that, larger camera sensors (e.g. 1"), week or more long batteries, total voice control, etc.
I think the point here is that the recent "big" features are all pretty minor things like 60fps screens etcetera, they are really nice but nowhere near as important as the new things we used to have every generation.
Eye tracking based scrolling would be something that I'd like; for reading long articles/books. Using regular camera is prohibitively power hungry; not sure if there is research for special purpose cameras for this purpose.
I bought my last phone over 4 years ago and it wasn't new back then. The only reason I'm thinking about buying a new one is the software version. But it probably won't cost more than $200, because that's already enough to get better hardware than I got 4 years ago for double the price, and I don't have an issue with performance.
Needless to say, I don't quite get how flagship phones still sell so well considering you can do basically everything for a small fraction of the cost. Is there really a mobile game or other app out there which requires top specs? Would such a game even sell enough quantities?
Google is hot with the ML train, they develop and release new state-of-the-art algorithms and improve all aspects of smartphone (videos, pictures, batteries, actions, gestures, keyboards, biometry, security, ...).
On the Asia side, companies are the first to release foldable phones. They are already acquiring user feedbacks and cost insights for the next generation of foldable phone, and Google is a supporting partner, with Android 10 embracing those new phones with new APIs.
I'm looking forward for foldable phones improvements and more Google magic
Apple is rarely first to put certain component or piece of technology into their products, but is usually first one to do it properly and create first actually usable product. That’s why pretty much every actual innovation only takes off after Apple has implemented it.
If people feel strongly enough that the name is not accurate, they will have to buy a competing product that fulfills their needs at the price they are willing to pay.
I suppose what would be interesting, but highly proprietary, would be Apple's marketing research information on how the "Pro" marketing term is received by their target consumers.
All that being said, I personally have never bought from Apple, and think the $150 upgrade cost is ridiculous (not to mention the $300 jump from the XR, which is still $300 more than I paid for my Pixel)! So I could say the "Pro" marketing isn't working on me! But overall, they aren't hurting for customers.
"MacBook Pro" and "iPad Pro" are the ones you buy if you need it for work, because the increased price will pay for itself with increased productivity. But buy the "Air" or basic versions if you are primarily using it for more basic tasks and media consumption.
Not sure the "Pro" distinction will hold up for iPhone, though. I guess it depends if Pro Photographers actually will give up their "Pro" cameras for an iPhone 11 Pro. And I can't think of any other profession where the iPhone Pro will "pay for itself" in productivity increases relative to other iPhones.
For most people relying on a smartphone for work, be it 700 or 1000 the device will pay for itself in a few months at most, so I think the price difference won’t matter much. Better battery performance could be significant though.
Twice during this summer, I was not able to share my screen with coworkers using Zoom because my MacBook pro would overheat and throttle the processors. It might be that there's some dust inside the fan (I have a cat) but I am not able to open and clean it up. How is that "Pro"?
Our servers are all linux based and virtualization in mac is spotty (especially if you want to share a Docker-based setup via Zoom on a mildly hot day).
I strongly doubt I will go back to Mac when the time comes for renewing. I really do need to get stuff done, and this machine has gotten in my way too many times.
The finger reader thingie is nice, though.
I vlog with a DSLR and even with an iPhone X most people can’t tell when I use footage from that (running with a dslr is hard, for example). iPhone Pro likely makes better video than my T6i Rebel in many situations. Depth of field is usually where DSLRs shine
More like "Prosumer" digital cameras, without removable lenses.
Don't know if the new mac pro will shake that up.
It does, you need to be able to charge its cost as a business expense to be able to afford it. The "Pro" signals to the tax auditors that Apple approves of this :-)
Self-styled "influencers". They'll be all in.
A great example of this is the "PS4 Pro"
I love it when people complain about the prices Apple charge, especially given the experiences I've had with customer service at Apple, so... story time!
I had an iPhone 5 when it first came out. At the time I was a heavy motorbike rider to and from work. One day when I was riding home it rained heavily (this was in England, so yeah...) and my pocket had been left open. When I got home my iPhone was completely submerged in water for at least 20 minutes.
I took it to Apple the next day and they replaced it for free. Try that with your Pixel... oh that's right, you don't have any stores to take it into world wide. Shame.
Fast forward to only two years ago...
I was in Vienna for Christmas a few years back. We'd gone through Italy to get there. During my time in Italy I noticed my iPhone 6S' battery was dropping quickly. I couldn't work out why. By the time we got to Vienna it would drop by 20% every 15-20 minutes. I found a premium reseller who took it in and replaced the battery in 45 minutes for free. I bought the phone in Australia.
