The iPhone SE was the best phone Apple ever made, and now it’s dead
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I have an 11" Macbook Air, and I love it. The size and weight is nice, the keyboard is great, the touchpad is precise, I love that it has MagSafe, and I consider the ability to plug in DisplayPort monitors and my USB-A devices a must-have. Newer laptop models don't have compelling features my Air lacks, and take away things I like. I have no incentive to upgrade, and will definitely explore other manufacturers when it eventually wears out.
It's frustrating when a company makes products that suit your needs well, and then changes its mind. I just don't seem to be in Apple's target market anymore.
I am also not planning on upgrading. The iPhone X family looks great. Amazing screen. I don't care about a home button or a headphone jack or whatever the improved battery life is. Until I can be guaranteed a seat on the subway, it's all a net negative because I can't actually interact with applications during my commute. (When I'm not commuting, I have a 32" monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse which is WAY BETTER than a 6" phone and my finger.)
(More honestly, I don't see $1000 in value-add over my current phone. I don't need the latest gadget to be happy... but if it makes me $1000 happier over its lifetime, sign me up.)
I feel like it's a cultural thing. "Designed by Apple in California" where you just drive to work so a bigger phone is only a benefit (larger battery, easier-to-read text when you're using the phone). But in NYC, small is a huge benefit, and it's a shame that the transit-deprived West Coast tech companies don't understand our use case here.
Ahh, you nailed it and I've bitten my metaphorical tongue to avoid saying loudly: the damned mobile phone ecosystem is designed and tested by people in giant suburban, car environments like California. Not subway takers. Not pedestrians. The giant two-handed phone design obviously is torture on a subway. With navigation buttons even Andre the Giant would have had trouble reaching.
You know what else, though, shows the bias? Apps that think they're always connected to data. Even Spotify, with its glorious offline ability to play music, hangs stupidly in its main home screens (the one that has the we-made-this-for-you playlists). Other video playing apps with no real caching or notification or awareness to the user when there's no data.
There are many examples of blind spinning waiting type hanging behavior, as if no one can fathom using a phone during a commute that isn't in a car (or a red yellow and green type of bus?)
Samsung, on the other hand, has been producing huge phones that no one is going to be able to use with a single hand since a long time ago, and has no problem selling them in places like Hong Kong. It doesn’t seem to me that it is suburban culture that is inflating the size of phones.
(Don’t get me wrong. I like dense urban environments, public transport, ability to use apps without internet connection, and, at the same time, smaller phones.)
I feel like the bigger and more important modifier is whether your phone is your primary computing device.
1) To show off.
2) A battery life hack. (Number of pixels to illuminate goes up like the square, volume of the battery in the phone goes up like the cube... so larger phones will have better battery life. This was a huge, huge, huge concern on Android when the big Android devices started showing up. Remember the days when your Android phone couldn't even last 8 hours in your pocket at work? That is when the big Androids started showing up, and Apple introduced large phones after that.)
3) Most people don't use PCs anymore, so their phone is their only computing device.
These three concerns obviously weigh into the equation in addition to usability on public transit.
But really, New York is kind of unique in how over-capacity the transit system is. Tokyo is similar. Bought a Japanese phone recently?
I don't think culture has much to do with it.
Apple's market cap is over $1 trillion. They sold over 40M iPhones last quarter. They have way more data than either of us do, and the market has spoken: there is not enough demand for small phones to justify a separate SKU.
(Also, as a fellow strap-hanger for 6 years, I just shoved my phone in my pocket and listened to podcasts while riding. But I know everyone has a different use case!)
EDIT: Folks complain on one end about Apple’s lack of product focus and on the other end about cutting out SKUs that do not make sense at their enormous scale.
As much as you all love the SE, it went untouched for years at a time. I imagine there were no components that made sense for the smaller SKU as Apple transitioned to larger phones (and batteries, crucially). It is also a low-ASP phone to begin with, which makes less sense for a company who increasingly makes “luxury” tech products.
I won't buy a large phone, which in 2011 meant I could buy the best phone on the market and in 2018 means I'm facing a future with some phone that just doesn't match a 2011 iPhone in looks, style and maybe even functionality and objective quality.
I'm sure they have great reasons, but it is very tempting to wave a fist in the sky and yell "why do they have to keep changing things?". The Apple ecosystem was great for me, and now I'm being forced out. It is like watching open source projects try to nuke themselves out of existence with the Big Trendy Rewrite; except Apple is wildly profitable and successful.
Making things at the scale that Apple makes them is hard. If the SE was a great business idea, Apple would keep doing it. Maybe they will make another one in the Spring. It's not dead dead yet.
It’s just business
Apple will probably sell 70,000,000 in 90 days this quarter. I think they know how to sell a lot of phones
Let's not pretend this is some natural result of "the market". The UX of most iOS apps, including Apple's, has been steadily getting bloated with bigger buttons, bigger labels, more padding in text fields, and reams of whitespace. This is personally annoying, but manageable on the bigger, newer phones. On iPhone SE it means that many apps can be maddening to use - with only a little bit of content visible on screen in some situations.
iOS 7 on the iPhone 5 form factor was great. iOS 12, not so much. Apple clearly sees no future for the smaller phones and their UI designers consider them an afterthought. It's little wonder that only diehards are willing to put up with this kind of UX compromise.
