First Weekend iPhone Sales Top Nine Million, Sets New Record

Apple's marketing is insufferable. The apple designed A6 chip? What a complete load. What did they design exactly, the apple logo they paste on it? And they talk about going 64bit on a device that has only 1GB of memory as though that is a benefit to anyone. It will slow down every single app out there currently. The benefit of going 64bit is that it gets people to start writing apps that support the technology. For the future. When 64bit phones will actually make any sense, so it's a good move but they talk about it like it's a benefit to consumers now.

What is the markup on these things? Who is buying a phone that costs more than 3 times as much as its competitors and the screen size still hasn't exceeded 4 inches? The "retina" display on these isn't even 720p.

I'm obviously disturbed. Don't even get me started on the 5c.

>> I'm reading more than at any other moment in my life before because I'm able to fill boring downtime by firing up the Kindle app. My long car rides are made more enjoyable because I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks. I can design circuit boards, find directions to a restaurant, read wikipedia, browse reddit and snap a photo to share with friends at a moments notice.

But in this constant frenzy of mental consumption in order to ward off the looming spectre of boredom, how do you find time to stop and collect your thoughts?

Having access to the sum of human knowledge (though not necessarily all of its parts) is amazing. It's also very distracting and can lead to a false sense of accomplishment based simply on the mental effort required to consume (and not necessarily retain) all of that content.

Kind of like going on a luxury cruise ship. There is always something to do, watch, eat - something fun, flashy, delicious. But at the end of it, you're exhausted.

What happens when the cruise never ends?

> The apple designed A6 chip?

AFAIK, these claims are actually legitimate since Apple's acquisition of P. A. Semi a few years ago.

> And they talk about going 64bit on a device that has only 1GB of memory as though that is a benefit to anyone.

Double-precision floating point instructions will be much faster.

> Who is buying a phone that costs more than 3 times as much as its competitors and the screen size still hasn't exceeded 4 inches?

There are plenty of people who prefer the smaller size - I am one of them. My daily carry is an HTC One, and I love it (I think it's the best smartphone available). But...the screen is too big. The "back" button is also on the far bottom-left corner and I normally use the phone with one hand. Stretching to reach that button 5000x a day makes my hand hurt. My hand actually hurts. Also, I now have a hole in the front pocket of two pairs of jeans.

Which phone is 1/3rd the price and comes even close in the camera quality? I think the iPhone 5S competes on the high-end smartphone market - HTC One, Galaxy S4, Nokia 1020. The price is competitive.

> The "retina" display on these isn't even 720p.

So you'd prefer more pixels which your eye can't see because...

Which record did they break? What was the previous record?

While I have no doubt that this was overall a record-breaking weekend for Apple, they are likely hoping that this gets interpreted as iPhone 5S sells better than the iPhone 5 did at its opening weekend. I think this is highly unlikely, though, because the 9 million includes both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5C, whereas previous year's record breaking sales number of 5 million included only the iPhone 5.

So how many iPhones 5S did Apple sell compared to iPhone 5 last year? Let's say the 5S and the 5C sold equally well (which is VERY doubtful considering not just price but also availability). This would put both iPhone 5S and 5C at 4.5 million. Both below iPhone 5 sales of 5 million. It is much more likely, however, that the 5C sold many more units than the 5S thus putting the 5S as lower than 4 million units sold, perhaps as low as 2.25 million.

There is no bad news here for Apple as I'm sure their profit margins on the 5C are similar, if not higher than the 5S. But it does indicate the oncoming commodification of smartphones and other personal digital devices. The 5C is definitely holding its own, and Apple's brand is as strong as ever but I just wonder if Apple really wants to get into this kind of competition.

The problem is that you can't back out the 5C sales and say you have the 5S number even if you did know it.

They are priced very similarly.. the 5C is probably cannibalizing a significant portion of would-be sales of the 5S.