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Comment by binaryapparatus | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of gymnastics this days, from people like John Gruber and Rene Ritchie to downplay what just happened. Truth is their 'explanations' are disturbing to watch and extremely unhelpful to Apple.

Plain and simple, battery is shaved so much that there is no surplus left (in the name of thinness), nothing to amortize normal battery degradation, so iPhone only works beautifully during initial review and couple of months after that.

I really love Apple and some of my daily living depends on it, but this crap has to stop already. Three years back until now there are many missteps in the name of fad and profit, couple of years more and it won't matter since I won't have any market in that ecosystem.

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> Plain and simple, battery is shaved so much that there is no surplus left (in the name of thinness), nothing to amortize normal battery degradation, so iPhone only works beautifully during initial review and couple of months after that.

This is the crux of the issue. Apple is trying to "fix" a design flaw with software.

If it is only one hiccup I woundn't react half as much but we could see exactly the same 'form over function' flaw with Mac Pro recently. Mac Pro has no cooling margin so it often fries graphic cards as soon as you try using it for (surprise) pro stuff.

I really dislike gimmicks over reliability, and I count race to thinness there too, that can be seen with Apple in last couple of years.

> There is a lot of gymnastics this days,

> iPhone only works beautifully during initial review and couple of months after that.

I guess both sides are guilty.

> Plain and simple, battery is shaved so much that there is no surplus left

So what do we gain by a larger battery? Only that the performance envelope would be pushed even higher. You’re basically arguing for degrading the performance of the phone from day one rather than degrading it over time. Matter of preference I guess

I am arguing that you can't create the system where only 100% of speed can be achieved by having 100% non-degraded battery. iPhone must have 10-20% security margin in battery capacity so when battery degrades it doesn't require degrading performance. That can be achieved by 10% thicker phone, right?

That’s why I’ve been wanting an iPhone Pro since about the iPhone 5. A bit thicker, maybe even kind of blocky a la iPhone 4, so you can a decent battery in there. About the size of an iPhone 5 because real pros have shit to do, not watch movies. And since we’re pros, screw playing games on it, so you can put a slower, battery-sipping CPU in there. IP67 water resistance. I’d buy one tomorrow. What I describe is almost the SE, but the SE is just going to have the same problems delayed a year.

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