With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by petecox » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:09 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #42

jkaptur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andy Warhol: "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drin…

This is different to soft drinks in other countries... how? Change the drink to whiskey, another popular one, and you can be sure that there's a difference between what the American rich and poor drink. > no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good And coke is not the same everywhere either. My guess is that the pre…

Yes, Coke does taste different depending on the country.

(And I've tried it on 5 different continents.)

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

#322

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:11 AM UTC

blubb-fish wrote: post #300

Retric wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work at a keyboard 8h per day, so I happily pay $100 for a keyboard that is nice, even though I could get one for $20. Same with the phone. Even if it's just some minor improvement I use it so much that it's worth it.

Also it depends on what you use it for. If you use it for web browsing/messaging/email/phone calls then most phones will do. But other features such as the camera might be very dependent on price. Adding $100 to the price doesn't add much to the ability to make calls, but photos actually get noticably better with each dollar still.

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

#323

Post by blubb-fish » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:12 AM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #311

blubb-fish wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> so you spend also excessive amount of money on water because you drink it several times a day? I sure do, because I prefer the quality control and availability of municipally-supplied mains rather than sinking a well in my back yard. Your point about conspicuous consumption is pretty unfocused. Should everyone use the same laptop, do the same job, be paid the same rate, lest be accused of propertarian tendencies?

> municipally-supplied mains

I don't know where you live but here in Germany this water source is pretty cheap while of high quality. So this would rather be an example of pragmatic spending behaviour.

A $1000 smartphone would rather correspond to vanilla-flavored water filtered in a space ship using a high-tech-crystal-structure ...

> Should everyone use the same laptop, do the same job, be paid the same rate, lest be accused of propertarians tendencies?

Exactly - you are identifying yourself with those possessions. In my experience people with such materialist life philosophy are tedious and annoying.

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

#324

Post by idonotknowwhy » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:12 AM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #107

1000 USD phone, still no audiophile option to listen to music. I am extremely disapointed with the direction Apple is going with all of this "we remove X because you do not need it anymore" approach.

It appears as though a lot of iPhone and Apple fans are down-voting you. I; too, would expect a better DAC+AMP for that money.

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

#325

Post by petecox » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:13 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #304

steevdave wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you still getting security updates for the Nexus 5? The last security update they released was from October 2016.

Someone I know has a Nexus 4 and gets regular security updates.

Yep, I'm using a Nexus 4 picked up nearly 2 years ago off ebay for around $US60.

It gets the monthly security updates. I guess I worry about the binary blobs that vendors may or not be updating but that's true of any hardware no longer receiving updates.

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

#326

Post by sah2ed » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:14 AM UTC

skookumchuck wrote: post #253

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…

Common pricing strategy is to have 3 price points: 1. a cheap stripper model used to bring people into the showroom 2. an expensive deluxe model with every bell and whistle. It's primary purpose is to frame the next one as being affordable: 3. the mid-price mid-range one you're expected to buy. Of course, the price-is-no-object people will buy (2) anyway, and that's just extra gravy. You'll see this technique used ac…

Also called price anchoring [0] in marketing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

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

#327

Post by ghaff » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:14 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #317

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.

The Swedish price also includes 25% VAT, as well as the cost of consumer protection afforded by Swedish/EU laws (which in the US you have to pay extra to get through AppleCare - although AppleCare does go further)

Using credit cards in the US give a pretty high level of consumer protection (over and above usual consumer protection laws) although not as much as buying an explicit warranty.

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

#328

Post by idonotknowwhy » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:14 AM UTC

exodust wrote: post #274

Planned obsolescence is my biggest gripe with Apple and other brands that do this. My 2012 iOS device is now stuck on iOS9. I wouldn't mind except they bundle web browser updates with the OS. This is wrong. The web browser on iOS9 does not support javascript ES6 features such as the "Let" statement. Any web sites that use let statements will fail on iOS 9. I discovered this recently when browsing on my iPad3, 2012 mo…

Apple have a lot to answer for, and there are a lot of flaws with iOS devices, but this isn't one of them.

5 years of updates for a smartphone is pretty good. From Android, I think only certain Sony phones even come close to that.

By now, the battery cells will be damaged, the CPU/RAM too slow or limited, the flash memory wearing out. Time for a new phone :)

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

#329

Post by Retric » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:14 AM UTC

blubb-fish wrote: post #323

falsedan wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so you spend also excessive amount of money on water because you drink it several times a day? I sure do, because I prefer the quality control and availability of municipally-supplied mains rather than sinking a well in my back yard. Your point about conspicuous consumption is pretty unfocused. Should everyone use the same laptop, do the same job, be paid the same rate, lest be accused of propertarian tendencies?

> municipally-supplied mains I don't know where you live but here in Germany this water source is pretty cheap while of high quality. So this would rather be an example of pragmatic spending behaviour. A $1000 smartphone would rather correspond to vanilla-flavored water filtered in a space ship using a high-tech-crystal-structure ... > Should everyone use the same laptop, do the same job, be paid the same rate, lest…

Your water example is ill conceived because bottled water often considered a reasonable purchase in bulk yet it is also a vastly larger price increase vs just a 5x on a phone.

Bottled water is basically the same thing just in slightly more convenient form yet it's ~1000x as expensive. Because it's not the relative price that's important it's the price relative to the benifit.

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

#330

Post by neogodless » Mon, Sep 11, 2017, 11:20 AM UTC

bambax wrote: post #167

sho wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competition is such that you can get an excellent product [..] for $1,000 The really interesting part is that for ~$1000 you get the best product available at any price . That's the magic of economies of scale in consumer markets, especially technology. It's so incredibly expensive and largely fruitless to step out of the economy of scale, that practically speaking no-one does it. I don't have a yacht like Paul All…

I wonder what phone Bill Gates uses nowadays!?! He said many times he's very loyal to MS but they have all but stopped making phones, so every choice left is a bad one...

If I had to go back to Windows phone, I'd use a Lumia 950/XL or an HP Elite x3.

The main things I'd give up would be first party Google apps and neat apps like my D&D companion. I'd be giving up SnapChat, but I rarely use it. Not sure if Bill Gates is big into that one!

Honestly for a professional, a Windows Phone would probably work just fine. But you give up big players in social, most banking apps and a vast library of entertainment. Fortunately for some, you can bank on your computer, and distractions on your phone are not desired.