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The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

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Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#191

Post by HNLogInShit »

Judgmentality wrote: post #175
interlocutor wrote: post #173

Apple's problem is that their rate of innovation has slowed down. iPhone generates over a 100 Billion dollars in revenue. Per year. If any company has the resources to innovate it is Apple. Apple, here are some free ideas. Some of these ideas go beyond the phone and into cell networks. If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? - Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell…

> Fix design. Fire Jony Ive's a$$ and hire some real designers. Apple used to be insanely great at design. Now they are a nobody. Take a look at HomePod. It is an amorphous blob. Every single Bose speaker looks better than HomePod. I'm not a designer, but wasn't Jony Ive largely responsible for leading many of the great designs at Apple, including the iPhone? Or do you think he's stagnated, or perhaps is unfit in his…

[dead]

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#192

Post by addicted »

mcrae wrote: post #170
jakobegger wrote: post #160

Can someone explain why Apple needs to make the iPhone more expensive when the Dollar rises compared to the Yuan? The iPhone is produced in China, most of the components are produced in Asia, etc. Their fixed costs per phone should drop when the dollar is strong. Sure, their margins might take a hit, but raising prices isn't going to help them sell phones... Similarly, why doesn't the phone price drop in the US? The…

Labour might be priced in CNY, but most of the expensive bits in the BOM are from non-Chinese firms like Qualcomm, Samsung, and others and would be in USD denominated contracts most likely.

Apple almost certainly doesn’t hire the Chinese laborers directly. They do so indirectly through the likes of Foxconn.

And their Foxconn contracts are almost certainly dollar denominated. If anyone benefits from the strengthening dollar, it’s Foxconn, who likely gets the same dollars per iPhone, but those dollars get them more Yuan than they did before. They still pay their employees the same number of Yuan, which means they have more left over for themselves.

As a result, Apple’s iPhone costs remain the same in dollars, so they need to sell it at the same dollar price to maintain their margins, but that means the iPhone is more expensive for people in China buying in Yuan, or people in India buying in Rupees, or people in Europe buying in Euros, therefore reducing sales.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#193

Post by pdpi »

jpatokal wrote: post #185
simonh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, apart from the latest iPhones having the best screens ever, the quickest most convenient and most secure unlock mechanism ever, the best computational photography ever, the fastest mobile CPUs ever released and overall being 2+ years ahead of their nearest competition, that was all a few months ago. Old news. What have Apple done for us just now?

Those are all incremental improvements. Nobody's saying Apple's phones are bad, just that they lack compelling differentiators to other phones, including older iPhones.

Their SoCs are a massive differentiator. Unfortunately I don’t think the iPhone is in a good position to leverage that.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#194

Post by inferiorhuman »

jinushaun wrote: post #60
marbletiles wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the iPod: the differentiation was about things people would care about, like size, capacity, portability, style, etc. You weren't made to feel cheap just because you entered at the lower price points. You wanted an iPod Mini, and it made sense that it cost less than the Classic: you were still getting "the best" version of the thing you desired. Same story with the Mac: buying the iBook didn't make you feel…

Yes! You hit the nail on the head! The iPhone needs to be split between iPhone Mini, iPhone and iPhone Pro, instead of current model of “last year”, “this year medium” and “this year large”. As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE. I al…

> As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE.

I have an SE and appearance aside I disagree. It had the guts of the current model including touch id and performs quite well for me.

Now, sure, it feels a little bit left behind. Maybe. It's still fast enough to run the apps I want. But, let's face it, all of the updates that the 7/8/Xfoo have had are updates I don't want.

The problem I've got with Apple is that they don't have any new products I want. I just had them replace the battery on the SE (which was a clusterfuck in its own right) and I just bought a refurb 2015 MBP. Granted Apple probably made more money off the sale of a refurb than they would've off of a new unit... but if the lineup hasn't improved in another six years I'm off to Linux on the desktop.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#195

Post by tazjin »

code_duck wrote: post #20
throw0u1t wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want an iPhone 7 or an 8. And it makes no sense that Apple sell both the 7 and the 8. Apple should make a phone like the SE which is made for the low-mid market, not just discount its old models.

Why? What’s wrong with an iPhone 7 or 8? Why would you prefer an SE-like model?

