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

iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 551 posts

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#401

Post by kalleboo »

mmanfrin wrote: post #79
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #70

I'm curious what other people think about the ecosystem as a catalyst, in particular Apple Pay. It seems to be that squeezing between iPhone owners and everyday purchases would be very lucrative.

It seems to be that squeezing between iPhone owners and everyday purchases would be very lucrative And something that Banks will very strongly oppose. How many places can you use Apple Pay right now? I love Android Pay, but the only store I can use it at is Walgreens -- no where else I go takes it. Banks still hold a huge amount of power at the point-of-sale market, and they will not give up their margins to Apple.

Doesn't Apple Pay work anywhere standard NFC (PayWave etc) works? AFAIK retailers don't have to do anything special to work with Apple Pay aside from have a POS with NFC support.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#402

Post by seanmcdirmid »

coldtea wrote: post #380
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, just imagine if the US, instead of crashing in 2008, decided to feed their bubbles with way more debt-fueled stimulus than they did. That is basically where China is today.

More than $1.5 trillion to Detroit and $1 trillion to Wall Street (plus the usual subsidies to all other sectors, including some trillions of military spending). Besides, at least China has actual manufacturing jobs and exports instead of tons of service jobs...

That was all paid back, however. And it is all accounted for on the books vs. shoved away in some local government/SOE joint venture.

Anyways, America has actual IP jobs and a relatively transparent financial system to compensate. We just have wild guesses about what is going down on the ground here.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#403

Post by galistoca »

digi_owl wrote: post #350
galistoca wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like emulating for the sake of emulating. I'm sure even you would hate it if you actually saw it in production. Typing on keyboard is shitty as it is. By making it force touch, it will be much slower to finish a sentence. When people use physical keyboards their fingers are by default resting on the keys. When most users type on mobile, they're not. It's easier to NOT rest fingers on the keys than resting…

And that is where the vibrate comes in. the keyboard is of a known layout, and by marking by feel when you move from one key to the next you know where you are. This allows the keyboard to be operated without looking, much like how most people use a ordinary keyboard today once they are past the hunt-and-peck stage. A big reason for touch screens being a problem in many situations is that you have to actually look at…

I'm guessing you downvoted me because you disagree with my point of view. I'll just tell you this: I have been thinking a lot about the stuff you talk about here and even prototyped a hardware device to try out the idea. I had the same point of view (It would be nice to have an input device I can use without even looking) but after experimenting I realized this isn't the case.

Also this "vibration" thing you're talking about--it's obvious you haven't thought deeply about this because if you took at least a couple of hours thinking more about how this would work you would realize vibration itself has nothing to do with this". I have had a phone that gave you nice tactile feedback using vibration (Prada phone), and while it does feel nice, it doesn't do anything in terms of letting me know my input was correct.

Anyway this all doesn't mean anything if you don't really believe me. So let me ask you a rhetorical question: Do you think you will be able to type into a blackberry absolutely without looking at the keyboard? Also, when exactly would you be typing while NOT looking at a mobile screen? Even on a blackberry people have to look at the screen to make sure they didn't mistype something (Even with all that tactile feedback). On a desktop computer typing without looking makes sense because that's the mode in which people use the device (whereas on a mobile phone the screen and the keyboard are attached so looking at the screen means also looking at the keyboard)

Anyway if you really believe in these ideas, you should at least try an MVP or any simple experiment (or maybe even some thought experiment) before being so sure about it.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#404

Post by gjvc »

barrkel wrote: post #400
_delirium wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not even get a perceptual performance boost at all. I recently upgraded from a 2013 Moto G to a current-gen Nexus 5x and it feels about the same, maybe even slightly slower, in terms of latency for common tasks and how often it gets bogged down. I think part of the problem is that the new phone has a higher-res screen, which some apps (like Facebook) adapt to by shipping much larger icon sets, loading highe…

The 5X is slower in single thread code than the Nexus 5 from 2013. It has 6 rather than 4 cores but not many apps can take advantage.

