iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/09/apple-debuts-iphone-16-pro-and-iphone-16-pro-max/

by mfiguiere • 2 years ago

614 1661 2 years ago

haunter3• 2 years ago

Probably gonna upgrade from my iPhone 11 to a 16 Pro, seems like a good time to make the jump (also I'd need a battery replacement anyway and I rather spend that money on the new phone)

atlasunshrugged• 2 years ago

I was thinking the same for my 12 mini. Love the form factor but the battery life is just atrocious.

zoba• 2 years ago

I'm in the same boat. Not excited about upgrading to these phablets (hyperbole) but the battery life is forcing me to.

robin_reala2• 2 years ago

Keeping my 12 Mini; I just ended up getting a 2nd-hand MagSafe battery. It’s small enough to have in a bag or pocket without a second thought, no cables to carry around and turns into a wireless charger when I’m not using it.

forgotacc240419• 2 years ago

I've the 12 and it's bad but not atrocious just yet. Have been told the 13 mini is much better so I'll probably get one of them next.

nyarlathotep_2• 2 years ago

I really just want a 12/13 mini with a 120hz screen and marginally better battery life

ninininino2• 2 years ago

Nowadays you can go in and just get a battery replacement directly from Apple as long as you didn't smash your device too badly.

throwaway2909• 2 years ago

I am also on 11. To be honest, I do not want to jump from LCD to OLED, for me it's a downgrade:(

(I often use it on low brightness in dim ambient light)

fkyoureadthedoc2• 2 years ago

I went from 11 Pro to 15 Pro and found the screen to be a nice upgrade. OLED on the new iPad Pro is fantastic as well in my experience so far.

risho• 2 years ago

what is wrong with oled?

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

(I often use it on low brightness in dim ambient light)

I'm curious, why? I hate the whole screen glow of LCD in low light, much preferring the pure black of OLED.

kubectl_h• 2 years ago

Same here, satellite messaging alone is enough to get me on this upgrade cycle. Beyond that though I am quite content with my 11 Pro, though I am looking forward to some of the AI stuff.

Cub3• 2 years ago

I'm in the same boat, got a battery replacement last year and am struggling to justify the expense but the satellite piece + AI integration may clinch it

laurels-marts• 2 years ago

iPhone XS Max here. I'm tempted this year.

paulmd8• 2 years ago

iphone 8 plus, bought refurb in early 2019. replaced the battery once (and got a replacement since the battery wouldn't pair). it's getting to be time.

usb-c is a big feature increment for me, and I need to finish the leap away from google voice, since I absolutely know they are not going to bother implementing RCS and will just shutter the service instead. LiDAR also seems extremely useful/cool. On the other hand, I was kinda hoping for thunderbolt support on the pro models eventually. Not sure if I will buy a refurb 15 Pro or a new 16 Pro Max or wait for the next cycle.

that's how you avoid e-waste for real and not as a fashion statement. simply consume less - and that includes not consuming a $300 android phone every 18 months, not just apple - and have it repaired when it needs it. with OEM parts that will last the long-haul and not something off amazon that will need to be changed again in 6 months.

beretguy3• 2 years ago

iPhone SE 1 here. I’m not.

johnisgood3• 2 years ago

How much would it cost to have the battery replaced?

haunter3• 2 years ago

I get my phones with a contract (0% APR) so like 2 months?

But in comparison it would be also more than half the price you could sell an iPhone 11 nowadays

system23• 2 years ago

New battery replacement is $99 for pro max models. New Pro Max starts at $1200 goes up to $1600.

pgt• 2 years ago

I upgraded from an iPhone Xs to an iPhone 15 Pro. The CPU speed was a major improvement to not have to wait for my phone any more, as well as better low-light photos.

haunter3• 2 years ago

Yeah the camera upgrade is the most I’m looking for, especially shooting videos

ilrwbwrkhv• 2 years ago

Ehh. Lacklustre.

tiffanyh3• 2 years ago

Just curious, what specifically were you hoping for - from a product that is 17-years old?

robin_reala2• 2 years ago

Not that it was ever in the rumour mills, but smaller, thinner and longer battery life would have been nice.

asdff3• 2 years ago

At this point its just sad that its spec bumps on what imo is a pretty poor iteration of their own product. They had better ideas in the past that I wish they would rehash just for the sake of offering more skus to choose from vs "small and large." I liked 3d touch. I liked touchid. I liked having a headphone jack. I liked a small and lightweight phone. I liked a phone that actually sat flat on a table. It's just a shame that this is clearly never going to be made by them today, and being reminded of this through yet another paltry spec bump with stingy storage offerings that's been all too typical from this company with this product lately.

pzo6• 2 years ago

There is lots of things were competition is ahead of them or things they could improve:

- 90W fast wired charging, 80W wireless charging - many android phone have it

- reverse charging - so that in emergency when you forgot to charge airpods and you already outside you could charge a little bit enough for a run - again some androids have it

- stylus support - still would be nice to get apple pencil for some signatures etc

- fingerprint reader either under display or on side button like on ipad air - sometimes when phone is sitting on the table it's easier to unlock with finger than pick it up and point at your face then put it back (especially annoying for iOS devs)

- irda led for controlling air con in hotel - they have already IR blaster on front and maybe even on lidar that they could potentially hack it similar like they hacked screen for flash.

- temperature sensor and humidity sensor

- IR temperature sensor for checking your body temperature or stuff you baking in the oven

- tiny thermal camera sensor for inspecting leaks in house for the winter

- microsd support (yes can dream can I?)

- any improvements for lidar quality or truedepth

- another programmable button on the left side for lefties

- 250GB storage by default

- 12GB RAM

- bluetooth 5.4

- thread protocol support like HomePod

miramba• 2 years ago

Some ideas: -change screen ratio, increase width against height, like an iPad.

-Why are iPads and iPhones treated so differently? I want to use a pen on the phone and make a phone call on the tablet.

-Double screen, not foldable, but two screens like an open book. I could see a lot of useful applications like showing lists on one screen, details on the other, or a good ereader. In landscape, have a writing app on top and a touch keyboard on the bottom screen.

-Slide the phone into a laptop-like shell and run desktop apps with MacOS. It's the same processor the macs have, no?

-Likewise, attach to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and run desktop apps.

Edit: Linebreaks.

dbbk8• 2 years ago

I've never owned an Android but I'm extremely curious about the Pixel Pro 9 Fold. That would really change how I use a phone in my day to day life. Presumably, Apple will get around to doing it too at some point.

jsheard4• 2 years ago

The non-Pro models are still only 60hz? C'mon man, high refresh rate is hardly a luxury feature anymore. At least give them 90hz and reserve 120hz for the Pro models.

geodel2• 2 years ago

Well, it is hardly a necessity too.

kmac_2• 2 years ago

$150 phones have better refresh rates. Once you get used to the better rates, it will spoil any scrolling on 60 Hz screens.

dbbk8• 2 years ago

The vast majority of people cannot even see a difference.

heraldgeezer3• 2 years ago

It's REALLY nice, though. I immediately notice if I switch my android from 120hz to 60hz. Even cheap Samsung models have high hz screens now.

throwaway2909• 2 years ago

PWM probably too? I keep waiting for the return of sweet smooth LCD but I guess my 11 is the last model...

wrcwill• 2 years ago

yup, ill keep using the 11/se until they stop using pwm for their oled screens (most oled tvs can dc dimming just fine)

vitaflo• 2 years ago

PWM absolutely kills all iPhone purchases for me. It's why I'm still using an SE.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 years ago

Genuine question: what are you doing on a phone that you need 120hz?

dilap• 2 years ago

Scrolling (much nicer/smoother feeling 120hz).

_ph_6• 2 years ago

Scrolling is quite much more plesant at 120 Hz.

yodsanklai2• 2 years ago

Does it make a difference though? I don't even know what the refresh rate of my phone is.

wingerlang• 2 years ago

I am happy with 60hz but I did stumble upon a 120hz phone the other week and it was instantly noticeably nicer, so much so that my next phone likely will be whatever iPhone has 120hz.

veber-alex7• 2 years ago

60Hz is the new 8GB

ashconnor2• 2 years ago

Shocked they are still using 128GB as the starting storage size.

rootusrootus3• 2 years ago

I guess they have more information about usage patterns than we do. Anecdotally, I have a 256GB iPhone, and I use it consistently for a whole variety of things, and my usage is just under 94GB. I'd bet that my 'normal' family members use a good bit less than that.

metaltyphoon2• 2 years ago

Ahh you need is kids to see that storage be laughable.

fkyoureadthedoc2• 2 years ago

I'm at 67/256GB, I don't know why I even went with 256GB

cruano• 2 years ago

I got the 512GB model and have been using it without any regard for storage for a couple of years. All my music is downloaded locally in lossless formats. I keep full-res versions of all my vacation pictures/videos and I also download a ton of crap, from videogames to movies.

I'm at 285GB right now.

The breakdown is 81GB for music, 56GB for pictures, ~40GB of download content on TV/Youtube/Audible and ~23GB of games.

I could _easily_ cut down on that. There's games I haven't played in a while, movies I've already watched, or even music I don't really listen to frequently enough to have it downloaded.

Safe to say I'll go for 256GB next time

drivers99• 2 years ago

I'm at 166 GB out of 256 GB. Every time I upgrade my iPhone (average every 5 years), I get the most storage available (after learning my lesson on the iPhone 4) and it ends up being 4x bigger than before.

iPod touch (32GB), if you ignore this

iPhone 4 (16GB), 2010

iPhone 6 (64GB), 2014

iPhone SE 2nd gen (256GB), 2020

iPhone 16 (1 TB)?, 2024

Every time, I think "that's probably way more than I'll need", but I guess in 6 years or so I'll upgrade to the 4 TB model. Or wait for next year's model, maybe another SE will come out...

jerlam2• 2 years ago

I wonder if storage needs have a very bimodal distribution.

Both my parents barely use the 64GB on their phone. The one that does photography, probably can't store all their photos on any iPhone, because it measures in the multi-TB.

I usually overbuy storage but after three years, I'm removing things like music and podcasts because it's completely full.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

they have more information about usage patterns than we do.

They, unlike us, also know what 256GB of storage actually costs but somehow that's not reflected in the price difference either

joshstrange6• 2 years ago

Every time I upgrade, I go and look at my storage and see that I’m close to my 256 limit, then I take a closer look and realize it’s my audiobook in podcast app taking up 40 to 50 gigs each. That plus a bunch of apps that I don’t actually use and could easily delete off my phone.

_mlbt• 2 years ago

With iCloud and music streaming 128GB is enough for a lot of people. I know I still have quite a bit of room left on my 128GB iPhone 12, even with taking tons of photos and videos.

hintymad2• 2 years ago

For people who want 256GB, they might as well just buy iphone pro max. It will be just $100 more compared to iphone pro.

el_benhameen• 2 years ago

I still prefer the smaller form factor. Easier one-handed use, and less bulk in my pocket. I wasn’t going to upgrade this cycle anyway, but the larger size of both pro models has removed any inkling of the “well maaaaaybe” feeling that I usually get.

veber-alex7• 2 years ago

Everything is in the cloud now.

128GB is plenty for me.

kube-system6• 2 years ago

Why is that shocking? Delivering a base model with minimal specs and upcharging for the specs that power-users need is Apple's standard way of doing business. If you want to store more, you pay more, either by buying more expensive models, or by subscribing to iCloud.

This pricing strategy is intentional in the way it is limiting to encourage people to buy more expensive models.

They don't offer 128gb as the base tier because they think it will meet everyone's needs. They offer that as the base tier because they think it won't meet everyone's needs. An ideal pricing strategy captures as many sales as possible while also upcharging as many people as possible who would be willing to pay more.

trustno2• 2 years ago

They can sell more iCloud subscriptions that way

madeofpalk2• 2 years ago

Fair - I'm sure it costs pennies to double the capacity.

But also I just checked and I have 128GB and its fine for me.

systemtest4• 2 years ago

I use around 60 gigabyte on my phone. When I go on holiday I put around 40 gigabyte of offline maps on it. 128 gigabyte is enough for me.

johnisgood3• 2 years ago

Why would a storage capacity exceeding 128 GB be necessary? If more than 128 GB of storage is required, why not utilize an SD card or other storage solutions (e.g. HDD / SSD used for your desktop) for storing large files? Is there a practical use case where data needs to be stored and actively accessed on a device with such large storage? For instance, I have a collection of videos totaling approximately 30 GB in size. I should consider transferring these files to my HDD or SSD rather than seeking a device with higher internal storage capacity.

pzo6• 2 years ago

Amazingly boring event - the last few years were boring as well but each year they don't disappoint to reach to the lower bottom.

souvlakee4• 2 years ago

It was super boring.

thecryptopapi• 2 years ago

"By far the best iPhone yet" "The thinnest display ever" "more scratch resistant" said no Apple CEO ever

uladzislau2• 2 years ago

Absolutely underwhelming announcement, I will hold for the next year

tropicalfruit• 2 years ago

every year the events get longer, the websites get bigger and more verbose and yet the products change less and less.

is there a word for this...marketing inflation in lieu of innovation.

apple used to be a tech company supported by marketing. now its a marketing company supported by tech.

talldayo8• 2 years ago

Stagnation

souvlakee4• 2 years ago

The more I watch, the sadder I get. It seems they've gone in the wrong direction. They have nothing to offer regular phone users, so they're targeting "creative professionals" with fancy features.

jamestimmins• 2 years ago

That's just for the pro version of the phone though.

I plan to get a regular 16, for the reasons you mention. What regular features would you want to see?

souvlakee4• 2 years ago

Also, my take on the new cinematic mode is that they should invest in a better camera if they can afford such fireworks.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Lots of people have creative hobbies that involve their phone in some capacity—music and photography are common—and basically everyone takes family photos and videos with them, so new photo capabilities are always welcome even for non-hobbyist users. Personally, I think it’s awesome that my kids could borrow my phone and make their backyard movies a hell of a lot more “cinematic” than mine on the family camcorder ever could have been, even if I’d had some idea of what I was doing.

Several of the “AI” features looked like the kind of thing any phone will feel incomplete without as soon as I use them the first time, for normal-user use cases.

Plus, you’re on HN: your complaint about iPhones is supposed to be that they’re just “mindless consumption devices” for sheeple who want to drool at YouTube shorts, wildly worse for any conceivable creative or practical, serious endeavor than Linux phones or a Thinkpad, because you can’t get a root shell. You’ve gone entirely the wrong direction for this site, with your post :-)

talldayo8• 2 years ago

Several of the “AI” features looked like the kind of thing any phone will feel incomplete without as soon as I use them the first time, for normal-user use cases.

We must live on different planets. Are you really going to send your friends and family AI-generated emojis, or rewrite your texts to them with Apple Intelligence? I sure know they won't.

duped• 2 years ago

I do a bit of creative audio work and consider my iPhone next to useless. iPads are useful in some contexts.

I've returned to the stone ages of digital tuners and metronomes for practice(1), and any recordings I make use a laptop. Not that there are good options for quick and dirty recordings, just that they're better than using a phone.

If I were making podcasts or something like that the phone would be a lot more useful, but for music, not so much.

(1) there was awhile back that my phone was integral to practicing music but now I can't use it at all, because every decent metronome/tuner app is trash.

sk110012• 2 years ago

We’re at a point where regular users already have everything they need, from any model in the past few years.

souvlakee4• 2 years ago

Before the iPhone, we thought we already had everything we needed.

Maximus90002• 2 years ago

As a regular user, I'd still like 10x optical zoom

rollcat6• 2 years ago

We’re at a point where regular users already have everything they need [...]

We still don't have:

- an iPhone SE1-sized device

- USB-C on a "medium" (iPhone Mini)-sized device

- Touch ID or non-OLED screen on a non-budget device

- 3.5mm headphone jack (even after they backtracked on removing most ports from Macbooks)

Yeah basically can I just have a 2016 with an updated SoC please.

egypturnash• 2 years ago

I have everything I need with a 5s. The only thing making me ponder updates is shit like “hi the new T-mobile app requires a newer version of iOS than is available for your phone”. Web still works though.

lsllc• 2 years ago

Isn't that sort of the point though? I'm a regular phone user, but boy when I was on vacation this year, my iPhone took some fabulous pictures with stunning colors. I'm sure way better than I would with a DSLR (given I have no experience with a DSLR and/or whatever post-processing/editing suites I'd need to go with it).

I totally buy into the "best camera you have is the one in your pocket" concept -- especially if that camera takes amazing photos without me needing to know how.

I do agree on the other features (or lack thereof), in general I only upgrade my iPhone for two reasons:

  1. Newer/better camara
  2. Old iPhone is getting long in the tooth (i.e. battery degradation)

I think the longest I went was maybe 3 years before the battery wouldn't really make it through the day.

I'll take a look at this one and if the camera is compelling enough, maybe upgrade (the 5x optical zoom might just do that for me).

swatcoder• 2 years ago

The archetype of a smartphone is essentially mature at this point and has been for a while.

Innovations are either going to be aimed at improving niche uses, gradual enhancements on stats like power/cpu/display/photo-quality, or accommodating fashion trends like overall size or whether it's foldable.

The most original opportunity lately is generative AI integration and that's exactly what they put into focus for 2024.

throwaway9182992• 2 years ago

As one of those users I'm still rocking my iPhone 11 and am perfectly content sticking with it The phone works. Telegram and Whatsapp works. Slack works. Safari still runs great on the web on the very few websites I use or browse. The longer I can use this without feeling "forced" to upgrade, the happier I'll be.

What apple offers me is peace of mind and stability. That's all I want from a phone.

EricE• 2 years ago

If I had hadn't smashed my 11 Pro I'd still be using it. It feels wafer thin in comparison to the chunky 15 Pro I replaced it with :/

mrzool• 2 years ago

What apple offers me is peace of mind and stability.

They’ll literally make your beloved iPhone 11 obsolete in a year or so, deliberately.

musictubes4• 2 years ago

Do people cringe watching laptop updates too? Only niche, power hungry users feel constrained by hardware limitations these days.

I do think some of the Apple Intelligence features are going to be pretty useful for regular folks. I also think it’s going to be the case that after a few years people will forget how limited Siri used to be while taking for granted the improved performance.

numbers2• 2 years ago

Good updates to the video recording, event was okay...kinda boring. Airpods Max got no updates just color, why even mention them?

jpalomaki• 2 years ago

They got USB-C

laweijfmvo5• 2 years ago

USB-C ?

zamadatix7• 2 years ago

I was immensely disappointed for the AirPods Max to be stuck with the H1 when even the standard AirPods got the H2.

cube22223• 2 years ago

I was planning to upgrade this year, and probably still will, but honestly, the differences between the base model and pro model this year are fairly limited.

ProMotion, Always-on display, a bunch more resistant to fall damage, and a camera that is better, but doesn't look like a lot.

I'm a bit worried about the Apple Intelligence features, as they've been very prominent on WWDC, but were fairly toned-down today. Not much of it was shown, and they're delaying their arrival (notification summaries look great though, as a "little thing that matters").

whalesalad• 2 years ago

I can't live without the pro motion display now. I'm on a 13 right now so this will be a big upgrade for me personally.

cube22223• 2 years ago

Yeah I'm on a 13 Pro. It's enough to upgrade, but it doesn't blow you off your feet. The colors are also arguably worse than the 13 Pro lineup.

manmal2• 2 years ago

I‘m on a 13 Pro right now, and an iOS developer, so should have a reason to upgrade now. But the iffy situation with Apple intelligence in the EU makes me hesitate.

zitterbewegung2• 2 years ago

I think it is a good thing to delay arrival so they can get it right. I almost think playing it up at WWDC was intentional so that developers would care more about it.

tekacs• 2 years ago

I've had notification summaries turned on for at least a few weeks as part of the iOS 18 Beta and I can sadly report that they seem to be very very low quality.

On occasion they'll squash down something that is better read tersely, but I've overwhelmingly found them to make the content worse than simply reading the original text.

