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With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

nytimes.com

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Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#291

Post by veidr »

alkonaut wrote: post #189

A lot of people just get the best iphone every 24 months (e.g. rich people, or people who have a generous smartphone policy at work). Having a model that gets another couple of hundred bucks from those people is pretty clever I think. This is basically the S-class phone (To make a car analogy, because that's what we do). The S-class Mercedes costs twice as much as the "Normal" E-class, and each time they launch a new…

I'm totally one of those people. I buy myself the best iPhone, every single year. But your car analogy, while popular, isn't really that illustrative.

Most of my friends have a nicer, more expensive, car than I do. Buying a previous-year showroom-demo Nissan SUV from the dealer saved me something like $20,000, compared to buying a Lexus or Audi, even one a few years old.

That's two decades of having the best phone. I'm not generally price insensitive. I'm specifically price-insensitive about devices that I spend a huge amount of time using, namely (in my case) my smartphone and computers.

And those things are also objectively way cheaper than luxury cars, so they aren't really comparable. A lot more people can decide to go high-end than can with cars, For instance, I noticed my housekeeper, a nice old lady who works for $15 an hour cash, also rocks a 256GB iPhone 7 Plus just like I do, and she doesn't even have a car.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#292

Post by Kluny »

jamespo wrote: post #285
Kluny wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also know a guy who made his living for many years repairing and reselling iPhones, who simply buys the top of the line as soon as it comes out and resells the old one to pay for it, at as close to full price as he can get away with. Since he always gets the most specc'd out phone available, treats it very carefully, always inside an otterbox, and is a pretty decent salesman, he usually gets his price. He also clai…

Thanks goodness iphones can't be lost or broken

It's more like... I've been getting better at not losing or breaking them as time goes by, and I've been investing in better cases/screen protectors. So I don't ruin them myself like I used to. But the damn things still break on their own. My last one, an LG G3, kept on having screen problems. I had the digitizer replaced once, had the whole phone replaced once, and it was having problems again when I gave up on it.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#293

Post by Kluny »

la_oveja wrote: post #231
Kluny wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also know a guy who made his living for many years repairing and reselling iPhones, who simply buys the top of the line as soon as it comes out and resells the old one to pay for it, at as close to full price as he can get away with. Since he always gets the most specc'd out phone available, treats it very carefully, always inside an otterbox, and is a pretty decent salesman, he usually gets his price. He also clai…

If you break/lose your phone it's your problem, dude. My Androids are lasting ~4 years each.

Of course it's my problem. I have to come up with strategies for dealing with it.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#294

Post by erikb »

yladiz wrote: post #205
erikb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) You don't know what an engineer is, obviously. So your examples had exactly zero impact. lol. B) The Galaxy S4 with Android 2.2 is more powerful than the iPhone 7. C) There are two reasons. Both may apply to you, though. Reality is really hard to accept, I know. D) Macbooks are really good. That doesn't give any additional points to the iPhone, though. I use one myself and am happy with it. It is well designed and…

A) I am an engineer, and at my previous company almost every engineer (9/10) had an iPhone. You should also know better than to insinuate that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Eric Schmidt aren't engineers, considering the companies they've created. B) Citation needed. C) What are the two reasons, specifically? The biggest argument I hear about using Android is that it's customizable, but I would argue that 99% of peop…

Look. Think about a guy. He stands behind a horse. The horse kicks him in the face. For most people this would hurt. But he doesn't process that feedback. How do you explain to him that it's a bad idea to get close to that horse from its back side?

If you can show me a strategy, maybe I can explain to you why iPhones are badly designed. it should be obvious by using it.

Examples:

a) you get a notification that you have a new mail, whatsapp message or similar. You open the app. Only then the App is able to actually start downloading the content. This is an example of Apps not really being able to work in the background. 80% of what you want to do with a computer you can't do with an iPhone.

b) The keyboard has no features to write more quickly, e.g. by swiping. Also the suggestions aren't learning from your input. This means each interaction is very painful instead of being done quickly.

c) Click on a Youtube link in FB or Twitter. It will not open the Youtube App, but it will open an app internal browser. From there you can manually redirect to the browser and only then you can open it in Youtube. There is no real event mechanism, or it isn't opened to App developers.

