Letter from Tim Cook to Apple Investors
apple.com
apple.com
Very interesting that Apple included this as someone who took advantage of a $29 battery replacement for my 6S just last month. The chain of decisions that took place for this to happen should be a lesson for more companies.
I imagine it went something like this:
- Feedback that iPhones were shutting down unexpectedly due to degraded and/or defective batteries.
- Instead of shouldering the battery replacement immediately, the product team decides to change the performance envelope of the phone.
- The root issue is not addressed.
- Betterygate™ inevitably happens.
- Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone
- Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales.
- Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue in the first place.
Of course there are other factors addressed in the letter, but this issue was notable enough to be included.
Because Apple shouldn’t offer something they don’t want people to use that phrase being very poorly chosen.
No manufacturer gives free battery replacements to 3 year old, out of warranty phones.
And even if they did the issue would still be wide spread because most people wouldn't necessarily come in to have it replaced.
If you had brought your phone in to an Apple Store during that first year I'm sure they would have replaced it for you under warranty.
Repair shops have simply been victims of Apple's aggressive approach to security.
All solved now and third party repairers can do most things.
Meanwhile, Apple does something like https://boingboing.net/2018/10/20/louis-rossman.html
Customs seized it. Not Apple.
> Apple is working with the government
And from the source article
>[Apple] will not allow me to replace batteries, because when I import batteries that are original they’ll tell me the they’re counterfeit and have them stolen from by [CBP].
Customs in general prevents the importation of counterfeit goods. Which they determine by whether that item has a logo and if it came from a legitimate source.
Furthermore, the root issue could have been addressed not just by offering free replacements (They weren't), instead of slowing down phones and having customers believe their devices were obsolete much earlier than anticipated, they could have been transparent about the issue like they are now.
Instead, I ended up with 1 free battery replacement, and 1 heavily subsidized replacement, which certainly factored into my delayed upgrade cycle. Apple experienced this enough to warn their investors about it in this letter.
The point I am making is that NO manufacturer replaces naturally degraded batteries for free. Defective sure. And not just phone manufacturers but I haven't heard of any manufacturer doing that. Batteries are a consumable item.
I do agree however that Apple should have been upfront about their measures they were taking to mitigate battery degradation.
Apple initially refused to replace my battery because they're consumable, even though they later admitted that some batteries were defective. They replaced some batteries for free [1], everyone else got an iOS 10.2.1 update with silent throttling [2]. Note that Apple did not admit to defective batteries until late 2016, and then announced an update with silent throttling in early 2017.
I am not implying that Apple should replace everyone's batteries for free, I am however under the impression that they attempted to keep warranty costs low by denying for as long as they could, and quickly following up with an update that hides the symptoms.
[1] https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/apple-says-ios-10-2-1-has-...
I think the lesson should be to have your battery replacement prices be reasonable to start with and avoid inflating the market for your devices artificially.
The root issue is that batteries degrade over time, for everyone, not just apple. iPhone’s did a good job hiding that away by degrading performance along with it.
The same thing still happens with new phones, but now apple just tells you when it happens. My X crashed in the cold and it said something like “your battery couldn’t provide peak power and your phone is now in degraded performance mode. Disable this setting in the settings app.”
Apple is good about doing things so the user doesn’t have to think about it. The media just ran with that shit and made it out to be way worse than it was.
Look they could have been more transparent about it and gave the user a heads up but I see it as a super reasonable response. I think people would rather have a phone that's slower than one that crashes at 29% battery.
This was a design flaw. Before the throttling update, there were ~1 year old iPhones that would reboot anytime you took a photo or opened a large app if the battery was below 90% charged.
Now I get why Apple did it, a recall would have been far more expensive, but nobody should be surprised by the media shitstorm and lawsuits that followed.
(A) Apple's terrible because they should have released the device with a "better" battery. One that's not "defective". One that could allow the CPU to run at full-throttle all the time for the usable life of the device. They slowed the device secretly to match the capabilities of the battery because they're trying to cover up a manufacturing defect, and they dont want to foot the bill for repairing everyone's phones.
(B) Apple was trying to get the most performance possible out of the physical capabilities of the battery. Unfortunately, it turned out that as the battery aged, due to physical changes, the battery couldn't keep up with the demands of the CPU running as fast as they thought it could over time. To prevent devices from shutting down and forcing users to replace the battery/phone earlier, they scaled CPU performance with battery age and therefore capabilities. Because batteries are consumable and their performance characteristics change over time. This means that the phone always give you just as much performance as physically possible at any given age.
IMO (B) is way, way more likely than (A).
If this was normal behavior, we would see similar throttling on previous iPhones, Android's and laptops.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/26/iphone-slowdown-class-a...
I'm fairly confident that what apple did was the most logical thing. They should have been more informative about it, but it's better than a phone dying at 20%.
This is a limitation of Li-Ion battery technology. It has nothing to do with OS or phone manufacturering like you keep trying to imply.
This isn’t really up for debate.
What is up for debate is how a manufacturer should handle this limitation and communicate it to customers.
Your expectation is entirely unrealistic and emotional. This has nothing to do with the size of the battery.
I guess the take away here is that for the X13, they should just clock it way down from the start and just maximise battery life. Which is not a bad idea.
I want them to say (as you do mention) 'hey, your device has been slowed down because your battery is old. Get it replaced to restore full performance'.
I'd absolutely rather have a slow phone than one that arbitrarily dies at 29%, if and only if I'm given this heads up. At least with one that crashes at 29% battery, I might suspect the battery is dying and get it replaced. The average user has no reason to think that an old battery will slow their phone down, and just ends up with a super-frustrating user experience.
There's a fine line between that approach and the approach of actively disregarding the user's need to control their own device. Apple too often falls on the latter side of the line, and "Batterygate" was a prime example. I certainly appreciate it when I don't have to think about something, but when I eventually do have to think about it, I need to be able to do something about it.
I do give them some credit for fixing the issue by making the phone work the way it should have all along.
I'd have preferred to prevent the CPU throttle by replacing battery within the phone warranty period than having to know it(cpu throttling) afterwards, when my phone was already out of warranty.
I don't see this as any different than the thousands of other OS management decisions like how to manage memory of new tabs or apps when you have a dozen open. What if you want to keep the memory/bandwidth etc... going for one app and not the others? Where's the consent there? Same idea IMO
Put this way - if your car suddenly refused to go above 30mph when previously you'd happilly race along the highway at 70mph, you'd wonder what the hell was wrong, and not think "Oh well, my car manufacturer is just trying to extend the life of my vehicle, it's fine."
The analogy is not quite right though. It’s more like they are forcibly reducing max speed to prevent a high speed stall.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/azdailysun.com/news/local/state...
With a car the obvious answer is: get the thing checked immidiately. He did, and he still had to drive around like this for 2 weeks till a replacement part arrived.
You just disproved your own point. This throttling was only implemented shortly before it got noticed and Apple announced it’s existence, like a couple of months at most. Apparently it wasn’t ‘very noticable’ and the perceived slowdowns were all in your head because for all those years you claim this was going on, it wasn’t.
modern cars retune their engines on the fly based on engine temperature, fuel quality, local air pressure, and other factors. this is to extend the life of the engine in general and to prevent catastrophic failure from knocking.
if you use your car as an appliance (the way most people use phones/computers), you will barely notice the fact that your car's performance is constantly varying other than a bit of sluggishness on a cold morning. to an enthusiast, it's almost impossible not to notice what the car is doing.
most apple customers just want their phone to not crash. if you offer them a performance/stability tradeoff they won't know what to pick anyway.
What a copout. There is no good reason. Your phone already does a 1000 things that you don't know about. Do you also want access to how many cores are used, which ones, what speed they are running at, which frequency your phone is using, how the GPS is getting its location, etc...
Your user experience will always degrade with battery age. This is an unavoidable consequence of using a rechargeable battery. It is physically impossible to run a Li-ion battery through hundreds of charge cycles and have it work just as well as it did the day it was new.
Without power management, the phone would turn off sooner, in some cases a lot sooner. That is also a bad user experience, especially if you need the phone to make an emergency call. This is one example of why using software code to prolong phone availability creates a better user experience, even if comes at the expense of peak performance.
In addition, car batteries have:
a) vastly better charge controllers than the cheap crap that's put in phones
b) better quality cells to start with, or at the very least higher QA standards
c) BETTER CHARGERS. Cheap cellphone chargers can kill the battery with their unclean power, especially when linked with cheap charge controllers in the phone.
d) better thermal management with cooling and (iirc) heating, compared with a cellphone battery that has to endure anything between double-degree negative temps in winter to +40 °C when it gets held by the user or the CPU gets active.
The significance of this will vary, largely based upon the range of the car. Think about how many cycles the battery takes after 100,000 miles on a car with a 100 mile range vs one with a 300 mile range, for example.
But to draw an analogy: that's kind of like saying death is inevitable, so there's nothing we can do about infant mortality. It's absurd to suggest that some kind of physical inevitability caused the symptoms actually observed to any significant extent whatsoever.
Battery aging does not need to lead to any user experience degradation within the first few years at least, because you can overprovision a battery, and because such overprovisioning actually not only provides some runway, but also reduces even the relative rate of battery decay.
Not to mention there are a bunch of other things a manufacturer does that influence battery lifespan. Which design aspects are at fault here? Apple surely knows by now, but they're not saying.
But even if you do choose to allow slow degradation - entirely reasonable! - the rate of decay is largely a matter of choice for the manufacturer. You can sell em to last for at least a decade if not more, or you can push em to the limits and have em degrade in months. Sure, that might cost a few extra grams and cost a few percentage points of the maximum initial charge - but nothing a user would likely notice, let alone mind.
Apple simply sold near dumpster-level quality li-on battery integrations - whether by accident, or to save money, or to limit device lifespan - we can't really know.
Which comes at a cost, in dollars, size and weight. Which is why it's probable no phone manufacturers actually do this.
Basically: you can throttle after the battery is damaged or before. And if you throttle beforehand, you need to throttle a lot less.
Finally, you imply this is costly - but don't forget that apple's phones are amongst the most costly out there, and similar sized batteries are found in devices a small fraction of the cost. Clearly the bill of materials for the battery isn't a going to be a big deal for apple, compare to those competitors, which also happened to ship higher quality batteries.
As you state it is an issue of consent to this throttling, if it was communicated effectively this wouldn’t have been a ‘Gate’.
A good way described in a podcast (think it was Rene Ritchie on the talk show) would be to let the phone crash then pop up a message with an explanation of what’s happened, that the phone is now dialled down to prevent future crashes, you can turn it off in settings etc..
Also, if you have that functionality, why crash and then display a message. Write: Crash prevented, but clocked down. Look what a Raspberry PI does: It flashes an icon if the power supply is not keeping up.
a) replace the battery.
b) opt-in to degraded performance.
c) upgrade my device.
Rather than (in effect) tricking me into an upgrade before it was really needed.
Temperature also effects the performance of the battery so if you're out in the snow it could handle less than being indoors in the heat.
