I really don't understand why anyone is paying $1000+ for a phone when you can get really amazing phones for $300.
Another question - why do people spend $30k on a car when a $10k car is nearly as good? Seems like a much bigger waste of money than the phone.
Why? I hate driving and would rather be reading or goofing off on twitter than being angry behind the wheel as I get somewhere.
Not for everyone but I'll never go back to driving.
Adaptive cruise control for fast but varying speeds is great, however - it makes the spacing much better, which makes things more relaxing. It also reduces the active brain load to 'what lane do I need, what's coming up in the next mile, and do I need to be preparing to stop/exit', rather than needing to worry about the car in front of you so much. For me at least, it also makes things like lane changes more deliberate, so instead of "need to change and keep speed" it's something more like "I'll get there when it's safe, and change lanes if it's really clear", which is a much better mindset.
My previous experience with adaptive cruise control with another manufacturer wasn't nearly as polished, so I didn't think much of it when I bought the car. But it quickly became one of my favorite features!
If I want to engage my brain at all I'll listen to a podcast or something, but often those half hour periods of relative disengagement are very nice breaks to have.
That said, I do choose 10 minutes of walking over 2 minutes of driving in anything but a torrential downpour, or 2 minutes of walking over an extra 30 seconds hunting a closer parking spot. Maybe it just all comes down to not wanting to deal with (potentially unpleasant) people.
Hard to argue with $8k for 250k miles.
No matter how much money I pay for an Android phone, I have to fight with it to stop my data being harvested by everything from the very OS up. Sure, I can get decent quality cameras and build quality on Android phones but I’m either paying a stack of money for the likes of a Samsung or I’m paying for something from some sketchy Chinese brand.
I don’t know if any android phone manufacturer has a hardware security implementation as high quality as Apple’s and even if there were, I’m not sure how many of the manufacturers I’d actually trust to build it properly, let alone have the OS use it properly.
I’ve also got far more consistent battery life out of my iPhone X than I have out of my previous Android phones.
Am I paying a premium? Yep. Is it a premium I’m happy to pay because I actually get what I want and my data is so far, more secure than on any Android device: yep.
Ah well.
bah!
I should have been an easy sale. After a bad experience with Android, I have no desire to go back. Budget isn't an issue. But if Apple is going to price phones like laptops, I'm going to upgrade as slowly as I upgrade my laptop. (Which given how long it took them to get more than 16GB of RAM, I've gotten used to doing pretty slowly.)
The only thing that tempted me was the camera improvements. Which aren't so much camera hardware as them greatly improving their photo processing via specialized computing hardware, as I understand it. Still, I take a lot of photos, and everything about this change looks fantastic.
Gruber's slideshow is good for demonstrating it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/sets/72157700003327111
Honestly, Apple's consistent approach of "new phone design with number-bump" one year then "same design with incremental improvements and an S" next year means that outside of unusual cases buying a new iPhone every year is silly. X to XS is underwhelming, but 7 to XS (or XR) is quite compelling.
Given which... unless Apple does something outright worrying, I expect I'll buy whatever they put out this Autumn. Get the fancy new camera features, and more of a notable increase everywhere.
And those $300 phones don't have a mind-blowing camera, but the latest gen flagships phones finally do. That, plus the fact that phones become obsolete much more slowly now, makes those $1k phones a worthwhile investment to me.
And as the Pixel 3 has shown the software makes far more of a difference to the quality of the photo then the hardware.
Software and hardware dance together on iOS.
Since Apple seems to be failing at that.
Apple and other phone makers set the benchmark years ago, people don't seem too interested in going back. Even when they're buying non-Apple phones, they're buying other companies' flagships: Samsung, LG, Huawei, Xiaomi. Those phones are no slouches either.
The physical focal length of a phone lens is about 3 to 4.5mm. There's not a lot of light-physics you cam do in that much space. Even a cheap point-and-shoot fixed-lens camera will be superior and will cost much less than the phone upgrade increment.
In my experience they last longer, feel more comfortable, hold a better shape, keep a better color.
[0]https://www.highsnobiety.com/2012/11/16/japanese-denim-a-his... [1]https://www.amazon.com/Unbranded-Brand-UB401-Indigo-Selvedge...
Not great. But okay for a tiny market like luxury consumer goods.
Probably should look at shutting up shop at some point.
And when they are, it's because of the brand and everything else going on with the brand.
Or are you suggesting you speak for 1.3 billion people.
What a ludicrous generalization. Not only do I personally know Indians who own iPhones and Macbooks for exactly the same reason I do - we like them better - but you could make the same specious argument about anything, anywhere.
And really, does merely owning some sort of iPhone really confer status anywhere anymore, if it ever did? I haven't noticed anyone besides high-schoolers caring at all about whatever brand of phone someone happens to prefer for a decade. Time for that old trope to lay down and die.
No, but owning a newer one impresses those easily impressed. It says to others that you can afford it. The Internet, at the least, is rife with memes about Android users being "cheap". Gifts of iPhones are often also highly valued over Androids as gifts.