Try that with your Pixel... oh that's right, you have to post your phone to the manufacturer and wait for them to fix it or replace it, a process I know to take weeks. Shame. But you saved $300 though!
I personally don't think it's worth counting the pennies in that manner given the services you're getting outside of the hardware. It's not much of a price hike at all, in the grand scheme of things.
As it turns out, I've never destroyed any of my own phones, so I saved $300 every two years since I started buying smart phones 12 years ago. So $1800. If my phone gets submerged and Google won't replace it, I guess I'll have to buy another phone with my $1800 budget!
Also, when I got my Pixel 3, the back had some waves in the paint. It literally did not matter at all, because I put a case on it, and it couldn't affect functionality at all, but I told them I wasn't happy, and they shipped a new one that did not have the cosmetic imperfections. Try that with your iPhone! Oh yeah, it would probably work.
shrug This isn't a competition. Just be smart with your money (or do with your money as you choose, whether someone else thinks it smart or not!)
Actually on a (Samsung) Galaxy 5 you could've just popped open the back of the phone and replaced the battery yourself in a few seconds.
Thus the "expensive" iPhones are $250 or less per year. And they are, in my opinion, usually better than the Android equivalent.
You might say; "but what if I have the same upgrade cycle with iPhones". Well, then you can have a look at what a used version of the last gen iPhone costs. Where I live; it is something like $100-200 less than what it was new. That means; some people are having the newest version of the iPhone for only $100-200 / year. That is, at least, roughly the same price as your are getting (or better, depending on resale value of the specific Android phone), but with the newest version of a more premium product.
In other words. You might be getting ripped off at $260. It all comes down to money over time, not amount at a defined moment, unless the amount is prohibitive.
The idea that apple needs an extra $300 dollars to fit that into my phone, maybe i'll just get two pixel 3s. Or a nice point and shoot.
The 'bare minimum' that the consumer will accept vs 'the average feature set expected' vs 'lets sprinkle in some unicorn dust and charge people up the wazoo' model is getting a little old. Its why I have iPhone 6s, 7s, still in the fleet of devices I support. The consumer and businesses are simply tired of this bs.
The new iPhone Pros appear to mark a shift; it's the same shift the Mac Pro announcement did in June, and was also a source of contention on Hacker News.
It's hard to name the more expensive version to convey it's better without in turn suggesting the cheaper one is shittier.
"Pro" lets you do that by suggesting that it's for a different audience, allowing consumers of the budget model to save face so to speak (I don't need it because I'm not a professional).
I'd imagine people getting into vlogging and such, or even people who just want to be "that cool and popular" (especially younger people) that would buy in to the "Pro" moniker.
I made the point elsewhere, but I think that ignores "professionals in the workplace doing this alongside other things". These can easily be "pro" for content creation teams, like editorial staff for capturing Stories from events and the like.
Just because they're not replacements for high-end commercial photography equipment doesn't mean they're not being used as intended by professionals.
Completely agree that their terminology might be skewing, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of their use in a professional context, even if the users aren't "photography professionals" themselves.
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Naturally it's just a marketing term.
This works very well when most of the required technologies are already there for bringing their idea to the reality so Apple doesn't have to push the state of the art for the manufacturing technologies. Multi-touch, Retina Display, Apple designed SoC were all good examples where this strategy worked out very well.
The trouble is that now most of the low hanging fruits are gone and the rest of innovation opportunities lie within the manufacturer side and require non-trivial investments. For instance, getting rid of notch requires camera under screen technology. This is being developed by Samsung, their competitor. The same thing applies to fingerprint sensor under screen. While all the competitors are shipping 5G in their flagships, iPhone 11 couldn't ship 5G due to their hard dependency on Qualcomm. In short, the current landscape doesn't allow Apple to keep itself on the bleeding edge in the smartphone business.
I'm curious about how Apple will address this problem. Disappointingly, I haven't seen any positive signal to indicate that Apple has a good plan to address this issue. It first tried a high-price, even-more-premium strategy and this turned out to be a disastrous one. Apple now tries to expand into the services business and chooses to be a competitor to its own ecosystem by exercising its dominant position. I'm pretty sure that this plan will work very well, maybe too well sufficient to de-prioritize the iPhone business just enough to keep its marketshare around 3~40% and make no more commitments. I hope I'm wrong.
Unfortunately, Apple's R&D spend won't likely enable what they want to do on their phone. A large number of sources consistently suggests that Apple is experimenting various options to get rid of notch, but all those options depends on display manufacturers.