That's why the CPU throttling worked. It kept the CPU from pulling too much power in one instant, and then the battery lasted fine all they way down to 1%
What? No.
First of all, battery degradation is a design parameter. You can easily verify from apple own pages that iPads are rated for twice the charging cycles of iPhones. Apple intentionally included a low rated battery to limit the product life.
> iPhone’s did a good job hiding that away by degrading performance along with it.
And no.
Apple did an awful job, lets not forget the phone where crashing before apple introduced massive throttling killing the device performances. Neither of which sounds like a "good job".
Here's what a good job would have looked like (since apple sells top of the line devices at peak pricing): from the processor minimum voltage and battery degradation metrics figure out a voltage margin that would satisfy the processor constraints after one or even better two years of degradation.
Or, second best, start of with a throttled processor to begin with, but that would have ruined marketing precious "x times faster than previous generation", so they decided to do the shady thing: selling something as fast and killing it's performance six month after purchase.
And of all this what amuse me most is people defending it.
I absolutely agree, Apple should have alerted the user when the throttling was enabled (and given the user a choice) from the day this feature was implemented.
However, I actually prefer my phone being slower and usable rather than fast but randomly shutting down. But somehow this does not seem the general consensus?
Batteries do not all degrade alike; not even close. There are huge differences in the rate of decay, and those are significantly impacted by the way the battery is used in the device (particularly maximum charging level, temperature, discharging level, power draw, charging rate) and the quality of the battery.
Apple did NOT do a good job of degrading performance along with it; because if they had, they could have degraded performance before the battery became damaged. As a ballpark, I'd expect a life extension for the iphones in question by at least a factor 10 would be technically fairly simple and affordable; i.e. this isn't peanuts that apple left on the table here. A 10 year life expectancy is totally doable.
So a battery as old as the decaying iPhone batteries need not have decayed significantly, as should be obvious considering that not all phones (let alone other Li-On battery devices!) degrade to this extent. The fact that iPhones did decay like this is almost entirely due to choices that Apple made (even if they made those choices without considering the consequences). Apple is pretty competent, so I'm a little skeptical they didn't know they were pushing the edge of what's reasonable, but sure, maybe it was incompetence rather than intentional penny-pinching or planned obsolescence.
User choices can matter too, but given how locked down these devices are and how managed the environment and how technically nuanced the necessary user actions are to have an ameliorating effect it's unreasonable to assume users had any practical ability to avoid this outcome.
It's much harder for users to do this reliably than for the battery controller. Damage is maximized when all factors align; that's e.g. why controllers automatically turn of quick charge for the last few percent; similarly you can get away with violating a few rules without too much damage as long as you don't violate them all.
Finally, 0% and 100% charge are nebulous floating concepts. What you're really guessing at are the voltage levels in the cells - but again as a user it's kind of hard to guess those in a simplified UI. Is 95% worse than 5%? Typically high charge is worse but... who knows, without knowing what the controller actually interprets as those percentages.
I've never looked, but I'd be willing to bet you can find software to do most all of this automatically on a rooted android; to what degree you can automate care on other platforms - I'm not sure.
But again, the whole situation is mildly idiotic: all of these things the battery controller/OS can do too, and probably better that any user. There shouldn't be a need for much user handholding. The only thing the OS really can't do is choose for you when you're willing to accept a small amount of damage for a temporary dash of extra charge or quicker charging; a feature that by default kept your battery in "care mode", with a temporary toggle to charge more quickly or to a higher level.
A quick google find stuff like https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_l...; and research articles such as https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/binary/pdf/corporate/tec... and http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/249356/... and https://res.mdpi.com/batteries/batteries-02-00013/article_de... - and I'm sure there are hundreds more. It's not too hard to find info on Li-ion battery degradation, but it's a little much to expect even expert users to actually do much about it (IMHO).
Apple sacrificed battery capacity for size and weight. They built several generations of phone that had just barely enough capacity for a full day of use and could just barely deliver enough current for peak performance. Unlike their Android rivals, they failed to over-provision the battery to account for degradation over time.
The Xiaomi Mi 6 had a 3300mAh battery. The Samsung Galaxy S8 had a 3000mAh battery. The Huawei Mate 9 had a 4000mAh battery. The iPhone 8 has an 1800mAh battery. See the problem?
The iPhone 6 became practically unusable due to throttling. They were not hiding the issue effectively. But they didn't tell people that the issue was the battery. Affected users complained on forums, and tried all kinds of things like factory resets and uninstalling certain apps but couldn't find out why there phone was unusably slow. And Apple support didn't help either. They just suggested to install the latest update.
Only after Batterygate became public did people find out that they needed to swap the battery to fix their phone. I bet a lot of people threw away their phones becUse they didn't know. (why bother replacing the battery when your phone has become unusably slow?)
Similar story on the Mac side.
Current phone lineup (not just Apple) sucks IMO. An untouched SE with latest radio and faster CPU would be worth the upgrade for me.
Maybe 4" is just too small for most, even for one-handed use?
I’m a huge fan of the Xs Max. The near-bezelless display gives you maximum screen size in a relatively slim form factor. Watching videos on this thing is just amazing tbh.
iPhone and Android sales numbers have proven time and again that the vast majority of people want a larger screen. Your best bet is probably the compact Sony Xperia Z series.
(Owner of a huge phone, but not as primary computer)
> gigantic ass-phones.
I'd imagine if they reduced the bezels on the size of the 6 product line, you'd really find the best of both worlds. Both small in the hand, but also enough space to get more screen real estate out of your applications.
An iPhone XS phone doesn't even fit into most women's pockets. It'll be funny if pockets get bigger to accommodate phones.
I’d be surprised if an iPhone 4 based on new power-sipping technology wasn’t within a few percent of the web browsing/movie watching time of the iPhone 8 or similar.
Even if they nailed the form factor, how many people are really willing to switch? You see some people swearing off a brand (on the internet, anyway) when something egregious happens but there's definitely inertia that keeps most people firmly in one ecosystem or the other.
It's sad I will have to move back to Android within a year (I can neither buy big iPhones nor spend those amounts the way the new ones are priced). I wish there were fully functional privacy focussed ROMs that was shipped by Android OEMs.
I'm sure everyone on this discussion board knows why this will never be the case, unfortunately.
With that said, are there any regularly-updated aftermarket ROMs that are privacy-focused? I've had a rough look at LineageOS[1] - a continuation of CyanogenMod - and it seems to mostly fit the bill.
I'm aware of CopperheadOS, but they had a "touch" of infighting about half a year ago[2] and mostly dissolved.
I too am moving away from Apple products, for the same reason. They are reaching expense levels (especially in my country) that I simply can't justify when I can get a HP or Lenovo business-grade laptop with drastically better hardware specifications and install simply OpenSUSE on it. Without going all-in on the Apple ecosystem to fully reap the rewards, it's simply not worth it for me to use any of them.
Does Apple report enough data for us to attempt to make correlations between average height (as a proxy for hand size) per country and purchasing decisions?
>- Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone
> - Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales.
> - Apple misses their earnings target
This is a gross misrepresentation of the report which clearly states "Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline."
Battery replacements may have been notable, but it is incorrect to imply that they were the dominant factor.
No it doesn't, only that it was "notable enough".
The last line is a dodge because, obviously, China's economy is actually the main culprit stated in the report. But I guess some people are going to hear what they want to hear.
I have an iPhone 6s and my wife had a 6 and needed a new phone. We bought a new Xr but it was a small fortune, even though we're both working in IT and having good income. The phone is a brick and I saw lots of slicker Android phones costing half the price and providing a very similar if not better experience.
My next phone is very unlikely to be an iPhone.
Like what you're doing with these replies and your focus on something the OP didn't say?
OP is attempting to place causation on the battery problem for the earnings miss or the valuation loss.
That is not supported by the evidence, which clearly shows that the primary cause had nothing to do with the Western market at all.
It's fair criticism, OP is discussing 5% of the problem and presenting it as if it's 100%.
OP not implying causation, they're calling something interesting out.
> "It went something like this:"
> ....
>- Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit ?longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales.
>- Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue in the first place.
It's an extremely clear post they made, IMO
There's is a causative link, which is why Apple included it in this report. How is it possible to miss that connection?
Now that we all can agree swish_bob is wrong, the problem remains that OP misrepresented the primacy of the factors stated in the report.
I don't get that in the least little bit from what he wrote. Nothing in his post even references the earnings drop.
“- Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer...
- Apple misses their earnings target”
Direct quote.
No he didn't, stop making stuff up. Apple would not have bothered to mention the battery issue if it didn't have a material impact on their business.
> - Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales.
> - Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue in the first place.
There's an implicit "because of this" between the two bullet points.
Again, it's painting a problem that is 5% of the issue as if it's 100%.
China was the vast majority of this decline, as the earnings reports show.
I have no earthly idea why people are ignoring this fact so badly.
Not about this being the most significant factor. You've decided to infer that from the list - most of us didn't because he _explicitly_ says so in his last sentence. They also had influence over this particular issue, unlike the macroeconomics of China.
It absolutely is suggested, if not implicitly then by omission.
> They also had influence over this particular issue, unlike the macroeconomics of China.
Right, but the more it's discussed, the more it feels like people don't want to talk about the slowing economy in China.
What phone you've got matters little as a result. So Apple doesn't enjoy its usual iOS-stickiness factor.
They are absolutely typical Chinese consumers in this regard. As soon as iPhone because hard to distinguish from other phones they switched away. As soon as iPhones became clearly distinguishable again they switched back. This is not just an observation, they say this is why they did it.
I think there are actually three factors hitting Apple in China this year. One is that a disproportionate number of purchasers got the X when it came out because it was so distinctive bringing forward purchases from this year, then there are a lot of Android phones now that look like the X models and the new X models don't look enough different from the original X to look new, finally the economy in China is pretty soft right now and people there are worried about the future.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-no-Apple-store-in-India-1
I can’t imagine Apple headquarters wanting to ignore a 100 million rich people market, but obviously it’s not worth the trade off of having to become business partners with someone they don’t want to be partners with.
I think he forgets to mention lack of innovation. It was the first year that I wasn't surprised from the new iPhone at all and none of my friends did. At this point I don't see much difference in having an X model vs XS.
You'll tell me that they had S models in the past and worked fine for them, sure... its not the same market anymore. There are very strong competitors using android which has also evolved and its doing really well as an OS vs what it was in the past at way cheaper prices.
At the price tag those iPhones are coming at plus the lack of innovation, I only see a constant drop in sales.
Personally I upgraded from an iPhone 7 to XS Max, my wife has an iPhone X and I don't see any difference between them, only the size. That plus the fact that I got my hands on some new android phones and got to use them made me think that I might change to android when my next upgrade is due. The apple ecosystem seems to be okish but I can't really say that it will keep me from changing. And truth be told there are quite a few solutions out there for them to become innovative again like the new ipad pro... have it use OS instead of iOS, that will definitely make people switch over to that and what comes with its ecosystem e.g pairing your mobile phone etc. Also airpods 2, just make some airpods with water resistance etc maybe improve connectivity a bit. Its not like we are requesting crazy innovation here, just simple solutions that will make us stick with the apple ecosystem.