I was really hopeful about them going in, but it seems like it might need an iteration or two more.

mason552• 2 years ago

I think that there are just very few notifications where a summary is the thing I want. Most of them I either don't care about at all or I want to see the actual text. Either it's important and the details matter or it's, like, a text from my wife and I want to read it in her voice and not a summary.

The fun of my family group chat is reading the messages from everyone.

cmcaleer5• 2 years ago

Presumably the AI features getting widely derided at WWDC influenced the script. I’m totally fine with generative AI, but I cringed when I saw the images they generated for the demo at WWDC. Just awful stuff.

pistolpeteDK• 2 years ago

Interesting to see how they're marketing increasingly minor improvements as major breakthroughs. 16 Pro: Better camera, more zoom, dedicated camera button… isn’t that it? WiFi 7, faster ray tracing, USB-C/USB 3? Hard to imagine many people really need that.

Have we witnessed peak Apple?

Apple Watch: minimal updates. AirPods Max: new color. AirPods: some minor tweaks.

laweijfmvo5• 2 years ago

ehhhh, maybe. they used to do small updates (other than CPU) and call it the "S" update; now they seem to keep increasing the number but doing similar small updates?

reducesuffering• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what more you'd expect after the 14 barely had anything on the 13. The stagnation happened 3 years ago.

crooked-v3• 2 years ago

And the things they decided to not do are baffling, too. The AirPods Max doesn't even have the H2 chip and attendant features, for example.

stephenitis2• 2 years ago

What is the attendant feature?

Wow they really didn't upgrade to the H2 chip! I preordered this without looking too closely as I've been waiting forever for an upgrade to buy this. Very strange.

MangoCoffee2• 2 years ago

Smartphone has reached its peak. What's left to innovate? maybe Huawei's triple-fold phone(?)

ilikeatari• 2 years ago

I think there is still some room. For me screen technology would be an innovation. Envision a screen that is hybrid between eink and current OLED. Or Siri that is useful (I think thats what they are working on). Or envision other inputs other than your thumbs :-) Maybe ironed out version of what they developed for Apple Vision Pro in terms of eye tracking or some other inputs. So many ideas!!!

fsflover14• 2 years ago

What's left to innovate?

How about running a normal OS without artificial restrictions, so that you could completely replace your laptop/desktop?

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

The same happened with laptops a long time ago. They basically do everything that's needed.

But in general I agree that the innovation output of Apple is really low compared to their size. But that seems to be the case for most of these mega trillion dollar companies. The bigger, the more conservative they get. But they are very good at making profits so it's all good as far as the CEO's bonus goes.

nabaraz2• 2 years ago

What about any other things like Word, Operating System, Cars? Are they not all doing smaller improvements year after year.

matwood2• 2 years ago

For the phone we've settled on a current form factor of a slab of aluminum and glass. All changes are at the margins. A little thinner, a little lighter, a little better X.

Until some other form factor takes off, this is where we are.

unethical_ban3• 2 years ago

I really don't know what people expect. That Apple won't market a product? That there will be a fivefold increase in performance each year?

phatfish• 2 years ago

It's like Call of Duty, you're not supposed to buy one each year and be amazed. Just wait two or three years and THEN you get a marginal improvement that means you can justify the purchase to yourself.

The yearly thing is to scam superfans.

callalex16• 2 years ago

And they still can’t figure out how to make the battery replaceable even though they claim to care so much for the environment.

ReptileMan• 2 years ago

I want replicable battery just to be sure that my phone is turned off when it says it is turned off.

PhunkyPhil2• 2 years ago

Why would a user-replaceable battery be better for the environment? Do you think that consumers are able to recycle hard-to-recycle lithium components like that _correctly_? Apple already offers battery replacements (comparatively) cheaply.

Beyond that there's huge issues with it such as third party batteries tainting the overall quality of the phone, having an entirely removable back plate would kill their water/dust resistance rating, it looking bad (Yes this is important to Apple) etc, god-knows-what other issues arise changing the internal structure of their components that drastically.

Don't assume they can't figure out an engineering problem because you're upset that phones aren't the same as they were 20 years ago.

zitterbewegung2• 2 years ago

I don't see much to upgrade to but, if I didn't get a iPhone 15 Pro I would have probably gotten this. The new camera button is interesting and the gestures are nice.

Interesting to see all the rumors of a iPhone Slim / Air be nothing and I almost thought that they would do it on the Pro lineup.

skygazer2• 2 years ago

The slim rumors are for the iPhone 17 line when they drop the Plus from the lineup. The rumors spanning two generations ahead is confusing.

gamepsys2• 2 years ago

The rumors of the thinner iPhone made me disappointed when this wasn't thinner.

mgrandl• 2 years ago

The slim / air rumors were always for the iPhone 17 lineup.

justin66• 2 years ago

No.

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/apple-could-deliver-...

laweijfmvo5• 2 years ago

So did they just give up on Blood-Oxygen sensing on the Watch? Thought it might be a good time to update my Watch 6 (black titanium) to a 10, since they brought back the black titanium, but they just have no answer for the blood-oxygen lawsuit?

ayhanfuat• 2 years ago

Maybe they are just not reporting it. Sleep apnea detection is probably using blood oxygen levels.

laweijfmvo5• 2 years ago

I checked the "Compare" page and it confirms no blood oxygen on Series 10 and Ultra 2. It's basically the one thing the 6 does better.

xattt• 2 years ago

It’s pretty unsexy for Apple to say they’re using their sound recognition tech to listen for snoring.

flutas2• 2 years ago

As the other commenter said it does seem like Apple might have either straight up removed it or is disabling it in software entirely for now.

Comparison page lists the "Blood Oxygen app" for the S6 through S8, but S9 and S10 both just have "-" for that comparison section like the S5 has.

https://www.apple.com/watch/compare/?modelList=watch-series-...

EDIT: Another difference between them is the Vitals App description removing the blood oxygen reference.

S10: "Vitals app featuring heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, and sleep duration"

S08: "Vitals app featuring heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration"

skygazer2• 2 years ago

It was using the accelerometer to detect breaths, or absence, and uses a month's worth of data, so not using O2 at all.

_ph_6• 2 years ago

Wow, if they removed the blood oxygen measurement, I will keep my S7 Apple watch. I had planned an upgrade.

ninininino2• 2 years ago

Removed for US purchasers. Fine elsewhere.

billfor• 2 years ago

The Samsung Galaxy Watch series still supports it, as well as blood pressure and sleep apnea (though you may have to hack it slightly to unlock those features in the US).

callalex16• 2 years ago

It’s been really crappy the entire time it existed, so it’s not a big loss. I have my watch on quite snugly (but not too tight), and fairly high on my wrist, and the stupid thing only takes maybe 3-5 measurements per DAY. Also, it cannot take measurements while exercising, or even moving.

tuatoru3• 2 years ago

It takes more frequent measurements in "sleep" focus mode (Settings > Focus.)

sunnybeetroot• 2 years ago

I’m on the 9 and have blood oxygen sensor, are they removing it in the 10?

raydev7• 2 years ago

They didn't "give up", they were sued and had to remove it (at least in the US). This is the most recent update I could find: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122407/apple-watch-masim...

vault_• 2 years ago

Probably a result of the patent dispute over the feature: https://apnews.com/article/apple-watch-patent-dispute-sales-...

qingcharles2• 2 years ago

Patent issue, it is blocked in the USA, IIRC.

Here's one thing I saw about it:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/2024/07/while-apple-has-update...

cmcaleer5• 2 years ago

Anecdotally I found it worthless anyway. I tried a variety of straps, tightness, positions, but I think the freckles on my white skin just confused it. Finger monitors consistently have it at 98%+. Apple Watch: “Your Blood Oxygen content is 85-100%”. Thank you Apple, very cool.

No real pattern to the large outliers, they’d happen at all times of the day, even with my girlfriend’s watch that I asked for a lend of.

jadbox• 2 years ago

No additional RAM? So 16 Pro is still using only 8gb? I was hoping to be able to run my own LLMs on device, but unless you're using micro sized models, it'll be practically impossible (or too slow for casual use).

dblitt• 2 years ago

Notably, only the pro models support USB 3. The base 16/16 plus are still on USB 2. This hasn't changed from the 15 lineup when they switched to USB-C.

unsnap_biceps• 2 years ago

what do you use that usb 3 speeds matter? The only thing ever plugged into my phones port is a charger.

baq• 2 years ago

Same thing you use prores log video for.

aucisson_masque4• 2 years ago

I have a bad wired internet connection and use my phone to download anything over 1gb. takes 2 minutes instead of 2 hours.

also use it as a portable usb stick. when you are transfering stuff over 10gb, usb 3 is very very usefull.

_ph_6• 2 years ago

They said that the iPhone can record video directly to external storage, so you would need the faster USB speed for that. Quite a nice feature for productions which use the iPhone for professional video.

mirchiseth• 2 years ago

It will be interesting to see how users will use the new dedicated camera touch control. Other phonemakers have tried it in the past (Sony Xperia comes to mind) but capacitative is probably the first. Also how developers will adopt for their apps. It is a small change but definitely differentiating for Apple at least for now.

sk110012• 2 years ago

There’s definitely a feeling that the Pro models are the actual model and the non-Pro is a bit closer to the old C/SE models. It didn’t feel that way a few releases ago.

I do love the colors on the regular models though!

switch0073• 2 years ago

Same with the MacBook Pro, where you want the Pro CPU not the base CPU

yreg3• 2 years ago

Do we know what's the RAM in those phones?

StayTrue• 2 years ago

Looks like 8GB.

nabaraz2• 2 years ago

I remember people lining up outside apple stores on the pre-order day. What has happened now? Have we seen the peak of smartphones until something new comes along and spur a new super-cycle?

nunez• 2 years ago

Online ordering and Apple scaling production to meet demand.

swyx6• 2 years ago

i mean have you tried shipping familiar daily use hardware for 20 years? why the cynicism. this thing needs to be dependable, reliable. not introduce new fashion trend every year.

brookst4• 2 years ago

Upgrades in mature markets are less exciting than in new markets. See: how exciting the 2024 Corolla is compared to the 2023.

gamepsys2• 2 years ago

I get excited when Toyota does a major model does a refresh. The Corolla is likely the #1 selling car model globally, so it has a major impact whenever they change something.

em500• 2 years ago

Well I still remember people lining up outside of computer stores to buy Windows 95. Some people line up about pretty random things.

cmcaleer5• 2 years ago

As a trend in general it feels pretty dead, at least in tech and gaming.

raydev7• 2 years ago

Apple has had a solid online experience the last 5 or so years. No need for lineups.

sam296817494• 2 years ago

If you can get it earlier then when it will be shipped, I can see why people, anxious to get their latest phone, would line up. Regardless, the only thing I’m lining up for is ramen.

joshstrange6• 2 years ago

I remember people lining up outside apple stores on the pre-order day. What has happened now?

We order online from the comfort of our homes and still get the phone on launch day?

minimaxir3• 2 years ago

The Pro variant is unusually poorly differentiated from the base model this cycle: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

The 13 Pro had ProMotion, 14 Pro had Dynamic Island and Always On display, the 15 Pro had USB-C and the Action Button, the 16 Pro...has maybe slightly faster AI? 4k120fps video? USB-C w/ USB 3? Not things most people would care about.

ProMotion/Always On is still limited to the Pro models which is enough to justfy the upcharge, but it's a surprise they aren't locking a new feature this time.

alkonaut2• 2 years ago

The 5x (vs 2x) optical zoom will also convince a few to go for the Pro. Isn’t the price difference smaller than previous models too?

dudus• 2 years ago

The extra optical zoom has been THE defining feature that pushes PRO to most users. It's a feature enjoyed by anyone and everyone.

rconti3• 2 years ago

$200 more for the base pro, but looking at trade-in values for my 14, you get half of that back.....

slaymaker1907• 2 years ago

I'm by no means a professional photographer, but better zoom is definitely a big selling point.

janandonly• 2 years ago

The previous model 15 pro already has 3x, so it’s a jump from 3x to 5x. Not enough for me to upgrade already, but a good feature if you like photography or videography.

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

Is this a real zoom or just a fixed lens with longer focal length? I have read that the 13 Pro does digital zoom between 1x and 2.9x and only at 3x the 3x lens kicks in. So if you have a 5x lens you get digital zoom over an even longer range. So you may end up with worse image quality over a wider range.

Is this correct?

Kirby643• 2 years ago

15 and 15 Pro both had USB-C. The 15 pro just has USB3 capable USB-C (15 regular was USB2 only). Seems like they're keeping that differentiation, which I suppose makes sense given the USB3 PHY is a considerable die cost.

jsheard4• 2 years ago

USB3 PHY is a considerable die cost

Is it actually a different die though? The A18 and A18 Pro are so close in specs, with the same 6 CPU cores, same 16 NPU cores and only 5 vs. 6 GPU cores that I would guess that they are the very same die just with one GPU cluster and USB3 switched off in the non-Pro version.

ars• 2 years ago

Do people really transfer enough data over USB on a phone for it to matter?

veber-alex7• 2 years ago

The 16 Pro has a bigger display.

Each model now has a different display size.

You can choose between 6.1", 6.3", 6.7" and 6.9"

evilfred2• 2 years ago

this part is really frustrating. I want to upgrade from my 13 Pro and have 120Hz but 6.7" is huge

playa1• 2 years ago

I would be fine with the Pro models getting larger screens if they would shrink the standard phone. I'm still trying to survive with my 12 mini for as long as possible until the battery dies. I tried a standard iPhone 15 for two weeks last year and I wasn't happy with the larger size and returned it.

The mini was a great form factor, fits in more pockets comfortably and the whole screen is within reach of my thumb when using the phone one-handed.

microtonal• 2 years ago

For me 60Hz on the base model is now a deal breaker. Even our daughter's 300 Euro A54 has a 120Hz screen (though not LTPO). Once you are used to 120Hz on a touch device, it's hard to go back (different on a relatively static computer screen, where I prefer having the high DPI of 5k 27"). So, it's iPhone Pro models until the base model gets >60Hz too.

ahoka• 2 years ago

Same as the 8GB Macs, ridiculous.

gessha2• 2 years ago

You and Apple’s marketing team have come to the same conclusion.

Sent from my iPhone 15 Pro

rottencupcakes• 2 years ago

I’ve actually come to the conclusion that a laggier worse phone display is a feature, not a bug. Quicker response times = more addictive with little to no upside in productivity.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Surely that's a joke, what special need could possibly call for requiring more than 60fps (calling it a dealbreaker)? It's nice to have but... it's like having a slightly faster CPU or cellular modem that lets pages load 2ms faster, sure it's nice but... a dealbreaker? Why?

dialogbox• 2 years ago

Well. I used to think the same but I found myself got used to the 60hz display within a week again. It's true it's annoying for the first few days but you know, mankind is an adapting animal.

binary_slinger• 2 years ago

I read that sentiment often. But I am able to switch between my 60 Hz iPhone 13 and 120 Hz iPad Pro without issue. iPad Pro switches from 120 Hz to 60 Hz when low power mode is activated. I notice the switch but I easily adjust and not think about it.

mdavidn• 2 years ago

I understand 60 Hz being “a deal breaker” for gaming and VR applications, but on a battery-constrained mobile phone that I carry everywhere? No thanks. I’d rather have more battery life or less weight in my pocket. 60 Hz is more than adequate.

kaba010• 2 years ago

Plenty of people simply don’t see it though. That’s what apple is betting on.

paulpan• 2 years ago

Are there new hardware features announced for the 16 Pro? Apple definitely would love to add an exclusive feature but it seems like negligible pickings. The "Fusion" or "tetraprism" camera is the only other one that comes to mind.

Fundamentally Apple wants to leverage their supply chain to maximize shared parts between the Pro and base iPhones. Lack of hardware innovations makes it hard to create product differentiation.

Heck, even the A18 Pro chip seems a marginal upgrade over the base A18 chip: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/apples-a18-chip-desi...

reliableturing2• 2 years ago

I agree but I already planned to upgrade to a 16 Pro up from my 12. Biggest thing I’m looking forward to? Battery life.

In the announcement they said “big boost”, and looking at the comparison page I will go from 17h video playback to 27h. That’s not even including the battery degradation I built up in the last 4 years. I’m practically going to double my battery life.

jncfhnb• 2 years ago

Damn you can only watch 13 hours of video content per day now? Rough.

jjtheblunt• 2 years ago

Are you assuming the upgrade 'stride' is 1, whereas perhaps the normal user does not upgrade more often than every 3rd model?

minimaxir3• 2 years ago

This isn't related to the user update cycle discussions, just pointing out it's odd that Apple has always locked a new feature/hardware to a higher SKU to help price discriminate but here it's weaker.

tiffanyh3• 2 years ago

Here’s the link you intended:

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-16-pr...

jhawk28• 2 years ago

Lidar is only on Pro.

echoangle• 2 years ago

The 15 non-Pro also had USB C, the main differences were action button and camera

rekoil• 2 years ago

Titanium frame, better battery life, 120Hz display refresh rate, better camera, 5x optical zoom, LiDAR.

deergomoo3• 2 years ago

better camera

Better ultrawide, but from the comparison page on Apple’s website it would appear the main sensors on both are the same?

deergomoo3• 2 years ago

ProMotion/Always On is still limited to the Pro models

Always On is on the base model this year too

minimaxir3• 2 years ago

No it isn't, check the comparison link.

Always On depends on ProMotion for 1Hz refresh.

MangoCoffee2• 2 years ago

It seemed like smartphone has reached its peak

yungporko2• 2 years ago

smartphone plataeu happened like 8 years ago. at this point, even in our wildest dreams, what else could you possibly want a phone to do? all that is left for this form factor is incremental QoL improvements until some crazy new technology which we can't yet fathom drops, and god help us when it does lol.

breadwinner• 2 years ago

Well, what about foldable phones? The current iPhone is too long to fit in my pocket comfortably. I would upgrade to a foldable iPhone.

Another idea: support hover gestures as seen in this article: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595564/microsoft-3d-touc...

In software, get rid of flat UI. No need to bring back skeuomorphism, but find a middle ground.

baby6• 2 years ago

Have you seen folding phones?

veber-alex7• 2 years ago

I am disappointed.

The 16 Pro is larger and heavier than the 15 pro which is already heavy.

I have small hands, I want a smaller and lighter phone.

Not going to buy the 16 because of lack of ProMotion.

eitally2• 2 years ago

I'm not in the iPhone ecosystem anyway, so it's probably moot, but one thing Google did really right this year was to issue Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL that are identical in everything but the screen size. I'm very happily upgrading from a very large 8 Pro to a nicely pocketable 9 Pro that contains all the same guts as the 9 Pro XL. Apple should have done the same.

zamadatix7• 2 years ago

The Pro and Pro Max are like you say with the sole exception of optical zoom level. OP is referring to the non-pro models at the end when talking about ProMotion (there are 4 main variants each release, not 2).

aucisson_masque4• 2 years ago

i bought my grandma an iphone 6, damn these thing were perfect size and the force haptic was awesome. Iphone are becoming more and more like android, in size, in complexity and jankyness.

paxys7• 2 years ago

Smaller notch? Touch ID? Better battery life? Faster charging? Larger default storage? Nope, let's skip all that and spend most of the event talking about video recording.

Is anyone here actually excited about the features they just announced? Or are people simply upgrading because they get the latest iPhone every year or two by default?

oldstrangers• 2 years ago

Judging by the success of TikTok, yes, lots of consumers will love new video features.

thiht• 2 years ago

Better battery life

That’s the only thing from your list that people actually care about and they did improve battery life, there was a whole segment about it.

The rest? No one cares. Do you even use an iPhone? You sound like me before I got an iPhone:

- I thought the notch would be annoying, I don’t even notice it anymore, it’s never been an issue in actual use

- I was convinced TouchID was better than FaceID but I completely changed my mind. FaceID is just more reliable and convenient, especially if you have sweaty palms

- Faster charging? I mean, why not, it’s always nice if it can be faster, but I’ve found fast charging already surprisingly fast whenever I’ve needed to quickly get some % before going out

- Larger default storage? Same, it’s a nice plus, but if you want or need more storage, pay for more? You have the option

ProfessorLayton• 2 years ago

I disagree, there's lots to improve on that "regular users" would notice. I went from an 11 (non pro) to a 15PM, and there's still a few major gripes I'd like to see fixed that haven't been addressed in the 16, but would benefit regular users if improved:

- I wish my phone was easier to unlock when outside in the bright sun and wearing glasses. I often have to take them off or try again, or put in a passcode.

