$100 more for the iphone?

raz-0

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/business...r:content&mc_cid=65f86af5f7&mc_eid=dff5e405ff

So what do you guys think?

As an Iphone user, I find anything under 32gb is a PITA, and 32GB is overly expensive as is. I can see a premium for the phablet phone over the standard phone, but Tacking $100 bucks onto the cost of an iphone would basically cover the cost of dumping all my paid for apps and re-buying them (at least the ones I continue to use). I'd only lose two platform specific apps I really find useful.

IMO if this is for the 4.7" phone, it's absurd even if they are making 32gb standard.

Also, I wonder if it has anything to do with them talking to the FDA about the health monitoring bits. They may be getting whacked by the medical device tax care of the ACA/obamacare.

For $100 more I'd want to see 32gb standard the bigger screen, and something like IPx7 water resistance.

Sapphire glass and subsidizing the ACA becaue you can implement a pedometer and can measure heart rate with the camera aren't on my list of killer features.
 
This is good news for Apple investors. Profit$

No, this pisses me off actually. Apple already has enough growth in the high end. Where they need new growth is in the lower market segments. Right now their strategy is to sell people the iPhone 4 in emerging markets, but the thing is too slow to run the higher end apps we build. Not to mention that this new iPhone is going to cause some serious issues for developers because it will create resolution fragmentation between iOS devices. I get that people want a bigger iPhone, but I feel like Apple is kind of throwing their app developers (who are the real "investors" in the platform) under the bus by doing something like this. They create a "luxury" device with an even higher pricepoint and then they make it harder to develop for by giving it a different screen resolution. Means you are essentially optimizing your apps for the very top segment of the market if you choose to go all-in on developing for the new iPhone. We're going to be firing on all cylinders as soon as WWDC rolls around to get our best apps ready and rolling for iOS 8 and these new devices, but we really won't have any other choice.

The other downside of raising the price is it makes them even more reliant on carrier subsidies, which are already taking a huge nosedive in the US. T-Mobile has almost done away with them completely, and the rising pre-paid carriers never had them to begin with. Even people with enough money to not care are starting to wisen up that AT&T and Verizon are giving them a raw deal on their contracts. It's hard to leverage the strength of your network as an advantage when the prepaid carriers run on the same network and give the same service for half the monthly cost in exchange for bringing your own phone.

Sapphire glass is huge though. I've used two prototype (non-Apple) devices made with sapphire glass/transparent aluminum oxide and all I can say is that Corning should be shaking in their boots. If any manufacturer can get the price of sapphire glass down enough for it to be a reasonable building material, it is probably Apple. It makes the phone almost completely drop-proof. You can throw a small, thin piece of sapphire glass at a concrete wall and it will bounce to the floor unscratched. It's not invincible, but when used on a phone, would prevent the vast majority of shattered screen accidents.
 
Does sapphire glass durability vary depending on source? The sapphire glass used for Touch ID on the iPhone 5S doesn't seem durable. The marketing effort behind it makes it seem like it should be.

http://youtu.be/J-3c1NYF8Gw
 
Blatant cash grab from what it seems like, really disappointing on a base level.
 
Does sapphire glass durability vary depending on source? The sapphire glass used for Touch ID on the iPhone 5S doesn't seem durable. The marketing effort behind it makes it seem like it should be.

http://youtu.be/J-3c1NYF8Gw

I would assume it varies based on the method and equipment used to create it, or the overall purity of the resultant glass. Touch ID already has some issues reading fingerprints right out-of-the-box, so I'm not sure I'd attribute the difficulty experienced in that video to the sapphire glass alone. My limited experiences with sapphire glass being used as a screen/covering were extremely promising and I look forward to being able to get a device of my own that incorporates the technology.
 
Does sapphire glass durability vary depending on source? The sapphire glass used for Touch ID on the iPhone 5S doesn't seem durable. The marketing effort behind it makes it seem like it should be.

http://youtu.be/J-3c1NYF8Gw

Sapphire glass is tough, but my reference point is from the small acerage of a watch crystal that is set in a recessed manner into a watch bezel.

One possibility with that video is he used a totally crap steak knife to do it. It's not very hard. it is possible he left some of the steel on the crystal, although that is less likely with a polished surface. I have thought I scratched a sapphire crystal as well as a diamond like surface coating that is in the same neighborhood as factory grown sapphire. Both wiped off with solvent. The latter was from steel that was about 58RC with regards to hardness, but it was also a satin finished surface.
 