This born-and-raised Californian also rides the subway (bart) to work every day, and I'll have a hard time giving up my SE for similar reasons to you. Don't let assumptions about what California is like get in the way of a good argument.
Clearly app developers had already abandoned the size, but worse I realized how horrible all the apps had become. Apple iOS apps are now the same complicated disasters as every other platform. I was hanging in there with my Mac Book Pro 2011 hoping for a new machine that deserved to have Pro in the name and now I knew that soon there wouldn't even be an iPhone that I could use with one hand (comfortably - Yes I have heard all of the Apple apologists and Android phablet fanatics)
It is difficult to remember how lost we were, Microsoft Vista, Donut and BlackBerry. Steve changed the world one last time, but can't imagine Apple will again.
The iPhones sold off within a day and the Mac Book Pro 2011? To a musician with a rig that connects to Firewire.
Oh Apple...
I get the elegance argument about 4/5/SE design, but the screen size thing is just the market speaking. A lot of people use their phone as primary computing device and a bigger screen is nice when it's your only device.
Never have I had to hold a cell phone to do so.
A lot of people use it as a time for reading, and your phone is the logical thing to use for that purpose.
Apple is happily going off in a nonsense direction where their products are less and less useful because they are less complete and therefore less “self reliant” as devices.
See that’s what people don’t articulate. It’s not that the design changes are bad. Some are great. It’s that the balance of great design and great utility is what made apple impossible to beat as a phone and a laptop, and then there was the fact that they were seamlessly integrated (something apple has still failed to fully exploit — their stuff could be mind blowing). This is what made the brand great, and I feel like people miss that part of the argument.
When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances. I didn’t need a dongle to present and I didn’t need a cable adapter to charge my phone. When I packed for a conference I would grab my laptop, a power supply (that I could trip over in hotel rooms while working with no worries and that neatly wrapped up), and an hdmi to dvi adapter in case the projector failed, but that was it. Now I feel like Apple has externalized all of that utility in an effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters, both for phones and laptops (and actually the 2013 Mac pro was the same problem).
Apple needs to understand what made them great was that they weren’t the ultimate steak knife, they were the ultimate survival knife, and get back to building the most useful, thought out and self-contained devices like they used to. They had a sweet spot, but we’re going back to the Apple cube across all product lines again, and nobody wants that.
The pro computer failure and the move away from nerd needs to slab of glass has lost balance and is heading into design over substance. The pendulum needs some rebalancing.
Except it didn't have VGA which is still popular in conference rooms to this day, so you needed an adapter for that. Some people probably needed an adapter for Ethernet as well.
Not to mention you needed a MagSafe 2 charger instead of a universal USB C charger.
> effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters
They did it on the MacBook because USB C is more convenient than having specific use ports. The same reason you're happy that the 2013 MacBook had two USB three ports instead of two PS/2 ports and a serial port.
As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
This mythical device does not exist. USB-C PD includes 5 different power profiles[1] and even if your adapter is big enough subtle compatibility problems still pop up - my colleague's laptop complains about his adapter every time you plug it in for some reason. The situation is better than when every PC product line had their own power connector, but if you were in the Mac ecosystem you already mostly had the same thing because every laptop just used the same of Magsafe connector.
USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
> As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
What if I want to charge my phone and listen to music and own really nice headphones that don't need to be upgraded every year? Oops, can't do that anymore without this monstrosity: https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAH9D7KY71...
I've been using the top rated "budget" Bluetooth headphones from The Wirecutter for a year now (Jabra Move) and they blow. Like most bluetooth devices, the connection only works "most of the time", sometimes they connect but don't identify as headphones (?) and I have to power cycle them.
They also weigh noticeably more than my previous favourite, portable, wired headphones (Sennheiser PX 100-II) with worse sound quality to boot. I only noticed this when switching back to my wired headphones after I forgot the Bluetooth ones at work and realizing that the wired ones felt almost weightless by comparison. If this is the best that Bluetooth headphones in the ~$100 range have to offer, I don't want it.
Oh yeah, and I have to charge the fuckers every day because what I needed was another device that's useless unless I remember to plug it in constantly when I'm not using it.
Thanks Apple.
Those are deprecated anyway. All you should need to know about a charger is the max wattage.
It does exist. Yes, there are issues like the ones your colleague experience but most of the time you can charge your phone, MacBook, or Windows laptop with the same USB C charger.
> USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
You can buy an adapter for this if it's really something you're worried about [1].
It should also be pretty clear by now that Apple expects most of their users to not be using their MacBook while it's plugged in. The majority of MacBook owners will rarely need to thanks to the improvements in battery life over the past five years or so.
> What if I want to charge my phone and listen to music and own really nice headphones that don't need to be upgraded every year?
You can't. Again, most people never use this functionality. It is unfortunate for those that do but that's why the adapters exist. Much like the lightning to USB 3 adapter I have for my iPad. It would be convenient for me if I didn't need that adapter to plug a midi keyboard in, but the amount of people actually plugging midi keyboards in doesn't merit including a USB port on the iPad.