- I'd like the screen to not dim after a few minutes outside in the sun.

- I wish my phone charged faster, especially for moments where I'm like "Oh crap, my uber will be here in 5m and I forgot to charge my phone"

- I wish my safari tabs didn't attempt to reload at the most inopportune times (or ever like my Macbook). This is a very real scenario I run into often when in the subway with no cell/wifi, and is extremely annoying. Better than my 11, but not fixed by any means.

- I wish my OLED screen didn't have visible PWM at low brightness, and strained my eyes. Not everyone is sensitive to this, but some are, and I didn't have this issue with my 11.

These are all regular user stories.

paperplatter7• 2 years ago

The notch is ok, but FaceID is a downgrade, and so is not having a home button or a headphone jack.

nox1018• 2 years ago

- I thought the notch would be annoying, I don’t even notice it anymore, it’s never been an issue in actual use

I have several apps the notch covers. Arguably that's the app's fault for not upgrading ? Or is it Apple's? Maybe Apple should let apps opt into the notch. For apps that don't opt in they'd get a blank bar at the top. That would at least not have broken so many apps.

- I was convinced TouchID was better than FaceID but I completely changed my mind. FaceID is just more reliable and convenient, especially if you have sweaty palms

Sucks with face masks.

rurp2• 2 years ago

Not everyone has the same set of use cases that you do. Device storage for example is a big deal for anyone who spends significant time outside of wifi. Buying more cloud storage doesn't help someone without an internet connection. Many people prefer TouchID for various reasons and I'm not sure why we wouldn't believe them just because you happen to like FaceID.

mysteria• 2 years ago

I was convinced TouchID was better than FaceID but I completely changed my mind. FaceID is just more reliable and convenient, especially if you have sweaty palms

Actually for me it's the opposite, and I see much more failures to unlock with FaceID compared to TouchID. There are many times where I had to hold the phone out in front of me like I'm taking a selfie and look directly at it for the system to work, whereas TouchID works in all kinds of weird positions as long as I'm able to place my finger on the sensor.

grujicd• 2 years ago

FaceID is not really compatible with Always On Displays. When you glance at a screen it's because you want to take a look at the clock or see if there are any notifications. I don't want my glance to unlock it! At least that's my experience with Galaxy phones and how I use AOD.

wlesieutre7• 2 years ago

5x zoom and the new camera button on the Pro sound great to me, will probably upgrade from my 12 mini for that

I don’t shoot much video but I do take photos

petesergeant2• 2 years ago

Is that a big upgrade on just using the volume down button for photos?

tbolt• 2 years ago

12 mini is so great but I’m going to have to try moving to the pro.

saurik• 2 years ago

Do people have to "upgrade" constantly? Shouldn't the iPhone get at least a little bit better every year, even if no one "upgrades"? I often use my devices for years until they break in some way, and then I get a new one... is it really so wrong that the 2024 model is only better in ways you don't care about from the 2023 model?

pazimzadeh2• 2 years ago

you don't have to upgrade, but it used to be tempting

nox1018• 2 years ago

Apple often gates features on model number. They'll make up some BS about needing the power of the newer model to do X but they'll be plenty of demos of doing X on various platforms with less power.

Not saying I need those new features. Only that Apple's incentives are to try to get you to buy the new phone so they are incentivised to gate several software only features to try to get you to upgrade.

whycome• 2 years ago

Especially when the upgrade cadence is just one year. It’s not a PS5 or whatever.

Like any evolution, the year over year changes shouldn’t be that drastic

4dm1r4lg3n3r4l• 2 years ago

Exactly. Them releasing a new model every year with small, incremental updates is not for people to upgrade from the latest model (although it is obvious Apple tries to frame the newer models as large upgrades, they haven’t been that for the past 5 or so years), but rather for people who have been wanting to upgrade for a while from their 3-4-5 year old iPhones, and whenever they do they get the latest and greatest. Would the new models feel bigger upgrades if Apple only released one every 2-3 year? Sure. Would that be better for the average consumer looking to upgrade from whatever iPhone they have? Not sure. Incremental updates are nice IMO, stop caring about them if your iPhone is less than 3 year old…

spike0212• 2 years ago

My personal upgrade cycle has been every 4 or so years for the last few iPhones. You really don't need to upgrade more often.

I'm on a 12 Pro and I only want to upgrade to get more memory and faster processors. My current phone easily pages apps out of memory too often these days and it gets a bit tiring. Also, I already replaced the battery once after 1.5 years and the current battery is already back to about the same health/capacity as the first one was in the same amount of time.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

They mentioned giving up to $800-$1000 for trade in for an iPhone 12 or newer. That's pretty aggressive on a device that's $999-$1199 list. It sounds like they are really wanting people to upgrade to this device.

macintux• 2 years ago

If the iPhone was radically better every single year, people would be complaining about e-waste instead.

grimgrin• 2 years ago

Dunno exactly what my dance is but more than once I’ve found myself getting on the upgrade program, but not upgrading on the 12 month opportunity and instead paying it off over the next 12. If it has a crack I’ll do a last minute applecare swap while I got it. Cool, new old phone for another cycle

dbbk8• 2 years ago

No, most people shouldn't be upgrading constantly. But Apple does a least encourage this somewhat with their Upgrade Program.

zarzavat• 2 years ago

It comes to something when a $160 Xiaomi has the features that OP wants though.

Apple drip feeds features, they have realized that their business relies of making small incremental improvements to the iPhone every year so they hold back features that are bog standard in the more competitive Android world and then make a big fuss when they add it to the iPhone.

brookst4• 2 years ago

Many families hand devices down. It would be odd for a bachelor to buy every new device every year, but if older devices end up with kids or grandpa it makes perfect sense for the family to buy a new device every year.

mig39• 2 years ago

Yes, my family practices trickle-down iPhoneconomics. I get the new one every year, because it's a tax thing. I give my old one to my wife, and whichever kid has the oldest phone gets hers.

steve_adams_865• 2 years ago

I got the 15 pro because of an offer through my wife's work (it made it ridiculously cheap and seemed like the right opportunity to replace my 3 year old SE), and worried I'd have a bit of FOMO with the 16 a month away from release.

I really don't care. The 15 pro is so much phone, I can't imagine it lasting less than my SE. And frankly I only upgraded due to the limited time opportunity and knowing my son could use my SE due to his 7 being a crumpled lump of broken glass and gnarled aluminum. It's like he skate boards to school on it. RIP little SE, I guess.

I'd like the slightly nicer camera, but the ones on the 15 pro are so good it seems absurd to complain. I actually used this thing for product photos on my store's website, and they turned out remarkably well. It's not PRO level (I'll reproduce all of them with my camera later) but my god, cameras in phones have come a long, long way. We're at a point where I'd be very surprised if iPhone 17 introduces anything interesting.

nox1018• 2 years ago

I got the 15 mostly for USB-C. I still have cable hell because my AirPods are lightning so sometimes I need USB-C -> lightning and sometimes I need USB-A -> lightning

I might get an Airpod 4 for the USB-C though the Airpod 3 sucked and I'm suspecting the Airpod 4 is just as bad. Falls out (compared to Airpod 2). Pinch to play/pause/que sucks compared to Tap to play/pause/cue. Several friends had similar experiences including several friends that work at Apple. All of them returned their Airpod 3s.

slt2021• 2 years ago

both glass and back frame is easily replaceable and very easy to DIY.

the CPU and integrated circuit is the core of the phone and if it is intact, the phone can be refreshed to be like new with the new shell for like $30 with parts from ebay

JumpCrisscross12• 2 years ago

Is anyone here actually excited about the features they just announced?

I'm frankly happy Cupertino didn't add bullshit features to make it exciting. This is an incremental update. They opened up minor new capabilities, some of which will matter to some people to varying degrees of compellingness.

coliveira2• 2 years ago

I only upgrade every 4 or 5 years, and only because I need more storage after a few years of usage. This time I'll probably "upgrade" to last year's version.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Could also buy a device that takes upgradable storage, if that's truly your bottleneck / the reason you're replacing the whole device. Current state of the art is 1TB sdcards iirc, probably in 5 years they'll be denser again

dagmx3• 2 years ago

Video and photography are by far the biggest feature that people buy phones for. Pretty much every phone manufacturer focuses on cameras for that reason.

asadotzler2• 2 years ago

Incorrect. Video and photography is all the phone manufacturers can practically upgrade given the form factor constraints (size, thermals, etc.) so that's what consumers have been trained to differentiate between generations and makes and makers. The truth is the feature most people buy new phones for is more battery, and that's about it.

paperplatter7• 2 years ago

I'm just glad it makes the slightly less new ones a bit cheaper. My iPhone 6S needs to either get a new battery or get replaced.

callalex16• 2 years ago

The 6S is one of the last iPhones you can reasonably replace the battery on by yourself with a kit and guide from iFixIt. Cherish it!

Xenoamorphous• 2 years ago

For better or worse the current big thing is AI. I wouldn’t expect any big leap in hardware anytime soon, other than perhaps running local AI models locally.

wilsonnb32• 2 years ago

I mean, the big feature last year was that it was made out of titanium making it slightly lighter than the previous stainless steel models but still heavier than the aluminum regular models for no reason. Video recording is cooler than that, at least.

amarshall• 2 years ago

They added enough weight back to the 16 Pro that it’s now only 7 grams lighter than the 14 Pro, whereas the 15 Pro was 19 grams lighter than the 14 Pro. (I just want a new Mini, tbh)

rkagerer• 2 years ago

Touch ID?

I missed the memo - I thought Touch ID was abandoned in favor of Face ID? Did they bring it back on the latest models? Can you use it again instead of Face ID, and is it as instant as it was on the older Apple phones?

yoyoyo11222• 2 years ago

TouchID is still on iPad Air and Mini.

Would love to have both! FaceID never works for me when I'm laying on my side in bed.

paxys7• 2 years ago

It isn't abandoned. The side button on the iPad Air for example is a touch ID sensor. They just don't want to bring it to iPhone for some reason. Plus all other high-end phones from competing manufacturers have touch sensors under the screen now.

throwitaway11232• 2 years ago

The rest of the industry seems to be moving towards under-screen ultrasonic fingerprint readers, which if Apple adopted, would allow them to shrink the notch by getting rid of the Face ID sensors. I think they've dug in their heels on Face ID though, so it likely won't happen (although they did reverse course on Force Touch, so anything is possible).

They likely won't end up reducing the size of the notch any further until they figure out how to either make Face ID work with just a single selfie camera (which would inevitably be less secure), or put the sensors under some sort of semi-transparent display.

Many people thought they missed an opportunity by not simply putting the fingerprint sensor under the Apple logo on the back of the iPhone, but they probably didn't like the UX of that solution.

xyst• 2 years ago

Not really. Apple has stagnated.

tpmoney7• 2 years ago

People have been saying this every Apple announcement since the first iPod. It's replaced the classic "beleaguered Apple" line that was so popular in the press before they were as massive as they are now. I'm not sure an incremental iPhone update is any real proof of stagnation given that every iPhone update since probably the X which introduced face ID has been incremental, with the predictable accompanying "nothing exciting or new since Steve Jobs" commentary. And certainly one could maybe argue that the fact that every update since the X has been largely incremental is that proof that Apple has stagnated, I would offer the counter argument that no one today would pick an iPhone X over an iPhone 16 even if the X still ran the latest iOS, and when the X was released Apple was still shipping computers with intel chips and has since then successfully introduced an entirely new class of computer processors capable of competing with x86, completed its 3rd complete and relatively seamless architecture change, along with ripple effects in the non-apple world in the way of boosting interest in Windows ARM and increased focus and market access for things like the Qualcom Snapdragon Elite chips. So while they may have slowed down some, I think going from the first A4 series chip in 2010 to an entire industry changing desktop class processor series in 2020 is the sort of "stagnation" I can live with.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

It said A18 uses 20% less power than A17. However, that might have been for the CPU cores. I don't remember if they made claims specific to the GPU cores or the ML cores.

4fterd4rk2• 2 years ago

Well it does actually have faster wireless charging and better battery life but ooookay.

I buy a new phone every year because I'm rich, I love technology, and this is a device I use for a significant portion of every single day.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Please tell me you at least give the old phone to someone who can still use it for multiple years, rather than putting it with recycling where they may reuse some metals or, at best, some of the parts

dbbk8• 2 years ago

Good for you? No one's saying you're not allowed to buy one every year if you want to...

jessriedel4• 2 years ago

I'm excited that the cost of iPhone 15's will continue to fall so I can soon eliminate lightning cables from my life. Please everyone, go out and upgrade from 15 to 16! :)

mohaine• 2 years ago

A set of these, while still not ideal, make the transition much easier.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6PDGLWZ

noname1205• 2 years ago

I wish Apple never (got forced to) drop the lightning port. USB-C is vastly inferior in terms of durability due to its dumb design with a tiny PCB that sticks out right in the middle and an hermaphrodite plug that goes around it while still being inside the port.

heraldgeezer3• 2 years ago

Crazy how my Oneplus 10 (2 years old btw) charges to 100% in 30min and 80% in 20min from 0. All I do is charge when I shower, and it's done.

fundad3• 2 years ago

I don't think paying inflated prices for more expensive inputs while keeping the same retail price is good business, I wish it were because everything has gone up. Other than the camera button, Apple focused on features enabled by the System-on-a-chip because the per-unit marginal of those features are low. The 16 has improved computational photography which could be a substitute for optical zoom for some families who previously bought the Pro for optical zoom.

It makes sense that they would keep prices constant this year considering the pattern over the last decade.

Apple raised the retail price on the 15 Pro Max and added 5x zoom (2023). Apple raised the price on the iPhone 14 by using last-generation SoC (2022). Apple raised the price on the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro by dropping the AC adaptor and adding carrier charges of $30 (at least in the US) (2020). Apple raised the retail price of the iPhone 8 ($50 more than the 7) and in the same year, put more expensive inputs in the the X line which became the Pro line (2017). Apple put more expensive inputs in the 6 Plus and priced it $100 more than the 6 (2014).

DidYaWipe13• 2 years ago

My last iPhone purchase was the original SE... which turned out to be the most highly-regarded iPhone of them all.

It got smashed, so now I have to deal with all the regressions. No TouchID, no headphone jack, no SIM slot. Will I enjoy having a much better camera? Yep. But that won't do me any good while I can't listen to shit on the plane or in my cars... unless I carry an octopus of dongles everywhere, and none of it breaks and none of its non-removable batteries die.

The sad fact is that manufacturers work harder to screw the customer now than they do to impress him. Apologists enable this behavior, and entire product categories regress.

sourcecodeplz• 2 years ago

They still sell the SE. It has touch ID and SIM slot. No headphone jack though.

nick34434• 2 years ago

I missed wired headphones... Until I tried air pods pro. Even though I use them with a pixel phone fwiw.

bschwindHN3• 2 years ago

Same here! Haven't smashed mine yet thankfully and it's still great in 2024. Except that everyone is making their software slower because that's how it goes.

kayodelycaon• 2 years ago

The camera button and x5 zoom is why I'm finally upgrading from a 12 Pro.

willseth• 2 years ago

I have a 14 Pro, and the main reasons I want to upgrade are for Apple Intelligence (mostly Siri-based) and for the better camera and video (as my family's default photog). If I didn't have kids I could wait a few more years on the camera, but I've been wanting a better Siri for years.

rongenre• 2 years ago

I'm on a 6 year old XS. When I upgrade, I get 5G and USB-C, and a chip that's now ahead of the OS.

andrei_says_• 2 years ago

Upgrading from 13pro for the camera. The 13pro camera is OK but the 50mm is still very pixelated.

As a street / candid / pj photographer, the iPhone cameras + photo capture flow is unbeatable.

TOMDM• 2 years ago

We're probably at least a decade away, but what happens when Apple _cant_ make a better iPhone?

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Our tech is already great, we just need to distribute the awesomeness better. If innovation stops today, honestly I'm rather happy, we'd just keep building the tech we have until everyone gets their copy

That said, it seems pretty unrealistic that we can't figure out any incremental improvement until advancing our understanding of the universe. Both have been happening in parallel for centuries if not millennia

amluto• 2 years ago

I’d be in favor of the massively improved battery life that would come from making the main body of the phone thicker. The camera bump is absurdly thick, and making the rest of the phone 1-2mm thicker would make the camera stick out less and add a lot of internal volume that could be used for a larger battery.

pzo6• 2 years ago

for me the issue would be not thickness but heaviness - iphone are quite heavy already comparing to androids even though the latter have batteries with more capacity. I switched from iPhone XS (177g) to iPhone 13 mini (141g) and really enjoy that it's much lighter. iPhones 16 pro is 199g.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

I upgrade because I use it for few years and it’s starting to get slow, and stuff is breaking

can16358p• 2 years ago

I personally don't care about smaller notch (wouldn't say no of course, but not dealbreaker)

Battery life is more than enough for me almost every day.

Why on Earth should I downgrade to Touch ID when using Face ID?

I cared about the camera and improved ultra wide angle, 5x telephoto (my current one, 14 Pro Max has 3x) and 4K 120FPS HDR are enough for me to upgrade.

I agree that the general improvements could be better though: nowadays it's mostly software/AI stuff, and I'd definitely would like to have better camera/better display upgrades instead of just software stuff.

hbn3• 2 years ago

The new iPhones don't even have a notch anymore. The 14 Pro switched to the dynamic island 2 years ago, and last year the whole 15 lineup got it.

And the thing with the dynamic island is it's mostly drawn on in software. It's actually 2 small cutouts, a pill and a circle for FaceID and the selfie camera. They fill it in with the island at the top to make it look like it's all software, so I don't see them shrinking it since it's being used as a feature, where apps can minimize into it with live data (music playing, sports scores, etc)

rhplus• 2 years ago

Reminder for folks with older models: an Apple authorized battery replacement is about $80 in the US and will refresh your device enough to stretch its life a few more years.

Hendrikto• 2 years ago

What are you talking about?

The new models do have better battery life and faster charging.

Closi2• 2 years ago

Smaller notch? Touch ID? Better battery life? Faster charging? Larger default storage? Nope, let's skip all that and spend most of the event talking about video recording.

They probably have done a load of research that shows that people on the whole buy new phones more because they think they will take better photos/video of their travels/friends/kids, rather than because of the notch size.

kaba010• 2 years ago

Did you even watch it? The battery life has definitely been an important point here (likely due to Apple intelligence using a lot of energy).

kemayo2• 2 years ago

Is anyone here actually excited about the features they just announced?

I'm somewhat tempted by the camera improvements. Mostly the increased resolution on the ultra-wide camera, though the dedicated camera button might be nice. There've also been times when the higher zoom lens would have been useful for me, and it being available as standard means I'd actually have it without needing to buy a too-large phone.

The ultra-wide matters even when you're not using it for the zoomed-out fisheye shots, because it also is used for the macro mode. When you're within about a foot-or-so of a subject, the Camera app will switch to macro mode and quietly transition to using an extremely cropped view from the center of the ultra-wide lens. This lets it focus really well on up-close things... but the image quality is noticeable worse. So hopefully a vastly higher-res ultra-wide would result in me not feeling I should fiddle with camera settings around that transition point.

(Yes, this is very much a problem of Apple's own making. It started being annoying around the 14, when the main camera's focal length changed a bit and made them push the distance they had to trigger macro mode from out so it was no longer only happening when you were around 6 inches from a subject.)

omar12• 2 years ago

I am excited for the features announced. My current phone is the iPhone XS, which in September will be 6 years since its release.

Mind you, I try not to get excited for other releases when I made the decision to not yet upgrade my phone.

ttepasse• 2 years ago

I had a small conspiratorial thought while watching this event:

"Apple Intelligence" does not come to Europe and the rest of the world because of the DMA/DSA or other regulations. It doesn’t come, because language support isn’t there.