Disclaimer: I was an avid windows user and android phone user up till iphone 5s came out, I switched to 5s and the difference on iOS quality vs Android was massive. Due to work I also started working with a mac and so I joined the ecosystem and I can't say am very displeased apart from the price tag, but seeing how Android has progressed over the years and how stock Android can be even superior to iOS has made me thinking of changing back.
Which competitors are innovating better than Apple?
With AirPods, they mentioned yesterday that they were supply constrained throughout the holiday quarter. I'm not sure innovation on that product is an issue here if they can't keep the current version stocked enough to meet demand anyways.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/815565/data-reportedly-signal...
It would seem that this issue is far broader than simply Apple's strategy alone.
—more attractive screen
—faster
—much better camera, which is not a big thing for me, but always nice to have
—size in pocket is fine, but the size is annoying for on-screen reachability
—FaceID is better than TouchID in two particular ways: in-app authentications and unlocking the phone with wet fingers (which is common because of my work)
—the swipe down for Control Center is far less convenient on the XS because there's a much smaller target area for beginning the gesture
—the XS can't by default show the battery percentage, and for long-term device life I preserve my battery (I always run in low-power mode, even), so this is information I like visible at a glance
There's no doubt the XS is a more capable device than the 6S, but for how I use a smartphone the gains are not particularly beneficial. Maybe after I add the second phone line to increase the telecommunications divide between myself and my business I'll appreciate the XS more, but for now I am regularly reminded how much I enjoy the 6S when I pick it up to use it as an iPod.
Except, no, it doesn't.
Unethical LPT: Always buy the extended 'protection plan' since this problem happens so reliably around the two year mark. Call complaining that your phone crashes when it's low on battery and get a new phone for like $100. Cheapest way to get 4-5 years out of a single phone purchase.
And since it's been two years since you bought the device they'll almost always give you a better phone as a replacement.
Now someone at Apple thought instead of shutting the phone why not slow it down so that user can still make that urgent call. That's brilliant and all phones should emulate it. Apple's bad is the did it silently so user didn't know it was a battery problem, the blamed os updates, hardware, weather but not the battery, because degraded batteries never slowed down any phone including iPhone till now. So instead of getting battery replaced they bought a new phone which as a 'side-effect' was beneficial for Apple.
Now once people figured it out they were outraged, so as a PR measure Apple gave discounted battery replacement and once people did that phone was good enough again so delayed new phone purchase. Now as karma striking, all this news and discounted battery may have nudged users who otherwise chuck their phone every two years to get the battery replaced and the fact new device is costing 1000 fucking usd, some delayed for another year.
So this means that 12 months ago I bought a 32GB SE for 100 pounds, sold my 16GB model for 95 pounds (SE prices seem to bottom out around there) and got a brand new model a year later for free. At an overall cost of five pounds I've gotten a phone (well, two phones) that's hopefully gonna last me a total of 3 years. Beyond the inconvenience of catering for a 320px wide phone in the app store, it's not hard to see why Apple felt the need to kill it.
I'd rather use an external battery pack than change from my 6S.
However, when my MBP literally caught fire in my bed while I was asleep and melted the keyboard, apple refused to fix it as the warranty was two weeks out and they claimed that the "liquid sensors had been triggered at some point in the past - and while apple recognizes that the machine catching fire was a safety issue - they didnt find reason to justify fixing the machine. You can purchase a new MBP for $1,299 - or we can replace all the guts of your machine for $1,500"
Bullshit.
iPhone 5c was a cheap and performant phone with a good ecosystem.
Apple made everything worse through updates, bloat, and price increases.
My phone became so impossibly slow that I bought the cheapest but also nicest walmart phone I could on a whim (LG Zone4).
It's been so amazingly performant for just $100 that I would never, ever consider buying an expensive phone again, ESPECIALLY not one from Apple!!
And that's not because of the battery, that's just because of the software updates. Like, the CPU didn't lose any MHz along the way.
If Android doesn't follow the same path then I will be good-- if they do, then onto the next idea!
The software changed its requirements. Within reasonable limits that's just the nature of technological advancement and availability of faster hardware. I don't know if the performance degradation of iOS 11 and 10 were reasonable, but judging by user feedback Apple seems to have increased performance with iOS 12, particularly for older devices. Of course that comes too late for the iPhone 5C, which isn't supported anymore.
I don't want to hate on Apple. I have no allegiances to anyone in particular. I just am a cheapo user that values basic functionality, some speed, some longevity.
I don't put a premium on privacy or animojis or nice cameras or huge amounts of storage :)
And phones are not like cars, even in the post Moore’s Law world, silicone improves quite a bit.
You could get the exact same Apple Battery from China for about $7 including shipping. I would bet Apple have them for less than $5. Even at a reduced cost of $29, there is still $25 margin for Apple. Even if you subtract the operational cost involves, I doubt Apple ever subsidizes.
Also, a $7 battery from China is a gamble especially for something heavily used and physically next to your body a lot of the time. I'm sure you'd get a battery that had the same physical size and stated spec, but I'd be skeptical it'd have gone through the same QC. You could get one from a bum batch, or a relabeled one operating out of spec. You just don't know.
Not to mention Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties.
A better Spec battery cost less than $7 from LG Chem. BOM cost on battery are not expensive at all, and it is not a secret.
>Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties
Congratulations, you played yourself.
Just in case you did't know.
They explicitly write about a sharp turndown in China.
The guidances drops from 89-93 to 84 (about 8%). From what they are writing that all can be accounted for by the drop of revenue in China. Since China accounts for around 1/5 of Apple's revenue - the drop must have been around 40%-50%.
Which is a lot for a single quarter.
Also notice the reaction in the forex market. That certainly indicates that this is a broader issue.
In the bigger picture Trump has decided that a trade war with China is a good idea, so of course there are going to be unpleasant consequences.
Cook's reign has been rather miserly - pay more for less. It's been an effective short-term strategy for investor returns, but it hasn't created a solid foundation for future expansion, and has also given users very little to be proud of.
Where does Apple want to be five years from now? iPhone XIIIS? MacBook Hydrogen? Mac Pro Gold Professional Edition? There's only so far you can push that boat before the lustre fades.
Apple market share can still grow in established markets (what percentage of laptops are macs, what percentage of phones are ios).
Emerging markets; China, India, Africa can still grow for Apple.
And then of course they can innovate; find new product categories, services ...
Indian market for Apple has been shrinking because of the ridiculous prices for Apple charges in India. Samsung, One Plus and others now dominate there.
There is also a massive slowdown of the Chinese economy that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the trade war.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/815565/data-reportedly-signal...
It’s extremely obvious they weren’t ready for this quantity of repairs.
My wife's brother has a 6S Plus. My mother has 7. They work amazingly well and fast. To them X / XS / XS Max are basically "spend 1300 EUR to get a bezel-less phone and nothing else"... and in a way, they are correct. Many people don't care about FaceID or OLED screens.
Smartphone market is nearly saturated. It's time for more realistic pricing. And I am saying this is a loyal Apple user.
Just before Christmas I bought an iPhone 6S for $99 from AT&T. That’s a very realistic price for a very nice phone!
Fine print: I had to pay $145 plus tax but $45 is credited to me for monthly charges. The phone is locked to AT&T for 3 months. After Christmas the price has gone back to $199.
But I could have been clearer: I meant the newest models.
EDIT
Take a look at this video from Microsoft where they show how hover and squeeze gestures can dramatically improve the phone experience: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595564/microsoft-3d-touc... This shows there is plenty of room for innovation, Apple just isn't innovating fast enough.
More hidden UI in a car seems like the absolute worst place to use such a hardware feature. Drivers should have their eyes on the road, not staring at the screen while they try to get their finger just the right distance to make some UI element pop up.
Edit: the linked Microsoft demo is pretty cool, and could improve mobile devices, but is exactly what I was thinking should not be in a car control surface.
I agree Apple -- and everybody else -- does little to no innovation in the smartphone sector but I don't feel that's the only factor. At certain point prices are so high that people refuse to buy and then do post-hoc rationalization. My wife's brother loves the idea of a bezel-less phone but he is not in a situation to spend the ~1000 EUR on an iPhone X or ~1500 EUR on an XS Max so he just said "screw that, it's not worth it". It seems that many others are doing the same.
I don't necessarily disagree with you -- just adding that IMO there's a maximum price you should not test your loyal buyers with no matter how much can you sweeten the deal otherwise.
It’s so utterly insane that I just cannot imagine how people justify buying one to themselves.
Consider it like buying an expensive bed and mattress because you use them an awful lot (20-30% of your life, pretty much, for most people.)
It kinda is, though. If I spent a huge amount on something and never used it, that would be a status symbol thing.
> the added value of a 1400 Euro phone over e.g. an iPhone 8
That's implying there's no difference worth the additional cost. The X has a better, bigger display than the 8; better camera(s); better battery; all things which are extremely relevant to my daily use.
But you should not generalize. Many people, me included, made a rational analysis and chose the iPhone for the unqestionable benefits it offers (and for personal philosophy reasons like Apple's stand on privacy).
As usual, it's not about if something is "overpriced". It's about if the device commands enough added value so the customer deems the price fair. MANY people, me included, find the Apple tech expensive. But for the things I am looking for in my mobile and personal computing needs they don't have competition. So we swallow the price and pay up. It's pretty simple.
I feel a lot of people feel the need to express contempt and call many Apple users "iSheep" but they are missing a lot of legitimate factors in the process.
Unfortunately, my device is needed also for work -- and the ways I am using it are very strictly bound to the smartphone format.
I am not a social networks addict. My device works for me, not I for it. But I still need the bigger screen, the touchscreen and all the apps.
Which is baffling. A screen protector and case will cost you about GBP20-30 and they work. I closed a taxi door on my iPhone X last year - all that happened was the screen protector broke and there was a dirty scuff on the case.
I've dropped my phones countless times and only once has the screen cracked[1] (and then I didn't have a screen protector on.)
[1] Which was an internal hairline that you couldn't see unless it reflected external light just right. Apple Store said they'd never seen a crack like it and replaced the whole phone immediately without question.
It's a solid 3-5 years investment especially if you use it a lot -- like I do.
The smartphone as a product has peaked for the moment. Apple's growth will eventually stop as it's tapped out all its markets. It has nothing to do with innovation.
Apple has a lot of opportunities to innovate outside of smartphones though. They can be a luxury version of Nintendo, innovating on the front of HCI, not repeating 'Thinner, Faster and Pricier' recipe every year.
Apple has a smash-hit already in the Watch, which is an amazing technological achievement and a sales success. But nothing they can do measures up against the explosive growth of smartphones, so all their innovation will be overlooked in any case. If the complaint is that smart watches are too small of a product for Apple (not what I'm saying, but a lot of eggheads out there) then "a luxury version of nintendo" won't sell nearly well enough to matter at all.