Typical greedy Apple overpricing and fleecing of the sheep if true. They know people will line up around the block and blog writers are lined up to declare it best smartphone ever without even using it.

And iOS is absolutely terrible at dealing with screen resolution, and Objective-C sucks, its amazing there are so many quality iOS apps as developing for it sucks.
 
It is a weird hybrid with the ugliest syntax known to man, which not even its own mother could love, its a hack designed to add functional programming to a primitive language like C, the only reason it survives is because Apple uses it. The naming convention alone would drive anyone insane, the code is unreadable (even more than PERL), literally everything about the language sucks except for its concept of message passing.

XCode sucks as well, easily the worst IDE ever. XCode vs Visual Studio is like a wheelbarrow vs space shuttle.
 
No, this pisses me off actually. Apple already has enough growth in the high end. Where they need new growth is in the lower market segments. Right now their strategy is to sell people the iPhone 4 in emerging markets, but the thing is too slow to run the higher end apps we build.

Apple doesn't want the low end. Just like Lamborgini doesn't want the low end. This is an intentional pricing structure.

They do recognize of course that China and India are huge markets. But they mentioned time and time again they don't want to build what they consider to be an 'entry level' phone. So they get around that by simply selling older phones that they can manufacture cheaply. You're right though. Those markets are going to get left behind. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. I expect those localized markets to want to produce their own apps for those phones, as opposed to people in the US etc translating their software.

Still, just like Apple realizes it's worth it to sell their product to those two massive nations, it still might be worth the time to translate and create a specialized version for that market.


Not to mention that this new iPhone is going to cause some serious issues for developers because it will create resolution fragmentation between iOS devices. I get that people want a bigger iPhone, but I feel like Apple is kind of throwing their app developers (who are the real "investors" in the platform) under the bus by doing something like this. They create a "luxury" device with an even higher pricepoint and then they make it harder to develop for by giving it a different screen resolution. Means you are essentially optimizing your apps for the very top segment of the market if you choose to go all-in on developing for the new iPhone. We're going to be firing on all cylinders as soon as WWDC rolls around to get our best apps ready and rolling for iOS 8 and these new devices, but we really won't have any other choice.

We don't know what they are going to do with the resolutions yet. There are rumors that both phones are going to use the same resolution. The latest rumor I read is that there will be a 4.7" device and a 5.5". So using this theory, there will still only be one "new" resolution" as compared with the 3.5" and 4" devices. This of course will still make most app developers want to ditch 3.5" devices. We won't know until release, or at least until some Taiwanese site leaks it, but hopefully that will help a little.

Still, you're right. App development on Apple's system is getting harder. The advantages of not having a scaler. As opposed to the advantages of having a scaler. Ah well.


The other downside of raising the price is it makes them even more reliant on carrier subsidies, which are already taking a huge nosedive in the US. T-Mobile has almost done away with them completely, and the rising pre-paid carriers never had them to begin with. Even people with enough money to not care are starting to wisen up that AT&T and Verizon are giving them a raw deal on their contracts. It's hard to leverage the strength of your network as an advantage when the prepaid carriers run on the same network and give the same service for half the monthly cost in exchange for bringing your own phone.

This does suck. It seems to me though that the end user will end up being the one who pays it anyway. I don't think the carriers are going to subsidize that. They might, but I don't expect them to. I myself have moved to a no contract provider. $500-$700 for a phone is a lot of money. But it's a device that is becoming ever more complex, and still can be sold at the end of usage for a fairly decent amount back, provided of course that the device is handled with care.


Typical greedy Apple overpricing and fleecing of the sheep if true. They know people will line up around the block and blog writers are lined up to declare it best smartphone ever without even using it.

It really bugs me when people make this argument. If Samsung, HTC, or any other company could do this, they would. Believing that they wouldn't if they were in the same position is foolish.
I realize this next point you didn't mention directly, but I will anyway because of implication. People often reduce the term marketing. They think that marketing=advertising. In reality it's knowing your target segment well enough to be able to sell to them what they want, and knowing what the market price for it, will bear. Of course there are things to consider such as brand recognition, etc, however putting everything into that one basket and blaming that is absurd.

