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Comment by throw93 | Hacker News Reader

That’s why I asked meaningful in what way.

Meaningful to me is something that improves quality of life for majority of people like vaccines, cure for terminal decease, better public transport etc. Making a $1000 phone sadly does not fall into same category.

Apple did push the industry with personal computers in 80s and better smartphones in 2007 but since then it’s been very incremental improvements.

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A phone with a transit app and NFC payments actually is one of the most useful things you can have for public transport.

It’s slightly more convenient than carrying a paper transit pass and a credit card(which don’t consume energy) sure, but nothing life changing for anyone.

Nah, it lets you navigate systems you've never used before if you're on a trip, or replan if you took the wrong train or there's a delay on a line. Or give up and call your mom to come pick you up if it breaks down.

NFC payments don't consume much energy on a phone either; you can generally set them to work even if the battery is dead.

How is this unique to Apple though? Every other smartphone company does this. It was innovative in 2012, now it’s as common as a wheel.

It's not, but I didn't mean to imply it was.

Apple does provide all those as first party services though, so you might think of buying new phones as subscribing to that if you like it.

Smartphones have been instrumental in helping the third world enter the information age, and Apple kicked that off.

With these phone prices? The third world got kicked off with the cheap android devices…

Which wouldn’t have current form and functions had iPhone not exist.

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