But it doesn't help that Apple is trying to compensate for slower sales with higher prices. They are digging themselves deeper that way.
One success of the iPhone is that regardless of what is happening a user can alway simply press the home button and be back at the home screen. I think one of issues with the new X phones is that the lose this.
My mum / gran can use an iPhone because of this - they never feel intimidated or confused by it. Start to throw in new, undiscoverable interaction gestures and you start to lose this simplicity.
I miss more physical buttons. The first semi-smartphone devices were perfect. They had 6-10 physical buttons and still plenty of screen. Nowadays everything is gestures. :(
With emerging tech like radar-like detectiong of gestures above the screen I feel this trend will become even worse.
I suspect people like to throw a lot of airy claims about terms like innovation without understanding what exactly does that even mean vs. what do they actually mean, although we'd need less hand-waviness and more well-stated gripes to be sure.
...Hell, these are not innovations. They are baseline expectations, IMO anyway. Let's not even mention AppStore which is an awful experience overall. I literally type the exact name of an app and AppStore cannot find it! Discoverability is a joke.
I like Apple's ecosystem better for reasons I won't list so as not to make this comment huge. But it's IMO undeniable that Apple has been coasting for a while now.
They should take a few hints from Android, the now dead Windows Mobile, and Sailfish OS.
I don't demand Iron Man level of UI and usability with holographics and intuitive blend of real world and VR interaction. I demand a more modern and smooth experience though. And even on a very strong device like the iPad Pro 10.5" and an iPhone X, many Apple apps still manage to lag and take several seconds to respond.
This is inexcusable.
The OLED screen is arguably a downgrade because it uses flickering PWM brightness control.
See here for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation
Not sure how specifically it's done for OLED though.
I don't believe it exists, and I place this in the same category of people who think that wifi makes them sick.
The problem is phantom array effect artifacts when you move your eyes. These appear and disappear in response to eye movement, so they can be perceived as motion, which is distracting to some people. I personally find PWM very obvious and annoying, but I suspect I have unusually weak saccadic masking.
Is this intrinsic to oled, or will future versions be able to avoid this?
You may not be bothered by it, mind you. I just tend towards dry/sensitive eyes and don't want to aggravate it.
However, you can use reduce white point and a higher brightness at night to avoid the flicker. Can be triggered with accessibility shortcut.
I have seen the videos (especially review videos) where the flicker on the camera is present from another camera, but I haven't noticed any eye strain or any problems with this device. If anything, I'm using it more than my previous ones because reading text on it is so enjoyable with the better screen.
The main people affected are those who get headaches, would you say? Maybe I should reconsider.
That's not to say no one can be bothered by it. But it's much less likely to bother anyone. I have sensitive eyes and tend to notice flickering at anything less than ~70hz. My Xs hasn't bothered me and I tend to use very low brightness even in well lit env.
I don’t care about new features such as Face ID. I do look with envy at the X camera though.
My next phone might be another 7 unless Apple drastically cuts prices or introduces an iPhone 9 with the X camera.
There is no justification for adding 50-100% to the monthly cost of a smartphone in 2019 when it’s the first time I don’t really need a faster phone!
Apple obviously realize that if they had a reasonably priced phone it would eat all their XR/XS sales, but the product strategy just looks like it risks losing customers to Huawei/Samsung.
I know people who can easily buy 10x iPhones for their entire family and part of their relatives -- and they refuse. These are people who can spend $50k and almost wouldn't notice and even they think the modern iPhones have taken the price too far.
They did address this.
Gmail has been hard to get away from though because of my account but I hope to take care of that soon.
I’m more interested in using the best product for what I want to do. While that is sure to be subjective it feels like Apple is the best to me.
That being said, I’m not able to stick to DDG. Every time I do a search and I don’t find what I’m looking for on DDG I think, “I bet Google would have found it”. However when I’m on Google and I don’t find what I’m looking for I think, “I just didn’t write a good query”. That mental hurdle is hard to get over.
Safari vs Chrome is another one where I choose Google. The web developer tools for the browser and the integration with Node/V8 seem so much better. If I were not a developer I imagine I could prefer Safari but it’s too hard to pretend when it’s what I do all day.
Same here. It doesn't help that 80% of the time I'm having the former issue, I copy the query to Google and the top hit is perfect, a hit which didn't even show up 30 results down on ddg.
I should try copying the other way, but Google does seem objectively better (doesn't stop me trying to use ddg and only go to Google manually as a fallback).
Google does a ton of personalization of search results, whereas DDG doesn't, so it's not really a fair comparison. I've found that, with my better queries, StartPage (anonymous Google results) isn't much better, so the difference is likely Google getting to know you better.
The country localisation gets in the way as often as it doesn't for normal usage, but given that I use ddg by default, many of the queries I use Google for are the ones I actually want localised. (Ddg is even worse at searching in other languages, which gets slightly better if you manually change the search language on the results page, but not much.)
I'll give startpage a try. I thought Google blocked (or at least CAPTCHAd) third parties from using the search without paying for every query (their search api is super expensive), so I didn't look for a proxying service before. Thanks for the tip :)
The last Google product I'm having trouble ditching is Drive. I like accessing spreadsheets everywhere, including my phone, and I find LibreOffice less intuitive, and self hosted LibreOffice Online sucks. I'm looking at OnlyOffice, but the resource requirements make hosting on a VPS expensive, so I'll have to get a machine set up locally if I want to do it (and all the headaches that brings with exposing it to the world through my ISP).
I'm also on Google Fi, but I'm not too attached to it. If the Librem 5 ends up being as awesome as they promise, I'll likely leave for something else, like Ting (I used them for a couple years).
https://prism-break.org/en/categories/android/ https://prism-break.org/en/categories/servers/
Android phone today is like living in a room full of CCTV cameras and mics and tons of sensors and trying to close the windows and doors while the control of those feeds are in the hands of Google.
Once I find an alternative to Google Drive that I like well enough, I'll seriously consider the Librem 5 or going back to a flip phone. My phone requirements are pretty modest, but since I already give Google a ton of data through Drive, I figure using their phones isn't that much worse (I just limit how many additional services I use).
I'm also considering switching from Android. I'd rather pay more and be the customer instead of the product.
Well, that's when I found out how locked into the mac ecosystem I was. It was very painful to switch back to windows. Even my keyboard shortcut muscle memory was difficult to overcome.
I chose an official Google phone because I wanted to be sure that I could get security updates and run the latest version of the OS. But it didn't take long before the phone's UI performance became extremely noticeable. Simple stuff like triggering the back action or switching between apps would take multiple seconds. Chrome sometimes took up to 20 seconds to load. I can't help but think that Android made some fundamentally bad decisions in their software stack given just how bad the experience can be. And 13 months into my Android phone experience, the phone started boot looping and basically turned into a brick. Called Google, who ducked out of any responsibility because their warranty only covered the first 12 months, despite the fact that they've known about this issue for more than 2 years and kept selling the phone anyways. Compare that to the way that Apple responded to batterygate and you can see the difference in customer service between them and Google is night and day.
Maybe it's just me, but I've also talked to others that have gone to Android and found only a world of hurt. With Apple making iPhone battery replacement very affordable, you'll get a far smoother experience sticking with an outdated iPhone models than you'll get with top-of-the-line Android phones. I hope for your sake that you have a more positive experience with Android than I did. But less than 18 months later and I'm back using an iPhone 8 and have no plans to ever consider Android again.
Something is definitely wrong with that phone, or maybe that Google model. I'm definitely not seeing slow behavior like that on my Samsung S8 that I've owned for over a year. It's been getting regular security updates too (just got the December update a couple of weeks ago). I have seen similar slowdowns on my older Nexus 5 & iPhone when the internal storage got too full.
I'm a long time Apple user (over a decade, one of those people who queued up for a day one iPhone), but I am ecstatically happy with my Samsung S8 and find it to be the most "Apple-like" device I've bought from a non-Apple company. That said, if you prefer the iPhone, that's okay too. People like different things and use different features.
Um yeah, that's not the average user experience.
my only issue now, after almost 2y with the phone is that the battery is starting to lose capacity.
I have even used cheap android devices like Moto E4 without any problems at all. I am not sure what you are doing with your phones. Android is the most common phone OS, it's not nearly as bad as what you experienced.
I do remember seeing your complaint in the pixel subreddit, though. Seems Google has a QC problem.
I accidentally destroyed my phone, so I got a Moto x4 and couldn't be happier. It's faster than my Nexus 6, has way better battery life, and my only real issues are with Hearthstone (frequent disconnects, seems to be pretty common) and Smart Lock sucking, and Smart Look seems to be a common issue across Android phones (after a reboot, Smart Lock won't work if it was enabled, so disable it from Trust Agents, reboot, and reenable it and it works great again; I've run into this on Nexus 6, Pixel 2, and Pixel 3).
However, I'm trying to de-Google my life, and I don't want to run to another monster (Apple), so I'm watching the Librem 5 to see if that's an option once this phone gets long in the tooth. That being said, Android doesn't suck if you want a mainstream phone, and the Moto x4 is quite nice for how cheap it is.
Your experience is atypical. If your experience was the norm, Android wouldn't exist at this point.
Shall I point to my 2 MacBook pro keyboard failures and say the Apple laptop experience is a total failure?
The only exception is the Podcasts app. I hate that app with a burning passion.
Mozilla has lost my trust lately. I don't doubt the sincerity of the developers there. But they've grown into a large revenue generating organization now, and their principles appear compromised at the executive level. See this debacle over the recent Booking.com ad that finally made me dump Firefox [0]
[0] https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-boo...
Why Safari instead of Firefox? On iOS, they're the same browser underneath anyway, so there difference lies in extra features on top.
As for headphone jacks. I haven’t used wired headphones with my iPhone for over 5 years. Dropping the jack has literally had no impact on me whatsoever. In fact it’s one less hole to fill with pocket lint. Before you go on a tirade of audiophile nonsense, I’ll remind you that most people listen to audio and video that is streamed over cellular data in a lossy format. All arguments are rendered moot. I am a content iPhone X user, so now you know of at least one.
> In fact it’s one less hole to fill with pocket lint.
Is much more nonsensical than
> audiophile nonsense
Seriously, I haven't head of one good reason that the headphone jack hindered wireless audio.
Your needs don't define the needs of everyone else in this world. It wouldn't be a controversial move if it didn't piss off a bunch of people, now would it? If the airpods/dongle works for you, great. That doesn't mean they don't piss off and inconvenience a large group of people because if they didn't, there wouldn't be the corresponding backlash.
> Before you go on a tirade of audiophile nonsense, I’ll remind you that most people listen to audio and video that is streamed over cellular data in a lossy format. All arguments are rendered moot. I am a content iPhone X user, so now you know of at least one.
In case you didn't know, audiophilia is actually a very expensive hobby so most people aren't audiophiles. Most people pissed off about the removal of the 3.5 mm jack are not audiophiles. It is the everyday people wanting to listen to their device through headphones that are inconvenienced by this move. Audiophiles listen to music on their desk with their $2k open-back headphones and $2k dac/amp stack. And when on the move, they use digital audio players to play lossless flac. Most people pissed off are not pissed off because of sound quality, they are pissed off because now they have to use a dongle to do something as basic as listening to their device privately.
