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I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

morrick.me

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Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#71

Post by ssl-3 »

epistasis wrote: post #53
ssl-3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am thinking about my older uncle and my niece in her 20s. They're smart-enough people, and they're quite aware that a modern phone can be very expensive to fix. In particular, I'm thinking that I (a person of reasonable technical skill) would love to help them out by changing the designed-to-be-swapped screen on the phone they dropped instead of them paying someone else to conduct surgery on it.

How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools. The only people who change their own oil would have the skills to change an iPhone screen. I have changed the battery on two iPhones on my own, and replaced one screen on my own. I've also…

Of course they don't advertise it: Most cars are dead-nuts simple to change the oil on.

If changing the screen of a phone were as simple as changing the oil in a Honda is, then none of this conversation would have to happen.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#72

Post by travisgriggs »

Huh. It’s been a while since Apple has “one more thing” awed me. So… “the awe tapers” sentiment, I can agree with.

The rest of the article I found full of non-sequitur, for me personally.

I think the Apple Silicon laptops are just about right. About the only thing that would fill an itch: I angsted for years after the discontinuation of the 17” models. Since what was 15 can now be 16, I’d put cash down for an 18” model.

I’m not much of a power photographer, but I really like the orange of the pro, and the trickle of feature improvements between my 14 and this one are enough to get enthused about.

My Pro ‘Pods (2) are going strong after a few washes, and I look forward to replacing them with 3s when they give out.

Here’s the thing for me I guess. I develop/maintain native apps on both platforms for my employer. I test with a couple of Samsung devices (why Samsung? Because 85% of our Android customers in ang tech are using Samsungs). And I just hate the experience. The hardware is ok, at times. We use them for testing (so not much daily driving) , and the failure rate is worse than the iOS devices. But the Ux is the worst. Apple will have to turn liquid glass into muddied frosted glass in a storm before the hodgepodge that is material, ui one, and the weirdest apps, make me want to switch.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#73

Post by dmbche »

daedrdev wrote: post #50

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

Don't most people use nondescript earbuds?

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#74

Post by astrange »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #8
danpalmer wrote: post #3

This pretty much sums up my feeling on the new generation. I too don't understand what's "awe dropping" about it, and have finally switched from an iPhone 15 Pro to the Android ecosystem, where a flip phone is somewhat "awe dropping". I'm not fully convinced about it, but it's different, it's fun, it's clever, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The only thing I disagree with here is about the Air. I think Apple's strate…

https://chainsawsuit.krisstraub.com/20161028.shtml When "you can't use it outside anyhow" expands to phones, which are only useful because you can take them outside.

You couldn't really always phones outside until they switched to OLED because you couldn't see the screens in sunlight. They were still popular though.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#75

Post by internet2000 »

daedrdev wrote: post #50

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

> I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here.

The poster himself admits that after a meandering 2000 words...

> I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#76

Post by freetime2 »

Regarding the iPhone 17 Pro:

> People who have no use for all these pro video recording features shouldn’t waste their money on it. Unless they want a big chunky iPhone with the best camera array and/or have money to burn.

I feel like people who “want the best camera array and have money to burn” probably describes a significant percentage of HN readers.

I’m honestly pretty excited that they’ve finally put the larger, high res sensor in all three iPhone cameras - which should result in pretty decent image quality across the entire 13 - 200 mm equivalent range. It’s a nice upgrade from my current iPhone which uses smaller 12 MP sensors for the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras - resulting in images that are noticeably soft and noisy.

I personally don’t consider the iPhone 17 Pro to be too big or chunky. I’m generally happy to sacrifice an extra millimeter of thickness for better battery life, and enjoy the usability of larger screen sizes. I know that a lot of people really want smaller phones, though, and I think it’s unfortunate that Apple cancelled the mini (and the smaller SE design). I guess it just wasn’t selling that well.

And finally, I’m at a point in my life where spending $1100 on a new iPhone every few years isn’t going to break the bank. And I also am able to give my current iPhone to family members, who should be able to enjoy it for many more years to come.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#77

Post by MangoToupe »

bombcar wrote: post #52
daedrdev wrote: post #50

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

AirPods are one of Apple’s best products in forever and their size forgives them battery complaints, to me. Even phones and laptops I’m willing to give a pass on, ever since USB-C got “good enough” and the battery life long enough. If I had one complaint it’d be that they should sell one fat phone with no camera hump (because it has more battery). Edit: I should have clarified as AirPods Pro are the ones I have exper…

Airpods are very, very expensive compared to competitors with 90% of the same features. I've been using a $30 set for several years and the main drawback is it's difficult to switch devices—because apple doesn't allow third parties to use access the proprietary comms that allows this for airpods.

Also, I think the white is ugly. But kids seem to love it.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#78

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

avidiax wrote: post #15
daemonologist wrote: post #7

The title is appropriate, in that it feels to me that most of the awe has gone out of these products/keynotes. This is maybe down more to the maturity of the category(/ies) than any fault of Apple's though. Perhaps they can be blamed for failing to introduce exciting products in new categories. I do find that wireless earbuds actually last much longer than the wired variety, despite the non-replaceable batteries. Bac…

Apple is a hostage of its own marketing. A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout. A convertible Macbook Air with a touch screen? It would be sold out. Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular. A best-in-class TV powered by Apple TV? Would probably sell well. But al…

And this is why you shouldn’t listen to the “less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” tech crowd [1].

A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.

> Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.

I don’t think Apple has any issue selling AirPods. But honestly, I do like my $70 Beat Flex for traveling. I don’t have to worry about them falling out of my ears and between the seats on flights and the double flange ear tips block noise better than AirPods Pro.

I’ve had touch screen convertible Dells. I never used the touch screen. They are bulky, the screen ratio is off either way compared to an iPad. On the other hand, my wife now uses an iPad Air 13 inch with a regular old cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and she loves it. Her x86 MacBook Air was getting long in the tooth.

This is before the newest OS with real windows.

[1] or more relevant to the HN crowd “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#79

Post by daedrdev »

dmbche wrote: post #73
daedrdev wrote: post #50

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

Don't most people use nondescript earbuds?

A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.

Re: I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

#80

Post by rectang »

daedrdev wrote: post #50

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

I used to hate Airpods in videochats since they made the person wearing them sound bad because of dropouts, had heinous latency, and frequently disconnected causing meeting interruptions. But people think they're "better" than [wired] Earpods, which have none of those problems.

/me shakes fist at cloud

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