No one is impervious. Not even Apple. They proved that to themselves in the late 90's early 00's. Blackberry fell. MySpace fell. Nokia fell. IBM fell. If Apple can raise the price and get people to still buy their product, it shows that they know their market well, they've created a product the market wants, and whether you agree to the consensus on its superiority or not, it shows the general population does. Your reduction that people that like these products and feel it's worth it are "sheep" is ignorant.

When Apple slips, everyone will bail. Just as surely as they did before. Then you can have your enormous "I hate Apple" parade and feel justified. Until then, it's all premature.
 
It is a weird hybrid with the ugliest syntax known to man, which not even its own mother could love, its a hack designed to add functional programming to a primitive language like C, the only reason it survives is because Apple uses it. The naming convention alone would drive anyone insane, the code is unreadable (even more than PERL), literally everything about the language sucks except for its concept of message passing.

XCode sucks as well, easily the worst IDE ever. XCode vs Visual Studio is like a wheelbarrow vs space shuttle.
I assume you meant to say "object-oriented" rather than "functional", as O-C adds no features typically associated with functional languages to C (apart from optional immutability).

In any case, I asked what was wrong with it, not what you don't like about it.
 
This will be the decline of apple. Clearly they are trying to punch this cash cow harder than before people start parachuting out.
 
This will be the decline of apple. Clearly they are trying to punch this cash cow harder than before people start parachuting out.

Apple will be fine, more than fine. They have amazing margins and an extremely loyal and committed base. It will be tough for them to hold onto and grow their mobile market share but the margins are far more important than market share, at least for now.
 
Apple doesn't want the low end. Just like Lamborgini doesn't want the low end. This is an intentional pricing structure.

They do recognize of course that China and India are huge markets. But they mentioned time and time again they don't want to build what they consider to be an 'entry level' phone. So they get around that by simply selling older phones that they can manufacture cheaply. You're right though. Those markets are going to get left behind. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. I expect those localized markets to want to produce their own apps for those phones, as opposed to people in the US etc translating their software.

It's not even really China or India I'm talking about, it's the rest of the developing world where a smart phone is usually someone's first computing device. These people buy apps at a higher rate than those who also own other computing devices, despite their income level. There's lots of opportunities for new apps that have already been done to death in other computing ecosystems but where doing them anew on mobile can provide a fresh market and opportunities for innovation. The market for "luxury apps" is almost completely saturated at this point on iOS. Apple needs to broaden the hardware market so the software ecosystem can widen as well. We're ready to build. Why isn't Apple ready to help us sell our stuff to the customer?
 
Apple doesn't want the low end because their entire business model is built around the 'Apple products = high end = cool = status symbol' model. Its the same model used by any other designer product like jeans or shoes.

Offering a low price product dilutes the brand image. And another thing, Apple has by far the highest profit margins of any oem. Their product cost less to manufacture and they charge more. They can't really do that with cheaper products, they tried a bit with 5C and failed miserably.

It really bugs me when people make this argument. If Samsung, HTC, or any other company could do this, they would. Believing that they wouldn't if they were in the same position is foolish.

Do what - make more profit by selling devices at huge markup? Sure they would if they could. But those companies are primarily engineering companies, Apple is much more focused on 'design' and marketing, they spend less on R&D than most companies. And there are other reasons to dislike Apple - they depend on litigation and frivolous patents granted and protected by a biased US govt to stay in business. No other country in the world would protect Apple's ridiculous patents and their attempts to stifle others.
 
How so? You have facts to back that up?
Yes, I have read the data that you are contradicting with your unsubstantiated opinion and you're wrong. You can either continue being wrong or you can do your own research and correct your mistakes.
 
While some of the language is loaded, I think those are mostly observations in #16. Apple does generally seem to stay away from the race to the bottom in pricing, although some products are quite good values for their class. I definitely wouldn't have made such a blanket statement about Apple's profit margins because it's complicated by target audience and other factors (Apple TV users pay for media, handheld users pay for media and apps and are usually shielded from MSRP in phone users' cases, laptops and workstations have more of the price paid at purchase, etc).

According to iSuppli component cost estimates, Apple does generally have far better margins for its class of phone products than other top tier smartphone makers. That is more of a successful execution of Apple's vertical integration strategy: Apple owns or controls sourcing of everything from the software stack to silicon. IOW, Apple pays fewer middlemen and the margins it gets on phones shouldn't be surprising.
 