Not to mention the fact that Apple/Google/HTC/etc claim that the reason why they removed 3.5 mm was to improve sound quality. In their opinion, 3.5 mm is archaic and is holding back the audio industry. This seems like a bullshit excuse, because you don't hear any audiophiles complaining about that, and they are the people would'd drop $2k for a 5% improvement in their dac. If they removed 3.5 mm because it's holding audio back, where are the improvements and benefits from using their latest hyped flashy "adaptive" audio technologies? Where are the white papers? If you ask anyone working in high fidelity sound, I don't think anyone would have suggested that this is what we needed.
But yours do? You are part of, in my experience, a extremely vocal minority who are doing exactly what you are accusing me of.
> In case you didn't know, audiophilia is actually a very expensive hobby so most people aren't audiophiles.
I am actually very aware of the fact that it is an expensive hobby. A lot off the tat is baseless nonsense.
> Most people pissed off about the removal of the 3.5 mm jack are not audiophiles. It is the everyday people wanting to listen to their device through headphones that are inconvenienced by this move.
How? They gave away a dongle until the X series phone. It works just fine. I see on my daily commute a heck of a lot of headphone users. I see a lot of dongles and I see a lot of wireless headphones, AirPod being extremely common. I can only presume that the majority either use the headphones that came with their phone (a lot of apple headphones out there) or keep the dongle attached.
> ...now they have to use a dongle to do something as basic as listening to their device privately.
So? A bit of history; back in the day, expensive 'on/over the ear headphones came fitted with TRS Audio jack (6.35mm). In order to use decent headphones on your walkman/discman, you had to use a converter (a dongle in modern parlance). The horror!
> Not to mention the fact that Apple/Google/HTC/etc claim that the reason why they removed 3.5 mm was to improve sound quality. In their opinion, 3.5 mm is archaic and is holding back the audio industry. This seems like a bullshit excuse, because you don't hear any audiophiles complaining about that...
Do you have any evidence other than the opinions of individuals who spend thousands on snake oil?
> If they removed 3.5 mm because it's holding audio back, where are the improvements and benefits from using their latest hyped flashy "adaptive" audio technologies? Where are the white papers? If you ask anyone working in high fidelity sound, I don't think anyone would have suggested that this is what we needed.
For portable music players, I doubt many would care...
I still use Google Drive, Google Fi, and Gmail (moving to ProtonMail), but I've found awesome alternatives that improve on Google products:
- Orgzly - way better than Keep, and with Syncthing, I can edit task lists on my desktop with my preferred editor - Firefox - ad block on mobile is awesome, as is browser integration for Bitwarden - Signal - better than Hangouts for SMS, if only for the dark theme - andOTP - pin lock for second factor auth beats out Google's Authenticator app
I've been considering moving to NextCloud (tons of advantages over GSuite), but I'm having trouble replacing Google Sheets. Honestly, most of Google's products are mediocre, and it's really annoying switching to their flavor of the week (Google Talk -> Hangouts -> Allo -> Duo, Gmail redesign that runs like crap on Firefox, etc). I also wish there were compelling alternatives to YouTube (PeerTube looks interesting, but unlikely to get traction) and Android (Librem 5 might be good enough).
In trying to switch, I'm realizing how much better some options are once you get out of the Google ecosystem, but it's hard to kick the few strong products they have.
Personal anecdote: I broke my iPhone and have been using Android for a bit, and I must admit: at first I thought I'd switch back but nowadays Android is pretty good.
Hardware at a comparable price-point is solid, the UI is smooth and better-looking than it was before, the app ecosystem isn't quite as good, but is very very close, and there's features I would actually miss on iOS (a calendar widget on my homescreen, unlocking my device without touching the screen and Google's Night Sight).
I miss my to do app and my email app, both of which are not on Android (Things and Spark). But overall, I personally can't think of a single aspect where iOS "miles ahead" anymore, from an end-user perspective.
Apple has done well to make privacy one of their prime offerings.
Simply buy a Pixel (or any other device that supports AOSP). Build your own AOSP image (which is quite easy). And you are ready to go. Use applications from F-Droid only.
Admittedly it's not as straightforward as running your favorite Linux distro, and there are some caveats, but it's quite close.
https://www.apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb
https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...
I really hope this is untrue. My instinct is that you perhaps can't be a big behemoth of a company if you don't behave like Google and Facebook, but Apple occupied that middle territory successfully for a long time.
As a fairly heavy iCloud user, I wouldn't say they "suck" at services. They're not as good as Google at it, to be sure, but most things work pretty well for me.
I would also add that Apple is actively working to close the gap. Look at last years hire of Giannandrea from Google.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/business/apple-hires-goog...
According to recent tests, Siri has already improved a lot.
I would love to switch, but Firefox+uBlock on Android is soooo nice for a fast mobile browsing experience. The moment I can do what uBlock does on an iPhone, I'll switch.
Which is perfectly fine for me but if you have a lot of subscribed lists it is possible to go over it.
Sure, part of them aren't domain/URL based (they are CSS/XPath based) so I might not actually be disproving what you said.
That is a distinctly android problem, and is an example of one I'm glad to avoid by sticking to iOS.
Perhaps she should be more selective with apps she installs? Also, how would this be exclusive to Android? iOS apps can have ads on them. Even if the feature is added with an update.
How does a standard user know whether a small app to e.g. manipulate photos (as in this instance) is going to be updated a few days later to show ads when it's not running? Shouldn't an end user be able to trust Google's app marketplace to not feed them junk like this?
I use BlockBear on safari. Any speed gains you may have because of uBlock are offset by the cpu speed gains on iPhone XS. Hell, hacker news loads faster(less than a blink of my eye) on my iPhone than 2017 MacBook Pro.
Depends on network performance, how heavy your typical sites visited are, and what type of configuration you're running on uBlock.
Anecdotally, I find my Snapdragon 835 phone with Firefox/Ublock Origin to feel somewhat faster than my A10 with Safari/1 Blocker X. (Plus Firefox/uBlock gives various QOL improvements over Safari, like customizably removing cruft from various sites, and not autoplaying video.) My biggest complaint with Firefox/uBlock Origin is that the UI isn't very nice for whitelisting scripts on mobile.
For example a turnkey business service is https://ba.net/adblockvpn
What I do care about is being manipulated. I don't want to be persuaded to buy stuff I don't want or need.
Google can know everything about me, but I don't want the ads thanks very much.
Oh, and I want a news feed of things that are actually important, not what some algorithm thinks I want to see.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but those two sentences contradict each other. ;)
The main publicly visible application of personal data is advertising, so if you don’t want ads or manipulation, then you actually do care about privacy.
And are you certain you don’t care about privacy outside of ads? If so, why? Many people who’ve said things like that just didn’t even think at all about what happens or could happen to their personal information. Would it surprise you if you found out that insurance companies were purchasing personal information in order to increase their denial rates on claims? Would it bother you if your personal information was used to support a politcal party you oppose? Would it concern you if your personal habits were used to advertise to your neighbors or co-workers or friends or family instead of you personally?
And I was being a little flippant, of course I care if somebody used my identity to commit crimes, that's a total pain in the butt for me.
Okay, sure. I asked you why you don’t care about privacy, and you haven’t bothered to answer. I don’t really mind if my argument is weak, but yes I could certainly work on it and improve it if I had a reason to. I can’t read your mind, though. Do you want to provide any reasoning for your case or counter-argument at all?
Two things to think about. 1- I wasn’t attacking you, in case you felt like I was criticizing, and were just trying to criticize me back. 2- None of the examples I gave are made up, they are all real things that have happened.
I like Apple stance on privacy, but the price of iPhone XR is not serious.
I rotated through the pixel, iPhone XS, Samsung Galaxy, and 4 or 5 other flagship phones (was able to get amazing two week return policies)
Ended up with the XR simply because it was an excellent solid phone, cheaper than the other flagship phones. Admittedly I didn’t checkout the Xiaomi phone.
For reference, I had to replace my nexus 6p because the battery was so bad it was dying at 50% randomly. Plus google was no longer pushing updates.
It's nice to surf the wonders of billion-scale device mass-manufacturing if you don't need the latest and greatest.
This may be right, but have you used fdroid yet? There are a bunch of great free apps on there as well. NewPipe comes to mind.
There's one place that iOS is miles behind though, and that's file handling. Having to go through a desktop and iTunes to receive music from a friend is a pain in the arse.
I've also noticed Apple supports their devices for a long time. But does Apple guarantee that five years anywhere?
I bought it a year after release and it was less than half the price of a similar iPhone.
I can at least trust iOs to provide software updates for my device until 5 years of age. But I find it hard to see that many people value this remotely close to the price difference.
iPhones win in the security department. That's my biggest draw to switching.
It's interesting you say that. I've been looking at de-googling myself and getting off Android, but I cannot find a decent replacement in the App store for my password manager of choice (KeePass2Android, cos I use KeePass everywhere).
Other Apple owning friends of mine say I should be using whatever it is that iPhone supplies by default, but the problem is I want to de-google myself, not move entirely into Apple land, so having something which only works on the phone isn't going to fly. I've got Windows and Linux machines all over the place that I want my password manager to sync with.
Edit - spelling.
Why spend $1,449 on an XS Max when you could have replaced the battery on your phone for $29?
Funnily enough I got an email about availability of the new models for a discounted price "for a limited time only". Maybe their prices will be reviewed?
Headphones, same issue, phone wants to initially connect to any other bluetooth device except the headphones in my hand. So, now I have to dig into settings, etc... I don't have that issue with 3.5mm jacks.
And now the Iphone XR has brought the side-bezel back! It almost looks like a rubber case.
And very few people won't do it to a phone that costs several hundred dollars to buy, and that will likely suffer considerable damage if you ever drop it on any hard surface without a case.
The effect is so dramatic that some manufacturers rescale the indicator so it isn't possible to reach those charge levels, and makers of electric cars won't charge above 90 percent by default.
https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to...
"A laptop battery could be prolonged by lowering the charge voltage when connected to the AC grid. To make this feature user-friendly, a device should feature a “Long Life” mode that keeps the battery at 4.05V/cell and offers a SoC of about 80 percent."
I've had a lot of laptops with this kind of mode on them from several different manufacturers. I think Samsung, Lenovo, and HP have some knowledge of extending the life of their batteries. https://support-us.samsung.com/cyber/popup/iframe/pop_troubl...
"...it is strongly recommended to select "Optimize for Battery Lifesapn mode" or Conservation Mode and keep AC adapter connected alll the time. This mode will enable the battery to be fully charged to 80% or 60% of its design capacity." https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht069687
I have little reason to think a similar concept applies to phone batteries, as they're usually a similar chemistry these days.
I know that manufacturers sometimes gate off some of the capacity so that the battery doesn't actually reach extremely high or low levels of charge, but that would still imply that avoiding the very high and low ends of the reachable spectrum would still be helpful, just maybe not as much.
