Apple’s New iPhones Get a Lukewarm Reception from Buyers
wsj.com
wsj.com
http://bgr.com/2017/12/18/iphone-x-sales-china-256-gb-quarte...
And unlike previous generations my last phone is still so good that after a battery change it will be a parent/sibling phone for 2 more years without problem. That means that they are less likely to get a new one too. They can drop their iPhone4S and take my iPhone6, instead of going to the store to get a 7/8.
I think this is great, and not surprising. There is a point when perf and features give diminishing returns and we are there. Good!
I don't understand how someone on hackernews can be excited about the stagnation of innovation... lol
Is 300 the right sample size? I recall reading that Apple sells over 500 iPhones every minute (on average), so I wonder if such a small sample is appropriate here.
It's the epitome of form over function.
The (nearly) full screen display is fantastic. The notch and rounded edges don't bother me at all; it gives the phone screen an organic shape, previously only seen in sci-fi movies.
FaceID is fantastic; it's super reliable and incrdibly seemless. Touch ID was far worse.
Swipe motions instead of the home bar works great.
I've never been happier with a phone. Truely a phenomenal device.
And yeah, the 7 is a very solid phone. But the X is really special. And I sold my 7 for $400, so hey, my bank account is only out $600 for the X. :-)
To know you truly have the user's authorization to do something, there needs to be a discrete, conscious act. Touch ID had that. Face ID got rid of it. That's a net loss for users.
So for me, that's reliable enough.
The seemless part is when I'm using my phone, I barely notice that I'm authing it with face ID. So, pretty seemless.
Touch ID often failed for me. Every time my hands were ever so slightly damp or sweaty, Touch ID failed.
Face ID almost always works. It works while running, while cooking, when wearing gloves, and even in the bath tub.
It does fail when I‘m wearing a dust mask, but it‘s probably not a good idea to bring the iPhone to the workshop anyway.
TouchID also almost always worked for me but failed when my hands were wet. My wife has endless problems with TouchID on her phone.
The only annoyance is when it's laying flat on my desk and I want to turn on some music when it isn't currently playing, but I can just tilt it 30 degrees and it opens.
The swiping gestures on X also feel really great over trying to double click the home button all the time.
Happy iPhoneX user here.
FaceID is a complete game changer IMO...a paradigm shift!
Not just for unlocking the phone but the fact all of my apps (banking, etc) also support it makes authentication be a problem of the past...all friction gone!
It’s amazing and can probably only be expierenced in person...which might be why sales have been weak.
Those all work with TouchID too. But with TouchID I can add my wife's fingerprint, so when I'm driving she can unlock my phone and use it to do banking or set up the navigation for me or whatever. Or when I'm showering. Or bathing the kids. Or cooking, or working in the yard, or....
I recently went to Disneyland and the way it works with normal passes now (not year round), is that they point an iPhone at you and take your picture. If you enter a new country, they take your fingerprint and take a picture of you. We are training people to use the two pieces of information that most companies and countries are now readily collecting from you, your thumb print and your face picture, as the password to your most sensitive information.
You have to be looking at the phone. How much that helps is another question.
Apple is probably the only company that can push such an UI (with people willing to take the time to learn it) but I have still rarely seen it work for normal users : if a button is not visible; it won't be used.
If I were to buy an iPhone X; I would just wait a generation or 2 for this notch to hopefully disappear (also hopefully to have a more resistant frame even though I doubt it will happen , form over function).
Since that's not possible right now, only compromises can be achieved.
So you don't have front facing speakers and have a notch in the screen.
Whether you are ok with this is subjective and I am not.
The iPhone X is basically an iPhone 8 Plus in a smaller form factor and a better screen. For those of us who don't like the larger form factor, it's ideal. Otherwise, I'd have to choose between a better camera and bigger screen, or the smaller phone I wanted. With the iPhone X, I don't have to choose. That's the selling point of the iPhone X – you don't have to make those compromises.
Anyway, you're entitled to your opinion but please don't speak for everyone. My girlfriend and I love our X's. FaceID doesn't seem to work well when I'm in bed, but touch id was lot more painful. Now you can say "Hey Siri, open mail" without touching your phone.