A cursory web search will give you lots of articles on Apple's high profit margins, like this one - http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...ry_high_margins_for_both_iPhone_5S_i_and_i_5C

Also does anyone actually think Apple deserves all the patents it owns and uses to litigate, on frivolous things like rectangular black shapes, buttons, slide to unlock etc etc, all of which have plenty of prior art? When a company loses its patent cases in every country but the US, and even in the US when the US govt has to step in to give Apple a pass and avoid them paying fines, you know something is very fishy. OTOH things Apple blatantly steals, like notifications, it never has to pay a cent for or acknowledge. Do you think Apple could've won that joke of a billion dollar verdict in any country outside the US?

You've said my facts are inaccurate, the onus of proof lies on you, not me.
 
A cursory web search will give you lots of articles on Apple's high profit margins, like this one - http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...ry_high_margins_for_both_iPhone_5S_i_and_i_5C

Also does anyone actually think Apple deserves all the patents it owns and uses to litigate, on frivolous things like rectangular black shapes, buttons, slide to unlock etc etc, all of which have plenty of prior art? When a company loses its patent cases in every country but the US, and even in the US when the US govt has to step in to give Apple a pass and avoid them paying fines, you know something is very fishy. OTOH things Apple blatantly steals, like notifications, it never has to pay a cent for or acknowledge. Do you think Apple could've won that joke of a billion dollar verdict in any country outside the US?

You've said my facts are inaccurate, the onus of proof lies on you, not me.

The litigation conversation would be approached from the opposite direction if Samsung could just come up with their own ideas. People only focus on the Apple v. samsung dispute because there's so much media attention around it, but then neglect to find out anything else about the situation. Apple was the victim of more frivolous lawsuits than their competitors over the last 5 years:
https://www.patentfreedom.com/about-npes/pursued/

They also campaign heavily for patent system reform that would result in some of their cases against Samsung being thrown out if the are enacted.

Litigation isn't even a significant profit driver for them. They make more money from dying product lines like desktop PCs than from the proceeds of litigation anyway, so this idea that it is motivated by greed doesn't seem to have much basis. They spend a lot of money to appear in court without a whole lot of monetary gain and a PR hit for having shown up in the first place. Doesn't sound real greedy to me.
 
The litigation conversation would be approached from the opposite direction if Samsung could just come up with their own ideas.
The big issue with that is Apple has many patents on things it wasn't the first to think of either. Virtually all of the patents Samsung "violated" were Android UI features (one was trade dress on an older model... because Apple invented the candybar form factor obvs), using idioms which have been around for years. The US software patent system is broken and is abused by Apple and many other companies.

Apple went after Samsung simply because it was Apple's largest threat, and Samsung made numerous mistakes along the way which didn't help things either.
 
The US software patent system is broken and is abused by Apple and many other companies.

Agreed, but you can hate the player or you can hate the game. Hating the game might result in some real reform and progress, but hating the player just makes you a pissed off consumer of some other product made by a different corporation who does the same thing. The broken system is the only way for grievances to be addressed, so in the meantime we all make do with what we have. Hopefully we can all look forward to a future without software patents but today that's not reality.
 
If the law makes murder legal and you go kill a bunch of people, that doesn't mean you're a good person and free of all responsibility.

Apple abuses the patent system more than anyone e!se and uses it to stifle competitors unfairly. And unlike other companies who own patents, Apple invented almost nothing of what they own. Its all bs.

Google owns pretty much all these inventions and I wish they'd step into the fight, but they make a lot of money from iOS devices.
 
Why are you trolling this thread? Just go back to the News section and let people who want to discuss topics at hand instead of railing against apple in every thread.
 
Google owns pretty much all these inventions and I wish they'd step into the fight, but they make a lot of money from iOS devices.

So you think Apple and Google have teamed to to conspire against Samsung? Seems legit.
 
Why are you trolling this thread? Just go back to the News section and let people who want to discuss topics at hand instead of railing against apple in every thread.

I'm surprised this discussion has gone this far, seems the mods have gotten much more lenient in this section.
 
I'm surprised this discussion has gone this far, seems the mods have gotten much more lenient in this section.

/shrug, it has been my experience that the mod's usually are more then willing to let anti-apple trolls run rampant for a while, since many of the mods share their beliefs.
 