All of your complaints about bluetooth headphones are perfectly valid. Some people like them, some people don't. Lucky for you, a $9 dollar adapter for your wired headphones will solve all of your problems. Hardly even worth complaining about, especially if you were willing to spend ~$100 on a set of bluetooth headphones.
Nothing has come close since.
I don't know what sort of bubble the product manager or whoever lives in that makes that a reasonable tradeoff. Sure, it might seem neat on paper that they have reduced the height 13% and total volume 18%, but in practice, well...
I’m considering getting a MacBook but I’m thoroughly uninterested in a new(ish) one.
You could go older but there's no need unless you want a DVD drive. And you'd sacrifice CPU performance and maybe memory capacity.
Alas, it seems the Apple official Refurb store sold the last of their 2015 MBP models earlier this year. The earliest ones I see now (in US/UK/HK stores) are 2016 models.
1: "The 2015 revision brought the modern Force Touch trackpad and used the space savings to increase the battery to 99.5 Wh, just under the 100 Wh carry-on limit for most commercial airlines" from Marco Arment, https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
it turns into the twilight zone with the rebuttals they come up with. mostly it is related to the sells and extrapolating that to consumer satisfaction.
The first gen felt like typing on a flat surface for me, whereas the newer ones feel really nice to type on.
I say this more and more each day. I'm in the same boat with the SE, and it's also the same with the MacBook Pros for me. I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro last October, the one from 2015, the last one with a great keyboard.
It seems that April 2016 was the peak of where Apple and I aligned.
I would gladly pay £1000 for this phone to be a first class citizen again, it feels like apps aren’t optimised or suitably spaced for the small phone. But I _love_ the size, the design. The touchID- everything is where it feels like it should be. Ugh.
FWIW. I even jumped to android to get my tiny-phone fix. But Samsung crapware pushes me back.
Examples? I was shopping a while ago and the _only_ option I saw was Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact.
The design language for the XZ2, particularly the weird back, is unappealing to me too, and the button configuration hearkens back to the Z3 (still, IMO, their most satisfying design).
1) I moved to all bluetooth back in 2012. Headphones and wires have always been a nuisance for me. I'm not sure why Apple removed the headphone jack - but I never felt the need for it. I don't even carry the dongle anymore.
2) I loved the HTC One's display. I don't like screens that are too big and hard to handle but the iPhones were always too small for me - too hard to read anything. I switched to iPhones only after the 6 - and yes, that's because finally it had a screen size that I liked.
3) I did love Magsafe - no doubt about it. But I'm ready to let it go as well. I can now go to pretty much any desk at my office and plugin a Dell usb-c dock - that's shared with PCs and start working. At my permanent desk, I have just one dongle/adapter to which everything is hooked into - it's actually simpler than my previous setup where I had a 4-port USB Dongle + Display port Cable + Power adapter to plugin/disconnect. Now it's just one cable to plugin to my computer. And yes I have tried some docks as well - it was still at least two.
New Apple very much seems to optimize for their profit margins and gimmicky features at cost of usability.
I think Steve Jobs may forever be remembered as the CEO who legit gave a shit about usability.
As another poster downstream pointed out, they could be saving the release of the new SE for another announcement in 6 months to avoid cannibalizing their new flagship phones
The announcement is basically telling those users (and there are millions of them!) that it is time for a change.
The decision is good business sense. And given they often announce products in Q2 as well they will have data of demand for new phones, and also how many have exited the Apple ecosystem due to price, and then in March they should be able to decide whether or not in best interests to release an SE2 or bring back the SE1.
As to margin above it should also be pointed out that the components in the SE are now aged. To do the same again, and take latest components and stuff into a smaller form factor will take a major engineering effort as new components and usage is for a larger cavity inside. To take all those and stuff them into a smaller space is actually like inventing a whole new phone - one literally has to rethink the physics of everything. Big investment.
Also if they continue to sell the SE it means they and suppliers must continue to produce the components and parts. And for much of this that means factories worldwide, including here in mainland China where i live, need to keep running nearly obsolete processes, equipment, and that wont be viewed well by their investors unless it is a cash-cow.
This is done for business reasons. When a company gets bigger than most global trading blocs the decisions they make have enormous global trade implications from the mine to mainstreet.
For me it’s not an issue of being able to use it with one hand. It’s an issue of having a phone that itself is just small. It fits easily in my pocket where I barely notice it. I don’t want a phone that feels like an iPad in my pocket. I don’t want something that feels way better than my wallet in the keys+phone+wallet combo that I always have with me when out in public.
It is light to carry around and I can throw a case on it and it still a reasonable size.
Absent the introduction of another smaller model, I guess I will be forced to upgrade to a larger phone in the future if I want to stay with iOS (which I do) but I will be doing so with no enthusiasm.
Welcome to the future.
Surely not having to redesign case, mechanical switches etc should give scope for more margin, not less?
This is what the author of the article should have written. Instead he's filled his piece with inane bollocks.
"It honed that design to a cutting edge and then, when everyone expected the company to leap forward, it tiptoed instead, perhaps afraid to spook the golden goose."
It's really difficult to look at the iPhone X and not see a company leaping forward. Look at the critical reception and customer satisfaction. This is a phone which was widely considered to be a huge leap, and which Apple explicitly acknowledged at the unveiling.