> "Signals" is not something Apple likes to give, which is probably why you aren't seeing any.
Apple definitely wants to prove their iPhone business has more potential to grow; why would they hide the growth potential of the largest business to their investors? The truth is that it doesn't see more potentials on its phone business and this is why Apple is aggressively investing into services business.
> I would argue that hardware+software integration is more important than 5G, underscreen fingerprint, or notchless design combined.
I wouldn't argue on a subjective issue, but just note that iPhone used to have the best hardware, software and their integration during Steve's era, which is not true anymore for hardware and the gap is increasing. As a 10 year iPhone user, this is very disappointing.
Wozniak knows how to put it together more efficiently and Jobs scoured catalogs to get the best deals and knew where to source in the valley.
The secret sauce is just the Apple way of putting it together and serving it to you.
The clone wars era taught them to stop doing that but those days have been so far spread to now that this we're finding ourselves repeating similar mistakes.
Additionally there was also the Apple era of just rebranding shit for the sake of establishing halos and ecosystems. There were a period of Apple branded Sony monitors and Apple branded printers. They opted out of that and went with the retail option these days. At least they learned from that.
But yes, Apple got bigger. What once was getting chips from Sunnyvale to Cupertino is now getting chips from Shenzhen to Cupertino. And the milestone we've hit now is Apple today announcing a new camera with phone communication abilities.
Apart from Samsung which does Full vertical ownership, there isn't any other company which does that. And Huawei uses Foxconn as well, OLED from BOE, NAND and DRAM from Multiple Sources etc. There is nothing from Huawei that shows Full Vertical Ownership.
>While all the competitors are shipping 5G in their flagships, iPhone 11 couldn't ship 5G due to their hard dependency on Qualcomm. In short, the current landscape doesn't allow Apple to keep itself on the bleeding edge in the smartphone business.
Apple wasn't the first with 4G, but they drove 4G adoption. And 5G isn't even ready, all current 5G solution on the market are big, bulky and power hungry. But it is great people are driven into these marketing hype, only by doing so they could recoup some of their R&D investment. For Apple, they will move to 5G when it is ready.
Yes it didn't allow Apple to be on the bleeding Edge of Foldable Screen. Look at what happen to Samsung. Bleeding Edge means nothing. Not everything has a first mover advantage. Innovation doesn't just requires Bleeding edge, that is Invention. Innovation requires Invention that brings Value to masses, and for that to happen, pricing is often an obstacle.
Apple strengths are in integration, design and marketing. Like mentioned, other phones had NFC payments way before the iPhone, but I'd say mobile phone payment really took off when Apple Pay came out. That's the power of marketing and influence at work.
I would place unmatched iOS security first, strong privacy stance second, well before marketing.
Camera under the screen etc. are gimmicks that don't provide real value to customers. On the other hand, having the most performant SoC combined with the most performant software does provide real value.
Until Apple are able to break out of this mould I feel they'll be stuck at this combination of
a) uninteresting yearly iterations
b) ever increasing base phone prices for little end user gain
I don't thinkt hey're able to paint themselves out of this corner on the smartphone front.
They have iOS as a decent but certainly not impregnable moat for iPhone. Some brand new groundbreaking product will be needed very soon to prevent the Apple stock price from steadily declining. (It already starting plateauing 15 months ago.)
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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.
This feature was introduced in 2014. The timing of the removal makes me think it's related to the departure of Jony Ives.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Neither 11 nor 11 Pro have 3D Touch.
Humans are only sensitive to change. A positive change feels good. No change feels normal. A negative change feels awful. A sensible person would try to fill their life with positive change.
Are folks running ML training algorithms on their phones? Why does one need the "fastest phone"? How many apps are there for which how fast your phone is even matters? I am not saying people shouldn't buy these phones but the pricing on these things is absolutely insane, it seems people are basically paying an Apple tax on these devices. Even high end devices from other manufacturers are not priced this crazy.
95% of bankers and doctors driving BMW or Mercedes don’t use these features but still pay for them. Same with phones but a $1000 iPhone is far more in reach of aspirational buyers than a $50k German car.
We shouldn't need them, but we do, because the quality of consumer software is very poor these days. To enable "rapid" and "agile" development, where "customer value" is delivered "continuously", developers write under-optimised, resource-hungry software that never gets refactored.
I’ll buy one because I like buying new/nice things and the fact that for $1200 I’ll get a lot of value out of it, due to how much I use my phone is an added bonus.
This is definitely not a compelling upgrade for many people.
Well, I do (although it's a base model Hyundai). I also still use an iPhone SE and will do for the foreseeable future.
