I got the new 14 Pro, but only because I wanted the mag charger feature. Before that, the 11 Pro was still a solid phone and did everything I wanted and more. Won't be upgrading at least 3 years
A new iPhone every 5 years for example, would be dumb. Ignore the hype and marketing and just pick the one you'd like if and when you upgrade.
A tangent:
Personally, I wish more things had yearly upgrades and the backwards/forward compatibility Apple devices generally have. It's a different model, but it would be nice if game consoles had improved iterations yearly. The once a half decade model creates too much of a boom/bust cycle imho. If the Switch had a new, better version every year that was both forward and backward compatible within a "software generation" a lot of games like Pokemon wouldn't look and perform absolutely terribly.
They sorta do a tick-tock cycle now, generally, its form factors on the 'tick', and significant hardware refresh on the 'tock'
Take pre-orders a few weeks in advance, then everyone can have it day 1. No scalpers reselling them on eBay for 10 times the cost. No stampede at Apple stores because they already have a few weeks of inventory.
The accelerated product cycle is why you have awful launches like consoles. The product is barely finished and rushed into production in time for Christmas. There's not time to build the actual units. Slow down a bit and you can solve that problem.
Inventory in a warehouse does not have the kind of cost you think it does. Most of the "cost" people talk about are hypothetical profits that a different product occupying that space might generate in the same time. The real costs are insurance and warehouse leases. Per unit, it's almost nothing.
A company like Apple could easily stockpile months worth of inventory and never even notice the real physical cost of storing it.
Opportunity costs, or any other "virtual" cost, are still meaningful figures.
Well, not Macs. They've never managed to settle into any kind of consistent upgrade cycle there. In the past I guess they could blame Intel somehow, but they're not even releasing an M2 iMac at all.
It was fairly easy. Intel's released products often would not meet original spec, or once it was throttled to fit into spec it didn't have significant performance gains over the prior generation. Often they would go generations without the performance warranting the increased part cost.
> They've never managed to settle into any kind of consistent upgrade cycle there
They would like an annual incremental upgrade cycle and a five year design cycle.
Even without Intel, they still have supply chain constraints. For instance, even with their own silicon, they are relying on TSMC to be able to meet process and production volume targets.
Releasing chips on a new process will likely lead to really odd effects due to yield issues - for instance, having a new CPU show up first in products with lower sales volume. That includes tiering, either with things like a regular vs "pro" phone, or retaining the older model of computer while charging more for the newer version.
Right now they appear to be on an 18 month cycle for Apple silicon, which is driving their new hardware (either with a new machine serving as the launch platform of some new SoC, or a design revamp of a machine based on existing SoC).
Humorously, the only product which has had an incremental update so far is the MacBook Pro 13".
I suspect they'll eventually have a two or three year "architecture" tick for their Mac and iPad SoCs. Depending on those architectures and the upstream changes at TSMC, there might be a lot of different SoCs released against that tick.
> but they're not even releasing an M2 iMac at all.
I'd be really shocked if they don't release a M2 iMac, most likely in March.
I couldn’t say the same about an Android phone of similar vintage (not counting lineageOS - there I can even still get the latest Android on my Oneplus One, but it’s more rough around the edges compared to the original OS)
People (usually from the Android camp) complain that Apple never innovates on brings anything new, which is kinda true if you only take the delta between the two latest devices.
But they fail to take into account the person going from a phone that gets dropped by the latest iOS release (5+ years old) to the latest and greatest. The leap in features is staggering.
Everything about the MacBook is better than its predecessor but I was particularly blown away by the iPad Air and the handwriting recognition. I put my 1st gen Apple Pencil in the drawer not long after buying the original iPad Pro and eventually sold it. Now I use my 2nd gen pencil every day and I’m even thinking of buying an iPad mini as a really portable digital notebook.
I get the same pleasure again next year when I finally get to upgrade my iPhone 8 Plus. Battery life on my 8 is terrible now and it will get dropped from OS upgrades next year. I’m probably going to upgrade to a Pro Max because I’ve heard the current generation get 48 hours+ battery. But most exciting of all next year: USB-C!
I much preferred the old form factor and would readily give up the faster processor, etc, for it.
Apparently, and this explains my experience, after an OS update the phone will use a lot of battery while it does post processing of any photos you have and other random stuff.
After a full night’s charge, the next morning my iPhone SE battery plummeted so fast that the numbers were ticking down every few seconds.
After some Googling I read about this post-update battery usage issue. I deleted all the photos from my phone and my battery is now fine.
I wonder how many people have bought new phones because of thinking their phone battery is on the way out when really it is just post update activity.
Funnily enough, after transferring everything to the new phone, the first thing I did was go through all my photo's and start deleting a lot of photos. I didn't realize it, but any time a photo is texted to you it saves it (makes sense, I just never thought about it), so I ended up deleting random photos going back years.
The charge port had gotten so finicky I couldn't get it to charge half the time and it was really a matter of economics. Spend $200-300 (or more) asking someone to fix it or spend a bit more and get a new one, so I decided to spend a bit more and get guaranteed good hardware.
I just really lament the form factor change.
Nah, that never got to production. The internet collectively lost their shit and the project was cancelled.
They just teach the image ML model to detect new kinds of stuff and it takes a while for it to go through your library.
Photo processing should only happen when plugged in.
While the iPhone is always a good time to buy because next years one won’t obsolete this years.