Nexus 5 is one of the all-time greats of the smartphone era.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#405

Post by Illniyar »

skywhopper wrote: post #105

It probably doesn't help that the subsidy model has completely changed. But personally, I think iPhone performance has hit a point where one doesn't really feel the need to upgrade right away. I was so ready to upgrade when the contract on my 4 expired. It was really a pain to use after a couple of years. But my 5S has now lasted me two and a half years and other than wishing I had more storage capacity, there's real…

Thats easy to fix - next iOS release your phone is gonna get slower and slower. :)

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#407

Post by klagermkii »

digi_owl wrote: post #297
orbitur wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D Touch should've replaced long press. I hate that I have to wait, I don't care that it's 0.4 of a second. A long press is a concession to the fact that there's no physical button, and 3D Touch should've solved this problem. But instead I end up triggering a 3D Touch when I want to delete an app.

What surprises me is that they didn't try to use it to make the keyboard more "physical". If the OSK can distinguish a finger resting from a finger pressing, then you get closer to that of a physical keyboard. Especially if the resting part can be tied in with the vibration engine to give a slight nudge to indicate edges of keys, or some such.

I wonder if the pressure detection is localised enough to allow that to work without being annoying? If I'm resting my right thumb on a letter, but pressing with my left thumb on another letter, I don't think the tech is necessarily there to accurately detect which letter got pressed. And I think that's needed to make typing feel good, since in using my regular keyboard while one finger is pressing a key the next finger is on or hovering over the next key.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#408

Post by encoderer »

hiddencost wrote: post #383
encoderer wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're mis-applying the theory here and confusing Return on Risk? No matter what you say, if I buy a stock that expects to earn dividends, and I do earn those dividends, and I've realized a 5% dividend yield, I certainly have made a profit. Now, whether I'm getting return on risk is another thing and very well the answer may be no.

Don't think -so- that I've made a mistake. I can eliminate risk and make the same point: Suppose you buy a perpetuity, granting $X every year. After 100 years, you'll have 100 times $X more dollars, but you will be worth exactly the same as you were worth before the perpetuity. (This assumes that the market correctly prices the perpetuity so that the expected value of purchasing it is $0). EDIT: I'm not talking about…

I still think you may be misapplying some theory. The points of discounted future cash flows, time value of money, and ev are not lost on me. But pointing out that an arbitrary profit figure irrespective of inflation is a "profit" is meaningless.

It's a nice Econ lecture but markets do not actually behave by a manner of collective estimate of dfcf. I would say it's more accurately described as a random walk with an upward inflationary bias.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#409

Post by tarsinge »

forgetsusername wrote: post #260
zanny wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at that, it isn't just about making a profit, it is about making more profit (or often just revenue) each quarter. Your business could be operating at a 40% profit margin that but be called a failure and run against on the stock market when that doesn't become a 41% margin next quarter.

Pure exaggeration. This is not complicated. You buy with the expectations of future profits X. If the stocks fails to meet those expectations, you reallocate your capital by selling to someone else who is happy with There is nothing nefarious about it. Nobody is a failure. The system isn't broken. This is the free market.

The point is that the free market may not be good for long term R&D because a lot of buyers/sellers are speculators with expectations not aligned with long term company viability.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#410

Post by skc »

matwood wrote: post #98
jonknee wrote: post #32

tl;dr it's hard to find lots of new people every quarter who can afford $600 phones.

Or it's just gadget saturation in general. My MBP from a few years ago works great. Some of the older iPads I have at work are just fine. The iPhone 6/6+ also works just great. At some point, the marginal utility of a new device just isn't there. It is what happens as markets mature.

I think this is what it is.

Smartphones in general have reached a point where we are barely wowed anymore.

I got myself a cheap xiaomi phone as a stop gap after my high end phone died. A year later, I'm still using it and have no energy to even bother looking at what else is out there.

Post reply on HN