I consider myself to have been "tricked by business" (as Macklemore would put it) when I bought a Tesla Model X in 2016. It replaced a 2014 LEAF, and I can honestly say that I regretted it and wished I had kept the LEAF. The difference in cost didn't make up for the difference in overall driving experience and utility for me. I've since traded in the Tesla for cheaper PHEV, and I'm much happier with that now.
I also am still using a Pixel 2. Nothing about anything else on the market today seems compelling enough to convince me to replace it. So I guess I'm joining a chorus on this thread.
Climate change is a big deal. Electronic waste pollution is a big deal. Apple breaking labor laws is a big deal.
This is what the richest company in the history of humanity is here for: making feel good gadgets. What an achievement. Meanwhile: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/apple-foxconn-caught...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Refurb pricing on the iPhone 8 is now $379 (64GB) / $509 (256 GB).
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.
[EDIT: "brand" instead of "branch"]
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.
Now would I buy another 64 gig again? Probably not, at least with arcade coming and knowing how fast the games eat up space.
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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.
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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.
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I doubt it, those events get gasps and thunderous applause over the most basic features that competitors have had for a while.
I have an iPhone 7 Plus and comparing it to the iPhone 11 versions I don't see anything in the latter that I'd upgrade for. The best I could come up with would maybe be the watch but that's only because I have a Series 1 that is probably on its last legs. If I'm being honest, however, when the Series 1 goes I'll probably go back to my $30 Timex. $5/mo for Arcade and TV+ each is a great price but then again, at least for the latter, I'd be paying a little over a third of the price of Netflix for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the content. Sure they'll be adding more but nothing they have now really gets me excited to watch.
I used to so look forward to product announcements because it was like being a kid again. Looking through the Christmas catalog at all the things I'd love to have. Imagining how my life might be better "if I just had that new iPhone!" Now? Meh.
I'm genuinely sad. I feel like it's the end of a very long era.
I mean I have an iPhone 8 and what I see are:
- An edge-to-edge screen
- Longer battery life
- Faster processors
- Improved cameras (don't care much myself but it is still improved)
- FaceID
- Updated Wifi and LTE technologies (not sure how much hype that is)
- More durable (apparently) and more water resistant (at least compared to my 8)
- Multiple wireless headphone support (not sure I need this either but it is still a feature others will use)
I don't need to upgrade for any of these things, which is probably a good thing in terms of e-waste, but it is still definitely a clear upgrade from my current phone.
What would make me "upgrade" (not sure if I can really call that an upgrade in the absence of a headphone port).
Must-haves:
1. USB-C
2. 5G support using a single-chip like the Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 baseband chipset (not a separate 4g and 5G chip as with the X50)
3. No more stupid notch
Nice to have:
4. Some sort of anti-slip ridges or grip milled into the casework
5. Getting TouchID back
6. No more stupid lens bump
There were zero rumors of this, it was just wishful thinking, but man if I didn't dream...
The only other update I want is more battery life. They’re thin enough; make them a third thicker with all of that used for battery. Or just thicker so the new camera is flush against the back casing.
https://ibb.co/yF5FSbp
Is there any use case where WiFi + Bluetooth hotspot makes more sense than enabling each separately. Bluetooth is a huge battery drain. To avoid this as it is now, I have to select Wifi + Bluetooh, wait for my device to connect via WiFi then go back to settings and disable bluetooth. If I forgot to do so, my battery is gone in a few hours.
With battery life being such a priority, I'm genuinely puzzled as to why this hasn't already been implemented.
I don't want the screen going to the edge. I want the fingerprint thing, not FaceID.
The rest are nice I guess, but those two things are the sticking points.
I don't think anyone doubts the "clear upgrade" part. It's the "need" part we're talking about, here.
Sic.. they don’t even really try to sell a longer battery life, they just are content of getting through the day
- a larger screen option. 6.5 isn’t enough
- a mini pencil to use on that larger screen
- some type of integrated headset or device to use the new iPhone as a VR/AR headset
- Better battery life. I know they announced this, but the batteries need to be 10-100x better. I can’t use my phone all day without it dying. I should be able to use it for a week without dying
Thought of a few more that would have been good:
- a flip phone option, something really innovative (not a joke)
- a much smaller version of the iPhone. Like an iPhone nano
- a gaming version of the iPhone that had a gpu and could run steam
I know some of these sound like science fiction, but that’s kind of the point for Apple events. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all next level. What have we gotten from Apple in the last 5 years? Headphones? A notification machine for your wrist?