They don't have planning meetings once iOS 16 or iPhone 14 ships to decide what to work on next year - like most companies, the products are divided into components, for is divided into features, where those features have multi-year pipelines and land when they are ready (although they often land incrementally).
Slower releases likely mean that there'd be more motivation to aggressively push changes out, e.g. your team's changes either ships in 3 months or have to wait two extra years. That means that a slower release cycle can actually decrease quality, and is IMHO one of the reasons that many longtime MacOS users have decided they'll never install an OS until the dot-two release.
Even if that isn't the case, slower release cycles mean that developers are less nimble in correcting the problems that inevitably exist.
A non-Apple example - Java before 1.9 is a great case study of how a poor release process cost insane amounts of efficiency, and cause a language to be too slow to take advantage of market opportunities. Their new process is faster and more predictable, and has resulted in significant gains for the language and VM.
> I got the new 14 Pro, but only because I wanted the mag charger feature. Before that, the 11 Pro was still a solid phone and did everything I wanted and more. Won't be upgrading at least 3 years
Sure, most people don't upgrade their hardware every year. That doesn't mean creating and selling new hardware is a bad idea.
The iPhone 14 (non pro) uses much of the iPhone 13’s internals, while the Pro gets upgraded. I think this is basically how the watch already is. I expect this is the future, the upgraded won’t really matter and won’t really exist beyond slight aesthetic tweaks. It’s like cars, no matter which year you get, they all drive just fine and are mostly the same internally. I’ve long said that cars are the natural comparison to these sort of electronics. Cars and phones are probably the two most expensive and utilitarian things people regularly buy. They come out with new ones every year, but don’t do major refreshes every year so you don’t really have a reason to tine when to buy one. I think it also indicates that we’ll see a price stagnating base-model phone and an ever increasing top-tier model as the companies explore how much people are willing to spend (a Corolla vs a Mercedes).
The nice thing about the steady new versions is that you can always go to the store and buy the biggest-number iPhone version and not worry about lifespan or if it’s good (contrast with a game console: if you buy the PS4 6mo before the PS5 comes out, you made a mistake).
I don't think so.
A Mercedes will get you laid, the latest iphone won't and likely never will.
cell phones stopped being status symbols long before smart phones were created by apple and I don't see them going back to that.
Not having one might harm your chances, though.
Only because it’s a sign you have money, not because cars are cool.
> the latest iphone won't and likely never will.
When apple has a $5k iPhone it may once again become a status symbol.
Almost 50% of Americans have an iPhone of some version. It’s obviously not a status symbol of everyone has one. iPhones, like cars, are mostly undifferentiated.
Apple has a lot of room to build a status symbol, but admittedly they haven’t been too successful when trying with the Apple Watch, so I will admit the odds are low they’ll succeed, but I believe the market exists in the long run.
The other issue is copying it is too easy, so even if Apple tried the look of it would very quickly get copied.
Smartphones are present in ~85% of US households, and about 45% of US smartphone users have an iPhone; that’s significantly less than 50% of Americans with an iPhone.
maybe this is what we should expect, though, as the tech matures -- like cars: there's a new model every year, but only significant upgrades every half decade or so.
but mostly 'ciz work paid for it & and i could give my old phone to my brother-in-law (who had recently lost his in a hilarious dating mishap -- a hike, a river, old shorts w/ holes in the pockets...).
to be fair, the camera is better -- but im such a pitiful photographer it's wasted on me.
also, the pill sucks compared to the notch. (notch disappears mentally, pill doesn't.)
As long as people are willing to upgrade for minor features, why wouldn't they release a new phone each year?
I say this as a person who would (will) absolutely upgrade just for USB-C hopefully next year.
I will not play the nickel and diming game on DRAM, 6GB on a flagship phone ain't enough for a five year phone.
I've praised Apple for allowing me to do this by continuing to put out security updates for older phones, but the most recent set of pretty important security updates (15.7.2) have artificially been restricted to only devices that don't support 16. This is incredibly frustrating because all the work has been put into making my older device secure without having to update to the latest OS, Apple won't let me have the update and I have to go to 16 instead.
When a company doesn't have a yearly big flagship product launch, people assume something is very very wrong.
Let's pretend Samsung skips releasing a new Galaxy this year. Mums the word, no news at all, they just don't announce anything.
Well crap, to the average person who wants a new phone, that is scary, they want a phone that is going to be supported, not a phone from a company that might go out of business tomorrow! Or at least stop making phones.
And who wants to buy a 1 year old phone? Heck phones have a huge drop off in purchase within months after release, 6 months on the market and unless you need a phone, mine as well wait another 6 months and either get the model you're looking at on serious discount, or get something that'll last longer.
And then the tech press will go crazy with speculation! "OMFG END OF THE WORLD FOR THAT COMPANY!!!"
Ok, another fun fact, profitability of consumer electronics, at least in the US, generally relies upon holiday sales. iPhones pop out in September, which is about optimal timing for reviews to hit en-masse, to build mindshare, and have partners do their initial huge full price sales before holiday promos kick in.
Start releasing every 18 months instead and you fall off that train, your choices are pretty much 12m or 24m cycles to hit that holiday release.
but if none of that interests you then yes, i guess it could be considered a terrible cycle.
Most people aren’t updating every year.
Imagine if they only updated every second year. You would pay full price for a phone that came out 23 months ago?? Don’t be daft.