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Comment by new_vienna | Hacker News Reader

It seems that this will cannibalize iPhone 16 sales - it's $200 cheaper, same form factor and internals, with the only difference being the camera, which if you care about you go for the Pro model. However, the price makes for a much more appealing upgrade for anyone who has an older iPhone

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>, with the only difference being the camera, which if you care about you go for the Pro model.

Some people may care a little extra for an ultrawide lens and spending more for the cheaper iPhone 16 with 2 lenses of regular + ultrawide is enough for that. Don't have to get the more expensive Pro model.

The Pro model adds a 3rd lens for optical "true" telephoto instead of digitized "fake" telephoto and increases the resolution on the ultrawide.

It's also not clear from from the Apple press release if the 16e has a macro mode. The regular iPhone 16 (not Pro) has macro.

Everyone I've talked to would prefer the telephoto over the ultrawide for the non-pro models.

But then why would you buy the pro?

According to the Compare site[0] it does not have macro mode.

16 Pro: 48MP macro photography

16: Macro photography

16e: —

[0]: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

Which is why this came out in February, after most of the sales of the iPhone 16 are done.

Which is also why we will probably see the discontinuation of the regular iPhone 16 this Fall when the iPhone 17 is introduced, with this 16e staying on at the same price for an extra year.

While I'm not an expert, betting on the older model staying at the same price point until after the next model is released is a fairly safe bet, if you don't get an ever bigger discount once the next version comes out in the fall. Unless their own modem fails horribly, it seems they will continue with the new modem on the 17, driving the 16e price down.

I do not expect the 16e to reduce in price for at last 18 months. Apple has been tightening the screws on its prices. Also, the c1 modem is not coming to every single device Apple makes this year. Qualcomm announced that there is a deal for new iPhone launches until 2026. We're not done yet with Qualcomm and Apple.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-11/apple-aap...

There are a number of other differences besides the camera, a significant one being the lack of MagSafe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43104109

You can easily just add a case with magnets in it. Even iPhone 16 Pro cases often embed magnets in them to compliment the built in ones.

I'm guessing you might miss the cool animations but for charging and mounting it will work the same.

If the only things left to compete on are the camera and frame construction, maybe it's time for the non-pro line to go away.

There should never have been a "Pro" line in the first place. It's all about creating desire through marketing to make people spend more on the ladder.

The iPhone 4 had stainless steel frame, yet they made a big deal of it with the X and subsequent "Pro" generation when it was a standard "feature" that set them appart for success in the first place. It's crazy how much bullshit Apple have been selling since their financiarisation.

>It's crazy how much bullshit Apple have been selling since their financiarisation.

Have you seen what cars people buy?

Welcome to the modern world.

Apple has no problem with self cannibalization. See the iPod or the iPad with keyboard for example.

Counterpoint: removing Hypervisor API from iOS 16, ostensibly to prevent iPads from cannibalizing MacBooks.

Or MacBooks not having touch screens, or iPads being unable to run macOS / macOS apps even if you buy the $350 keyboard that gives it the same exact inputs as a MacBook, or iPads with modems being unable to place calls.

There's all sorts of limitations that seem less like thoughtful design and more like holding back the devices just that bit to make you want another device. You can't just want an iPad Pro, how will you run desktop apps? You can't just want an iPad Mini, how will you call people?

Well, at least the iPads can function as calculators now.

It's funny how iPads are marketed as laptop replacements, but everyone with an iPad has a laptop too. Especially the Apple fans who tell you it's a laptop replacement.

Now that Mac Mini is smaller, it's almost viable as iPad sidecar to run MacOS and Linux VMs. The ultimate dongle, with "I should be a hypervisor" graffiti.

Pixel Tablet with GrapheneOS has less limitations and will soon have Linux VMs, but lacks a keyboard travel case, and has been discontinued.

Can also emulate a PC in WASM to run Linux with a huge performance hit.

But I'm not even talking about Linux stuff, just basic use cases. Like a website somehow doesn't work with the iPad/iPhone, even if you forcibly request the desktop version. (YouTube creator studio live streaming is one example, or random airliners' in-flight video sites.) You need to unzip, manipulate, re-zip, and email something. Putting stuff on a USB stick for a print shop. Doing taxes. Running some Mac/Windows-only software.

