> Other companies compete over best or newest features. Camera location/exterior shape forces their status-conscious demographic to buy new phones.
Frankly this kind of comment has no place on Hacker News.
There are many, many reasons to be critical of Apple. "Doesn't compete on features and only cares about what the device looks like superficially because their customers are sheep who only care about status" is not only a lazy take, but also doesn't even remotely describe the reality in which we live.
> I don't see what is wrong with calling out a very rational decision to continue making high status products rather than deviate into high tech products.
I genuinely can't fathom how one could conclude that Apple as a company isn't investing in technology. I mean, even at a superficial level, you're talking about a company that in-houses their own chip design and has dominated the mobile CPU market since doing so. They're very competitive in the desktop space in compute power with their very first chip line in this product category, and are absolutely crushing the existing players on performance per watt.
The've leveraged this advantage into being effectively the only meaningful player in the wearables space other than Garmin. Satellite integration into the phone is a direct shot across the bow of devices like the Garmin inReach, and the greater battery life (plus satellite integration) in the Apple Watch Max is going to start eating away at a chunk of Garmin's marketshare for GPS-tracking watches. Though Garmin still wins here for serious backcountry enthusiasts who spend multiple days in a row out of reach, Apple is leaving them a smaller and smaller margin in which to operate.
I stand by my original comment that this characterization of Apple is not reflective about of our reality. For Apple's many faults, they are extremely competitive from a technological perspective. Precisely because they are so unbelievably good at identifying how and when to apply a technological advance to achieve the largest possible impact for their customers.