They are only announcing US English support, with some other English dialects in December: https://eu-img-cdn.livecenter.com/lc-images-2021/lcimg-72ed0...

And the list of proposed languages coming sometimes in 2025 is rather anaemic: https://eu-img-cdn.livecenter.com/lc-images-2021/lcimg-8aec0...

Granted, Silicon Valley companies are mostly rather bad when it comes to other languages (and even more other cultures), but Apple in the last decade tried at least and language support for Siri, dictation and such had in the past much fuller lists of language support. When was the last time they had to pad an extra slide with different variants of English [1]? When did they had to put Spanish, the quasi second language of the US, into next year? And missing from the next year slide are major languages like Arabic, Japanese, German, Italian, Hindi and a lot of more languages Siri already could do, although badly.

Maybe the new LLM/ML training for "Apple Intelligence" needs far more data, bigger data sets and that's why?

[1] Normally I would have thought of a slide with english dialects as a good thing. Computer language systems should recognize that the English language is different in different countries, that different English-speaking cultures are different and I'd argue even "UK English" is far to wide for that country of dozens of vastly different dialects. And of course the biggest English dialect is missing: "English as a second/nth language" or better "English with an accent".

th3owner2• 2 years ago

I am still waiting for Safari to translate Danish.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Does it do other scandinavian languages and is Danish classically difficult even for computers, or is the whole language family out?

dbbk8• 2 years ago

I am still waiting for any browser to just integrate DeepL already. Both Apple and Google translations are miles behind in comparison.

kube-system6• 2 years ago

No Apple financing on the unlocked phones?

kowbell2• 2 years ago

I saw that and was disappointed - but then I read the fine print and it sounds like they ARE unlocked and you can switch providers freely (even while still financing)?

kube-system6• 2 years ago

Ah, looks like that is the case, with a couple exceptions:

When you purchase an iPhone at Apple, you’ll receive an unlocked model that you can use with any carrier. There are two exceptions: If you buy an iPhone through an AT&T Installment Plan, you will receive a locked model. If you buy an iPhone through Boost Mobile Financing, it will be locked for the first 60 days after activation.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Apple and "unlocked". There's something there...

kube-system6• 2 years ago

I don't follow. All of my iPhones have been carrier unlocked.

mrweasel2• 2 years ago

The fact that phones needs to be financed or subsidised by the carriers should tell you that they are WAAAY to expensive.

I'm still of the opinion that Apple needs to make a cheaper phone. Starting a $1100 makes this something only very few will purchase on their own. It's an absolutely insane price.

The iPhone SE starts at $600 (4000DKK) that is still way to expensive. I really wish they'd make a "base" phone for around $150 (1000DKK). I don't need the fancy big screen, I don't care about FaceID, the camera was good enough on the iPhone 7, I don't care about the sensors, I don't care about AI, I don't care about games. I just need a phone that can run a few very simple app and has BlueTooth and tethering.

kube-system6• 2 years ago

I don't need the financing, I just take all the 0% financing I can get.

Apple caters to the premium market, diluting their brand with a cheap phone would be a dumb business decision on their part.

kmlx• 2 years ago

Starting a $1100 makes this something only very few will purchase on their own. It's an absolutely insane price.

not if you account for inflation.

$1100 is $905 in 2020 money.

basically iphones have become cheaper every year due to inflation.

rty32• 2 years ago

“Powered by the faster, more efficient A18 Pro chip and built for Apple Intelligence, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are the most advanced iPhone models we’ve ever made,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Thanks Greg, that's very helpful information.

gk1• 2 years ago

As much as I can’t stand marketing phrases like “the most advanced we’ve ever made” or “the most powerful yet” — because it should go without saying that the newest thing you’re releasing is also the most of anything — the fact that companies keep using it suggests it actually works to market the thing.

codetrotter• 2 years ago

the newest thing you’re releasing is also the most of anything

Well, they also regularly release lower specced models for people who don’t want, don’t need or can’t afford the Pro or Pro Max iPhones.

And on the other hand you have people who need the best or want the best.

And it’s helpful to both kind of people to know that ok the Pro and Pro Max are the most powerful ones.

And while it might seem “obvious” to you and me that Pro and Pro Max are the most powerful iPhones, there’s a lot of people that don’t regularly stay on top of what models exist of iPhones.

stavros• 2 years ago

Isn't "the most advanced iPhone ever made" a meme by now?

crooked-v3• 2 years ago

Keynote Bingo: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/g4z9cgmgep7.png

tehnub2• 2 years ago

The phrase was used—infamously, in some circles—by Activision to describe the 2022 Call of Duty release (Modern Warfare II) https://www.gamespot.com/articles/modern-warfare-2-is-most-a...

minkles• 2 years ago

They’ve run out of useful and interesting stuff to say so they just flatter themselves with amazing progress which is incremental at best.

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

We've manufactured this from a blend of grade 11 graphite collected from an asteroid and dried oyster tears which you will hide using a $5 cover from Alie Express.

2muchcoffeeman2• 2 years ago

People make jokes but we now carry these thousand dollar devices that provide access to everything in our lives.

They should be covered in a durable and easily replaceable cover.

cube22223• 2 years ago

Fwiw, the newer iPhone Pros are in fact extremely durable.

I don’t like cases (they make the phone too bulky for my liking) but also frequently drop my phone on stone/ceramic tiles (not the perfect combo, I know) and after 3 years of having a 13 Pro it’s still in great shape.

Just a few scratches on the corners of the phone (which usually get the most of the hit).

In other words, I very much appreciate them improving durability.

ericwood• 2 years ago

I've always wondered about the "most advanced ____ we've ever made" phrase, it seems like almost like a silly tongue in cheek inside joke at this point. Does it date back to Jobs? They've used that exact turn of phrase for every product iteration as long as I can remember but I can't find any info on its origin. Maybe I'm hallucinating this?

readyplayernull• 2 years ago

"AI for the rest of us."

https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/

We don't deserve so much advance.

ricardobeat2• 2 years ago

It's just going to be true forever.

antisthenes• 2 years ago

I've always wondered what a VP of marketing does at a company that already has a de-facto monopoly on their biggest market as well as in the luxury segment worldwide.

Come out once a year and say "we made this thing bigger and better"?

Must be nice to get paid $25mil/year for that.

travisjungroth• 2 years ago

It’s not like that monopoly was handed to them. They have some of the best marketing in the world.

There’s a quote from the CEO of Coca-Cola I remember but can’t find a source for, about why they still spend so much on advertising. When a pilot gets to cruising altitude, he doesn’t shut down the engines.

11235813212• 2 years ago

I’ve read that Apple marketing has a hand in product direction. But yeah, maybe they are paid more for what they don’t say and keep others from saying. :)

uladzislau2• 2 years ago

This is very underwhelming update, let’s wait for the next year

lcnmrn• 2 years ago

More buttons? Since I lost my power button on Pixel 5, I'm using it only with gestures: touch the fingerprint sensor to unlock, swipe down on home screen to lock it. I think a slider on the notification area can be used for volume up and down for a true buttonless experience something Steve Jobs would have loved.

mrtksn• 2 years ago

Ironic, isn’t it? when the iPhone first came the most different thing about it was that it had a very few buttons. they were telling stories about how Steve Jobs wanted to remove all the buttons. Now we have more and more buttons.

aucisson_masque4• 2 years ago

the iphone apple makes today and the iphone steve jobs made are very different. No one can say what jobs would do nowadays ofc, but i believe he adhered to strict guideline like make it hold in one hand and simplify everything -> less buttons, less settings.

I bet he is rolling in his grave when he sees this new icon color theming thing or what they did with the control center where there is now 5 different page of settings.

samatman2• 2 years ago

The original iPhone had four buttons: home, power, up and down volume.

The iPhone 16 Pro has four buttons: power, up, down, camera.

Plus a switch for mute. Both models.

teekert2• 2 years ago

"Powered by the faster, more efficient A18 Pro chip and built for Apple Intelligence, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are the most advanced iPhone models we’ve ever made," said Greg Joswiak

Was hoping for: "We peaked last year, this iPhone is slightly worse in all dimensions compared to last year."

Disappointed.

swyx6• 2 years ago

i clipped the 5 mins on apple intelligence here for those interested https://x.com/swyx/status/1833231875537850659

notes:

- photos/album search now includes video understanding, which imo seems very good from the first 2 examples they showed. includes scroll to exact time of the moment you describe.

- Mail and Notifications will show summaries instead of str[:x]

- Siri now knows iPhone, becomes the ultimate manual on how to use the increasingly complicated iOS 18. and can read your texts (!) to suggest actions with Personal Context Understanding (also it will try to advertise apple tv shows to you... i'm SURE it will be totally objective and aligned to your preferences amirite)

- new iphone 16 camera control button is PRIME real estate - notice how OpenAI/ChatGPT is now next to Google search, and both are secondary clicks to Apple's visual search, which comes first

- camera adds events to calendar!

- "all done on device" and on cloud (though craig doesnt say that haha)

overall i think insanely good ideas on ai + phone integrations.

schmidtleonard3• 2 years ago

This is good but... all I wanted for Christmas was anti-spam that didn't suck donkey balls. Sigh.

callalex16• 2 years ago

They don’t prevent spam abuse through their app push notifications, and don’t even offer a way to report bad behavior. They are pro-spam.

gffrd6• 2 years ago

Did you say spam?? Boy have we got the thing for you!

Take a picture of a restaurant? Hey, did you know it's a place you can make a reservation at?

Your friend mentions a song offhand? Psst … wanna play it now?

Don't forget about how your cousin talked about that AppleTV+ series!

nashashmi3• 2 years ago

now you will get spam that AI can understand.

thih92• 2 years ago

"all done on device" and on cloud

The real indicator for me is: how many of these features are not available in the EU due to privacy concerns. Do we know that?

bengale• 2 years ago

It’s all Apple Intelligence and that’s not coming to the EU currently.

a13n• 2 years ago

lots of the US has similar legislation to GDPR at this point, e.g CCPA

eptcyka3• 2 years ago

Privacy concerns? They're just trying to bully the EU. There's no legal or technical reason iOS 18's remote access features wouldn't work in EU, but alas, they do not.

JumpCrisscross12• 2 years ago

real indicator for me is: how many of these features are not available in the EU due to privacy concerns

Lawyers and lobbyists are still getting their heads around the EU's AI Act [1].

[1] https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/high-level-summary/

jcz_nz• 2 years ago

EU ruled that Apple cannot link components. This suggests that Apple would need to provide API’s to allow competitors to be listed alongside the “Apple AI”, or any device to enable screen remote control (ala remote iPhone control). If you’re a dev, you might appreciate why that is an absolute PIA from a software perspective. Since they want to bring these features to market ASAP, launching now and foregoing the EU is a sensible step. Huxley sends his regards, really.

panarky2• 2 years ago

"Insanely good ideas"?

With the months of nonstop and over-the-top hype of "Apple Intelligence" these all seem underwhelming.

Even in the idealized world of demoware there's no killer feature, not to mention that none of it is even available to real customers yet.

I was expecting something only Apple could do with their vast ecosystem of IP and partnerships, the must-have cool new thing that would stimulate a leap in demand for iPhone.

It's hard to see how any of this is enough to trigger a new upgrade cycle instead of just waiting until battery life goes to shit or the screen cracks so you have to upgrade.

teaearlgraycold5• 2 years ago

Semantic search was always going to be the killer feature of this AI boom. But it’s just a cherry on top of existing software and requires training users to expand what they think is possible.

swyx6• 2 years ago

1) i am as ready to shit on apple and siri as the next guy, but imo the HN cynicism is overbearing here. apple isnt building to impress internet neckbeards like us. they are building for the normies. features they understand intuitively and cannot fuck up. maybe wait til it gets in the normies hands to judge. ~none of us here know what its like to work on a hardware/software platform for >1 billion? people.

2) i actually do think dedicated visual intelligence button IS a killer feature. suddenly phone is ai's view into the world. yes probably v1 today will disappoint. but 5 years from now the kids will laugh when we say we had to take photos and upload them to an app back in our day. or manually enter in any information from the real world into our calendars and emails and texts.

afavour• 2 years ago

With the months of nonstop and over-the-top hype of "Apple Intelligence" these all seem underwhelming.

None of that was coming from Apple, though. I don't think they can be held responsible for hype that gets put on them.

IMO these are all solid moves into AI integration without getting carried away by hype and doing things that will have very middling results.

ricardobeat2• 2 years ago

I think you're seriously underestimating the impact of actually-useful and reliable AI features at your fingertips. This is what everyone imagined computers would be, since I don't know... the 80s?

concinds• 2 years ago

They showed up the full Apple Intelligence featureset at WWDC months ago. This was a shorter recap.

DidYaWipe13• 2 years ago

Like what? People have been whining "where's the innovation" for years about phones, totally ignoring the fact that this is a mature product category.

Where's the innovation in word processors?

At this point, we're often talking about regression. Apple removed the audio output from its best-selling music player. It removed TouchID. It removed the SIM slot.

You know what would be "innovative?" Making a goddamned phone that can withstand being used for its primary purpose. The failure of the iPhone's design has been confirmed by millions upon millions of people, who have concluded that they must bury their "thin, elegant" phones in bulky, tacky cases. You have to shake your head at Apple's breathless announcement of NEW COLORS!!!! when the vast majority of them will never be seen.

Then there's the fact that Apple ignores an entire market: men who don't wear cargo pants all day every day. Maybe some of us don't want to look like a schlub with a TV tray jammed into his pocket (again, made even worse with a dumb case).

gffrd6• 2 years ago

there's no killer feature

You know when you go to a restaurant and the menu is like 3 different cuisines, it's 12 pages, and each page has 20+ items?

The Intelligence section of the presentation felt a bit like that.

Generally, I was surprised how lightly Intelligence featured into the keynote: it wasn't a standalone talking point, nothing on the Apple site talks to it directly. It's conspicuous, given that they've dedicated hardware real estate to it ... and the hype cycle.

stronglikedan• 2 years ago

Apple rarely ever innovates, so it's not surprising these new features seem underwhelming. What Apple does best is to perfect (others') existing ideas so that they work more much more reliably than the competition. The number one pain point of technology today is that hardly any of it consistently works correctly more than 95% of the time. But when Apple releases a feature, it works 99% of the time instead. That's their key differentiator.

conception• 2 years ago

On device and not shared with advertisers is the Only Apple can do part.

jimbokun3• 2 years ago

photos/album search now includes video understanding, which imo seems very good from the first 2 examples they showed. includes scroll to exact time of the moment you describe.

This is a killer feature. Everyone can understand the usefulness of just describing the video moment you want to find. Digging through years worth of photos and videos looking for that one specific moment can be a huge chore when you want to show it to someone.

NoLinkToMe• 2 years ago

The action button being prime real estate I think shouldn't be understated.

It's a button that'll be in the hands and pockets of >1 billion people soon.

Each press allows these billion people to connect with a supplier of Intelligence. Whether it's ChatGPT, Google's search, Apple AI or whatever supplier. Apple controls the hardware.

Just think of Apple's contract with Google that nets them $20 billion a year in profit. For comparison, Walmart, Amazon, NVIDIA, Volkswagen, VISA, all had about 20 billion in net income in 2023.

Or think of the appstore as an analogy. Apple controls the gateway between consumer and supplier, and gains from it. This action button will be no different.

boringg• 2 years ago

The part I am most interested in is how much of it is on device and how much of your data is trained only on your own model vs hovered up into a larger model.

On device, my own model. Great.

DidYaWipe13• 2 years ago

Totally. I am down for decreased dependence on connectivity and remote servers.

llm_nerd2• 2 years ago

"- camera adds events to calendar!"

I'm on iOS 18.0 on my iPhone 15 Pro, rather that the 18.1 with the "AI". Recently had an eye doctor appt for one of my children and they scheduled a follow-up, giving me a little card with the details. I was in a hurry so took a picture of it intending to enter the calendar event later, and it immediately pulled up a fully-filled in, completely accurate new calendar event. Little affordance that is just so nice.

Indeed, in general the camera is getting...crazy. We have a pair of Maine Coon kittens and every picture is tagged with Maine Coon, despite the cats barely even coming into the breed's features yet. Constantly amazed at the stuff the built in camera is identifying.

swyx6• 2 years ago

oh so you're saying this is not an Apple Intelligence feature? its a little hard to tell

pants2• 2 years ago

I have a hilarious list of animals that my cat has been misclassified as by my iPhone. Everything from a beetle to a nematode. It doesn't give me a lot of confidence in these features!

gizajob• 2 years ago

Yeah I took a photo of a weird moth in my house the other day, and accidentally scrolled up the next day to realise that the iPhone had categorised it as the exact species - a Poplar Hawk Moth. I was stunned. Didn’t even have to google for 5 minutes, the camera already knew.

nashashmi3• 2 years ago

on device text recognition, and on device text pattern recognition allows you to call phone numbers, select dates, copy text, copy qr codes, etc.

but few times, there are instances where it doesn't recognize the date and time. I guess this is now a supported feature, instead of accidental feature.

sib2• 2 years ago

As opposed to Adobe [R] Photoshop [R] Lightroom [TM]* Classic's person identification feature which has identified my dog as no fewer than 5 different members of my family, ranging from ~5 years old to > 90 years old.

* I think I got that name right...

laweijfmvo5• 2 years ago

Anything that's going to recommend Apple TV shows (or any other product) to me is an automatic turn-off. I'll keep all of Siri off if I have to.

015a5• 2 years ago

I have this sinking suspicion that the AI segment today was so quick, so high level, and so future-tense ("Siri will be able to..."), identical to the similar segment at WWDC; I have to wonder how many of these features we'll actually see. I'm getting vibes like the old "Facetime will be an open protocol" promise; its like someone is making them do this, their soul isn't in it, and for that reason they still don't have one narrative for why I should care. Instead, they have a quickfire list of twenty features, the titles of twenty epics from their jira.

The iPhone 16's camera button will gain the ability to soft-press to lock focus "later this year". Their software teams are so incredibly far behind, the new phone has literally one new feature, a feature medically prescribed to induce drowsiness, yet they can't even get the software for it finished for release.

zombiwoof4• 2 years ago

I think Apple will be the first to realize nobody wants to pay for “ai features”, and they are hella expensive to support

baxuz• 2 years ago

As someone whose mother tongue isn't English, and whose residence isn't the US, apple intelligence is basically useless to me. Like every other ai assistant gimmick out there.

pndy• 2 years ago

Hear hear; I'm using Siri to set timers, turn off alarms - everything else without a proper support for my native language is useless.

It's been nearly 12 years and the supported language list is still the same.

melenaboija• 2 years ago

overall i think insanely good ideas on ai + phone integrations.

Mmmmm, feels disappointing to me if that is all we get from a multi trillion tech company + multi trillion technology

miguelrochefort• 2 years ago

I predicted those features weeks ago [1], but I still feel they could do so much more. If anything, their implementation feels like a rushed afterthought.

In their demos, they use the action button to capture an ambient song for Shazam, the power button to capture a voice command for Siri, and the camera button for an image for Visual Intelligence. All 3 captures should be performed using the same button.

And screenshots still require pressing 2 buttons simultaneously. Unless you want to share your screen with Siri in which case it's the power button...

People are going to use this button as a voice recorder, and Apple will announce native support next year.

[1] https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/capture-button

xavdid• 2 years ago

Mail and Notifications will show summaries instead of str[:x]

While it's true that the first x characters of an email don't always have the most important bits, they're never _wrong_. It's always exactly what's in the email.

I'm worried about cases like this [0], where a summary is inaccurate or misleading. It may not happen often, but it's possible, so I have to be a little skeptical of every summary. Though I can see where AI summaries are a plus, the move from 100% accurate to <100% feels like a big downgrade.

[0] https://mastodon.macstories.net/@johnvoorhees/11288700482217...

data-ottawa3• 2 years ago

I'm curious how Apple Intelligence will manage Duolingo's progressively worried sounding notifications through the day.