> It was the best object Apple ever designed, filled with the best tech it had ever developed. It was the best phone it ever made.
At the time, arguably. There's little disagreement that the processor, camera, screen, GPU, and security in iPhone X is better.
> To me the SE was Apple allowing itself one last victory lap on the back of a design it would never surpass.
Just such a painfully bad take. Staggering.
Honestly, after you try a retina MacBook display - you can't possibly think that it's not a compelling feature worth upgrade. My old macbook air's screen looks like complete garbage now after I use new macbook pro's daily.
> Newer models don't have compelling features my SE lacks
While I do like SE design too - the camera on that thing is just horrible by today's standarts
In a vacuum, I guess the Retina display is nicer? It’s not something that I really find very noticeable, personally.
Out of curiousity, is there any advantage of DP compared to HDMI? I've never had anything that would use it, and HDMI makes more sense as a standard-to-upgrade-to, coming from DVI monitors. Quick googling suggests HDMI has twice the data bandwidth as well.
(not that Macs offer much in the way of HDMI ports anyway...)
I'm not sure why it's so hard for people to understand that Apple's market is people who want to be cool.
They don't sell hardware devices, they sell coolness.
These people don't care at all about how the phone/laptop is. It doesn't matter that you only have USB-A adapters or mini-jack headphones, if Apple says that the new cool is USB-C and AirPods, you are going to buy that and then snicker at people using the "old stuff".
It's like in the joke: the only thing worse than not having an iPhone is having last year's one.
I used Windows laptops from various OEMs up until I switched to a Macbook in 2011.
The quality of the software (all the UX/UI beauty and reliability of Snow Leopard, iTunes used to be good) and hardware (touchpad was revolutionary, backlit keys, great keyboard layout for toggling sounds/brightness, built-in HD camera) was YEARS ahead of the competition, which is just now starting to catch up.
If you look at the market now, all the laptops look like knock-offs of Macbook design, and the software is evolving to be that way as well.
Apple was ahead of its time for usability and a frustration-free experience, but it's a stretch to say any of their new products are cool. Apple Watch/Airpods/iPhone 10X SE are not cool...they just signal that you have a lot of disposable income
I'm always surprised by this. I remember trying to use iTunes back when I had an iPod Video and it was a piece of garbage. I guess it's different in osx?
Here's the history of Cadillac tail fins of the 1950s and 1960s.[1][2] Each year, the tailfins were re-designed to make the previous year look un-cool. Apple follows that approach. The new models are not better, just different.
(The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado [3] was "peak tailfin". The tailfins almost reached the height of the windshield. We'll have to see how far Apple pushes their "notch".)
[1] https://justamericanautomobiles.com/cadillac-tail-fins-1948-... [2] https://justamericanautomobiles.com/cadillac-tail-fins-1960-... [3] https://jalopnik.com/5915106/1959-cadillac-eldorado-biarritz...
Unless your definition of "being cool" is wanting the best, I'll take that.
Apple is now a fashion & lifestyle company. It sells the brand first and foremost. Every thing else is secondary.
As long as people keep buying MacBooks in absurd numbers, apple will keep going down this path.
Do these people need a $2000 MacBook to edit photos, consume media and work on office ? No. Do they still buy MacBooks ? Yes.
And there you have it.
You're also of course distorting the average sale price of Apple laptops, which is way under $2000.
Apple sells user privacy and products that work better and last twice as long as the competition. Everything else is secondary.
As an aside, you don't seem to have mastery of when the Jony Ive era began, at least not if you are referencing a post about the iPhone SE being the best.
I've talked with a lot of people about why they stick with Apple. Why the pay so much and then pay even more money for accessories. No one really has a compelling answer they just shrug and say "it's what I've been using" or "I'm bought in."
I think people are aware of the ways their being nickeled-and-dimed, I just don't think people care enough to switch. And I kind of don't blame them.
Switching ecosystems is a lot of work. If your whole music library and playlist collection is on Apple music, exporting it to Spotify is time consuming and confusing, you may not even know you can do it with a tool. You'd also have to learn a new OS, re-buy any apps you've previously purchased. It's a pretty big hurdle to switch.
I made the jump from MBP to Surface and I’m very happy with that choice. Great screen and keyboard, thin and light enough for anyone reasonable, swapped VirtualBox for WSL and that’s great too. Still waiting to see any of these ads people claim W10 is infested with too.
I just wish they'd decide that quality, reasonably priced hardware without gimmicks was the new cool.
The smartphone industry's decision making in the last few years has been... bizarre. I've been an Android user up to this point because I appreciated the vast feature set, open architecture and diversity of hardware that I could find. That initially meant settling for a lot of the quirks and general cheapness of early Android phones - Apple had them all so thoroughly beat on polish. With the advent of really good high-end phones from Samsung and others, and the great advancements in Android's software, it seemed to me that we were getting to the point that there was no particular reason why anyone should prefer an Apple smartphone over any of the other high-end options.