This is the golden age of any technology; the lack of something great, and seeing it approach from the horizon, then repeating with the next thing.
Smartphones definitely seem to be converging on a form factor and a feature set. This is what happened to "feature" phones that we all had just before the smartphone became available. Do you remember any features you were dying to have in your next flip-phone? I don't. They had matured.
What will happen after smartphones? It's anyone's guess, and I'd say that whoever is going to invent that new device already has the idea and is trying to get it developed.
I get that 5-10 years ago it was a totally different field, when technology wasn't matured, and everything they announced was something groundbreaking.
But now, besides from the yearly camera and chip improvements, I honestly can't think of anything I would want in a smartphone.
By removing the home button, Apple turned iPhone into a device completely controlled by gestures. It's arguably the biggest UX change since the first iPhone, and one that was surprisingly unreported at the time. It makes the phone feel more cohesive, and the initial impression, once you learn the app switching gestures, is vaguely futuristic. FaceID works great, too, and certainly feels futuristic, though on its own it's not really a game changer. It's the integration into the buttonless UX that makes it a worthwhile feature.
(I actually wish there was also a fingerprint sensor, because the FaceID doesn't work well for contactless terminal such as the ones you find in stores -- you have to first hold the phone near the reader, then pick a card, then hold the phone at the right angle for it to recognize your face, then bring it back to the reader. Not ideal, though someone claimed the new phones would do FaceID at steeper angles, so maybe it's gotten better.)
I don’t have any problems with FaceID — it’s more reliable and easier than TouchID for me. I live in a rainy place, though. Obviously a YMMV situation.
With TouchID do you just put your finger on the home button and hold it by the reader?
First and most noticeably they no long have a "master of ceremony" someone that is not only excited by the products but also enthusiastic to show them off to you. This is exemplified with no more "One More thing..."
Second, their designs are old and tired. I don't know if Ive ran out of Braun/Rams designs to borrow from or if the execs fear any major design changes, but Apple has become too comfortable with their design language and unfortunately they are starting to show a lack of taste (looking at you over-sized camera bump)
Third, the products have matured. Apple hasn't really done anything new or exciting with their lineup. Gone are the days you expected to see a new product that is lifestyle changing. Now days you might see a spec bump, or a change in product to make it thinner, but nothing that really stands out as "Wow I've gotta have that". The thing I remember most from the last two announcements were features targeting "influencers" - Animoji's and "Slofies".
Finally, I don't feel apple understands the waning in their product appeal. Be it on price or function, I see a lot less Apple products at coffee shops and colleges these days.
Smartphones are pretty much done. The one thing I'd upgrade for is apparently not possible with current technology: A display that works perfectly in sunlight, being illuminated by it instead of trying to compete with it. Other than that? I can't even think of something!
It'd be much easier to use my phone for what I want to use my phone for -- productivity and being connected (and occasionally looking things up online). Instead, my phone successfully hypnotizes me with it's bright colors and videos. More and more, I find myself using my phone not because I actually want to, but because it sneak attacked me with some notification that sucked me into doing something that's just wasting my time.
Also, with e-ink, the battery should last at least a couple of days. And, to your point, you could use it under any lighting conditions -- at least I can with my Kindle Paperwhite.
I never understood the need for so many people to tune into those Apple live keynotes. It is of course all marketing and slideware.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that today’s hardware is not changing as fast as it was 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago).
Looking at the quality and size of devices now, I can’t imagine much will be different in 15 years until we get to a major re-invention of things; I.e. holographic devices or implanted smartphones, things that you dream about. The screen quality is just so great already that I can’t imagine it being 1000x better - like you might compare an iPhone to a mid-90s gameboy screen or early Nokia candy-bar phone displays & UI.
What can we possibly expect from new devices besides more storage, slightly more pixels, and slightly more powerful processing?
The first iPhone at "everyone had"[1] came out a little over 11 years ago.
I'd hazard a guess most people who were in their ~mid 20's back in 2008 is now in their ~mid 30's, and have probably lost a lot interest in "new and shiny thing".
I'm swiftly approaching 40, and what gets me excited has changed dramatically in the past decade.
We'll see how long the line up is on release day, that'll give as an indicator of how out of touch us old folk are.
1. iPhone 3G available in 22 countries for as compared the original iPhone available in only 7 countries, according to the Wikipedia articles for each
Now I can have my other number without worrying about green bubbles. Instant clout. I'll pay for that: the device and additional number monthly.
Goodbye Google Voice/Skype numbers! Well I'll keep gvoice for a third number for shenanigans, like craigslist replies
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