It feels like an endpoint that will get gamed by apps over time.

lofaszvanitt3• 2 years ago

The company needs S. Jobs to be resurrected.

willis936• 2 years ago

can read your texts

Anti-feature. I don't even want my phone listening to me and prompting some awkward speech search engine I didn't ask for.

sureIy2• 2 years ago

- camera adds events to calendar!

The state of the camera app pisses me off. It could do so much but it does so little. Why can’t I snap a picture of a written WiFi password to connect to WiFi? QRs are so 2008. Why can’t it fully parse a menu and show me what each dish might look like? It’s mind-boggling to me that with thousands of engineers on staff they produce so relatively little. Thousands!

kemayo2• 2 years ago

Why can’t I snap a picture of a written WiFi password to connect to WiFi?

You can actually do that, as of last year's iOS release. It's sort of a pain, but it's doable.

You need to be at the point where it's asking you for the WiFi password, tap the text field, choose "AutoFill", choose "scan text", and use the camera interface to pick the text.

This is extremely undiscoverable, no argument, but it is at least a system-wide standard for how to scan in arbitrary text when you have a text input. (They've picked "AutoFill" as the brand-name for all their get-text-from-somewhere-else features, so it also contains standard password-filling from apps.)

whywhywhywhy2• 2 years ago

insanely good ideas

Bafflingly underwhelming additions from the previous innovation leader who had a last mover advantage in the space.

Think we need to be holding Apple to a higher standard, what they did in spaces before with the OG iPhone, iPad, iPod was completely upend the industry and change the game through focusing a product on a few pain points of the existing market. Yet Apple Intelligence feels like a brief struggling to find a reason to be there.

bartekpacia• 2 years ago

The thing I liked the most about this event was the beautiful places where the presenters were. Outlook on Golden Gate, Coit Tower, Palace of Fine Arts, De Young... loved that!

heystefan• 2 years ago

Huh, I thought some of those were green screen.

siamese_puff• 2 years ago

I don’t even click these anymore.

gibsonf1• 2 years ago

I hope all the LLM features can be disabled.

flowerlad2• 2 years ago

All I want is for Apple to fix speech recognition in iMessage. Not sure if that’s in this release. They demo’d AI text review and rewrite but not LLM speech recognition.

I currently use ChatGPT for it’s accurate speech recognition then copy/paste into iMessage.

coder543• 2 years ago

In my experience, iOS 18 makes it better, but no, it is still not as good as Whisper Large, which is what OpenAI uses behind the scenes.

You can run smaller Whisper models on your phone through various third party apps, and those options work well too. (Trying to run Whisper Large even on the iPhone 15 Pro Max is asking too much… it works, but only barely.)

flowerlad2• 2 years ago

Looks like I can skip iPhone 15 then. Will upgrade when it can run Whisper Large locally… hopefully iPhone 20 or sooner.

EcommerceFlow2• 2 years ago

ATT is offering $1,000 trade in for Iphone 12 - 15, an amazing deal for those with slightly older iphones. Obviously it pays off over 36 months, but I don't see myself switching anytime soon so it works out. I think the others have similar deals too.

thimabi• 2 years ago

It seems too good to be true. Surely they are offering up to $1,000 trade-in for iPhones beginning with the iPhone 12, right?

asadotzler2• 2 years ago

Correct, up to, which translates to about $200 for your iPhone 12.

HeavenFox• 2 years ago

imho these high trade in offers are basically carrier-subsidized phones in new clothes: in exchange of a discount, you agree to stick with the carrier and phone for the next 3 years. And the discount may not be that great! You can get plenty of money if you sell the phone yourself.

jron• 2 years ago

Can I install my own applications on it yet?

Mad_ad• 2 years ago

yeah, in Europe

xiconfjs• 2 years ago

But no „A.I“ for us - not even local :/

dmix3• 2 years ago

Featuring a new 48MP Fusion camera with a faster quad-pixel sensor that enables 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision, these new Pro models achieve the highest resolution and frame-rate combination ever available on iPhone

Every iPhone generation makes YouTube video quality slightly better as it’s what a lot of people use. That plus social media.

Camera quality is quite amazing these days

parker-3461• 2 years ago

Given that they had to upgrade to a new camera sensor to get faster readout speed, I’m wondering if they actually changed to a better sensor with improved pixel size and light sensitivity.

I have read the official press release but it seems like there is no mentions of this.

Might need to wait for the ifixit tear down in ~10 days.

Edit 1: there has been some discussions that eventually the Sony IMX903 would be used, but not sure when that will actually eventuate.

dmix3• 2 years ago

A big part of it for content creators is stuff like this

You can capture 4K 120 fps ProRes and log recordings to an external storage device — a big plus for pro editing workflows that demand a high frame rate and colour grading control.

Might make a dent in mirrorless sales, just w/o the lenses

xslvrxslwt2• 2 years ago

I'm actually so furious about this. No, they did not put the IMX903 (ik this because microns they showed are still 1.22, not 1.4 of the imx903) - even though it was supposed to be in the 15PM. It's the exact same sensor, all they changed is the processing algorithms & new sensor shift OIS (v2). Nothing that 15PM couldn't have been if they bothered 1% (even now they could push an 'OTA' to turn 15PM into 99.97% 16PM (if they were a real company that is)). IMX903 would remove a need to upgrade the sensor for the next 3-4 years (coming from me, who is already using a phone with a way better 1'' sensor (lyt-900)) but no - they choose to do the same crap scamsung and goolag are doing, albeit iPhone sensors are currently way better as the Scamsung/Goolag are still on the old dogshit HP1 and HP2s from 2020/1 tech (yes, GNK is new but it's the same crap, basically a mix of HP1 and 2) so it's still in the era where Sony was unparalleled (now both Samsung and Omni are killing Sony with their latest sensors). And it's crazy how only Chinese phones are pushing new techs, literally if they had better QC and ideas they'd be 5 years ahead of crapple, scamsung and goolag - like this they're barely better. If Apple had my LYT-900 it'd be a murder scene.

steve_adams_865• 2 years ago

I’ve been blown away by the 15 Pro’s camera quality. I still use my camera for more serious photo taking, but the phone is kind of my default for throwing content together because it’s so flexible and the quality is basically good enough to go live with. I didn’t expect this at all. It has been a really pleasant surprise.

shadowtree• 2 years ago

Well, Gurman was right - the 16 phones will not trigger a big upgrade cycle.

17 might, as it would indicate Apple is taking a breath.

Or, of course, we'll never get a supercycle again till someone iphones the iPhone.

spike0212• 2 years ago

I have a 12 Pro and was thinking I'd upgrade. Usually I'd opt for the Pro tier but this cycle I think I'll actually go for the regular 16. There just doesn't seem to be enough there for someone like me. Which is maybe the point? I liked having the better camera system but these days they show all this extra stuff I don't use my phone camera for anyway. I have a Sony a7iii for the fancy stuff.

UniverseHacker2• 2 years ago

Disappointed again there is no small version... I can't figure out why anyone wants to carry these massive phones everywhere. To me the major advantage of mobile tech should be it getting smaller and lighter each generation. Especially since nowadays it can wirelessly use whatever big screen happens to already be wherever you are anyways.

To me the old iphones with 4" screens were a good start, and I was hoping they'd get smaller and lighter as the tech got better... an iPhone 5 was 3.95oz, now iphones weigh 6-7 ounces.

maxglute• 2 years ago

Finally. More buttons. I miss those 5 way toggle switches on old gadgets. The wheels you can flick up, down, hold, and press.

FuriouslyAdrift• 2 years ago

Meh... it's still too heavy, too large, and the camera sticks out too far.

callalex16• 2 years ago

The biggest innovation they could have at this point would be the price, but that will never happen.

lysace• 2 years ago

Gotta preserve that 50% profit margin (ish).

adamwk• 2 years ago

It happens every year? Just buy the iPhone 15, which will drop in price next week.

pil0u• 2 years ago

Should I replace my iPhone 7 with this one?

baby6• 2 years ago

Get a pixel fold pro 9!

jmmcd• 2 years ago

You see a cute dog in the park, and click the special button to find out what breed it is - amazing!

But I know what Steve Jobs would have said to this. Just go up and ask the girl what breed her dog is, and get to know her.

switch0073• 2 years ago

That was on the same level as the kid in the dark room staring at his iPad

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

I'm conflicted.

It's absolutely stunning what smartphones can do these days and Apple makes an excellent product. It feels ungrateful and cynical to keep calling new models "boring".

The reality though is that normie needs were accomplished several generations ago. I'll use my girlfriend as a sample of such user.

She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED nor would she notice Pro-motion.

You can add a million features to the camera app but she opens it and presses the shutter. Her only awareness of features is when she accidentally enables one and doesn't know how to get back.

You could set her back 8 iOS versions and she probably wouldn't notice. Because she uses none of the hundreds of features released since. Not because she dislikes them, she doesn't know they even exist.

All the spectacular advances in computing power are lost on her as this makes zero difference for the Facebook cat video group and Pinterest.

You might assume my girlfriend is perhaps lowly educated or just not tech savvy. Wrong, she's highly educated, even works in IT, although not in an engineering role. It's not that she's unable to understand the advances, she simply doesn't care.

It's becoming ever harder to justify new models for normies. Pretty much they buy the new one when the battery of their current one runs bad, typically every 3-4 years.

I think this is also why Apple put many Pro features into the regular model. Most people don't buy the pro and they're desperate for selling points in the regular model.

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

GenerocUsername• 2 years ago

Apple is a trillion dollar battery company.

colechristensen• 2 years ago

The joke I want to make is they make phones that are as fragile as glass and that's why people replace them so often... but they actually make phones out of glass that are stupidly fragile. It's equally stupid that you have to buy this thing and put a protective case on it that increases it's size x%.

Why is the back of my phone glass. Why does the front of my phone have 0 protection from the glass hitting whatever it is dropped on?

This has to be on purpose. Or maybe in an opposite direction, their stock would likely drop a considerable amount if they made a phone you could drop on concrete with only minor blemishes.

israrkhan• 2 years ago

3.36 Trillion as of today.

paxys7• 2 years ago

All the spectacular advances in computing power are lost on her as this makes zero difference for the Facebook cat video group and Pinterest.

Gonna disagree with this one. Tell me, does using an iPhone today feel significantly faster than the top model 2-3 years ago or even 10 years ago? Does the battery last a lot longer than it did back then? Apple certainly claims this is the case in their marketing every year. The answer however is no, because with every increase in computing power and battery size, the OS and all the apps on it get that much more resource hungry. The entire ecosystem is designed to get users to need to upgrade every ~2-3 years, otherwise they will start to feel the lag.

JumpCrisscross12• 2 years ago

does using an iPhone today feel significantly faster than one from 2-3 years ago?

Yes. Absolutely. We just forget that opening an app--or restarting the device, or recovering from airplane mode--was an action that incurred a noticeable delay once and does not tend to anymore.

nicoburns• 2 years ago

Eh, iPhones are pretty fast. I think a lot of older model just need a battery replacement. I was using an iPhone 6S until last year and it was certainly slower than the latest models, but not dramatically so. The bigger difference was the camera quality which has improved dramatically in 7 years.

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

I agree that this effect exists but it's not as strong as it was in early generation models.

jwells892• 2 years ago

I've noticed overall improvements in responsiveness as well as the number of apps that can stay in memory without some getting evicted, though the latter is most noticeable when using smaller indie sorts of apps (think Ivory for Mastodon, Narwhal for Reddit, etc) which are on average built more efficiently and aren't dragging around a metric ton of tracking garbage.

ksec5• 2 years ago

Tell me, does using an iPhone today feel significantly faster than the top model 2-3 years ago or even 10 years ago?

You are on a platform where 99% of comments at one point were suggesting VSCode is fast enough or feels as fast as Sublime when it first launched, i.e before a lot of optimisation.

There are a lot of people just dont feel the difference or simply dont care about that tiny difference. And for someone like me who is latency sensitive, it bothers me a lot.

keyle2• 2 years ago

Agree with what you wrote. That said quality of life things such as pro motion and increase battery life are noticeable.

Scrolling at 120hz is butter smooth and improves the UX quite a lot. While battery life is peace of mind that you don't have to worry about.

What ticks me off is OpenAI integration in my private life. I really like chatGPT as a daily google box but I hate the idea of it meddling in my private information. That's a big no no.

veber-alex7• 2 years ago

So don't enable it.

ChatGPT is optional.

ghaff3• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

I was with you up to there. Do you really think that people are so lazy or stupid that they wouldn't go to any of the zillion battery replacement places (including Apple Stores) rather than buying a new $1K-$1.5K device?

digital_sawzall• 2 years ago

I have a 2015 Macbook pro and an iphone 11 that works great save for that they don't hold a charge.

I would happily spend a several hundreds dollars to save these and continue to use them, or give one to my parents or kid, but I can't find someone who will do a battery replacement. I live in Austin TX and have called 3-5 different apple repair shops. If I can't find someone to do it in a city with the second largest Apple office in the world, I don't think anyone else will be able to.

phil212• 2 years ago

Yes. Because it’s a giant pita to drop your phone off and be without it for an indefinite period of time (if something goes wrong). For a device worth a couple hundred dollars it typically makes more sense to trade it in and simply upgrade.

Especially if you are paranoid and refuse to hand a third party your phone full of private data. If I need to wipe and restore that is a huge time sink I’d rather future proof against.

It’s the pain and uncertainty factor.

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

Do I believe that? Absolutely. Never underestimate how lazy people are. I very commonly hear battery health as the reason for replacement. In fact, I'd say it's the most common reason heard. A 3 year old iPhone is still excellent, why else would you replace it?

Besides effort, there's also trust issues. I once had a battery replacement done but the "new" one was just as bad as the old one.

arcticbull2• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

Battery replacement costs at Apple are $69-99 and offered all the way back to the iPhone SE 1st Generation. That's the all-in cost where you bring it in, they open it up, swap it out, and give your phone back to you.

An OEM battery for an Android phone is like $50.

Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years hardly seems like it's going to nuke their business from orbit.

jazzyjackson9• 2 years ago

Agreed. Apple phones are quite repairable (just not DIY-able), no one is dropping 1000 dollars on a new phone because their current one has a cracked back glass.

Watching their live feed, one of Apple's selling points on such an expensive phone is that it will last a long time and have a higher re-sale value than other phones. It's not a case of planned obsolescence.

user39393823• 2 years ago

Assuming those prices are correct and the procedure is that convenient, it doesn't practically exist if most people aren't aware of it. From my casual observations most people suffer with bad batteries until buying a new model.

avidphantasm2• 2 years ago

Bring it in where? I have to drive an hour one way for an Apple store. It’s easier to order a new device than be without my phone.

conductr2• 2 years ago

My thing is the battery timeline matches pretty closely to when I’m just ready for something new. I go bare, no case, so by 3-4 years my screen is scratched and scuffed enough to just do full replacement. I usually notice the speed leap too and how certain apps were severely unoptimized for my older device. So that’s nice too. But it’s not ever felt like a “upgrade” in a very long time because I don’t have any new features unlocked (not any that I use), so I’m my mind it’s a “replacement”.

jtriangle8• 2 years ago

You missed the user bit of what you're replying to.

There are android phones that have this ability, I have one. New batteries are ~20 bucks, and they take about 5 minutes to swap, most of which is shutdown/boot time. I can take my phone out innawoods and use offline GPS all day, and as a flashlight at night, by just bringing a pocketfull of batteries.

When a battery goes bad, I toss it in the recycle bucket, and buy a new one. I currently have 10 of them and they're on rotation.

What that means is, I get a new phone when apps stop working, and I use very few apps, so, that's been 5+ years since I adopted this model. It'd certainly be better for the environment and better for the consumer if manufacturers were on-board with this idea, but, it'd be far worse for their margins, so, these devices only exist on the periphery.

That said, I do think that Apple could make this work for the masses. Simply pair the batteries with the phone, keep everyone in the walled garden, don't allow 3rd parties in willy nilly, and then charge more for new batteries. That that system and spin the hell out of it, make android/google/et al look like evil megacorps filling the earth with chemicals leached from 1-time use android phones, and call it a day.

smitelli• 2 years ago

And sometimes they rip the display cable while they’re trying to swap out the battery, and you end up with an entirely new SE2 in the end. Happened to us about 1-2 months ago.

meragrin_• 2 years ago

Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years hardly seems like it's going to nuke their business from orbit.

Apple's business model partially depends on selling people a new phone every few years. If people switch to battery replacements in place of new phones in large quantities, that is going to significantly hurt their business model.

makeitdouble8• 2 years ago

iPhone SE 1st Generation

To note, that's a regional thing. It seems to stop at gen2 for Asian countries for ex.

Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years

iPhone batteries become subpar way faster than that, especially the older models who get more strained as they bear the heavier OS. Once every year and a half looks more realistic to me.

cogman10• 2 years ago

An OEM battery for an Android phone is like $50.

I just got mine replaced on my pixel 6, total cost was $200.

Still gonna hang onto it because there's no reason to replace but yeah labor costs for android are a bit ridiculous.

Mistletoe2• 2 years ago

I think people are just too lazy, don't know, or don't want to go to the trouble of getting the battery replaced.

reisse• 2 years ago

An OEM battery for an Android phone is like $50.

I've done four or five battery replacements on various Pixel phones, each time battery was 15$ max. I've done the replacement myself, but I know that in an (unauthorized, obviously) repair shop the work costs maybe 10-15$ and takes twenty minutes. The math is the same for iPhones, maybe 10$ more.

69-99$ is an "Authorized Apple Service" tax.

Fokamul• 2 years ago

"highly educated" != "tech savvy/smart". IT Project manager, right? :D

IgorPartola2• 2 years ago

The real advancements majority of users would notice:

- Get rid of green text when messaging Android phones

- More battery life.

- Better camera (arguably already achieved)

- lesser issue but fix the stupid bugs with storage/duplication with pictures and messages. I am already paying for a TB level plan with iCloud. How can my phone possibly run out of storage?

That’s it. All the AI stuff is marginal at best and useless at worst. The new UI stuff they introduced sometime ago? Doesn’t really get used by anyone I know. Control center was probably the last useful feature added. If they did a release where they removed features to simplify iOS I would upgrade.

peab• 2 years ago

where'd you see no more green text?

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

Agreed on battery life. It's such a pity that advances in battery tech is never given back to the user.

As for green text, this is purely a US thing. Most of the rest of the world uses Whatsapp.

Tepix• 2 years ago

Also, AirDrop and mobile hotspot are unreliable, if Apple could make them always work, that‘d be noticeable.

inferiorhuman6• 2 years ago

  Get rid of green text when messaging Android phones

Do you mean green background? Because the non-iMessage bubbles are the white text on a green background for outgoing messages only. Given that the most vocal folks seem to be Android users who care about the background color of someone else's messages I doubt the majority of iPhone users care, would notice, or are even using the Messages app in the first place. Certainly if you're calling it green text you're not paying much attention either.

  Better camera (arguably already achieved)

Apple can still get rid of that hideous camera bump.

dividedbyzero• 2 years ago

Get rid of green text when messaging Android phones

I don't think iMessage is big anywhere outside the US (which appears to account for about 9% of iPhone users). I don't think a majority of global users even knows there are different colors.

treflop2• 2 years ago

The AI stuff could be useful if it makes Siri more useful.

Like when I'm listening to a Spotify playlist and I want to like the song or save it to a playlist while driving, it would be amazing if I could just tell Siri to do it for me. As-is, sometimes it tells me it doesn't how to play songs on Spotify.

Or they were showing how you would be able to look for photo by describing it.

makeitdouble8• 2 years ago

Better camera (arguably already achieved)

I feel the later generation of phones went back a bit as they have more aggressive processing. It can work great, but the hit or miss ratio is worse, in particular noise processing can be way off.

