Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zelphyr | Hacker News Reader

I honestly can't put my finger on it. All those features you listed are great but none of them make me WANT that device. I used to want the new product they announced as soon as they showed it off. Maybe when I hold one in my hands that will change.

View on HN

I somewhat have to agree on the "I used to want the new product as soon as it was shown off" bit. I mean to be clear there are some nice improvements on the iPhone, and it packs a hell of a punch compared to previous versions.

For me, it was how the announcements were made, they did seem to just feel like they had a massive "Wow" factor.

Even way back on the first iPhone announcement - When Steve was on stage and talking about the Palm and Blackberry devices having "physical keyboards", and that he had merged it all with the iPod with touch screens, to me that seemed like a massive jump. (OK I admit, at the time I was very much in the camp of "my Blackberry's keyboard is the finest!", but I watch the announcement back again... there was a very Steve Jobs finesse to the whole thing!).

The more recent announcements have kinda been a bit "meh", and I think maybe it's just that - I think a new type of device that has not been thought about, would bring back the "Wow" factor again.

I think, just for me anyway, that jumping over the releases (so skip a release and upgrade), I see more of a jump, than say if I was going between each version.

Anyway, my thoughts - and I don't know - maybe others see the same with the announcements not quite as they used to be - due to the slowness of "upgrades" to the product.

I have to agree. The upgraded camera is enough to get me to want to switch, but the keynote itself was rather dull. I generally enjoy the Apple launch events, but they’ve been sliding lately and this just made me feel “that was a waste of time to watch”.

> I used to want the new product they announced as soon as they showed it off.

Maybe you’ve grown up some since then? New phones are fun gadgets, but in the end, it’s just a phone.

It's also because the smartphone became mature. Many of the earlier iPhones had gigantic deltas: 3G, Retina + front-facing camera, Touch ID/secure enclave, > 4 inch display.

Now (or at least for now) the changes have become more iterative. The delta between several generations are still nice, but between individual generations are less enticing to immediately upgrade.

In the end this is not bad. Upgrading a still perfectly working product every 1 or 2 years is quite insane and taxing for the environment. A lot of credit should go to Apple for maintaining iOS support for old iPhones. This makes it possible for people to keep their phones longer or hand them down. Or for people with lower incomes to buy older generations and still get upgrades.

Of course, slower upgrade cycles are bad for manufacturers. So it's smart of Apple to increase revenue through services (Apple Music, Arcade, Apple TV+, iCloud Storage), rather than forcing their customers to upgrade perfectly-fine devices.

I can put my finger on it, literally, I love the fingerprint sensor for Apple Pay. I see my wife trying to use face-id for it and it seems very convoluted. Until someone shows me a simple a gesture as holding out my phone with my thumb on the fingerprint sensor, I don't have any want for a replacement for my 8.

Same. I far prefer the fingerprint sensor to Face ID.

Watch is really really nice.

One big problem with the fingerprint sensor: It's thrown off by even a minor amount of moisture.

Or dryness. During winter I can't get fingerprint sensors to work on my fingers :(

I still have an iPhone 7 so I am in the same boat as you, but don't you just double tap the power button for Apple Pay on FaceID devices? That's the same way you do it with TouchID, except you are using a different button.

I just know that when I place my phone next to the payment sensor, the phone switches to "pay mode". So if my thumb is there, the action is just put phone next to sensor, put thumb on fingerprint, in one fluid motion. For my wife there's this, place phone next to sensor, lift phone up to look at it, then put it back down. Often times lifting it up causes the payment system to timeout.

Perhaps there's a smoother motion, double clicking, then face-id then press. To me, the finger print sensor just means I'm tapping my phone on the sensor.

> one of them make me WANT that device

You could have said the same about your iPhone 7. What features of the 7 made you WANT to switch compared to earlier models?

Well, I actually needed it. I jumped into a pool with my 6S in my pocket. Other than that, you make a fair point.

The problem is that the improvement of the first iPhone compared to what came before was like 1/x where x is a very small, close to zero number, while the subsequent releases are like 8/7 or 6/5. And to top it off they cost over $1k, which makes it a hard sell for me.

The rumored folding iPhone would have been the wow-factor even if Samsung failed already in their first attempt. I'm not sure how it makes sense for someone to ask people what they would have been looking for to make the announcement worthwhile. Are you hiring?

"People don’t know what they want until you show it to them." -Steve Jobs

Reply on news.ycombinator.com