The phablet craze and the ridiculous explosion in screen size should have tipped me off that something was very wrong with the industry. It didn't make sense to me that literally no-one would offer a phone that was small enough for one-handed use. And then they started eliminating the headphone jacks. And then... the notch. Multi-billion dollar development teams started chasing each other down degenerate design paths. The modern smartphone is this weird art project that's uncomfortable to interact with, and doesn't have a lot of basic features I use. Swappable battery? Expansion slot for microsd? Rare, and getting rarer.
Worse, Google seems to have totally abandoned the initial premise behind Android, and every handset manufacturer has erected a walled garden filled with bloatware and with no expectation of any future support. If I'm going to live in a walled garden, I would rather live in a nice one.
I won't put the iPhone SE on a pedestal. It's older hardware, and you're definitely sacrificing some battery life and camera quality (two of the few positives of these modern phablets). But I can reach across the whole screen with my thumb, and I can listen with any set of headphones I want, and it's really very pleasant to use - after only half a day of use, it has just seamlessly disappeared into my life. Exactly as it should.
It's the first smartphone I've ever used that I actually enjoyed.
(Even though it is rather inconvenient and cumbersome to move data from or to the device.)
https://macroplant.com/iexplorer
... which allows me to treat everything in my iphone as a filesystem and pull items off / delete them / add them, etc.
I am not sure I could be an iphone user without this tool.
Is it really that hard to believe that most people like phones with larger screens and there's little reason to include a third way to output audio from your phone (in addition to Bluetooth and lightning)?
I'll kind of give you the notch, but I honestly like the look of the iPhone X quite a lot.
> Worse, Google seems to have totally abandoned the initial premise behind Android, and every handset manufacturer has erected a walled garden filled with bloatware and with no expectation of any future support. If I'm going to live in a walled garden, I would rather live in a nice one.
I'm asking because I'm torn between Xperia XZ1 Compact and the iPhone SE...
edit: forgot the "Compact" part...
As someone who's in the likely unique position of carrying an iPhone SE and an XZ1 Compact in their pocket every day (and a Pixel), I'd recommend the iPhone SE:
- The iPhone SE is 20% lighter, which you notice over an extended time of using both phones.
- The camera on the XZ1C is frankly abysmal. The iPhone SE has a far better camera.
- I think the iPhone SE runs iOS better than the XZ1C runs Android.
However:
- I think the XZ1C has better battery life.
- The XZ1C has a MicroSD slot.
- You can install open source ROMs and MicroG if you want to own your device.
But, using an OS made by an ads company is starting to get a bit creepy, so maybe it's time to switch.
This might have been fine if Sony's camera app wasn't a trainwreck compared to the 3rd party developers'. It also meant that image quality in other apps like Snapchat suffered. I was never 100% clear on whether the better camera algorithms were available to 3rd party devs if they bothered to implement them as a Sony specific feature, or if they were entirely locked to Sony's own camera app. In either case, 3rd party camera apps were bad.
Similarly, if you unlocked your bootloader you'd lose those image processing DRM keys and the camera turns into hot garbage.
> Sony has updated the text of the bootloader unlock warning on its website to be clear about the camera impact. It reads, "...the removal of DRM security keys may affect advanced camera functionality. For example, noise reduction algorithms might be removed, and performance when taking photos in low-light conditions might be affected."
https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/10/02/unlocking-the-bootl...
I don't know whether they're still doing this nonsense or not. Other than that it was a decent phone. They didn't mess with the OS too much. I don't hate Android as an OS, but it seems like whichever OEM you pick you're just deciding which particular flavor of bullshit you want.
Seems the same to me
I wish Sony will keep this line alive, Apple SE was only real alternative when I was buying the phone . . .
The XZ1 itself is quite a large phone, 73 mm wide. I find those quite awkward to use.
By selling what the market wants? From sales figures it is quite clear what people want and it's probably because the phone is most people's primary computer outside of work. That's not the case for a typical HN user, but big screens make a lot more sense when you don't come home to a computer.
What are you talking about, Apple knows this more than anyone. Why do you think they abandoned the SE?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/804398/us-iphone-sales-b...
The 6s and SE were their last remaining headphone jack phones. Maybe they’re trying to force the wireless headphones change as well as pave a way for new models. The SE actually sold more this year. But adding it’s 8% made it a clear 33% model replacement.
- Costs $650 less
- Does everything I need it to
- Does it one-handed
Maybe the goal is to make phones so uncomfortable to use that you won't want to take them out of your pocket.
- Use more materials to make larger phones
- Make the phone more difficult to grip securely
- Wrap glass around the edges so it can always land on glass no matter how you drop it
- Move control center so far away that you have to let go of the phone to reach it
2 thoughts: web browsing is a bit grim and the need for using 2 hands seems irritating, especially as you’ll be scrolling a lot on a small screen.
1) Because the iPhone SE was a new phone with flagship quality 6S guts, and I'm commenting on the apparent direction of Apple's new phone development.
2) The iPhone SE was price dropped to $350, so with the 7's new price drop it's $100 more expensive, not $50.
3) Everything I said about the XS applies to the 7 too, if not as strongly. It’s been a continuing trend.
4) I’m looking from the perspective of an existing SE customer, many of which will be looking to replace their phones this year or next. No current SE users are interested in replacing a 2.5 year old SE with a 2 year old 7 for $450.