That's crazy the budget Pixel a lone gets overall better photos than a top of the line iPhone.

jm42• 2 years ago

How about getting rid of that stupid back button in the top left corner when an app opens another app? It drives me crazy seeing it every time I click a link in a message. It's the most useless thing. There's already a good app switcher. What is the point of the back button?

baby6• 2 years ago

Or a folding phone? That would be huge

ksec5• 2 years ago

Better camera (arguably already achieved)

For the Pro Model. Yes. Not for the normal iPhone though. 2x Optical Zoom is barely enough. Especially when I default to taking photos with 1.8x which fits my view point a lot better. So when I get 5x optical zoom it is more like 2.5x only.

And if there is one thing I would add to the list is weight. The Pro model is too heavy.

baggachipz2• 2 years ago

I've been working in tech for 25 years, and I'm sure I hardly use any of the new features. Camera? Click, maybe crop it or turn it into a loop if it's funny. I play some games on it. I browse some social crap on it. I occasionally tell Siri to set a reminder. That's... about it. I'm really not sure what else I'm supposed to be doing.

adrr4• 2 years ago

I use mine to measure things, replaced my measuring tape. It is also my flashlight. I use it to find my wallet and keys as they have air tags in them. Its my wallet, credit cards, hotel room key, subway/metro pass. I have an app that implements OpenAIs CLIP on my phone and can instantly search my photos thats better any other image search out there and it runs on the device.

creakingstairs• 2 years ago

I’m on the same boat as you. I do most of my productive work on my computer. But I started teaching kids recently and realised that kids do EVERYTHING on their phone these days. Write essays, edit videos, play games, make musics etc. A lot of them can’t type well on their keyboards and it’s the main source of frustration for kids when learning coding.

jodrellblank2• 2 years ago

You don’t use maps for looking around? For navigation while driving? You’re allowed to have in-car satnav or not drive.

You don’t use the camera for QR codes? Fine you don’t want to scan things for information. You don’t use the image recognition in the camera app to select people and copy them out of the background? That’s fine you don’t participate selfies and party photos. To do OCR on text in photos? It’s fine that you never want it. To select e.g. plants and search for what they are on Google? It’s fine that you know what everything is/don’t care/don’t photograph plants. To search your photo library by text for things and people recognised in the pictures? Fine that you know where all your pictures are. To describe photos by voice? Fine that you have good eyesight.

You don’t use the builtin daily steps tracker, or any third party running or cycling or exercise mapping / route trackers, or any Garmin style route planners? Fine that you don’t have other devices for that kind of thing or don’t go out.

You don’t use the weather app, or a third party one? Fine that you don’t want to.

You don’t use any remote terminal, Remote Desktop, programming, Jupyter, anything? Fine that you have a laptop which does everything you need.

Kindle, any ebook reader, any podcast app? Fine that you have paper and don’t listen to posts.

Any music player? Fine that you don’t listen to music.

Any Netflix style video or TV show app, BBC iPlayer? Fine that you don’t even own a TV.

Any third party camera app such as night eyes or webcam stacking, or use the phone as a wireless webcam on another computer? Fine that you aren’t interested in photo novelties.

No Evernote or OneNote cloud synced notebooks or todo lists? Calendar? Email? Fine that you only ever write plain text in a plain text file and you don’t have meetings or appointments.

No local train, tram, bus, library, cinema, schedule app? Fine that you drive everywhere or go nowhere.

No educational apps? Fine that you learn things in other ways. No Chatgpt? Fine that you don’t ask LLMs things. No Google or phind or kagi search? Also fine.

Look, 25 years in tech, am I really writing out a list of “things people do on phones” as if I genuinely believe that you’ve never heard of any of this stuff while also adding how it’s fine because I’m totally expecting you to do the “too cool for school” dismissal of everything?

Has your 25 years in tech been Bronze Age tech? You must be 40 ish, and lived through the era of dumb phones being new and everyone talking about nothing but what contract texts and minutes they had, the time when everyone had Blackberries, the time when features were things like a compass, clock, snake game, custom ringtones, FM radio, and people were doing endless comparisons of their new phone to their old one, the first camera phones, when data went from WAP to GPRS to 2G and web browsers, when “location based services” were called out on TV adverts, and all through the smartphone years nobody ever showed you the cool app they just found, when translating foreign signs was coded in assembly on a 3GS to being just a built in thing in Google camera, when Evernote was a tech darling as people realised the cloud sync convenience, when “no Wi-Fi less space than a nomad” gave way to “all previous gadgets are now one” and the rise of smart tv and smart homes and appliances with their own apps and streaming, every app launched on “show HN” or linked,

you missed everything for fifteen years and “don’t really know what people do with phones anyway?”

That’s got to be a troll comment where you know very well what people do and are pretending not to because you look cooler if you’re disaffected and uninvolved… Right?

Why else would you have no interest in phones but be in an iPhone 16 launch thread? and think your comment on how you don’t even use a phone anyway is a good comment worth posting?

Or you have main character syndrome and think the only things which exist should be for you to use need nothing else matters?

Assume good faith… are you … hoping someone can share a list of “things phones can do?” then here is another partial one.

ben_w4• 2 years ago

Even as an iOS app developer, there's a huge amount of stuff that stock iOS can do that I'm unaware of.

At this point, I'm not going to be interested (dead battery isn't "interested") in the upgrade cycle until there's a new kind of sensor, e.g. thermal imaging or (technically possible in software) repurposing the WiFi as a wall penetrating radar.

Even on the dev side, WWDC for the last few years feels more like "here's an even more complicated way to create a simple app" instead of "this will make your life easier because x" or "y is increasing important, use tool z to support it".

busymom0• 2 years ago

I am an iOS developer too and I use an iPhone 13 before which I used an iPhone 6 until its support was dropped. I prefer developing with older devices as it helps me ensure my apps work well on slower devices. I haven't seen any reason to upgrade for the last 3 years. Switching from iPhone 6 to 13 was the most needed change for me due to the change in safe area insets (notch).

linotype• 2 years ago

Outside of the trades, what would be some practical uses for thermal imaging?

kvgr• 2 years ago

I am professional android developer for more than 10 years. And even i dont care about the features anymore. Outside my work i just want good battery life and big screen. I have iphone 12 and dont plan to upgrade until it stops working. Probably professional exhaustion. But i honestly care about the newest buzz.

markus_zhang• 2 years ago

They have to keep adding new features because what to do otherwise? I have long lost interest of the mobile world. Battery life and some rams to run some apps are all I need.

The general customers definitely want more. They are getting excited by AI in camera apps (existed before the AI hype) and other stuffs.

cmeacham98• 2 years ago

She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED nor would she notice Pro-motion.

I find this example interesting, because on the android side I would rank these two in the top 10 _most_ notable improvements made to phones in the last 5-10 years.

I have had multiple "normies" use my phone in the last few years and ask why it felt so smooth - and every time the difference between my phone and theirs has been a higher refresh rate display (what apple calls "ProMotion").

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

The lack of distinction between LCD and OLED can be explained. The specific condition in which OLED thrives rarely occurs. You'd need deep blacks in low ambient light viewing conditions for it to really stand out.

iOS, most apps, most websites, even most video isn't mastered as such and not consumed in those conditions.

FireBeyond4• 2 years ago

Apple makes an excellent product

Contrarian opinion on the AirPods. Apple says that they think the new noise cancellation "auto adjust" is better on the "human" side of things, and the social - they showed an interaction where the barista started talking to the wearer, and the AirPods adjusted so the barista could be heard.

To me, that's not social, I think it's actually anti-social. It moves the onus onto anyone who wants to or needs to interact with you to assume that you can hear them, that you're focused on the conversation, etc.

It really wouldn't kill you to remove an airpod (or any headphone) if you are in public initiating interactions with someone, for just a few moments.

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

Fully agree. Same for putting a speaker on the Apple watch.

"Great for when you don't have your airpods with you"

Yes, and surely it will be normalized in the culture to just blast your watch in public.

doublepg23• 2 years ago

I think that ship sailed a while ago.

I was doing retail work around COVID and there were many many people who didn't have the decency to hold phone calls while checking out let alone taking off headphones.

wilg2• 2 years ago

It really wouldn't kill you to remove an airpod (or any headphone) if you are in public initiating interactions with someone, for just a few moments.

you can just do this. but sometimes your hands are full, or you dont have use of them, or you dont want to drop your airpod.

tpmoney7• 2 years ago

It really wouldn't kill you to remove an airpod (or any headphone) if you are in public initiating interactions with someone, for just a few moments.

Actually, I've found this creates more social friction, not less. I spent a while listening to some books while working, and originally had noise canceling turned on. Every time someone came over to talk about something, whether I paused and turned noise canceling off or removed the ear pieces, there was always an awkward moment for the person talking to me while they had to stop what they were starting to say, wait for me and then usually apologize for interrupting. It felt extremely anti-social, and I think a part of that is that headphones were for a very long time considered anti-social and the act of removing them was often a signal that someone was interrupting you (and that you didn't really want to be interrupted). But when you're using headphones in a shared space, it's usually less about not wanting to be interrupted and more being considerate that not everyone wants to listen to the same things you're listening to.

Eventually I left them in transparency mode and kept the volume low enough that I could carry on a conversation over it, and could subtly reduce the volume while still holding a conversation. No more awkward pausing and restarting, no more apologies and the "hardest" thing I have to do is maybe rewind a bit after I'm done with the conversation. So much less anti-social feeling all around.

charlie90• 2 years ago

This is a massive pet peeve of mine. When the f** did it become socially acceptable to wear earbuds when interacting with someone? At least with wired buds or headphones its obvious that you're being an anti-social prick when talking to me, but now you have these hidden things that seem to be in everyones ears always.

And dont even get me started on the robots that are talking into the void when out in public. I have no idea if they are trying to talk to me or on a phone call because their airpods are hidden.

015a5• 2 years ago

Heck, I have friends in tech that in the past did iPhone 4, 6, 8, whether you were an "even number" or an "odd number" iPhone buyer became something of a label. One of these guys is on the 11 Pro, has the 16 Plus in his cart, but is actively texting the group chat whether or not to go through with it.

If you feel Apple isn't actively facing a xx% risk to their business by 2030, you're beside yourself. Its not that people are switching away, or that Apple overtly missed some major tech trend; people just aren't upgrading anymore. They need to come up with something a lot more drastic to keep people motivated toward spending $1000+/year with them; its not ungrateful, its not cynical, its the market. AI is not it.

wlesieutre7• 2 years ago

It's the camera for me, especially 5x zoom lens in the big phone instead of the enormous phone. But if I do go through with it I'll be coming from a 4 year old phone, so I'm already not in the $1000/year market.

If they're able to figure out a mass market VR headset that will give them another push for new phone sales. I hear the "spatial photos/videos" are very cool.

1-more• 2 years ago

spending $1000+/year with them

I figure Apple hasn't depended on latest model upgrades every year for a while now. Hell I'm going 12 to 16 Pro because I'm sick of not being able to photograph birds well.

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

I agree. I do think Apple is thrilled with the sudden AI hype as this gives them 1-2 generations of new "selling points" as they were truly running out.

But still, it masks the problem of an underlying demand that will stagnate if not decline. They're aware of this danger, hence to pivot to earn more from services.

spacemadness• 2 years ago

I really hope the vast majority will never upgrade every year, regardless of those poor Apple stockholders and their incentives. What a bunch of capitalist driven excess that would be. I say that and I write code for iOS.

jmull• 2 years ago

It doesn't look like Apple needs people to be upgrading every other year to do well. Not anywhere close.

Apple sold 232M iPhones in 2023, and had 1.83B active iPhone users.

Doing a little math, they'd need their existing users to upgrade every six years to keep selling them at the current rate. Your friend would still be ahead of the curve for Apple if he goes forward with that upgrade.

tomjen32• 2 years ago

I feel like Apple is in danger of missing the foldable market. It has matured on Android to the point that the quirks have been ironed mostly out, the inventions necessary has been made, etc. Meanwhile Apple has made nothing at all in that area.

lstamour• 2 years ago

“Even” or “odd” number isn’t as applicable as it sounds, though I do remember if you were an “s” year or not. It was iPhone 3G, 3G S, 4, 4S, 5, 5S, 6, 6S, 7, 8/X, XS, 11, and standard annual numbering from the 11 on. In early days you’d ask if you were an “S” year or not. Only since the 11 could you ask whether you were “even” or “odd” without it meaning upgrades every 4 years.

What’s changed is that Apple increments the model number every year instead of every two years, and you can probably blame Samsung for that a bit. Your friends probably still upgrade every 4 years like we almost always used to. I remember getting the 3G for the network improvement, the 3G S for the speed bump and video recording, the 4 for Siri, the 4S for a speed bump, … back then it was often the case that the non-S model was a new design with last year’s chip, and the S model was a speed bump with last year’s design.

If anything’s changed, it’s that they often spec bump the processor every year in minor ways, instead of every 2 years, and the increases are steadily more incremental than they used to be. If you ask me, it’s because Apple doesn’t have competition in the mobile phone CPU space yet. (Or ever, while Qualcomm holds so many patents…)

Also it’s more clear than ever before that the iPhone X, Max, Pro series are all ways to ask for more money for the exact same chip/product. Some years the Pro is significantly faster because it gets the new CPU first, but by the next year both Pro and non-Pro end up getting the same CPU for cost reasons. It’s telling that most years Apple doesn’t claim a speed increase between the Pro and non-Pro models. For example, if I recall correctly the only difference for the iPhone 13 was actually software. Likewise in this generation (16) it feels like the only difference between Pro and non-Pro is the SoC binning and the binning of the quality of the OLED in minor ways.

hintymad2• 2 years ago

even works in IT, although not in an engineering role.

What an accurate profile! I work in an engineering role in IT, and I'm like your girlfriend when it comes to the phone. Like, I don't even know whether my iphone is max or max pro, as it does not make a difference to me. The top apps that I use are Kindle, Books, Chrome (for tracking my progress on dreamingspanish.com), Podcast, Spotify, Maps, and as everyone else: some social/messaging apps. Everyone of such apps seems work just fine on a much older phone.

stroupwaffle2• 2 years ago

My biggest complaint is that the lenses aren’t flush with the back. I hate having cases on my phone, and their design makes wireless charging somewhat useless because it’s not flush with the charging mat.

spicymaki• 2 years ago

They would if they could. Optical physics is one factor that prevents the lenses from being flush with the back. If you want to support advanced optical features the lenses need depth.

napierzaza• 2 years ago

I don't really get the confusion people have. It's understood that most people don't constantly upgrade every year. They are improving their product, and when you do need a new phone it will have a many features and be competitive with other devices. Yes, there has not been a killer-app in a long time that forces upgrades.

jrflowers• 2 years ago

People like better looking/more easily captured photos and even “normies” can grasp features like satellite 911

mithr• 2 years ago

I don't know that I completely agree. To some degree, sure — most folks probably don't notice the year-to-year updates in e.g. computing power.

But my 70yo mother, who is pretty far from being technologically savvy, uses continuity every day to copy one-time-use codes from her phone to her computer, even though she'd have no idea what the term "continuity" means in this context. She notices that it's easier to snap better pictures in more conditions than it was a few years back (and that pictures she receives are better looking on average, too). She uses 1Password with FaceID, which I set up for her, because it's so easy to just look at your phone to unlock that there's very little in the way of enabling and using that, and she doesn't need to write down passwords anymore.

I think some of the magic of the Apple ecosystem is that you don't have to know about these things in order to use them. Someone shows you how to do something (Apple could certainly improve on the organic discoverability of many of these features! Some are impossible to find without looking), and then it often just works. And these things do keep getting closer to that ideal over time, with each generation. When I first started using continuity — long before my mother did — it definitely did not work all the time, and I persisted because I'm a techie early adopter. Eventually, though, it reached a state where once folks learn about it, they can just use it.

I'm also not sure about the 3-4 year number, at least from personal experience, fwiw. We pass down phones in my family, and it easily takes 5-6 generations for them to reach the end of that chain and be in use for a year or two before they're switched out for the next model. Battery has never been the reason someone in that chain switched phones.

sroussey5• 2 years ago

Battery can be replaced by going to the apple store and buying a new one which is cheaper than a new phone, so I agree with you on that.

Phone definitely last longer so 6 years sounds about right, as after that they tend to get obsolete.

delaaxe• 2 years ago

Speaking of continuity, how do you get a Youtube video currently playing on the laptop to pause and continue on the iPhone?

haroldp• 2 years ago

Continuity camera is great too. The mouse and keyboard sharing... works great when it works. Looking forward to that maturing a bit.

cssanchez• 2 years ago

That's so cool! I had no idea about universal copy/paste and I struggle a lot with one time codes across devices since I don't have universal iMessage set up for privacy reasons. I usually just send them to myself via telegram for simplicity.

Thank you for posting all these tips.

ern• 2 years ago

I pay very little attention to features on phones, especially things like improved cameras, but I finally upgraded my iPhone X to an iPhone 15 (one of my kids needed a phone). I've noticed that I've been able to take some stunning pictures out of planes when flying, as well as low-light photos.

I agree that even when they aren't explicitly highlighted, they do make a substantial difference, especially when comparing models over a span of a few years.

AmVess• 2 years ago

I recently bought my little ma a new big ipad. Her first response to it was "holy cats, this is fast!"

She used an A14 Bionic equipped ipad.

She is in her 80's.

wferrell• 2 years ago

Genuine question - how do you get 1Password to stop re-asking for the typed in password. It is a pain in butt.

android521• 2 years ago

your grandma is certainly a small minority. I am a software developer and i barely know or care about most features on my ios phone. If my apps are not slow and require me to update and my battery is good, i have no reason to get a new iphone. Apple knows it since they require their apps to be updated every year so that it won't be supported on older devices.

kristianc3• 2 years ago

Nearly all of the things you describe there aside from the camera are software/services based and don’t require improved hardware year-on-year at all. This is a problem for a company that makes its money selling expensive hardware.

viscanti• 2 years ago

This kind of proves the point? Presumably your mother didn't buy the latest phone for "continuity" or camera improvements. The features and additional hardware improvements might be noticeable after being used, but are they driving sales to people who aren't tech enthusiasts?

TuringNYC• 2 years ago

> The reality though is that normie needs were accomplished several generations ago.

Sure, and a couple of iOS updates into a good phone, and the phone is suddenly slow, crawling, and no longer meeting normie needs.

thirdsun• 2 years ago

I experience none of that.

acchow• 2 years ago

The savvy users that integrate new features into their creativity are the young people. Under 25.

And of course creatives that do it as a hobby or a job.

Regular folks won’t be using this stuff

runjake• 2 years ago

Most people don't buy the pro

Historically, that was true, but more recently, most people do buy the Pro. I don't know why (actually I do: FOMO and monthly payment plans).

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/iphone-15-sales-figu...

iPhone 15 Pro Max: 23%

iPhone 15 Pro: 22%

iPhone 15: 14%

iPhone 15 Plus: 9%

foobarian3• 2 years ago

I don’t know if you’re old or not or what your eyesight is like but even the pro max is getting hard to read for me :-)

WillPostForFood• 2 years ago

You are already spending $800 for the 16; the 16 Pro is $200 more and you get better camera, better battery life, and slightly bigger screen. It is a tempting proposition if you want the new tech. If you don't care about latest/greatest get the SE at 1/2 the price.

Giorgi• 2 years ago

Owning current year's iPhone model is pretty much status symbol, that's basically all that is.

tails4e• 2 years ago

I agree largely. I have a p30 pro, and it's a great phone despite being 4 or 5 years old . It's so good, recently it got water damaged and I as faced with replacing it. I couldnt find a phone for under 500 that could beat it, and especially the 2 day battery life. So I didn't, I instead paintakingly dried it out over 3 weeks and it's pretty much fully functional. That's how much I didn't want to change phone, and how the new sparkly features don't really matter as much as battery life, and utility.

wwweston2• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

For me it's slightly more complicated than that. I would probably still be using my 2016 iPhone SE with its headphone jack and size if (a) it was still receiving OS updates and (b) iOS bloat didn't make it slow.

Would love it if the battery swap were easy for the end user to do, but TBH paying $100 to have it done every few years is doable for me.