For me, it's the size and headphone jack. Android vs. iOS doesn't matter much, but Apple was the only company still offering a phone that fits my two criteria.

Now I have 3 SEs (one with a broken screen that I'll get fixed, one currently in use, one still in the box) that will hopefully last me a while - maybe the phone market returns to sensible sizes & features in a few years.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#196

Post by tazjin »

tjr225 wrote: post #125
sueders101 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone 6 and beyond are too big for my tastes. I reluctantly upgraded to an iPhone 7 after destroying my SE. Even after owning the 7 for over a year, I find it uncomfortably large at times.

I really like the size of the SE - however I find the 6/7/8 to be a pretty great size too. I don't know how big the newer ones are in comparison.

Phone Arena has a good page for phone size comparisons: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size#/phones/size/Apple-iP...

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#197

Post by Tepix »

interlocutor wrote: post #173

Apple's problem is that their rate of innovation has slowed down. iPhone generates over a 100 Billion dollars in revenue. Per year. If any company has the resources to innovate it is Apple. Apple, here are some free ideas. Some of these ideas go beyond the phone and into cell networks. If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? - Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell…

In terms of design, those fat bezels around the MacBook displays feel very dated just a few weeks after I started using a Dell XPS 13 notebook (which was years ago).

I can't believe Apple is lagging behind in this area so badly.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#198

Post by gvurrdon »

m0zg wrote: post #179
gvurrdon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that Nokia 6.1 looks interesting. I note the mention of how the sides are designed to be gripped securely; my iPhone 8 always feels a bit slippery. If I could find a suitable replacement for the Apple Watch (which I find very useful) then I'd be very tempted by this.

I don't think there's going to be viable competition to Watch in foreseeable future. Watch 4 is a very strong and "deep" product, far beyond what anybody else can make. That's why they can charge so much for it. But if my iPhone 8 dies, there's no way I'm ever paying $1k for a new phone, even if I have to ditch the Watch.

Unfortunately, I think you're right about viable competition. Google's equivalent seems to be the closest in terms of features but from what I've seen the watches are buggy and slow, as well as having privacy issues.

I've got the latest watch and it is very good, so although the price is high it does not seem particularly unreasonable.

iPhones, on the other hand, give me the impression of being very expensive for what they offer and I find them unsatisfactory in a variety of ways. Currently, I plan to keep the iPhone 8 for as long as I can then decide what to do depending on the state of the market; this will probably involve getting a reasonably-priced Android phone with a custom ROM and some sort of fitness tracker.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#199

Post by benzoate »

have_faith wrote: post #166
rahoulb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone made the point that Apples margins are quite consistent and have been for years. But a larger proportion of their revenue comes from services which are normally very high margin. Which implies that they are actually cutting their margins on hardware - in other words the phones are expensive because they cost more to build, not because Apple are getting greedy.

> because they cost more to build Then they should offer models that are cheaper to manufacture, like the 5c. I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular and gouge sales of flagship models negating some of their premium branding. I'm currently on a 6s and see no update path for myself, I would happily sacrifice faceID and some of the higher-end phone materials for a…

The 5c was essentially an iPhone 5 (the previous years iPhone) in a plastic shell, with some other minor differences. Given that Apple are continuing to sell the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 you could say that the spirit of the 5c lives on (iPhone 7 is $450, vaguely the same price as the 5C).

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#200

Post by zapzupnz »

cageface wrote: post #135
zapzupnz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone I know In the grand scheme of things, and in the overall market, everyone you know still comes out to a rounding error. Don't get too caught up in anecdata. > I really feel like the XR is a repeat of the original iPhone 7 in that it's a phone with no target audience You're right, there. If people want a high-end iPhone, they'd get the XS. If they want a cheaper phone in the X form factor, they'd get an X.…

I always thought force touch was kind of a dumb feature so I'm happy to do without it. And the XR screen looks great IMO. I'll happily take the extra battery life over a barely perceptibly better screen. The main thing I'd change about the XR is I'd make it a bit smaller. Other than that it's a great phone.

Re: Force Touch. It is a bit of a dumb feature, but it's been a feature for all the new iPhones (bar the SE) for a few generations; plus, when you get used to it, it's bizarre when it's gone. That it's missing feels sloppy and creates fragmentation in the product lineup that didn't need to be there.
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