My only real [iOS] complaint with Apple is that Siri isn't getting smarter. Amazon or Google is going to deliver the first voice UI:
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user-inte...
I used to upgrade every two years but stopped that since I got my iPhone 5S, it's good enough for me. I didn't need anything until the battery life started to decline and when ATT had a good deal for two iPhones for price of one installment plan, I got an iPhone X. I would've stay on iPhone 5S for 5 years, no doubt. I suspect the same for X, I will be staying with it for 5 years.
A big part of it, to be honest, was my dislike of my past few phones. The 6 felt like the PERFECT form factor and was a good step up from my 5S, but it unfortunately suffered from the battery issues Apple claimed "only" affected the 6S. Once the 7 came out I realized my 6 was 2.5 years old and was seriously showing the performance impact of an aging phone (typically I stick to a 2 year cycle). I couldn't bring myself to spend the money on a 7 which I felt was no real upgrade; the better camera on the 7+ was the only thing to get me to "jump". Everyone I know who owns large Android or Apple phones swears you'll love the big screen and never want to go back.
I gotta say, I never liked the 7+. I kept expecting I'd get used to it and warm to it, but I never did. It was too big to operate with one hand, I always had to adjust it in my pocket to put my leg up to tie my shoes or get in the car or whatever, and the added screen size did nothing for me. Every time I picked up my wife's 7 I thought "this is more like it".
So I bought the X because I didn't want to pay MORE money and "downgrade" to the single lens camera on the 8; I felt like it was going to be let down. The X was a bit of a gamble. I was sure I'd miss the home button and touchID; I regularly used it to unlock my phone while lying flat on my desk and wouldn't want to pick it up to face me, but thought why not get a big screen in a small form factor?
The switch to the X was seamless. I have to say, within 5 minutes I had forgotten all about the home button, in stark contrast to all of the tech journos who said it took "weeks" to get used to. I'm in my late 30s so I'm well into my "I feel like a luddite" years, and it takes me seemingly forever to adapt to new technology, but the lack of a home button was a serious step up. Every gesture on the X feels totally natural and it all makes sense again.
The form factor of the X is amazing, it's perfect for me and what I want. The screen is brilliant, everything is just amazing. It's not enough to tell someone to switch from Android or from an iPhone they already like, but for the first time in years it feels like a serious step up in every way for Apple.
Another nice thing is, as someone who doesn't really like to stand out, in a black case (I use a QuadLock to attach to my bike handlebars), it looks like absolutely nothing. It's totally featureless on the front and it's a small-ish phone so it doesn't look flashy or draw attention to you.
Even the Apple Upgrade program is a 24-month cycle. Although there is no real penalty for upgrading after 12 months, there is a charge of more than $100.
Perfectly summarizes what Apple has been producing lately, and this isn't just exclusive to their phones. I wonder when they'll make something worth buying?
Apple does not release shipment or sales numbers mid-quarter, and analysts have repeatedly demonstrated that they consistently misunderstand mid-quarter indicators of shipping/sales volume.
I'm granting the benefit of the doubt there. It's also possible that there's widespread market manipulation or deliberately-false headlines for clickbait, but I'll assume they're just consistently wrong.
when it was $200-$300 to upgrade with a contract renewal, I tended to get a new phone with every iteration, regardless of the new features or condition of my current phone.
Now that the latest phones are $700+, or $40+ per month with insurance, I evaluate the purchase in the same way I've always looked at new laptops/desktops. If the current model meets my needs and there are no new features I will get much value from, I have no interest in upgrading.
have others experience this shift?
the only new feature that has me interested in a the iPhone X is portrait mode in a smaller form factor.
I buy my phones unlocked for megabucks, and save $15/mo over 2 years (=$360), don't have to deal with carrier locking restrictions, etc. Then when I upgrade, I sell the old one.
Or somebody who prefers a larger screen and finds that to outweigh the drawbacks that come from it... I know lots of people with Plusses and none have particularly large hands and, more often than wanting to "make a statement", they count it as a drawback that it appears so large.
Or just wait until next year, when they'll (probably) have an X Plus. Which will feel like a frickin' iPad.
I wish they'd make a smaller version of it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-ipho...
Sales are still great, but the growth has become stagnant.
But no, why don't you just leave this money on the table instead and I'll make do with the 2013 model.