- Will lay flat on a surface without requiring a case to do soThis is why my iPad Pro has a hard case instead of just a smart cover. The whole reason I got the damn thing is that you can write on it with a stylus, but somebody at Apple decided "Let's make this not lay flat on a table because people are buying a tablet to use it as a camera."
The only thing I've ever taken a picture of with it is probably a whiteboard.
With "Continuity Camera" or whatever it's called (1-click to take a photo with your camera and automatically import it into a program on your Mac), this becomes even stupider. Take the camera bump off and do that with phone to iPad. Everyone has a good camera on their phone already.
A more likely reason is that it‘s easier to pick it up from a table if it isn‘t flat.
Nothing they released after it makes sense to me. Too big and they deleted features I want while adding nothing useful to me. I wasn't expecting an SE2 so I wasn't disappointed when it failed to appear.
This iPhone and my MacBook Pro 2015 are the last Apple products I'll expect I'll ever own. Not out of spite but because they no longer make things I need, or even want.
I still feel the SE is a bit too small to be my main phone, but I do wish they kept making a phone that small. I know my sister prefers it, I prefer it for my second phone, a lot of people liked it.
Plus the 5S/SE industrial design is 10x better than any phone that came before or after. It's just beautiful, it's easy to hold, it's durable. It's just a great small phone, even if I think it's too small for my tastes.
Much like you, I believe that the SE is absolute perfection.
Even with my large hands, I don't personally have a need for anything larger. The only benefit, for me, is that I could have a larger playing field for Galaxies [1] -- but that's about it.
Combine the form factor with the fact that 11.3.1 is an excellent version of IOS that is also jailbroken, and I've pretty much covered the bases for my needs and desires.
With the SE and talk of the SE2 (RIP), I was really hoping that smaller phones would catch on.
Macbook-wise, I'm on a late 2013 15", and I love it. I'm quite protective about both of these devices, as there doesn't seem to be anything comparable coming down the pipeline.
[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/gala...
I'm on this boat too. SE and 2013 MBA user here. I like Apple much more than any of the competitors but their recent products are far away from my needs. I don't know what my "upgrade" path will be.
The iPhone XS itself is 13mm wider than the S.
As someone who uses an iPhone 7 Plus with one hand, I'm surprised that 13mm would make a difference. I'd be curious to hear what you thought after using one for a week.
13mm is nearly 1/4 the length of my thumb. I do not have unusually sized hands.
I wish I'm wrong and they release SE 2 after reaching their margin profits with X series.
We'll make it thinner, regardless of optical limitations, just leave a camera bump. We want edge to edge display, but need a camera on the front and can't quite put it under it yet: behold the notch. We will assume Gordon Gekko was ahead of its time and simply have everyone use preposterously large phones.
So a maxed out screen size on an SE body would give you a better screen than the 7, but in a smaller phone. How is this not an obvious direction? Lag the other hardware by 1-2 years to keep costs down a bit and avoid directly competing against the XS. I'd still buy it.
Apple has lost my business for upgrades with their new product direction in both laptops and phones
But we are not their target market anymore - it's the people/enterprises that can splash out $1-2k every year for the latest pic taking and video watching tech
And there are enough people out there to keep the company's revenues booming and the market happy
Would love to see someone focus on our slice of the market again, I just don't know if it can be done in a profitable way at this point
I have an SE now, and I am totally dejected about these big phones. I don't live on my phone (like the rest of the world seems to). I want something that fits unobtrusively in my pocket and that can be easily manipulated with one hand.
Fie on Apple!
I was playing with my 4S yesterday. I like its heft and size.
I would love to have a replacement board for it to run whatever.
Someone mentioned this in another thread, but I think there's a huge market for an iPhone "Nano," something between an XS and Apple Watch in size, but that has 85% of the functionality of the XS. No gimmicks, no bullshit, just a beautifully made "utility" device.
Every iPhone made by Apple after this, in my view, is a “wet soap”. They’re all so slippery and bound to fall from one’s hands easily. I personally cannot hold them without a case that mimics flat and better edges, essentially changing the shape of the phone to that of an iPhone SE and also increasing the weight. What a lost opportunity to make a great device again in every respect, Apple!
From a consumer’s standpoint, Apple seems so shortsighted and completely out of touch with what people love (not jut like), want and desire. Mac mini, now iPhone SE...voting with your wallets alone won’t help while ASPs of new iPhones are more and profits are increasing. Write to Tim Cook over email and let him know why you’re switching. Maybe, just maybe, when the good times start to turn bad, Apple may realize its follies and change course.
These kind of articles also help, but consumers need to voice their thoughts to Apple. Send emails to the top people and also write on Apple’s feedback page.
Consider for a moment that it's actually you that's out of touch with what people love, want, and desire.
They sold like 200 million iPhones in 2017. Hard to believe that they don't know what consumers want.
I sympathize: I actually prefer the original 3.5" screen iPhone. Even the 4" screen seemed a bit too tall for comfort. I finally decided if I was going to need two hands periodically anyway, I might as well bite the bullet and go with a large phone.
But I definitely like having a phone that fits comfortably in my pocket with my wallet - and that I can use one handed.