Better camera capability is the only other thing that even registered for me. The jump to the iphone 12 mini that I made last year did have some nice benefits on that front and got me some performance I'd lost back. Other than that, the main reason I upgraded is that I was forced to by the iOS obsolescence treadmill.

dkga• 2 years ago

Sorry, jumping in here. I don’t think it’s so much iOS gloat as much as app gloat. Take a look at their sizes, it’s absolutely bonkers and unjustified.

superfrank• 2 years ago

You only feel conflicted about this because (I assume) you lived through the phase where smart phones were changing every year and the updates from one phone to the next were regularly pretty ground breaking. People who lived through that era were conditioned to feel that every generation was a massive leap forward and that you were missing out on cool things if you didn't upgrade every year.

That's not the case anymore, but it's a hard feeling to shake, especially when companies are still trying to convince us that it's true because it benefits their top line. The truth is that smart phones are just small computers at this point. Most people don't feel conflicted about not buying a new computer every year and you shouldn't feel that way about smart phones.

At this point the only people who need (I use that term very loosely) a new smart phone every single year are people who see having the most recent version as a status symbol.

jmyeet3• 2 years ago

Apple is engaging in feature-bloat to protect the $1000 price point. That's all that's going on here.

Phones (particularly iPhones0 have stubbornly resisted getting cheaper. That's by design. Features get added simply to make it more expensive.

We saw this with the Macbooks about a decade ago. The Macbook Air was fantastic because it was cheap. For Apple it was too cheap. So we got Touch bar. Did it solve any user problems? No. I know a few will say they like it but it was a dismal failure.

The only reason the Touch Bar existed was to make Macbooks more expensive.

I have been frustrated with subsequent iOS updates because it gets less and less intuitive. Even Safari has a lot of touch points on the screen that do stuff I don't care about. On the iPad there's now split screen. I bet you've triggered this acccidentally or had to solve this for a friend or relative who had. We replaced private browsing mode with "tab groups". Does anyone actually need this? If you don't (and I would posit that's most people) then it's now an extra tap to switch modes.

Cut and paste just seems to get worse and worse. It tries to be cleve by selecting a word. It can be difficult and involve several taps to get around this. The original implementation of this was (IMHO) far superior and more intuitive.

gerash2• 2 years ago

I haven't had a Mac with touch bar but I can see the point of the idea:

You have a keyboard and mouse as inputs to a Mac. why not a mini touch screen as well? but instead of rendering the app content there you render the controls. this way you don't need to remember shortcuts because common actions for an app are displayed there.

IMO the idea makes sense but needs further refinement in execution. maybe even better haptic feedback

tpmoney7• 2 years ago

Ridiculous, iPhones are getting cheaper all the time. Yesterday a base model iPhone 15 was $799, today it's $699. In 2022 a base model iPhone 14 was also $799, today that same phone is $599. Sure today the iPhone 15 is no longer the top of the line model, but that phone is absolutely cheaper today than it was yesterday, and if it was good enough at that price yesterday, there's no reason it's not good enough at a cheaper price today. Either the new features are compelling additions that make it worth spending more money on or they're added "simply to make it more expensive", in which case the 15 is right there, 12.5% cheaper today than it was 24 hours ago.

The Macbook Air was fantastic because it was cheap. For Apple it was too cheap. So we got Touch bar. Did it solve any user problems?

Do you remember the same Macbook Air I do? The first one was $1,799 retail, and probably the biggest complaint in reviews was that it was too expensive for what it was. The MBA didn't drop below $1000 until 4 revisions later with the introduction of the 11 inch model. In 2014 that dropped to $899 for the 11 inch model. The cheapest the 13 inch model ever got was $999 for the last intel and the first M1 model. Today it's $1099, hardly a change from the "too cheap" $999 of its heyday. Also to the best of my knowledge, no MBAs shipped with a touch bar.

kietay• 2 years ago

The MacBook Air never had a Touch Bar

yodsanklai2• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

Don't underestimate the power of marketing.

AOsborn• 2 years ago

Absolutely agree.

I'd say this goes one step further. We hand down older devices to our parents. They are completely happy with a device several generations back. The current product philosophy has completely cut them out as purchasers. They are product users, but will never purchase again.

In fact, without planned obsolescence/battery degradation I suspect they would be happy never replacing their phones until they physically broke. It's a shame that they continually slow down to such a degree - the decreased speed is actually the only Apple 'feature' they notice.

bastijn• 2 years ago

Im there with you, my wife as well as myself are in fact like your girlfriend and I work an highly educated software engineering role. I simply don’t care, still on my iPhone 11 Pro Max which I got as a present from my parents at the time.

I think battery power drain is even not fast enough for phone companies to sustain the selling Model. My guess is sooner or later they realize the real control point is software updates and they forcefully shorten OS and specially OS security updates under a bullshit reason they still can get away with to get us all back in line of buying regular phone upgrades in fear of hacked internet banking.

jcgrillo• 2 years ago

sooner or later they realize the real control point is software updates

That's why I'm in the market for an iphone (and a new service provider), my pixel 5a5g got its final "guaranteed" security update in August. Nothing wrong with the device. Time to de-google I guess..

mihaaly3• 2 years ago

Not only when the battery runs bad. That can be renewed (sometimes, my 1st gen SE from the last batch runs the second battery pack, probably the last batch of batteries available).

Also when you are forced by apps you need that want the newest hardware by some reason. I mean when most of them, because some could be missed for a while, but when most you use are just refuse to work, then it is time to get a new one.

Not like you need the new app, it is the same like with the iPhone 'features' you mention, but when your bank app cannot connect the bank when it is the newest version minus 2, then it becomes a nuisance.

Not like I am afraid of tech, I have cool interconnected home appliances built from raspberrys and make my living on developing desktop tools, but the rampage of the mobile industry is just too much to handle. It does not worth the money and time they demand, getting in the way of my life as much as helping it. By now. It was better but getting worse as we speak.

moffkalast• 2 years ago

5G is rapidly becoming this.

I'm still using a phone that's only a few years old and maxes out at 4G. Lately it's started sporadically losing connection entirely in locations where it previously worked perfectly... meanwhile everyone around me has a five bar 5G signal on their newer models. They've started to do to 4G what they did to E, H and 3G, complete bandwidth reduction to fuckin zero so the latest protocol can hog all frequencies. Planned obsolescence or what? Upgrade or we will slowly reduce your device to a useless brick.

ryoshu• 2 years ago

My daily is an iPhone 12 Pro and I work on bleeding edge tech daily. I don't need to upgrade. It works fine. Had to replace it when it had a battery problem. There are no features I need from the newer models.

dangus2• 2 years ago

Yeah, okay, hardware releases are incremental now. We get it.

But someone somewhere has a 5 year old phone with a busted screen and a dead battery and it'll be nice for them to get this phone or another similar new, highly capable device. And they'd probably like to know that this 5-year-newer phone has a whole bunch of new capabilities when they spend a big chunk of money replacing a big purchase.

Sure, I don't want to buy a new car. They're expensive and they depreciate. I would like to just keep driving mine, it's fine. But when the time comes that I do buy a new car I do want to know that it has a whole bunch of new, better things than the one I am replacing.

Don't forget that Apple makes the perfect phone for your girlfriend: the iPhone SE. The flashy marketing videos are for high-value high-vanity customers who throw money at them. She could buy that type of low-mid-range phone at $400 and run it into the ground until she is forced to upgrade by hardware failure.

foobarian3• 2 years ago

The software mute was the last thing that made a difference in my day to day usage (but didn’t upgrade for it). The next thing I would love and upgrade instantly for is a sealed, waterproof design

epolanski2• 2 years ago

Man I work in IT as a developer and I have absolutely no clue what most of my devices (can) do, and truth to be told I couldn't care less, because if I need something I find out how to do it.

My main phone is a 2019 Xiaomi midrange phone, and I just can't tell how's the Iphone 14 I use to test our apps should be better, and I played with it some.

I read the economist, hackernews watch some YouTube, play chess and occasionally use messaging apps or check banking stuff.

I couldn't care less about editing photos on a phone nor mobile gaming.

I know I live in a bubble, but I don't see users around me do much more than I do with the phone.

It's not like these products are bad, and I think that people that live on their phone will benefit from all of this. But I'm just not one of them.

benrutter• 2 years ago

I feel the same way, both in the sense of not feeling most features really add value to users, but also in feeling a little ungrateful and guilty for not caring about this kind of innovation.

Recently, I've been valueing repairability more in tech that I buy and it feels like such a breath of fresh air and a bit of an antidote. Particularly, products like fairphone (a smart phone where almost every part can be replaced with a screwdriver) make me really excited, and feel like amazing innovation solving actual problems.

akira2501• 2 years ago

It feels ungrateful and cynical to keep calling new models "boring".

The church of American consumerism is so galling to me. This is a trillion dollar corporation that famously involves itself in tax schemes to avoid paying the face value rate that any other smaller corporation would have to pay.

You feel "ungrateful" or "cynical" because they aren't innovating?

Good lord man. Get out of that church.

_gabe_• 2 years ago

A more optimistic reading of that sentence is that OP respects the accomplishments the engineers were able to make, but they aren’t impressed. I tend to agree with your sentiment, but reading the whole original post in context does not give me the same take away that you got :)

jwally• 2 years ago

Its like wine. I can tell the difference between a $4 bottle of wine and a $14 bottle of wine, but I couldn't tell the difference between a $14 bottle of wine and a $140 bottle of wine if my life depended on it.

MarkMarine• 2 years ago

I also like wine, but it’s rare that I’ve had a $140 bottle of wine that wasn’t actually a $30 bottle, but I was at a restaurant. It is real easy to be underwhelmed by a $30 bottle.

I’d also put a bottle of Trader Joe’s 2 buck chuck ($4 cab) up against 75% of the $30 bottles and I bet in a blind taste test it would win.

That isn’t to say that people’s taste buds don’t work. I’ve spent a bit of time tasting wine essentially blind (to price) at vineyards, brought that same wine home and been underwhelmed again… I learned that even 30min in a hot car trunk (140F) can change wine. The wine I tasted from the storage cave that was great, sucks when I got it home. I actually tested after I got it home and saw this.

I think a lot of the “wine flavors being mysterious and psychosomatic” is actually poor storage. I know Reddit disagrees with me, but now that I climate control my wine when I bring it home, I haven’t had the same issues.

This is a fact for beer (hoppy beer specifically) that is well known and pasted all over the Russian River Pliny the elder label. I believe it’s a fact for wine as well. Because I’ve had a couple $100 bottles that were stored well, and the memory of that taste is still with me. I want to find a way to repeat it. (Without spending $100 for a bottle)

leptons2• 2 years ago

I'm probably a lot like your girlfriend, and I've been in tech for 40+ years. I'm still very active in tech, but I got over being interested in smartphones after my 3rd one, and I was a very early adopter. My needs were satisfied a long time ago. If I have internet access, and can remote into any of my other dozens of machines, the phone has satisfied most of its purpose for me - allowing me to access all of my computing stuff while away from my main computers. Oh, I also take the occasional call on the phone, but that's very, very rare.

The biggest upgrade for me in the last 19 years is the fold-able phone with a much larger screen area. But honestly, the old HTC Wizard that I started with does 80% of what I need a mobile device to do.

I don't need or want AI following me around, especially not in my mobile device.

soneca2• 2 years ago

”Pretty much they buy the new one when the battery of their current one runs bad, typically every 3-4 years.”

I am exactly like this. But I am also use it as an opportunity to upgrade the hardware.

For some time it was memory, although now I am pretty done for 256gb. I don’t need more. Recently it was the new processor+camera. I am not big into photography, but I like to take pictures. And I like them to look great, focused, even with bad light, without doing any setting myself (cause I am ignorant how to do it). Just regular picture of trips, or night with friends. I like the 2x and 0.5x zoom a lot also.

It is also nice for the new updated apps I use to run fast. My 4 yo iPhone SE not only had a bad battery, but it was very slow already.

And, occasionally, some gimmick is actually useful to me, like the notch. I turn off notifications of almost every app, including Uber and food delivery. For those the in-screen info in the notch is very useful.

I’ll probably only buy the iPhone 18 next, but it will be nice have the 5x zoom (maybe more by then) at the least.

godelski• 2 years ago

For memory I've found that I'm much happier setting up a backup to my machines. Currently I'm on a pixel but looking to switch to iPhone. I do my backups with termux, so does anyone know a good alternative on iPhone? I see termus but it requires an account? Can I access my photos from these emulators? Just being able to have a few bash scripts really empowers these devices.

mattnewton3• 2 years ago

People like new and shiny things even if they don’t use any of the shiny features. There is a contingent buying new cars every decade- those people are buying iPhones every other year. Apple may not sell the most phones but they do make the most money selling phones.

4b11b4• 2 years ago

You shouldn't call your girlfriend a normie, that's harsh

andrepd• 2 years ago

"Normie"? Anecdotally and fro personal experience, I'd say the contrary: it's normies that (pushed by advertising budgets bigger than actual product development budgets) are in love with these yearly churn and ditch their Samsung S74 to buy the new and identical Samsung S75.

Tech people, on the over hand, are some of the most borderline luddite people I know (me included!)

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

You can add a million features to the camera app

there was a huge jump in the quality of my photos when I upgraded to an iPhone 13 (my current) from an iPhone 8. I've seen iPhone 15 photos and they're even better. And I'm not a pro photographer.

hi_hi• 2 years ago

This is missing the point. It's not about the functionality. It's about the marketing.

Apple aren't going to all this effort so you have an amazingly functional product that will solve all your real world needs. They're doing it so you think you need it to solve problem you don't have. Classic FOMO.

r0fl• 2 years ago

Perhaps with Apple intelligence your girlfriend will just be able to tell Siri what she wants the phone to do and it will get done using a feature she never knew she had

lisper• 2 years ago

It's becoming ever harder to justify new models for normies.

It's not just "normies". I'm a senior engineer and I drive an 3rd gen SE. I was perfectly happy with my 2nd gen SE and only replaced it because I wanted more memory. In fact, I preferred the 2nd gen because of the square sides. The 3rd gen keeps squirting out of my hands.

Zak4• 2 years ago

I'm a technically sophisticated user, and I don't want a new phone. I would almost certainly like it less than my current four year old phone.

It would have a faster CPU, more RAM, and more storage, but it's rare I run into any of those limits. It would have a better camera than my current phone, but it would still be worse than my Olympus. It would have a bigger screen, but I wouldn't have a bigger hand and that would make it harder to use. It would have a bigger battery, but it would need a bigger battery. It wouldn't have a headphone jack, and I use mine. It might have an AI thing, but I don't want an AI thing.

For about a decade after the current era of smartphones launched, they weren't good enough to do all the things people wanted them to, so most people were eager to upgrade when possible. Now they are, and an upgrade usually brings more hassle than excitement.

girvo2• 2 years ago

It would have a faster CPU, more RAM, and more storage, but it's rare I run into any of those limits

I quite honestly cannot think of a single time I've run into any of those limits in at least the last 5 years, personally!

vladvasiliu5• 2 years ago

It would have a better camera than my current phone, but it would still be worse than my Olympus.

This is actually one of the reasons why I changed my phone last year. I don't know about your Olympus, but mine doesn't fit in my jeans pocket, even though it's one of the smaller models.

I don't always what to carry a dedicated camera with me, even though I bought a m4/3 specifically because of how portable it was. But I do like to be able to take good enough pictures, and the iPhone enables me to do that.

Silasdev• 2 years ago

Exactly.

It's just a natural maturity-curve that every new piece of tech inevitably goes through.

Tech on the maturity curve:

ICE cars: settled

EV cars: rising

PC's: settled

Phones: settled

Smart TV's: slowly rising still

Wearables: rising

jrockway• 2 years ago

I don't really see these upgrades as being for iPhone 15 users. If you smash your phone or whatever, you get this years model and it's mostly like last year's model except it's not samashed.

I upgraded from the X to the 15 Pro Max and it was a nice improvement. Much better camera. Much speedier. Better wireless charging. USB-C. I wouldn't upgrade to the 16, though; looking at the comparison chart, pretty much nothing changes. It can charge faster and record better 4K video. I have no complaints about charging speed and don't know what Dolby Pro Motion even is.

When the iPhone 20 comes out, I'm sure I'll be tempted to upgrade. Every 5 years is a totally reasonable upgrade cycle, and enough stuff changes that it feels worthwhile. So for that reason, I don't view the yearly announcements as being anything relevant unless you need a new phone today for some reason. (Though I was in the Apple Store last weekend and saw people happily buying full-price 15s, not knowing Apple's release schedule. That's a shame for them.)

UniverseHacker2• 2 years ago

Same here… I understand the advances and even like reading about them, but in the end I don’t care about having them- the phones are mature tech that still do the same thing.

The annoying thing is that somehow they manage to make it so the same apps doing the same thing either get too slow or stop working over time, so you have to upgrade to get the same functionality. I usually keep a device until it cannot do something I need that it could do just fine the day before….

There’s also the security update thing but I think that is overblown. Ironically, if you have a very old device it ages out of being targeted for attacks. I have never had a very old device get compromised.

brk• 2 years ago

Hmmm. You are possibly dating my wife.

zer0zzz• 2 years ago

You could set her back 8 iOS versions and she probably wouldn't notice. Because she uses none of the hundreds of features released since.

Not a chance. I think she would immediately notice because the web of today is always going to be far more bloated than the web of eight generations ago.

Trying any dated browser+hardware combo on the modern web is noticeable to all users I feel.

theptip• 2 years ago

I would agree on say 14->15 but I find it somewhat ironic that this version contains what could be one of the biggest changes in many years; Apple Intelligence is putting local-first LLMs into the OS.

I predict that in retrospect this will be considered a watershed moment in computing.

robwwilliams• 2 years ago

Yes, this is the right take on future phone/assistants. We will be entering a new world of search and much better Q&A. I’m hooked in Claude on my phone and having some local mini AI help could be a game changer

geepytee• 2 years ago

It's not that she's unable to understand the advances, she simply doesn't care.

Honestly that feels deep to me. I wonder to what extend all of the recent LLM advancements are lost on most people.

I also wonder if over a long enough time horizon, the "normies" as you call them catch up, or it goes the other way and the "techies" also start to not care (?)

hbbio• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

Oh yes. Switched from the iPhone X to a 13 Pro only because the battery life became unbearable.

Overall, the size/format/handling of the X was *way better*. Even the camera was *better on the X* except in low-light pictures which I don't really care about. The difference is noticeable on 4K screens and print, pictures were truthful without complex image enhancement algorithms that you can't disable (even not in RAW). Etc.

wrycoder2• 2 years ago

I’m still on the X after a $90 battery swap by an Apple shop. I got tired of the small payback doing them myself - and even the iFixit batteries don’t last as long as OEM.

GuB-42• 2 years ago

The problem with smartphones is that we are all, with few exceptions "normies". I dropped the ball on smartphones, my last one is a $300 Samsung that is actually quite decent for all I use it for.

It doesn't take the best pictures but it is not a blurry mess either, more than enough to complement my terrible skills as a photographer, and by that I mean the skill of pointing the camera in the right direction, not that of fiddling with the settings.

It doesn't run "heavy" apps, like 3D games, but I don't play these on my phone, the controls and small screen are not great. So I don't need that massive computing power. In fact, I only need these gigabytes of RAM because of how terribly bloated mobile apps have become. And the worst part is that I can't even use my phone as a general purpose computer. Despite being the more open of the two platforms, Android is so locked down that I can't have fun with the hardware and still use it as a daily driver.

A smartphone is like a game console, like the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is an underpowered device by today's standards, but who cares about the hardware, its only value is the games it plays, and Nintendo makes damn good games in that power budget, making it a damn good console. Same idea for smartphones, they are defined by the apps they run, and the apps I want to run run on low end smartphones, so why buy an expensive phone For real work, I use a PC, with a large screen, a mouse, a keyboard, and an OS with a usable filesystem, that PC, while decent, is actually cheaper than a flagship phone.

And yes, the camera, pretty much the only thing worth getting expensive phones for for most people, but still, there are limits to what these tiny sensors can do. And as I said before, we have already passed to point where for most people the real improvement can only come from the one taking the picture.

jdprgm• 2 years ago

This effect has been compounding too. I used to upgrade almost every cycle but have been on 11 Pro now and haven't been motivated to upgrade until this 16. It takes the combined changes of about 4 cycles to match the level of interest in upgrading single cycles did in the first 10 years.