The same sort of person impressed by expensive handbags and highstreet designer clothing in everyday situations is the same sort of person impressed by iPhones and sport cars in cities. I don't mean to pass any judgement when I say that, but I find the notion that people simply don't think "but I'll look poor if I use that" (perhaps unjustifiably, perhaps unconsciously) to be simply absurd. The vast quantity and desire for such show off products would show you wrong.
The truth is that few people (and I know that this might sound unbelievable to a HN reader) simply don't care very much about a phone's functionality beyond availability of apps (which is almost at parity level between Android and iPhone), performance (the minimum accepted being met by almost all popular phones) and integration with other tech (which seems to matter less now that people have moved from using iTunes to Spotify, YouTube and Netflix).
The look and high price are absolutely reasons why someone might prefer to buy and iPhone. It may not confer status to you but it seems to for a lot of others.
For a t-shirt, these things jump immediately to mind that may increase its cost:
- A limited batch
- A particular cut
- A particular print
- Supporting a clothing brand / designer you have a connection with
Why judge someone so harshly because they value some other aspect of the item differently than you? There's something incredibly ugly about being confident in your ignorance and casting judgement on other people.
A lot of phone have roughly comparable specs, but the camera and overall software behavior is not comparable on lower-tier phones.
This idea that anyone who isn't buying some cheap Android phone is doing it for fashion/trend reasons is ridiculous, insulting and condescending.
The fact is that I care about my privacy and security and only Apple seems to take it seriously. They also support their devices for years so I look at it like its an investment. That is easily worth the extra $10 or $20 a month I pay for my mobile phone plan.
Seeing that the iPhone 5s was introduced 5 years ago and is still getting updates, the 7 should still be getting updates until 2022.
What about cars? Are you proclaiming that everyone should drive a Corolla? Or that everyone should drive whatever it is that you personally drive?
Who are you to decide what is significant to the "average" person, if there is such a thing?
And we're seeing this on the mobile market as well, especially in lower income places like China and India - the 300$ phones these days can do pretty much everything what an iPhone does. With a bit less pixels, slightly worse camera and less words like "Magical!" in the marketing pitch.
So it's getting really hard for people to throw away several months of their savings to get a marginally better product with an Apple logo on it. And you can see this in sales - people go for Huaweis and Xiaomis in Chinese market in droves. Even in Europe, Huawei is gaining a massive piece of market due to their cheap and good offerings.
Since the 2013 iPhone 5s is still getting updates, I suspect that the 6s will still get updates at least through 2020.
But right now, you can get an iPhone 7 for $449. Again, if history is any guide, it should get OS updates through 2021.
Where I live iPhone is a status symbol. People buy them because they want to show off that they can afford it rather than because there is some special functionality they use. To me iPhone is like Rolex Watch most people who own them probably don't need them and could make do with something much cheaper.
edit: Good example my coWorker told me about her 14 year old daughter begging her for an iPhone. It's the "cool" brand people want. When I was that age I remember Nokia 3210 was the phone everyone wanted. When you have that sort of luxury appeal you can charge more for the product and people will pay.
The answer is a critical function of marketing.
I can also have a firewall NoRoot Firewall), more granular privacy controls, I can root and and replace my hosts file, and some other nifty security/privacy things for paranoids like me.
Is it as polished as an iPhone? No Does it cover all my needs fully (and them some)? Yes Did I pay 1/6 of the price? Yes (trust me I can affort any smartphone) Do I think Apple is milking it and offers nothing new? HELL YES
I am happy that their stock is getting slapped, Apple put themselves in that position.
As for the Chinese economy, at some point many countries will reduce imports from China for a variety of reasons, and the slowing dowin is inevitable. Apple messed it up on many domains. Now they are paying for it.
Are you referring to modulating the power usage to avoid random shutdowns? If so, I don't understand why people have viewed that as a nefarious scheme. Seems completely reasonable to me. The newer user-visible stats on battery health and power usage are also a good idea, but don't change the physics involved, you still need to modulate power usage to match what is available or shut down.
I would gladly pay for a new (£50-£70) battery every 2 years to keep my phone up and running. It is the lack of transparency that made me angry. I do have the technical skills/knowledge to understand the reasons. I also have the critical thinking to (imho) dismiss their BS answer that they force me to spend £1000 instead of £50. And this is where they killed my 'loyalty' to their products.
But this really isn't the question. People "overpay" for luxury goods all the time in lieu of higher quality cheaper products.
Selling expensive stuff doesn't necessarily mean you have to or should have the best stuff.
I am sure that I am not 100% immune to marketing, but I like to prefer the function over the plush.
Luxury is for other people. I prefer F.I.R.E instead :) I do understand that Marketing creates artificial needs, and I want to believe that I avoid it :)
and no you can't root Huawei phones without unlocking bootloader, not unless you are willing to part with significant fee to shady third party for something which was provided for free by Huawei