Samsung recommmends not going under 20% charge, but nothing about going over 80% https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-can-i-...
gadgethacks thinks that we should avoid going over 80% https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/set-charging-limit-yo...
Apple has fantastic information: Don't charge past 80%, if it's too hot! https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/ The expected battery cycles are around 500 and then you have at least 80% capacity left on the battery. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208387
Both samsung and apple says that you should have at least 50% charge if you store the device long term and also avoid going too low and leave it empty.
I get that apple/samsung will not recommend not charging 100%, from using accubattery (play store) they say that a full charge uses about one charge cycle, but charging to 82% does not take any charge cycle.
From what I've read the best thing for the longevity of the battery would then be to have it between 20 and 80%. But if you will replace the battery or phone after 500 charging cycles you could just charge it to 100% as much as you like. But never go below 20%.
AccuBattery should really add a warning about the battery health when going under 20%.
I did not know that it's possible to monitor battery health in iphone settings nowadays, that's great!
Now on ios 12 my iphone 6 is fast again. But, I probably would have bought the iphone 8 by now anyway, just because of camera quality, etc. The speed trouble just pulled my purchase up by a year. (I even bought a stopgap SE in the summer of 2017)
I suspect others also upgraded early in 2011 due to ios 11. Of course this situation is better long run now that its fixed. I'm so pleased with ios 12.
I have used the latest models and don't see any improvements worth upgrading for. FaceID is cool, but not enough on its own to convince me to upgrade.
In previous cycles, my update from 3GS to 4S was a no-brainer (retina, massive speed improvement), as was the upgrade from 4S to 6S (lightning port, LTE, massive speed improvement, larger screen).
Once I got my battery swapped, the phone was as good as new.
And I still have a headphone jack.
If I knew this earlier, I could’ve bought the X sooner. Couldn’t recommend it enough.
Having recently deleted all my timeline-based social media accounts, I'd even consider switching to a smart dumbphone like the Nokia 8110 if it had WhatsApp and Spotify (WhatsApp is rumoured to be at least coming soon to KaiOS) and just get rid of the distraction altogether.
So yeah, iPhone nerd here.
I’ve been rocking an SE for a couple of years now. Love it. Works. Quick enough. Small, robust. No plans to update.
I think the novelty has worn off. They used to be these cool new toys. Now it’s just a phone. I want to spend less time with the thing as time goes on, not more.
> US dollar strength-related price increases
A weaker dollar (due to inflation, etc.) is the reason that consumer prices increase. A stronger dollar in theory should make the prices decrease.
EDIT: I understand that a stronger dollar means the prices in other currencies will increase, but I was referring to specifically the price in US markets. Pretty sure the iPhone prices in the United States increased as well.
But I'm still a bit confused on it. How is Foxconn being paid? In dollars or in yuan? If the dollar is strong, shouldn't the BOM and manufacturing costs decline in lockstep with the Chinese buyers' purchasing power (relative to USD)?
So US probably has the cheapest iPhone in the world.
But for whom? If you're outside the US, and I'll remind you that most of the world, including China, is, then goods effectively priced in US dollars will be more expensive.
This is what I think 99% of business people don't get when they are confused by counterintuitive price dynamics of the industry.
strength-related price increases can be ambiguously read, whether the U.S. dollar strength increased or decreased, it led to price increases.
Just have to crack that digitally signed battery cable ;)
Jokes aside, Apple been deliberately reducing their products' repairability since at least iphone 3. I myself had a side business of selling factory refurbished phones when I was an exchange student in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. Malaysian refurbishers told me that in the middle of production run, Apple deliberately began gluing their front glass to the display with impossible to undo glue to nuke any chance of profitable refurbishment.
In contrast to "dumb" phones of Japanese brands, that were designed for extreme manufacturability, Apple's products are unique in that regard to be engineered with an opposite goal.
That’s true for most modern high end phones and has been since 2012.
https://ifixsmartphone.com/2012/11/16/smartphones-with-glass...
- $200 no questions asked buy-back - Better camera - Larger screen in a just about the same size form factor
I expect to have this phone for ~4 years with probably a battery refresh in ~2ish.
I went 4S -> 6S -> XS. I hadn't upgraded an iPhone in years, Apple has made the process extremely slick and painless. I was seriously impressed at picking up the new phone and being "good to go" in ~45 min when my apps downloaded.
I'm sure I'm an outlier
If you use a password manager that supports OTP tokens (lastpass with their authenticator app, 1password, bitwarden) you could just use that and remove Authy out of the picture.
I have no connection other than being a happy premium user for around 2 years. By far the best of those I found.
Now I have 2 devices that I can use, which makes me much less fearful about losing (or more likely misplacing) my phone.
In iOS I use 'Authenticator' - https://github.com/mattrubin/Authenticator. It's open source.
In not-perfect-light scenarios (not necessarily by night), photos shot with the iOS stock camera App have noticeably grain or "patches". The portrait mode is nice, but has glitches occasionally such that some item in the background gets merged with the face in the foreground.
So, I’m not a professional photographer, I only use the camera of my iPhone XS Max. The results are good enough, but the improvement isn’t that big over the iPhone 7 or 8.
What I do like is the big screen, since I use my phone only a couple times per week to make a call. Most of the time is spend in apps.
> Why spend $1,449 on an XS Max?
Period.
This is the cost of what an entry level macbook was...
The issue here is entirely around Apple and China.
I don't know all of the details, but I recall working with something like that twenty-five years ago, and usually there are a lot of tax breaks and so forth, because most of what's getting manufactured is exported. Jobs stay, products go.
So if you then sell those products in the same country, they want some of the taxes and and so forth.
The alternative would be to charge all the taxes, then manufacturers would file paperwork to get a refund for the goods they exported.
This system streamlines that for the case where the intent is to export more than is sold domestically.
But more than 50% of iPhone value is Chinese made.
Materials, labour, machine time, big part of ICs, batteries, passives, cabling, etc.
So, China actually double taxes own manufacturers aside from Apple itself.
The meme that "only $20" of iPhones value stays in China" is completely wrong. China makes tons of money from Apple.
Oh very much so. That's why China is careful about starting a trade war with Apple. They want to get their own manufacturers up to speed to replace Apple, but they don't want to just kick Apple out of China in one stroke and penalize the Chinese businesses that depend upon Apple.
If it wasn't for that, Apple and their strong privacy approach would be Persona Non Grata, IM-uninformed-O.
Apple tries to be less public about them having HUUGE R&D and business units in China with lots of things being done here.
In 2016 they posted a tiny press release about them opening their "first" R&D centre in China in Shenzhen, and deliberately making an impression of it having no significant role.
In reality, it was their _third_ RnD centre in Shenzhen only. Besides their nominal "design centre" in Kerry plaza, they rent a whole building in Discovery park in Nanshan, and have own section in Foxconn campus. The rumor is that they also rent yet another office for their product/project management staff somewhere closer to Longhua.
If some portion of the phone is imported, and that portion has duties, under normal circumstances Apple's subcontractor would import that thing, pay the duty on it, then export the phone and file for the duties to be refunded.
If the phone stays in China, the duty applies. So there may be duties involved if there are materials imported to China for assembly.
Apple was the first foreign company to price their computers and phones reasonably in China. Before the markup was around 50%, after Apple opened its first Apple stores in China that markup fell to 10-20%, which is about inline with tariffs.
I'm sure if you included the effective subsidies China-homed conglomerates enjoy, the ratio of COGS between e.g. Apple and Huawei could be as high as 4:1. Huawei can certainly afford to make phones cost 1/4th as much, although Apple could also afford to cut prices by 38 percentage points (as per their margins).
On the other hand, China-homed companies aren't responsible to public markets (Wall Street really) in the same way US-homed are. You could book a 1% margin, but your family owns the company, so the board isn't going to take away your private jet, let alone dump you as CEO.
In the US, the "family owned" (in the sense of being management controlled) mega-techs like Facebook and Snapchat are actually suffering greatly due to their poor accountability. It's truly bad for equities, even while Facebook and Snapchat book ever-growing revenues.
It will be an interesting reckoning. Not the change in consumer tastes in China, mind you, which doesn't really matter for share prices. It'll be an inevitable change in corporate culture.
After all, there are millions of extraordinarily talented people in China who will want the kinds of riches and glamor only a certain privileged minority get to experience. If the bottom line doesn't motivate public accountability, ambition will. That's healthy for everyone, but it will signal the end of sclerotic, state sponsored corporations in China.
So as always, the Chinese consumer is the victim. They get to enjoy phones that cost 1/4th as much as an iPhone. But in exchange, they forfeit a certain kind of life fulfillment that, in my opinion, they deserve.
Me sitting in Toronto saying, "iPhone is too expensive for me, I have a mortgage to pay" is still irrelevant, because Apple is hitting its targets in Canada, the US, and so forth. Maybe it is too expensive for me personally (I'm on an iPhone but it's a 6, not a 6s, not a 7, not an 8, not an X of any kind), but I don't speak for my economic zone.
Sounds to me that it isn't just China. The new phones are even more expensive then the previous ones. It's kind of hard to imagine that those high prices have no impact on sales and I would have at least expected there to be a mention about pricing in the letter.
They don’t break it down.
In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/observer.com/2018/12/tesla-chin...
And even non-tech luxury brands
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/luxury...
You could swap out Apple with pretty much anything and you'll be accurate. The person commenting on the internet all day isn't representative of the average person.
You can boost that several orders of magnitude when it comes to this site, too.
From looking at a few news articles, looks like revenue sharing increased from: $1B ('14) -> $3B ('17) -> $9B ('18) -> $12B ('19)
Example article: http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...
Looking at the increase in Apple's services revenue ($8.5B, Q1 '18 -> $10.8B Q1 '19 -> $2.3B YoY increase) vs. increase in service revenue due to Google sharing ($9B - $3B = $6B / 4 quarters = $1.5B), we get that approximately 65% of Apple's incremental services revenue is due to increased revenue sharing from Google. IMO, this doesn't seem like a long term sustainable source of revenue growth for Apple.
That figure bundles in the costs paid to Dell and hp to have Google the default search engine on those machines, but I think we can be pretty sure that is dwarfed by the amount paid to Apple...
Comparatively, TAC in 2017 was $9B.
Here's what I posted elsewhere in this thread that addresses it:
"The actual product is the Apple ecosystem and that's the bet Apple is making.
Right now, the ecosystem is tied together by iOS whose most popular incarnation is iPhone. But iOS was so successful that it has an install base of over 1 billion users.
That's nothing less than an incredible user-base - a hell of a foundation. If they can sustain that install base with iterative iPhones while strengthening their ecosystem through value-add products like Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and Apple Music, then they have potentially many cash cows with dramatically high ceilings and reach.
This is a good bet for them because it plays to their strengths and they've earned incredibly loyal customers over the years.
iPhone may not be the future of Apple, but it is the core from which many futures will emerge. It'll still be a critical product for Apple, but no longer a key top-line growth driver. And that's OK, that's how innovation cycles go. iPhone made it possible for them to start on 3rd base for the next cycle."
