Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Presumably Apple doesn't make a new SE because it would kill their margins. And it'd be hard for them to make the SE expensive because it would probably be thicker, with a cheaper screen, worse battery life and worse performance (because of battery & cooling).

But I'm sure they could come up with some semi-plausible reason to make an "SE Pro" so they can keep those margins. How about owning the extra thickness and giving it a massive battery and using the depth to put killer camera optics in?

View on HN

They still make the iPod touch. It even has an A10 in it. The 128 GB model is $299.

The 128 GB iPhone 8 is $499 with an A11.

They don't have to sell a new iPhone SE for less for $499. I'd pay that for it. Small is a premium. But would selling it at $399 really kill their margins?

Edit: the iPhone 8 64GB refurb pricing is now $379. That's a pretty good deal:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FQ6K2LL/A/Refurbished-iPh...

Is it possible to have a softphone app on the iPod Touch?

You would just need a wireless hotspot that the iPod would always be connected to, to use it as a phone (or maybe people can start bucking the trend of always being connected).

It's the same size as the SE, except a hair thinner, and has a 3.5mm headphone jack!

spec comparison: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-SE,Ap...

Sure, I know a few people that use iPod touches as their “main phone” using VoIP apps. But they’re of the paranoid hacker type and want a device that’s easy to lock-down from phoning home 24/7. It works out for them since they don’t tend to make or receive actual phone calls much.

Only issue is most of these VoIP services can’t be used in a multi-factor authentication scheme since they don’t support short code SMS.

Nobody should be using SMS for MFA anyway, especially not the paranoid hacker type.

Get an Apple watch with cellular, and tether an iPod touch to it?

Apple watch in cellular mode dies after a few hours.

Can't pair any non-iPhone iOS devices to Apple Watch.

I’d pay iPhone 11 money for an SE2 with iPhone 8-equivalent hardware.

I’d pay iPhone pro money for an SE2 with iPhone XR or 11 hardware.

The SE to me is not a budget phone, it is a premium flagship and I am willing to pay for the feature of being small.

If they can make money selling a $450 iPhone 8 they can surely make money selling the SE. If they made money selling it in 2017 why wouldn't they make money in 2019?

> it would probably be thicker, with a cheaper screen, worse battery life and worse performance (because of battery & cooling).

I might be wrong, but I recall that even though the SE had technically inferior components, including display, it seemed it had _better_ battery life than the latest iPhones of the time. I believe the latest was the iPhone 6 at the time. Presumably OLED might have changed this?

It was the iPhone 6s that came out in the fall of 2015 before the SE's release in spring of 2016. The battery life was better to the 6s and 6s Plus, depending on the task. But, the 6s Plus beat it in quite a few tasks (by a lot), such as standby time, talk time, and audio playback.

Pretty insane that the most profitable company in the (history of the?) world is so risk adverse so as to obsess about margins.

Off topic but I think that would be the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or V.O.C.)

That's probably how they became the most profitable tech company in the first place.

They also took risks, once

I understand the obsession with margins, but at this point they're really taking risks with brand loyalty.

My 2009 MacBook Pro could still handle pretty much any 2019 computing I need to do, but the new OSs won't support it. That's understandable really, but how sorry is it that the 2019 keyboard is so bad that I prefer my 2009 model, even though it's slower to wake and boot.

My SE handles all phone tasks I throw at it, no problem (maybe the battery life could be better), but I hate all the new models. Apple pretty much perfected the laptop around 2014 and the phone with the SE in 2016. These are classic styles that were the culmination of a decade of design tweaks and component improvements. Each of those older generations could have been maintained with no more than small improvements in components (e.g., SSD) and ports going forward (until some kind of revolution in computing interfaces) and they would have happier customers.

I doubt a company like Apple would re-introduce a product like the SE which at this point is that far off the current median product range they manufacture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com