d) The costumizability results in you being protected by default, because App developers already have more freedom to provide sane defaults. Even if you never use customizibility yourself, you already gain from it.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#295

Post by Kluny »

balladeer wrote: post #252
alkonaut wrote: post #189

A lot of people just get the best iphone every 24 months (e.g. rich people, or people who have a generous smartphone policy at work). Having a model that gets another couple of hundred bucks from those people is pretty clever I think. This is basically the S-class phone (To make a car analogy, because that's what we do). The S-class Mercedes costs twice as much as the "Normal" E-class, and each time they launch a new…

Works for me. I may be up for the next SE Class :) Provided SE sees an upgrade. A genuine "thank you" for everyone who are paying for all the features that will be in my next SE purchase ~2 yrs later (I hope to keep it for at least that long). On a different note, E-Class seeing most of the features of previous year's S-Class may be a bit far fetched, don't you think so? Maybe couple of features that make the newly l…

> PS. Know very little about cars (def. too little luxury ones). Just had some general doubts. And I hope E in E-Class doesn't stand for "economy".

"Executive" I think. But it's just a symbol that means their second highest model.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#296

Post by naraniano »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #119

Is the new iPhone really going to be $999? I wonder if Apple are seeding rumours like this to make a smaller price increase seem more reasonable.

It's the iPhone X, which is supposed to be the end of the line. The iPhone 8 will be priced as it has always been.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#297

Post by fsloth »

TekMol wrote: post #290

I don't get what it is about the iPhone that people are willing to pay a premium for. Is it all just in the marketing? I would not mind paying $1000 for a phone if it offered any additional value over my $200 Android phone. But I cannot see anything better in the form factor of the iPhone line. And for the software - I have an iPad and I hate the software. It is so restricted. You cannot even do basic tasks like down…

"You cannot even do basic tasks like download an mp3/pdf/whatever in your browser and then open it the app of your choice."

While I agree with your general sentiment I can save and open PDF:s from safari to third party applications just fine on my IPad.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#298

Post by kk_cz »

TekMol wrote: post #290

I don't get what it is about the iPhone that people are willing to pay a premium for. Is it all just in the marketing? I would not mind paying $1000 for a phone if it offered any additional value over my $200 Android phone. But I cannot see anything better in the form factor of the iPhone line. And for the software - I have an iPad and I hate the software. It is so restricted. You cannot even do basic tasks like down…

So, why did you pay a premium for iPad when Android tablet at roughly half the price would give you the same functionality?

(btw I don't get it either. But I don't see anything special about iPad, hence my question)

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#299

Post by wutwutwutwut »

quickben wrote: post #288
wutwutwutwut wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep the base price for a Iphone 7 Plus in Sweden is 1100$. Not sure it makes sense comparing prices like this though. In Sweden the cost of an iphone does not compete with your ability to get access to health care or education for example.

It's also the userbase or the marketing there (unsure which one). I was in Sweden few years ago, gislaved / hestra, and overall nothing else was being sold besides iPhone. It came as a shock to me. Only one of the tech toys stores that we visited had Samsung at the time.

Looks like your view is biased by what stores you visited. All stores where I live sell a mixture of brands, with the obvious exception of the Apple store.

I think the largest stores are Elgiganten, Mediamarkt, Netonnet and all of those sell a mixture.

A quick look at price comparison site for my area shows 80 stores selling iPhone 7 and 72 sellingg Galaxy S8. And that includes the Apple stores.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#300

Post by blubb-fish »

Retric wrote: post #286
alkonaut wrote: post #189

A lot of people just get the best iphone every 24 months (e.g. rich people, or people who have a generous smartphone policy at work). Having a model that gets another couple of hundred bucks from those people is pretty clever I think. This is basically the S-class phone (To make a car analogy, because that's what we do). The S-class Mercedes costs twice as much as the "Normal" E-class, and each time they launch a new…

Many people spend more time on their phone than their PC. So, 1,000$ is not an unreasonable price if it's noticeably better. It's like spending 200+$ on a pair of shoes, they don't need to be that much better fit to be worth it. I mean 1,000$ seems bad, but that can translate to under 30 cents an hour if you're spending 4 hours a day on your phone.

so you spend also excessive amount of money on water because you drink it several times a day?

there is objectively no reason to spend more than 200 Euro on a smartphone - except for attempting to inflate one's ego.

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