Apple has indeed accomplished many things since Jobs handed over the reins, but delivering a new, innovative compelling product line is not one of them. If they finally deliver on the Apple Car or some as yet unknown new product, they might finally fully move out of the shadow of Jobs' final tenure.
If not, they will find their existing product lines eaten away by relentless, industry commoditization. Having to bump profit margins on the iPhone X was their first serious stumble -- only to be rectified, if they can deliver a new, compelling product line in the next 1 to 2 years.
What company has, though?
My observation is that, while technology evolves very quickly, revolutionary product lines appear about once per generation. iPhones came out in 2007, so we have at least another decade to go.
1) BMW is a much smaller company, 15x smaller than Apple. Apple's valuation is partly based on them pocketing _most_ of the smartphone profits globally. There is no expectation like that towards BMW. Remember, stock market is a game about expectations.
2) Cars don't seem to be a winner-takes-it-all market. IT services are not always like that either, but closer. It doesn't make your life harder if your friend is using a VW and you're driving a Toyota; but it does make a difference if your friend is on iMessage and you're on Android. So there's a market force towards oligopoly.
2) that’s actually a strong argument pro Apple and not against them (that’s like saying: no one will ever use another search engine than google and because of that they’re growing bigger and bigger)
Usually when people complain that Apple hasn't delivered a great product since Jobs left, they are comparing to the iPhone. But it's important to remember that Jobs himself only delivered a product like the iPhone once! No other Apple product line, no Macs, no iPods, no iPad, nothing, ever came close to the impact of the iPhone.
If the iPhone is your bar of success for a new Apple product, I feel pretty confident that you're going to be disappointed. But Apple doesn't need another iPhone to grow very well for a long time.
Dropping the SE - the one affordable iPhone - is starting to look like a really bad move for Apple.
In late November 2017 no-contract SEs were going for $99 at some stores. A year later the price had dropped to $79. I bought one at $99 to use as an mp3 player and camera. Works great. I don't want a phone that's any larger because it won't fit comfortably into my pockets. Still using for day-to-day actual phone use a pretty great similar sized Android phone I bought for much less. I prefer it because it has an SD slot and replaceable battery and uses USB, all better AFAIAC than no SD slot, no replaceable battery and no USB. Phones are cheap and the cheap phones are very good.
And since everyone copies apple, get ready for massive slabs across the entire smartphone market.
Last Year they had $88.3B, this Year their lowest guidance were $89, so roughly the same. But Apple knew well ahead that they had new iPad, new MacBook Air, new Apple Watch for this quarter. They also changed their accounting to move revenue from Apple Maps and Siri to Services instead of bundled with their Products. So they knew Services were going to have a substantial increase.
In other words, they knew their Non-iPhone revenue were going to increase YoY.
They knew, nearly in real time their iPhone XS were doing well when launched, factored in the Q4 2018 quarter. That was what pushed the record Q4 quarter numbers, by those analytics over 30% of XS in total were sold during first two weeks, out of a total 14 weeks since launched.
In other words, to have made that initial guidance, Apple were expecting Xr to be a great seller. Everything from Non-iPhone and XS has been better than expectation, it was only the Xr that let them down. Xs Max has been doing better than possibly Apple has estimated likely pushing ASP even higher ( even though they may no longer release the number ) So 5% lower revenue is actually better that most would have expected.
All these leads to Xr. The Xr were targeting general buyers, but they were used to paying $749 for latest Smartphone, which the current $999/ $1099 are out of their bracket. Some have extended battery life that want their iPhone last longer. And more importantly in China, the price / performance gap between Chinese made Android Phone and Apple iPhone has never been greater. Huawei, Vivo, OnePlus and Mi.
If we assume the the ASP increase were roughly 15% compared to last year, we can estimate this year Apple had ~25% drop in unit sold. ~57.7M Compared to last year 77.3M.
Now more importantly, what will the guidance be for Apple on Q2?
Edit: I think this is the best thing happen to Post Steve Jobs Apple and I hope Q2 will be even worst and served as a Wake up Call. In my opinion for the past years Apple has been doing something wrong with their design and features decisions that add cost while brings little to no value to users. Touch Bar, Curved inside Bezel display, Butterfly Keyboard etc. While trying to nickel and dime on many areas, lack of fast charging, new lighting cable connector ( lower cost but higher resistance ) etc. Apple under Tim Cook has been far to concern about 20% Net Margin and other numbers.
1) China, obviously, if luxury perceived items like Apple products are slowing then that is a real indicator of the economy truly slowing regardless what the government states.
2) Having to full develop an in store trade in program pretty much is admission they priced themselves out of the market
People chasing status symbol but they are not fools, and the local brands offer good enough quality with only 40% of the price, you know what to choose.
I think that is the real risk to Apple. Right now iPhones (esp. in China) are a status symbol, but public opinion is a fickle thing. It's possible rising nationalism in China could also lead to an atmosphere where buying an iPhone is looked down upon as an exercise in conspicuous consumption but paid to China's enemy (when home grown phones are "just as" good). When that happens, Apple really is in dire straits. Apple needs to ensure they can innovate faster than the competition, but with a lot of value shifting to AI-related services (not necessarily Apple's strong point - compare Siri to Alexa or Google Assistant), that's a tough battle for Apple.
But I would say the real reason that Apple is suffering now is that they stopped to innovate. Those touted innovations on their press conference is hardly convincing that they are essential to my user experience. Gimmicks, like Animojis are showcased and centred during the once a year event to communicate to their customers. It is embarrassing and laughable.
And I blame Apple itself 100% on this, they are setting on a largest pile of cash that mankind every entrusted to a private corporate and does nothing. Now comes the recoknining, and it is probably overdue.
I’m not an economist nor social scientist, but I don’t think a simple “fool” judgement necessarily explains what motivates. Mind the story below is from 2009 and of luxury automobiles, but my point stands... I feel like the “rationalization” for events is just post-hoc acknowledgement of “which way the wind blows”.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/porsche-i...
A bunch of prominent economic figures out of China in the last month or two have pointed to a near-recession there. They're outright lying about 6.5% growth (if it's more than 1/4 that I'd be surprised), their economy is getting close to contracting. Their manufacturing sector is about to tip into recession [1] (guaranteed with the worst of the tariff hit just starting now) and their consumption tax numbers [2] have imploded at a historic rate. The iPhone sales drop in China aligns with the drop in the consumption figures there. Their credit impulse is deeply negative, which is a particularly bad thing to have happening with all the other negative numbers. Their new export orders PMI is in deep contraction.[3] They've got a lot of banks that need recapitalized soon with a central government intent on constraining the growth of further debt. In the cities you're seeing a painful wave of deflationary pressure hitting their housing market, with their world-leading vacancy rates on housing units (epic overbuilding) only making it worse.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/china-reports-december-caixi...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-31/china-...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-31/china-slo...
Here, Let me help you with that:
* Lack of a $0.05 headphone jack
* Lack of storage expansion
* Lack of USB-C
* Expensive 3d Touch that nobody uses intentionally
* Lack of a fingerprint reader
* Nerfing NFC for months on end
Despite that, there are things you are doing great:
* FaceID innovations
* Battery life improvements
* Performance improvements
* Taking a stand against predatory spying by Facebook and Google
It's like you're so close, then you shoot yourself in the foot.
The problem is the iPhone has been so good for a few iterations now. There is absolutely no reason to buy a new one unless you are gaming. I can’t tell the difference between the 7, the X or the XS in terms of day to day capability.
It used to be there was a good reason to upgrade every year. Now you can easily go 2-3 years without missing much.
I have a pair of headphones I like that can connect via bluetooth or wire. I have a headphone dongle that works even if it is a minor inconvenience. I also have the cheap lightning headphones that came with the phone.
Basically, the headphone jack issue has been mitigated to the point where it's simply not an issue for a lot of people. Maybe it costs Apple a sale here and there. I would be willing to bet a significant number of buyers don't realize it's missing and an even larger number don't care enough to make an issue out of it.
The headphone jack issue is old news anyway. It's been multiple iterations that haven't had it and some of them sold well. It has absolutely no bearing on sales of current models.
To me ditching Lightning for USB-C 3.x (Thunderbolt 3) would send a very powerful message from Apple. I really hope they do it in 2019.
> Apple boss Tim Cook has blamed the US-China trade war as he warned of lower than expected quarterly sales for the iPhone maker.
Seems like the US-China trade war is taking its toll on Chinese economy, particularly on the high end.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/apple-cuts-sales-forecast-as-chin...
I’m hoping for a refreshed SE. I like the button. I like the headphone jack. I don’t like FaceId.
But it ain't gonna happen.
An iPhone that's Slightly fatter (fill the space with a larger battery), headphone jack, and a "smaller" screen. Of course, have all of the latest hardware (camera, soc, etc.).
Or, a MacBook Pro, again slightly fatter (larger battery), with a great keyboard, actual ports (no dongles), and no touch bar. Give us the option for a matte screen to totally blow our socks off.
I'd buy those two devices tomorrow if Apple introduced them.
The surprise is that they didn't expect that raising the price by 20% wouldn't have an impact like this
But the people I know who switched from 6S / 7 are very much happy with their decision to buy an XS.
Or that might not be the reason, I don't know enough to analyze the situation by far. I just don't think we should rule out the extreme price increase as a potential partial explanation.
That sounds like Huawei fallout.
How would fallout from Huawei have anything to do with fewer people walking into Apple stores and buying a new Apple product? Have the prices risen or something? Are people afraid of being kidnapped if they walk into an Apple store?
To me, it is just a lame hyperpolitical straw man excuse as to why they aren't selling more products. It has zero to do with China, imo. It has to do with people not NEEDING a new device, so they are upgrading (a lot) less frequently. Personally, I'm on about a 5 year upgrade cycle now. Apple will have a harder time going forward having increasing records year after year, because they mostly rely on new hardware sales. I think we're kind of coming to a Moores law type effect in terms of hardware perception (not design/capability). There just isn't enough of a perceivable or revolutionary innovative difference for the average person to justify purchasing a new multi $k machine year after year. For most people (non power users), they get no actual tangible benefit. An iPhone X will perform just as well for the vast majority of an average users applications as an iphone 8.
Some Chinese people and organizations are reportedly boycotting US phones (which is mostly Apple phones) and purchasing Huawei phones instead.
> ... AirPods and MacBook Air were also constrained.
(emphasis mine) Interesting that Apple still can't manage to make AirPods, a 2 year old product, fast enough. I wonder why that is.
Tim Cook is one of the finest CEOs of his generation, but he cannot walk on water, and neither can his company. They do some things well, and on others, their reach exceeds their grasp.
It’s not JUST AirPods.
My wife should be due for a phone upgrade but instead she got the battery replacement a few months ago and AirPods for Christmas.