Couldn’t they ditch the notch by having the speaker on the edge of the device? I have no problem hearing the speaker with my phone pulled away from my ear.
iPhone X series is great fit for you then since it doesn't do that. Face ID uses an infrared dot projector and independent viewer to do a 3D read and then that goes directly to the independent security processor which acts as a black box (all cryptographically tied together, just like Touch ID). There is no photo of your face being taken let alone going anywhere. You can quite literally and trivially (as in I just did it right now) completely cover the front facing camera on an iPhone X and it will unlock with Face ID just fine.
If you're just worried about the mere existence of a front facing camera period then you should physically block it or drill it and inject it with black epoxy or something of that order.
>Couldn’t they ditch the notch by having the speaker on the edge of the device?
The notch is pure function defining form where the function is Face ID and a front facing camera. Face ID is a very valuable and important security feature, even if they ever figure out how to get Touch ID to work again through a screen. And a huge proportion of the market wants a front facing camera (as long as it's sufficiently secured, which Apple does a decent job of in iOS). Maybe they'll figure out how to profitably mass produce those features through a screen too someday but I don't see the notch going away in the mean time. Speaker function is by far the least important role there.
But I'm sure they'll re-introduce a revolutionary new fingerprint scanner soon enough.
I doubt it. Having to use TouchId or enter my code on my non-X devices feels archaic now. FaceId works so well on my X, I often forge the device locks at all. I'm ready to buy a new iPad when it finally gets added.
That triggered my PTSD from watching the Nokia N-Gage ads. That was cringey.
I think it's more a case of the companies saying "what you want is a bigger, shiny screen so you can use it like a computer, nobody has small phones anymore, don't be left out"
They have gone from a useful accessory, to a status/fashion symbol where bigger and faster is always better*
* For a given value of better
(Obviously some people actually do want bigger screens because they need it for things, but I would say they are in the minority)
But if I look around, I see a bunch of crappy big screens around, because "bigger is better" right? And sometimes, those bigger screens really are crappy. Some of them are decent quality, but they tend to also cost a packet, just like the iPhone, but not as crazy expensive as an iPhone. Still there are a lot of big crappy screens to be found around.
It's not people who changed their mind, it's Apple.
Most people never wanted small smartphones. It's particularly true in Asian countries. When I first came to Korea in 2010, some people jumped on the Galaxy Tab, because it was the first Android device that was big enough (and believe me, it was terrible tablet in many ways, and even worse a phone).
Apple probably doesn't want to bother selling niche products in highly saturated markets anymore, especially given that the SE was also a lower margin model. For one American/European consumer that is unhappy, they'll probably sell ten iPhone Xr's somewhere else.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/20/iphone-x-how-to-enable-reacha...
But I have to imagine a lot of SE buyers were doing so based on price rather than because it has an awesome form factor. Apple is now serving the cheap side of the market with the 7, which will probably make the cheap buyers a lot happier than the SE.
It feels like pure magic and I believe that magic died with Steve Jobs.
I find it hard to believe us small phone people will be taken care of by Apple ever again.
I have some old iPads and I cannot install anything necessary like Firefox because their iOS is too old and there is no update available (happens with iPad mini).
Or battery life deteriorates much quicker than in a typical Android phone (happens with iPhone 6).
Or because next software update had made device totally unusable (that happened to iPad 1 which become literally unusable due to apps/browser crashes).
Old iPods are very hackable [1]. There are suppliers making replacement backplates, click wheels, extended capacity batteries, and SD card adaptors. There's plenty of room for a Raspberry Pi Zero in the back, although I use a PQI Air Card. It can't run touchscreen apps though, which rules out maps/cameras/typing/many other apps.
Is there a touchscreen that can fit inside 103.5 x 61.8 mm? That's the part I would need to build my own iPod successor.
[1] https://www.head-fi.org/threads/official-ipod-video-classic-...
Most of all, I can actually type on the X, whereas when I go back to the kids’ SEs I can’t figure out how I ever got anything done on that thing at all.
Headphone jack? Where we’re going, we don’t need jacks.
The one and only downside of the X is that it must, must be in a case. I never put my iPhones in cases and never managed to crack one. The X with its all glass back, super slim profile, and curved edges is just too damn slippery.
The bonus of putting the $1,000+ device in a case is that the camera bump disappears and the thickness ends up just about right for me.
Wireless charging has been great, especially once I got one that held the phone raised up instead of flat (easier to position on just one axis) and rated for 10W.
The size of the X I feel is so much better than the SE and still perfectly usable one handed.
I really really don’t miss the home button. I find it so damn clunky on the SE now after getting to live without it on the X, and particularly double clicking home (versus the swipe up and to the right on the X) is just tedious.
I assume the extra waterproofing you get without the home button has literally saved my device several times by now.
I had an iPhone 4. And 5. And 5s. It’s a beautiful device. But it’s by no means an insurmountable pinnacle of design.
I honestly haven’t look that closely at the new lineup, but I’m just not currently in the market for an upgrade. The X covers every use case and leaves me wanting nothing. The home buttons on all my iPhones always wore out, got sticky, or eventually unresponsive after a few years. I’m somewhat curious what will ultimately take down my X, if I don’t drop it hard, I can’t see what about it could possibly wear out.