You go on ahead, Apple, wondering how to ignite more revenue growth.
I agree with the pain of USB-C, but one hub for home and one mobile adapter can solve all that. It's not as bad as people make it out to be.
Plus it's still a little more expensive than the previous base model at launch, I think, despite being worse in quite a few ways.
> Plus it's still a little more expensive than the previous base model at launch, I think, despite being worse in quite a few ways.
Besides USB-C, what else is worse compared to the previous model? I had the model before, so not too familiar.
Some people love the keyboard, some people hate it, so call that a wash. I recently had to use a two-generations-ago MacBook keyboard (last model with an optical drive, I think) after getting very used to 2014+ and the current ultra-thin one, and... I actually liked that one better than both the newer ones, and I don't hate the newest one, it's just less nice to use than the one two generations ago. Also gets crippled by specs of dust, seemingly, which is annoying.
To me in daily life, everything seems fine sans USB-C and touch bar. It's a one-time price hassle that sucks but in the end doesn't end the world. I travel with one adapter that has USB's, HDMI, and a USB-C on it and have yet to run into any issues with it. I wish Apple actually made decent hubs that didn't cost a small fortune, and I do hope they get their shit together next model as well.
I just think that the sky isn't falling. You said it was worse in quite a few ways, but I think it's really just 1-2 big ones that can be fixed.
> We had to buy a ton of new monitors at work because most of our existing ones wouldn't work or didn't work well, even with adapters.
The biggest issue is the adapter market is absolute shit. I got lucky with two good ones.
Well, it was several ports they replaced :-)
But yeah, it's not that I think the new ones are junk or anything. I have one for work. It's fine if you have USB-C stuff with it and if making sure you have that crap is someone else's problem, and expense. There's just no way I'm paying more for one of them than the previous model, for my personal laptop, because I use every port on there all the time—except the Apple ones (lightning/displayport? I can never keep the names straight) and don't have a single USB-C device in my house. If the new model came with a really great multiport hub/dock thingy to get us through this (multi-year) port transition period that'd at least make it less off-putting.
That suggests that the shitty keyboard (which improved mildly in 2017) is a not insignificant factor at the margins.
Lots of folks say the 2015 rMBP is the gold standard best laptop Apple has ever put out, and I can't disagree.
I'd drop some serious cash in a heartbeat for a brand new model that touches on those notes, but the new MBPs just are not even close to where they should be.
I'm unmotivated to buy a new computer I can't repair myself as easily or replace the batteries when they wear out, because I like using my computers for 5 to 10 years and run them into the ground.
However, looking back, they have a pretty good track record regarding what they remove. Keyboards and mice didn't really need separate ports, floppy drives weren't all that great, and optical drives ended up gathering dust in a nice battery-shaped hole.
They're type-C, but that's the direction all consumer electronics are headed in. All of my daily gear is USB-C now. It's a much more capable port in general.
And for legacy USB gear, you can either just swap out for a C-to-B cable, or get a small C-to-A dongle if the cable isn't removable.
I'd much rather have the extra type-C ports, myself.
Using my personal 2013 macbook pro (13in) with the monitor is a freaking nightmare. It just can't handle the higher res monitor, the mouse looks like its moving in slow motion. Same story on the 2015 macbook pro via hdmi.
This on its own will be a huge factor when/if I replace my personal laptop. I'm gonna hold on to it for as long as I can though...
Given Apple's deep pockets and platform ownership, how is it that Spotify is still alive? How is it the Apple Maps is still lagging Google Maps so profoundly? Or that Apple can't muster any response to Netflix at all? Let's not even get into the farcical self-driving car project they aborted
Apple has now had years and unlimited funds to compete in these service markets, but still is behind. Tim Cook needs to do some exec shuffling, the company is coasting. Shareholders and analysts won't ask tough questions, everyone is making money and they don't want to jeopardize access
It could be that tech expertise and data aren't fungible.
> Or that Apple can't muster any response to Netflix at all?
Nor have they mustered a response to Johnson & Johnson—hell, they haven't even overtaken Snapple, who are only the _third_ largest soft drink business in the US.
> Let's not even get into the farcical self-driving car project they aborted
Actually, let's. I'd love to hear what you know about it.