I know that in my own case I think that AirPods look ridiculous and stupid, and I can't believe anyone allows himself to be seen in public with them. But I think that less now than I did two years ago, and presumably in another two years I'll think that less still. No doubt in a decade I'll think that they don't look dumb at all, and maybe someday I'll have AirPods or something similar. And then one day I'll quit wearing them, because they're out of fashion again.
Heck, digital watches were popular for about 15–20 years, right? Maybe AirPods will someday be looked at as the digital watches of the early 2000s.
But I'd like a better camera so I took a look:
The other thing that isn't helping apple is the went from a simple system to understand iphone 6, 7 8 (s for the bigger models (edit: whoops I meant plus.). To so iPhone Xr, X, Xs.. I can't tell it the iPhone 8 is the end of the line for the numbered iPhones with a front button. Basically I'll have to do some research.
They made a page to help, but when comparing phones, price is an important factor to compare...
S has always been for second models with the same number (kind of like a minor version), they invariably are released one year after and are the same size (not bigger) as the corresponding non-S version (the XS Max is the only exception, there is no X Max, and XS Max is just a bigger same-year cousin of the XS, but the XS has the normal S-to-non-S relation to the X.)
This holds the whole way back to the first S, the 3GS.
I asked each one of them if patriotism or the recent Huawei/US kerfuffle influenced their decision. They all resoundingly said no. When I asked why they chose Huawei after being in the Apple ecosystem for a decade, all of them said "camera". They said camera quality isn't about DXO scores or 4k60 but being able to take "beautiful" photos out of the box for some definition of beautiful. To them, iPhoneXS is the same if not worse than a 6, because the iPhone camera doesn't take more "beautiful" photos, only more "realistic" ones.
Obviously anecdotes are meaningless and all that, but I want to note that China is a very homogeneous society given its population, so even a brief first-person glimpse into people's everyday lives can be pretty telling. I would not be comfortable making similar conclusions about any other cluster of 1.3B people.
TL,DR: I don't buy that the economic downturn in China and the Huawei/US situation are the sole perpetrators of Apple's problem in China. Apple is missing opportunities due not innovating in certain crucial areas.
I hear this all the time from friends and family. Such and such camera is so much better.
Most of the time the images really aren't. The brightness is just cranked up or something, the image doesn't look that great. I'm not sure why the iPhone doesn't have better low-light settings, even my 8 Plus doesn't take very good pictures indoors if I don't use a different camera app.
By "beautiful," do they mean those auto-Photoshopped images that are popular in China; where they eyes are made bigger, chin pointier, and skin lighter?
https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-huawei-smartphone-be...
> Popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S7, the Huawei P9, and many others often feature something called "Beauty" or "Beauty mode" when you turn on the front camera to take a selfie.
> Theoretically, it does what it says on the tin: airbrushing magic to make you look prettier in photos. Usually, it makes your skin look smoother and your eyes brighter.
US Dollar crisis coming to a market near you
- No home button
- no Touch ID... I can no longer quickly unlock phone with thumb .. Face ID is no good and can be dangerous in certain situations we all can relate but don’t admit (i.e. in stand stil traffic)
- it’s too big.. I can’t one handed text
Hoping some of the above is addressed and brought back in the 2019 models.
I might be wrong but it's happened several times before where companies were trying to drum up some support by suddenly being extremely "woke" just before having to come out with some bad news.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18017842/tim-cook-data-p...
PS. They did the same thing with Google, after "Operation Aurora" happened. That was the moment that Google left China.
I hate that we're in this in-between land that requires 3 or 4 different subscriptions to the same company whereas these things in my mind would just be bundled together.
Translation: We tried to charge $1,500 for a phone, but not even our core demographic is this gullible.
For other people reasons for this is clear. Apple is making slightly improved phones, with the extreme price tag. The pain threshold has been exceeded.
Almost all innovations now are from Asian manufacturers. Notch is not progress, it's a deffect. OLED? It was innovation 8 years ago, with Samsung Galaxy S. A phone as fragile as an egg, with back glass replacement costing $599 (versus $99 for Samsung Galaxy S9+). In my opinion, the only real advantage of iPhones is iOS, without apps slowing down OS, tons of bloatware, and lack of privacy even on the system level. But this not justify
And lastly, batterygate, that weakened trust to the brand, also didn't help here.
As a naive person on the outside looking in, why are there no suggested changes to the clearly incorrect estimation approach, especially in volatile markets? If the numbers are not as expected why not look at expectation generation along with other factors instead of ignoring it? Or are they saying in so many words that they can't be blamed due to macroeconomic conditions? Sounds like such a volatile environment would require caution on these short term forecasts. Again I'm naive, I just didn't see it addressed.
Apple has a tonne of money. It can solve shareholder disappointment by using it to buy back stock or pay dividends or something.
I don't look to Tim Cook for innovation right now.
Declaration of Interest: disappointed touchbar MacBook owner
Wonder why they never break out these products in these sales forecasts.
BMW, Audi (WW premium brand) and Mercedes all committed to gigantic investments into growing their presence here in last hew years, and so now has Apple.
In the past, American companies were some of the most passive players in China. It seems that they finally started to notice that China is a no joke market.
Say what you will about lack of innovation (which I don’t agree with), but the constant skepticism about cost ignores what consumers actually do in the real world. China is probably not going to be a reliable market for Apple because as Ben Thompson points out, smartphones are much more of a commodity there because consumers don’t value Apple software as highly as consumers elsewhere. If that’s indeed the case there’s not much Apple can do about it because they sell the entire package at a high price point. If people don’t value the hardware and software it’s probably not a market that is going to be good for Apple. Apple wants no part of a race to the bottom commodity market where cost is the sole differentiator. It’s a tough pill to swallow but what we’re talking about is consumer preferences in different markets around the world.
Apple should be worried about customers flocking to cross platform messaging apps in the US, though. Right now US consumers won’t part with Apple largely due to iMessage. What happens if people slowly transition to WhatsApp or FB messenger? I could see this as a real threat if FB continues to innovate in messaging.
Apple can reduce pricing by 10-15% or give credits so that people can use it for accessories and apps.
Until it gets price right, market like India can never grow for Apple.
This is a recent product…
Tesla has that product reality distortion field much like Apple has. Would've made a great purchase.
(And note that Moore’s Law being dead just means density doesn’t double on schedule. I am not suggestion there is zero progress in semiconductor technology.)
also thinking that if nobody had noticed the battery longevity performance degradation “feature” would Apple be sailing more smoothly right now? maybe they depended too much on crafty ways of trying to get people to upgrade and it didn’t pan out so here we are
I haven’t replaced the battery yet. I probably will this year. I’d rather just replace my battery for 60 bucks than buy a new phone for 800...
You can't survive in a competitive world with just 10% of the market share since interconnectedness is crucial for the dominance of any platform and that's why you need cheaper macs and phones without losing the appeal of high end products for those who have the money in times of economic duress like the ones to come.
I've heard from Youtubers who have maxed out the RAM on their Mac Pros that its absolute garbage at even handling mundane video editing tasks. This was two years ago.
Nonetheless, I won't switch to Android only because of the privacy promises Apple has made & doubled down on. Whereas Google doesn't seem to care so much. The forced auto-login into Chrome browser (desktop) when you login to your Gmail on the browser, was the last straw for me.
However I just don't get just why Apple doesn't loosen those purse strings and spend massively on re-capturing the imagination of the user like it once did.
Is it Tim Cook and the board?
Does the ROI simply not exist in this space anymore no matter the capital spend?
Where - if at all - does Apple see a justifiable spend in the near future - tvs? cars?
I just bought her the latest 64GB iPad on sale for $249.
When the iPhone 4 16GB was released, it was $499 unsubsidized.
Something isn’t right.
>China
pick one
Remember, China is the second largest economy in the world. There was a HN article awhile back arguing that China is taxed as an emerging market (low tax), but is dollar size of a mature market. So, two questions:
Is China considered a maturing market?
Is China considered a mature market?
I don’t think just positive growth counts as maturing (even the US still grows), so I think the answers have to be mutually exclusive. Maybe you could argue the rate of growth makes it maturing, but I would love to compare it to the rate of US growth from 1950's-60's (was the considered US maturing or mature during that period?).
There's an unrelated question as to whether OECD and non-OECD countries should be treated differently.
America is on another hand is a developed country on average, but double digit of population is officially below the official poverty line....
Which one is better you think? In reality, that is Apples to Oranges comparison. China is not a market economy to begin with...
Isn't that ridiculously high for the margin and kinda small for the rate?
This product line was born organically within them. What you think Apple should do next? They have patented a headset so maybe that is next for them.
That sounds like a slightly roundabout way to throw some of the blame at Trump and his trade policies. Not the only reason, but one of them, as the letter mentions.
Stop charging $1,000 for a phone. Stop gouging us for storage. Bring back a $999 MacBook.
I just cannot understand how an increasingly risk-averse, profit-driven company will summon the chutzpah to again create category-creating products once more.
I don't think you can overlook those things and take them for granted.
There's still not great alternatives to AirPods or Apple Watch to this day. Music streaming is pretty much just Apple and Spotify at this point. Also, few companies have been able to align privacy and embed it into their business models.
Apple has also quietly built one of the best chip design teams in the industry - pumping out various custom silicon that is powering FaceID, ML, Photography, and AR among other things. The # of custom chips Apple uses in their products grows every year.
So they've done a ton of innovative things over the past couple of years, it's just that you're not going to get another product like the iPhone which is perhaps one of the best businesses of all time.
We may never see another business like it anytime soon, from anyone. So I think it's a bit unfair to grade everything Apple does on the "iPhone Curve".
Right now, the ecosystem is tied together by iOS whose most popular incarnation is iPhone. But iOS was so successful that it has an install base of over 1 billion users.
That's nothing less than an incredible user-base - a hell of a foundation. If they can sustain that install base while strengthening their ecosystem through value-add products like Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and Apple Music, then they have potentially many cash cows with dramatically high ceilings and reach.
This is a good bet for them because it plays to their strengths and they've earned incredibly loyal customers over the years.
iPhone may not be the future of Apple, but it is the core from which many futures will emerge. It'll still be a critical product for Apple, but no longer a key top-line growth driver. And that's OK, that's how innovation cycles go. iPhone made it possible for them to start on 3rd base for the next cycle.
Kind of useless if you can no longer install any new apps.
That probably includes obsolete iPads too.
iOS adoption of new versions is extremely strong and has typically always been that way. Rate of adoption is fast as well. From release of a new version to 50% adoption is often just a few weeks.
I still can't see how Apple will surge again. The brand equity is based upon Ramsian aesthetics (which have been mimicked to point of being passè in 2019), coupled with category-defining products that became cultural phenonenas (nope: the Apple Watch is hardly holds a candle to those). Not to mention they've all but deserted the power-users with lacklustre notebooks and having 6 year silences between Mac Pro's.
I want to be wrong, by the way. I really do. But you are mainly describing features and not products when you talk about their strides.
Good luck trying to excise people's money through "Services" when everyone jumps ship after realizing they ship dumbed down products without any regard for people's need for workstations and not expensive toys that break trivially.