> Now that Mac Mini is smaller, it's almost viable as iPad sidecar

How I wish Apple would work to make this better than the current state. Currently it's very ugly (bad scaling, weird res, weird bars around screen), high latency, needs some configuration...

Just let me plug in a cable and it should immediately become a display. (with video over DP?)

I legitimately don't remember if iPads have USB-C or Lightning or both at this point, but theoretically either should've worked for wired video

Cheap HDMI to USB-c adapter was relatively painless with Orion app for video display on iPad Air/Pro.

The cheap ones have high latency and only 1080p, no?

It was adequate for CLI/terminal/console usage, i.e. there was no issue between iPad and the capture card, any limitations were intrinsic to the card itself and would be the same on a PC laptop with Windows/Linux.

Non-Pro iPads are limited to USB2 speeds. Capturing 4K content for display on iPad would need a Pro device with USB3/Thunderbolt USB-c input.

Maybe it's my eyes, but I really like having a high res display for terminal or anything else where I'm reading a lot of text. It can be low framerate or high input delay, though.

1080p on a small screen isn't bad, though.

>Or MacBooks not having touch screens

I hope they never do that, it was a disaster on Windows 8.

That was because they found a security bug in that code and decided to ifdef it out if it wasn’t being used.

UTM and others use that code to this day. They could fix the bug and re-enable.

Yes but of course they don’t actually consider this to be something they want to support

Eventually they did allow UTM SE into the App Store in July 2024, https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/07/15/app-store-utm-s....

I meant apps using the Hypervisor APIs on iPadOS

This is aimed at the lower end of the market: the pre/postpaid MVNOs and deal hunters. And for kids.

The new modem is interesting. How much power around the world is being wasted because Qualcomm's code sucks? Apparently gigawatts per day.

My cell phone has a 3.7v, 2018 mAh battery, for a total of 7.4 watt-hours.

That's enough power to drive a Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus a distance of... 55 meters.

Even if Qualcomm's code was solely responsible for completely draining my phone's battery every single day, it would still not be very much power.

Multiply that by 100 million phones and you'll understand what I'm saying.

Now multiply that by 6 billion, because that apparently is the number of smartphones sold over the last few years.

You'd give an AUD$1000 phone to a kid?

Deciding between the vanilla iPhone 16 and the 16e here.

I don't see much in favor of the vanilla iPhone 16. Is the extra camera lens useful for anything beyond portrait mode?

You can record videos for later playback on the AVP, in case you care. There's also UWB and magsafe on the vanilla 16. And the dynamic island and the camera control button. But it's mostly little things, which many people probably don't care about.

No, no one cares about AVP.

Currently, this is roughly true. But there's a decent chance it will have a killer app within the next ~5 years, and then adoption will grow quickly. At that point, it would be nice to have a small library of videos/photos that were taken with the AVP in mind.

Regardless of the AVP's success, there will probably be some AR/VR device that becomes popular, and can read this format in the future.

VR is not usable if it's not ultralight on account of the physical pain the weight of the headset causes. Of course the AVP is the worst for this as it's made of metal and glass.

I had to google that to even decipher what it is, and we have way too many Apple devices in our house :)

It took me a moment to figure it out too.

Try it in the store. If it's anything like my 12 mini, the wide angle lens creates too much distortion to use for portraits. Occasionally I use it for landscape photos, but I wouldn't miss it much.

it's probably better to get iPhone 15 Pro even if second hand but good condition. On swappa you can get it for $550 and iPhone 15 Pro still support apple intelligence.

Apple C1 modem versus a tried and true Qualcomm modem seems like a big internal difference.

Indeed, this is the most notable aspect about this launch from a technology perspective. Apple's been working toward eliminating their Qualcomm dependency for nearly as long as the iPhone has existed.

I bought a 16 Pro after the camera on my previous iPhone stopped working. Despite being a camera-led purchase - and I do care about the camera on my phone - I would have bought this 16e in a heartbeat over the Pro.

People love biggest phone for some reason regardless of features.

I like the bigger phones because of my poor vision and fat fingers. Easier to read, easier to type on.

Large phones are great for spectacle free use. You can hold the two feet away from you and still see everything while being able to actually focus.

Hell, i want a smaller phone lol. I love the high end phones, i like my iPhone 16 Pro.. but man, this smaller one is tempting.

I don't think i'd give up the camera for it though.. but a boy can dream.

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