Something folks haven't discussed much here is the accuracy of the story.

This is nothing but a rumour. In fact, as 9to5 Mac notes, Misek's "checks" are frequently off by a gigantic margin. He said that the iPhone 5s would come in several colours and carry NFC, for instance. My suspicion is that Misek is doing what a lot of analysts do: relying on dodgy sources (or simply making things up) to draw attention to his business and pump up a stock he covers.

I will continue presuming that the next iPhone will start at $199 US on contract, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't.
 
Typical greedy Apple overpricing and fleecing of the sheep if true. They know people will line up around the block and blog writers are lined up to declare it best smartphone ever without even using it.

And iOS is absolutely terrible at dealing with screen resolution, and Objective-C sucks, its amazing there are so many quality iOS apps as developing for it sucks.

I doubt this news is true at all, as far as I know about Apple.

Also, same thing can be said about Android sheep. They jump the Samsung even when they knew its crap. News media all paid to praise them, at the same time hired tons of writers bashing other competitor on forums. They were caught multiple times for doing it all over the globe, but people still fall for their marketing.

How is iOS terrible at dealing with screen resolution? Is there a example on that? Are you talking about Autolayout / constrains?
I am not quite sure where you got the Obj-C sucks. Obj-C is one of the most beautiful language that I have used so far. It gets thing done fast and efficient without some massive package import like Java, which usually end up with a mess for not having lots of native support on necessary things like notification(observer-pattern), or lambda programming (Finally in Java 8). The one that come close to it would be C#.

App quality on iOS is far superior than Android in every single way, because of quality controls and powerful native APIs.(And iOS Apps runs A LOT faster than Android because the VM Environment and GPU, especially the A7 64bit on reference count). The UI on iOS are generally way better than Android counterpart because all the reasons above.

Not trying to lean toward any side, but iOS is not what a typical Android user would expected to be.

BTW, I am a Android user, bought tons of Android phone because I enjoys the variety of it.
 
How is iOS terrible at dealing with screen resolution? Is there a example on that? Are you talking about Autolayout / constrains?
I am not quite sure where you got the Obj-C sucks. Obj-C is one of the most beautiful language that I have used so far. It gets thing done fast and efficient without some massive package import like Java, which usually end up with a mess for not having lots of native support on necessary things like notification(observer-pattern), or lambda programming (Finally in Java 8). The one that come close to it would be C#.


The reasons why there are complaints about programing for various resolutions is because Apple has them all essentially hard coded. There is no scaler. In other words if you want to support multiple iPhones with different resolutions, then essentially it has to be specifically programed for that resolution on that device.

I can't comment on the programming aspect of iOS, as that is beyond my scope of knowledge.
 
AutoLayout needs some serious bolstering to accommodate the additional pixels on the left and right sides for a device like the proposed 4.7". Doubly so if they do a 5.5" in another resolution.

AutoLayout also does little for apps with customized interface layouts and does away with the "pixel-perfect" mentality that's been part of iOS design since the beginning. I know we are going to have to change, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
 
AutoLayout needs some serious bolstering to accommodate the additional pixels on the left and right sides for a device like the proposed 4.7". Doubly so if they do a 5.5" in another resolution.

AutoLayout also does little for apps with customized interface layouts and does away with the "pixel-perfect" mentality that's been part of iOS design since the beginning. I know we are going to have to change, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Autolayout on iOS 7 is a disaster with that transparent inset, and create some weird behavior randomly. I rather do things manually, unless its for prototyping.

The reasons why there are complaints about programing for various resolutions is because Apple has them all essentially hard coded. There is no scaler. In other words if you want to support multiple iPhones with different resolutions, then essentially it has to be specifically programed for that resolution on that device.

I can't comment on the programming aspect of iOS, as that is beyond my scope of knowledge.

Apple did not hardcode them at all, its the developer who hardcode themselves. People loves abusing it. The scalar is there, but people just don't use it because there is no point when aspect ratio is fixed, even the X/Y is the same between Retina/Non-Retina.
I have not yet seen anyone complaint about it yet, except Android developer who just started to do iOS development.

It's a good thing and bad thing, depends on how you look at it. Android on the other hand the Layout is a disaster, that is why no one bother to try unique UI on it since it varies too much across all devices. Google acknowledge that, that is why they are pushing for a Android UI standard now, instead of ripoff iOS design.
 
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