Ask HN: Should Apple move to biennial iPhone announcements?

3 points·behnamoh··4 comments

At this rate, the incremental improvements over the last gen iPhones are so negligible even Apple won't let you compare it with i16 on their website. Doesn't it make more sense for Apple and other phone companies to stop introducing a new phone every year and do it every two/three years?

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I wonder why we don't get biennial [S] release years at all anymore. At this point, more of the iPhone's lifetime has been without S releases than with, but they could probably sliped back into that cadence and no one would've complained.

16 -> 16s -> (17 + 16s /w discount) -> 17s -> (18 + 17s /w discount) -> ...

I'd even say that the Pro could be it's own line. The unibody aluminium and tweaked looked would've been a good starting point for "iPhone Pro". (then iPhone Pro 2, 3, 4...) That could free them from having to segment the market for every single iPhone release by "pro" features, since the new pro in theory might only ever need a biennial release.

The cadence is not just about shipping marketable products and features.

It's also about iterating on internal capabilities, processes, technologies across design, sourcing, manufacturing, etc.

What makes it into each year's phones is what's had the kinks ironed out, and all the commercials sorted.

According to the DOJ's antitrust complaint, the improvements are negligible because of lack of competition in premium smartphones insulating Apple and allowing them to deliberately target "good enough" and eschew new and especially expensive features. If that's true then this crawling-progress is entirely artificial and biennial announcements wouldn't really make a difference.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544... (point #14)

they should go the 911 way...keep the name, change the headlights design every year

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