Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 411 posts

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#341

Post by harvey9 »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #273
Zambyte wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are phones that cost a lot less though. 50% of Americans being unable to afford iPhones doesn't mean they should just lease them. People need to stop associating so much personal sense of worth with their handheld computer. - written on my S10

> People need to stop associating so much personal sense of worth with their handheld computer. This might be the funniest thing I’ve ever read on this nerd website.

A lot of people buy phones as conventional status symbols rather than for nerd points. My massive generalisation is hn values doing something interesting with the hardware.

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#342

Post by harvey9 »

frmersdog wrote: post #236
Zambyte wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling my car that I fully owned in favor of a nice bicycle and an e-scooter was one of my best financial decisions in the last few years. I don't have to deal with insurance, parking (if parking is free by you, it shouldn't be), maintenance (I work on them myself, I just pay for cheap parts), and fuel is effectively free. That's all on top of the car payment for people who haven't paid off their car.

Genuinely wish I had done so when I lost my job at the beginning of the pandemic. I've dumped so much money into a vehicle that's falling apart, which I've driven probably less than 25k miles since. If you can't justify car ownership with your income, they're a money pit.

My car is fully owned and justified by my commute taking 3x longer by bus. Time saved is as important a measure as miles driven.

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#343

Post by pwagland »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #340
paxys wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments. There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”. There’s a reason Klarna is r…

> That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone This kinda sounds like, "We should make it hard for people to make poor financial decisions." Which seems like an answer completely orthogonal to the problem at hand.

What is the problem at hand?

How to get customers to make poor financial decisions? How to sell more phones to people that can't really afford them?

Seriously, what is the problem that is being solved?

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#345

Post by Havoc »

fny wrote: post #291

Holy hell--you can rent a 32GB M5 MacBook Air for $33 a month. You can stick that in your closet for one hell of an agent playground. A standard $33 server has trash specs by comparison.

Seems solid. Though it’ll have to be mostly idle. The air doesn’t dissipate heat all that well

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#347

Post by JumpCrisscross »

paxys wrote: post #96
Aurornis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright I think you're looking at this too much from the perspective of someone who wants to own the phone, not as someone who wants to consider a lease. Leases are not a new invention. A lot of people, including very financially savvy and well off people, choose to lease rather than buy depending on the circumstances. It…

> If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments. There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”. There’s a reason Klarna is r…

> They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one

Or they would have just bought the new phone and sold their old one for dimes on the dollar on e.g. Gazelle.

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#348

Post by br0wnr1c3 »

paxys wrote: post #96
Aurornis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright I think you're looking at this too much from the perspective of someone who wants to own the phone, not as someone who wants to consider a lease. Leases are not a new invention. A lot of people, including very financially savvy and well off people, choose to lease rather than buy depending on the circumstances. It…

> If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments. There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”. There’s a reason Klarna is r…

I think this is exactly right — when the options on the table are: - iPhone 17 (~$800) - iPhone 17 Pro Max (~$1200)

a person may reasonably make the choice that they don't need the Pro Max and buy the regular 17.

Now, when the options are: - iPhone 17 ($23/month) - iPhone 17 Pro Max ($35/month)

$12/month extra doesn't seem too bad, except the fact that after 24 months you can't afford to keep the phone and are effectively forced to upgrade to a new iPhone.

I agree that more options are generally better for consumers, but these types of leasing programs are predatory and come at a time when everything is becoming a subscription.

Re: The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade

#349

Post by mrweasel »

zeristor wrote: post #148

I’ve bought my last two iPhones with the 0% 24 month installments, seems like an obvious thing to do. Does this replace that as well?

We just get used iPhones, it's really the only reasonable option. If to many opt for Apples iPhone upgrade program that's going to put me in a bit of a spot.

Ideally I think a reasonable price for a phone, for my use case, is around $200 (incl. my 25% VAT). That leave me with the option of getting a really shitty Android phone with an operating system from a company I have zero trust in or pay slight more than I'd like for a four year old and use iPhone with an operating system I trust ever so slightly more.

For people like me, who view a smart phone as a necessary annoyance there are very few options. The few apps I have and need aren't running on open source operating system and modern society has decided to make my life rather hard with out those apps.

Right now I'm using a 2nd generation iPhone SE, it solves the same problems that my iPhone 6 did and I don't see how an iPhone 17 would make parking, mobile payments or charging my car any easier. People keep talking about how good the cameras have become, yet they don't even bother switching to portrait mode when taking pictures of people close up. When we're out my photos are often then ones people ask for and use, because I actually spend a few minutes on it, yet my phone have the shittier camera!

Post reply on HN