Using a lightning adapter is pretty painless. People just don't like change and love to complain.
Unexpectedly, the killer feature for me ended up being, "Can I record myself drumming without needing some stupid attachment?"
The iPhone 5s was the first iPhone I ever bought and the experience was simply magical. The phone itself was so beautiful, and the operating system just gave it this unbeatable cohesion.
I hope the iPhone XS can replicate at least some of that feeling, and I'm willing to let it. But I'm also skeptical of that.
This will make life easier in the long run. And I’m guessing this is true for Apple too.
But I get why people loved them. I like the 6 screen size and don’t want to go back, but the SE feels ‘right’ somehow.
Analytics will help you know. But at least it’s not still selling new for a few more years.
When „designing“ views I tend to face challenges from the other end of the spectrum: „what am I going to put here so there‘s not too much empty/negative space on the larger screens without making the layout look empty or clunky?“
I don’t think the notch is a factor in this.
Apple knows how many they sell. I’m guessing their sales metrics show it’s just a tiny tiny portion of sales. The fact it’s no longer similar to other phones they’re still selling means the economy of scale isn’t there anymore.
I guess the emerging market play didn’t work out? Or perhaps the Chinese market got to where large portions could afford the oversized screens sooner than expected?
I would happily buy an SE2 and use that. Wouldn't mind a higher price either if it had specs to match the larger ones. I just want to be able to use a phone one handed and not be too distracted by it.
The 6 and later versions were too big, for bigger screen needs I have an iPad mini. Which also seems on a glide path to obsolescence.
If we were limited to one Apple mobile device per person by decree, then maybe the bigger iPhone would make sense.
Understanding that Apple wants to avoid hyper-customization a la IBM PS/2 AND wants to maintain an air of avant-garde, some decent products have to be sacrificed.
A poster made a comment about working with the SE's limitations when designing apps for the SE. Some apps (such as Amazon) looked very crowded on my SE. Another (Manhattan Metal Prices) looks great
Maybe the SE died because it forced unwanted simplicity on app devs.
If they had kept the iPhone SE in the lineup, and introduce Xr next year, the reaction from people will likely be Apple bump the price of small iPhone from $349 to $599 / $649 ( Assuming $100 to $150 cheaper than Xr )
Now that iPhone SE is gone. They can make a new iPhone entry next year. Instead of replacing something with a more expensive model, they are giving you something new. It makes you value it differently. I think that is how it is going to work out next year.
iPhone 8 > iPhone Xr > iPhone Xs. Each with two different Display size.
I got sick of switching SIM cards when I traveled.
Anyway, grew to really love it.
The size is perfect. It's flat and perfect without a case.
Biggest feature: It has Apple Pay, a home button, and a thumb reader... I feel like such a putz trying to use Apple Pay on the X... like, "Hey hold on, Mr. Merchant, I have to take my sunglasses off and smile at my phone for it to authorize my credit card..."
I hate that we have lost the thumb reader. Facial recognition isn't better, doesn't feel more polished, and we just threw out something damn near perfect for something that's meh at best.
https://twitter.com/EricVicenti/status/1040376193881595904
"The people’s iPhone is still the SE.. made for human-sized hands, includes TouchID, headphone jack, is reasonably priced, and is the lightest phone they’ve ever shipped..."
The black and copper looks premium against my GF's iPhone 8, It's easy to hold, it's milled out of aluminium and strongly built, it's smooth, fast (Android One is great).
And it cost a fifth of what an iPhoneX costs here.
I even liked their cheeky piss take of the Johnny Ive videos.
iPhone SE topic: are there any manufacturers that take older iPhone model guts and repackage them with different bodies and screens?
I would love to use an iPhone (Google doesn't do privacy) but I can't justify spending 2 to 3 times the price on something I regularly break or lose... (I generally avoid fragile expensive utility items).
I use an iPad mini for safari testing because iPhones are so damn expensive, I can at least borrow my GF's in a pinch.
My mum thought only talks on her phone and she really likes something small and simple. We got her an SE to avoid going the Android route... if her SE needs replacing and we can’t find an apple replacement then it will have to be the Android route.
I wish he would just explain his thinking on this. It’s such a fundamental design decision.
I've had an iPhone for 8+ years and starting to look at other more reasonably sized options.
I can touch the screen and it acts as though nothing is happening...swipes, taps, etc... then seconds later it will run through all the things I've been trying to do all at once... pretty much unusable at this point.
I have a Samsung S tablet that got one major update (installed literally the day I bought it) but is exactly as same in terms of performance and utility as the day I got it. It's still perfect. Probably has some terrible security flaws, though.
Design? Nah. Some of us like a phone that fits comfortably in our hand and pocket, and doesn't look like every other phone out there.
When I have to use a button to open a phone now it feels like using a fax machine. It's so incredibly sluggish, slow and clunky.
And, when I look at an iPhone with huge borders on the edge (iPhone X goes right to the edge) it gives me claustrophobic anxiety because it's so small.
People are so afraid of change. Aside from the price, there's really no reason not to upgrade.
Seriously I love the SE too. And I was coming from large screen Android world to it as my first iOS device. Maybe they'll revive it by the time mine is ready to die...