If I do get a 16 Pro the only thing I can even think of from an upgrade perspective that would make it last less than 5 years would be if on device inference becomes a major thing and there are huge and relevant improvements, everything else is basically mature and I can't see being motivationally better in a few years.

People bring up battery as a big thing for upgrading but with the smarter charging that has changed a lot, my 11 Pro is still at 80% max after 4+ years which isn't materially different on a day to day basis for me.

threecheese• 2 years ago

You are lucky, or have excellent battery discipline. I just had to trade my 11 for a 15, the battery life was terrible (enough to force me, knowing the 16 was imminent). Also backgrounded apps would reload almost every time I swapped, maybe I am just using memory-hungry apps though.

chemmail2• 2 years ago

I'm waiting for 10X optical. There are times where I borrow my wifes s21 Ultra to get a shot i just can't on iphone. Everything else isn't really needed. I haven't even upgraded to iOS17 on my 13. I also have a 14 Pro Max as my gamer but hate the island so i'm sticking to my 13 Pro as daily driver at least 1-2 more years.

bradleyjg• 2 years ago

I’ve have photos on this phone (12 pro) dating back to 2012 through a series of iPhones.

The pictures they take when you press the button have gotten better and better. That’s not even considering the live photos, which are a new thing entirely.

Maybe this is the upgrade cycle it’ll flatten out, but I sort of doubt it.

ryukoposting• 2 years ago

At the beginning of the year, I upgraded to a Galaxy S24 from an LG V35, a phone that came out in 2018.

Can my new phone do anything my old one couldn't? Sure. The telephoto lens is really helpful for my blog, and I can shoot in raw format which is also really helpful. Circle-to-search is an astonishing accomplishment.

Do I actually do anything with my S24 that I couldn't do with my V35? Not really. All the improvements are nice to have. I could still take adequate photos for my blog with my V35, even if the S24's photos are better. I think I used circle-to-search to find a Chinese candy online once.

The simple reality is that I'd still have my V35, and I'd still be perfectly happy with it, if AT&T had ever updated their shitware-riddled fork to Android 9. I was stuck on Android 8. Slack stopped supporting it, which was an inconvenience that I could work around. But, then one of my banks stopped supporting Android 8, and at that point the only reasonable solution was a new phone.

The funny thing is, the V35 is noticeably better in several ways. It's lighter and thinner. It has a 1440p display in the same footprint as the S24's 1080p display. It has a headphone jack, and a really good one at that - LG was pushing their hi-fi DAC when Samsung and Apple were dropping the feature entirely.

tlonista• 2 years ago

I've been in tech for 35+ years. I've built CPU architectures, I can write device drivers, I can layout an 8 layer PCB, I can design an RF power amplifier.

I like the iPhone because it is easier to use than Android. My iPhone 4 was perfect. I'd still be using it if they haven't deprecated the OS and the battery died.

I have exactly 6 non-apple Apps on my current phone.

I want FEWER features. Integrated it or hide it. Don't make me have to learn about a new button, or switch, or setting or some magical tweak to use the basic features. If enthusiasts want to sniff and twiddle every last setting, go for it: give them dozens of settings until they burst. Just bury those settings away from me, or better yet: have a pro-mode setting that fills the GUI with all these features.

I want something easy to use with as few knobs as possible, and the ability to factory reset every app in case I screw up and accidentally flip some esoteric setting.

All of my college buddies and age-equivalent work peers (mid/late 50s) feel exactly the same way.

dzhiurgis5• 2 years ago

I think there's massive divide between people who just want a basic device vs (particularly kids) for whom iPhone is primary device.

Mixing them together is probably healthy to each other, but definitely annoying both.

Quick story - me and my partner were confused why none of the pics you take appear in the gallery. Turns out she filtered to show Shared Photos only...

Aloha• 2 years ago

You and I both want the phonepliance, I work in tech on highly complex distributed systems, and I use an iPhone because its an appliance, it works, I dont need or want to hack my phone, I just want a phone that works.

I just bought my first iPad, going on a work trip next week, gonna give it a whirl, and try that out.

wyager• 2 years ago

It's OK if we've surpassed the needs and observational abilities of normies and we are now purely pursuing arete for those who can appreciate it.

Eventually the level of arete usually passes some threshold that enables new normie-appealing use cases as well.

HumblyTossed• 2 years ago

I started programming on a TRS80 handheld then quickly moved to a C64. All I ever wanted to do was be a programmer. And as a programmer I still do!

But I use my phone just like you described your GF. They’re just not that interesting to me.

There is so much more tech out there that is more interesting.

baby6• 2 years ago

What people notice are the folding phones. People look at mine when I unfold it in the subway and I'm convinced that a folding phone user using their unfolded phone in public is going to be a massive marketing phenomena and convert a lot of people. iPhones are not cool anymore, they're just small legacy phones.

sneak2• 2 years ago

Faster performance per watt means fewer watts for the same performance.

That is not lost on even casual users. It’s not that they need or want a faster phone; it’s that their existing daily runtime can be in a lighter and thinner device, or a same size device can run longer.

princevegeta89• 2 years ago

Hmm why are we assuming your girlfriend represents a majority of smartphone users though?

stephenr• 2 years ago

Pretty much they buy the new one when the battery of their current one runs bad, typically every 3-4 years.

The "upgrade every year" concept never made sense to me, and while I agree that a battery might be the trigger, I think a reasonable number (not all) would still upgrade every ~4-5 years.

While there's generally no single groundbreaking feature year to year, over 4-5 releases there are likely enough smaller incremental features/improvements that someone would still upgrade.

faeriechangling• 2 years ago

I notice the generational improvements in battery life and still have a practical need for them.

randmeerkat4• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

It’s coming, the EU brought the USB-C port to the iPhone and in 2027 it brings user replaceable batteries too. [1]

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/07/13/new-eu-regulation...

vachina• 2 years ago

Feels condescending to assume people would not notice nor appreciate improvements.

You’re technically correct phones have reached feature parity, but how refined are those features is another story.

I can technically do whatever iPhones can do on an iPhone knockoff, but do YOU actually want to use an iPhone knockoff? Please.

scoofy• 2 years ago

The reality though is that normie needs were accomplished several generations ago. I'll use my girlfriend as a sample of such user.

Children and teens drive this, not existing adults. If existing adults is how we evaluated usefulness, we’d all still be using the command line on dot matrix screens.

mulmen2• 2 years ago

I am an engineer at a big tech company. I’m not a “normie”.

Even for me the new features aren’t compelling. They don’t really help me do anything I actually want to do. They don’t solve a problem or scratch an itch. And features change so often and so drastically I don’t really care to learn. I used to have an optical zoom but now I have super wide angle. My Fidelity widget used to show my balance but now it doesn’t so I just never bother swiping to that page. I assume the current iteration of widgets will go away or be replaced soon so I don’t bother trying to fix it. Whatever, doesn’t matter.

Smartphones are essentially solved at this point. It’s an appliance. And just like my washing machine and dishwasher the buttons are arbitrary and clunky but work well enough. I tolerate it. Like I tolerate that burner on the cooktop that doesn’t always work.

The only thing that would get me excited is text editing and spellcheck that work correctly.

eviks7• 2 years ago

How can you call it "solved" when such basics as text editing are broken?

The dishwasher comparison is also way off, the level of dishwasher interaction is primitive and the frequency thereof is very very low, so it's much easier to tolerate bad design

johnnyanmac• 2 years ago

well not fully solved. That's why I was watching foldable phones carefully and seeing how they iterate. That was indeed the first thing in a long time that both excited me and easily had me imagining various improvements (horizontal folds for productivity, vertical to minimize space. Both to built-in protect the screen).

fsflover14• 2 years ago

Smartphones are essentially solved at this point.

How about running a normal desktop OS on smartphone, so that you could completely replace your laptop/desktop?

bee_rider4• 2 years ago

I don’t get the assumption (not just in your comment, all over this post) that engineers and programmers are more likely to appreciate the changes.

I’m a programmer, apple devices have had the cpu grunt to run ssh or vi for ages. Therefore, I don’t really notice much generation to generation. I wonder if it will ever catch up to the Raspberry Pi in usability.

I expect a photographer, or maybe someone who opened big spreadsheets, or a social media person, or one of those coffee-shop authors, might be more likely to notice the difference.

nextaccountic• 2 years ago

All the spectacular advances in computing power are lost on her as this makes zero difference for the Facebook cat video group and Pinterest.

This is not my experience. All my life I used slow phones and browsing the web on them is excruciating.

mgh2• 2 years ago

Most people don't buy the pro and they're desperate for selling points in the regular model.

"Pro Max currently accounts for nearly 40% of new model shipments" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386700

You misunderstand the business case: she is not the target demographic/user, filmmakers are (as seen on the presentation). Apple's product marketing is 2nd to none.

To break it down: iPhone 16 is for photographers, Pro for filmmakers; Watch for sport and health enthusiasts, Ultra for athletes; iPad for media consumers, Pro for artists; MacBook Air for everyday consumers, Pro for working professionals; SEs for newbies to grab competitor market share with price penetration, etc.

Research: http://www.marcoshung.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com...

al_borland2• 2 years ago

I think the iPhone Pro is for anyone who wants extra flexibility with the camera, photo or video. The normal iPhone is for people who couldn’t tell you the difference between macro and telephoto, or don’t care enough to pay extra for it on their phone. I’ve been using an iPhone mini since the 12 came out. I really miss the telephoto and will be getting a 16 Pro (as much as I hate the size) to get the telephoto lens back. I used it fairly often when I had it; I almost never use the wide angle, other than to experiment to see why it exists (I’m sure realtors love it). I would not even call myself a photographer, I just take some picture when I go on vacation, just to remember stuff. However, I like more flexibility than the normal iPhone gives me. I also despise digital zoom.

The MacBook Pro is only for working professionals if they happen to be professionals in some kind of graphics (editing videos, digital artist, etc). Work gives me a MacBook Pro, and it’s pretty pointless. I write code; I’m not touching the GPU. On CPU tasks, the Air as the MacBook Pro are going to perform the exact same, assuming there is no thermal throttling going on… and there isn’t. I’ve never heard the fan on Apple Silicon; it used to be on all day every day with Intel. I’d actually prefer if work gave me a MacBook Air.

Loranubi• 2 years ago

That doesn't make sense. 99.9% of iPhone users are not photographers or filmmakers.

llmthrow102• 2 years ago

There aren't major innovations in chairs or mugs that make you throw out your whole collection every few years. Smartphones are just becoming a commodity and there's nothing wrong with that.

sweeter• 2 years ago

I honestly feel that. I love programming like crazy, I use Linux, but I genuinely just don't care one iota what features my phone or TV has... I just want to browse reddit, read webnovels, call my friends and family, watch and listen to music/videos, and take a few pictures. Sometimes I play with Termux. All these other features are just not important.

I think the thing I like most about my phone is the OLED screen, which has been basically the only feature I've cared about.

amatecha• 2 years ago

I seriously wish I could just use my iPhone 3GS still. I mean, maybe with a slightly newer iOS than it supported, but otherwise, for me that was the perfect form factor, and it was such a "focused" product back then.

mandeepj• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse

You can still take your old iPhone to a local electronic store or that phone stall at your nearby mall and get that dying battery replaced or check this one https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+15+Battery+Replacement/1...

Yeah - a battery replacement wouldn’t collapse a mere $3T juggernaut

tshaddox4• 2 years ago

If the only reason people buy new iPhones is that the batteries in their old iPhones go bad, why does Apple bother constantly iterating and improving them?

randomdata3• 2 years ago

Competition. Once the battery has gone bad and the user has decided that they are going to get a new phone to replace it, they are going to evaluate Apple's offering against all other phones they can buy. If Apple's device doesn't look as compelling as Samsung's (or whatever), the person is apt to buy something else.

But if the battery was working as well as it did when it was new, it is unlikely that the person would have started shopping in the first place. It is the catalyst that sees them move beyond "what I've got is good enough" to "this isn't serving my needs anymore".

kaba010• 2 years ago

Statistics indeed show that 3-4 years is the typical time people switch their phones at, but I don’t think your reasoning is sound. You can cheaply replace the battery at any number of repair shops.

It’s simply that 3 small, incremental upgrade does make up for a more significant one in the end, though in the future it might end up 4 or 5 years instead, as the changes from generation to generation are smaller and smaller.

larusso• 2 years ago

I’m with you. My wife is a bit like this but she actually cares for the new features just doesn’t bother to actively look for them. When they showed of all the ways the camera button works I thought: “No normal user will use this to change settings / zoom”. The main usage I see will be: open the camera app. And maybe, maybe take a photo.

I’ve been on vacation and used my Apple Watch as a remote for the camera for a group photo. People looked at me as I came down from mars.

And it’s not like Apple tries to sell these features. I think their videos and ads are on of the best. I mean they managed to teach pinch and zoom in an ad :)

lynx23• 2 years ago

I hope she never reads this, or you are in for a "fun" talk. Claiming your gf, who works in IT, wouldn't notice if she suddenly were set back to iOS 9, is a rather bold claim. I am sure you only feel confident writing this because you somehow suspect you aren't being watched :-)

gloosx2• 2 years ago

There are just 5 major use-cases for this thing, and they don't change since 2008: calling, messaging, navigating, camera, note-taking. The rest of what you can do is mostly time-burning and satisfying addictions, which makes the most of the profit I guess.

nyarlathotep_2• 2 years ago

Audio is a major use case.

Podcasts have grown in audience size dramatically, everyone has Spotify or whatever, and the iPod has long since been discontinued.

robomartin• 2 years ago

They have overloaded the buttons and swipe actions so much that it is impossible for most people to remember (or discover) a bunch of features. Zero points on usability and user-centered design.

The ONLY reason I stick with iPhone is Apple's approach to policing privacy and security. Other than that, it was done for me a few generations ago (maybe iPhone 4-ish). I have a 15 now, only because my iPhone 4 started to get weird. I can't see upgrading until iPhone 20 ore beyond.

If Microsoft got their heads out of their behinds and came out with a next-generation MS Phone (please don't call is Windows Phone) with true deep integration with desktop Windows as well as the security and privacy features, I would jump over in a microsecond. Sadly, they it seems they never understood this value proposition.

There a few simple things. iPhone has broken listening to music and they simply refuse to fix it. Own a large CD library that I have fully digitized into Windows Media Player. I can listen to an album as an album, from start to finish, in order, without doing anything special. Pink Floyd? Bach? Mozart? Just select the record play it as it was written. I can't do that on an iPhone. Or, at least, I have not been able to do it for multiple generations of iOS. To the point where I gave up and have not checked if anything has changed in a while. They model is selling you songs. Which is fine of one hit wonders. I get it. However, Mozart's Requiem isn't something that you should listen to or experience in "shuffle" mode or as songs.

I could go on.

vladvasiliu5• 2 years ago

She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED

I see sunglasses with polarizing lenses are the new rage. Have her wear a pair and try to look at the phone.

I wanted to buy such a pair a few years ago, but I still had an iPhone with an LCD screen, so I went the regular lens way.

spease2• 2 years ago

This is such an absurd attitude to have, on a site for startup news, no less.

Having a frequent, iterative release cycle has a number of benefits: - Everyone in the ecosystem knows the rough cadence of when releases will occur - The people and companies involved in those releases have a steady stream of work - If something isn’t ready, it can more likely be dropped without the consequences becoming overwhelming, which would force the company to push back a release and screw up the schedule of many other things - If something isn’t working, it can be quickly removed in a subsequent release rather than having to push out an out-of-band release - There will always be people looking to casually buy a phone, and this ensures they’ll probably always get something reasonably current rather than it depending greatly on when they buy. - People are much more likely to delay a phone purchase for most of a year rather than switch ecosystems for a killer feature. If it’s two years, they’re probably more likely to switch ecosystems (and if it misses that next release, they would have to wait four) - Holidays come annually, this ensures gifts are “this year’s watch” and not “last years’s watch”

Really, I think Apple should be commended for tweaking and refining things, rather than making big BS lateral changes to justify a product release.

Also, not all the changes were “incremental”. The camera changes and SoC improvements are pretty significant for people who make use of them. I saw 30% and 2x bandied about for some things.

As for “she opens it and presses the shutter”. That’s pretty much the optimal UI for a casual user, no? There’s a ton of work going into making it that easy to use for everything that goes into the picture that comes out.

The whole point is that people aren’t aware of it. They don’t know how fast the lens is or the resolution of the camera, they just know if they get a newer device the pictures will be a little better than the previous device. And that’s probably all they care to know.

No one is making you or your girlfriend upgrade every year. It looks like phones as far back as the 6s or the 8 are still supported, so by all means, keep using a phone until it’s 8 generations old.

As others have pointed out, you can replace the battery for a reasonable cost, too. Of course Apple doesn't want to - their whole business position is that it’s a premium product for people who are purchasing an “experience”.

They’d rather have the freedom to customize the internals to optimize performance than be limited by affordances sufficient to allow non-tech-savvy users to replace the battery. The latter of which is probably at odds with it being simple, waterproof, durable, and thin (eg a tiny screw or some kind of latching mechanism ).

octocop• 2 years ago

idk man, it feels like you are hatin' more on your girlfriend than criticising Apple.

Biganon• 2 years ago

Don't know about "hating", but I do wonder how she would feel if she were to read his comment. I couldn't be in a relationship with a woman I consider a "normie" whose use of a phone is sharing cat videos on Facebook. Jeez.

hedora2• 2 years ago

I’m typing this on the last mini.

I have huge hands. This phone is too big for them.

My second biggest complaint is that the 5g modem eats an insane amount of battery when it has weak single (20% in 10 minutes. I set an automation to force airplane mode.)

My third complaint is that the se3 is missing the UWB radio (and I actually use it!), so when this phone dies, I’ll need to get a refurbished phone.

My typical budget for a phone refresh is $1000, but apparently my money isn’t good enough these days.

fragmede5• 2 years ago

you might have better luck with battery life if you switch voice and data to "5G auto" instead of "5G on" in cellular options which chooses to only use 5g only when needed for performance to optimize battery life.

jiehong• 2 years ago

When you sell phones to most of the population, it’s not only about the need of average users, but about the needs of everyone.

You live close to another country and switch languages all the time? (Very normal in many places in the world) well, then you’re happy translating photos or copying text on them work without cell coverage.

You have some disabilities and can’t see much anymore? Local AI can describe what your phone sees, ans help you navigate places more easily.

You like photography, but your neck hurts because you carry that DSLR everywhere? Better cameras on your phone mean more people stop carrying those.

When you sell to everyone, a niche feature for some is a crucial feature for others. It’s no longer about averages.

werid• 2 years ago

You could set her back 8 iOS versions and she probably wouldn't notice. Because she uses none of the hundreds of features released since. Not because she dislikes them, she doesn't know they even exist.

there's no manual to read. apple does not inform you in any way. finding out new features is by word of mouth.

so annoying.

i should not have to discover features on my very expensive phone by random chance via watching a tiktok video!

saagarjha4• 2 years ago

Have you tried the Tips app?

iteratethis13• 2 years ago

Indeed. A typical major iOS version has hundreds of new features.

New iOS features are typically announced at the WWDC event. Which is a developer event that surely no normie watches. But even if they did, it's still a summary featuring like 5% of new features.

Normies may not know or suddenly discover features introduced a decade ago.

linux_devil• 2 years ago

True , for the matter if jsut like a privacy feature , we can turn off certain features which are not required and it can significantly maintain the battery. Yes, we do have Iphone battery power save mode but I am just curious how efficiently it can optimise battery power saving

benterix3• 2 years ago

If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse.

It's not entirely true: apart from hardware measures, they also use software to enforce phone upgrades.

ksec5• 2 years ago

I think She will notice one thing, and that is battery life. The new OLED, new SoC, new Modem, along with slightly better battery all means that you should be getting 20-30% more battery life when all things being equal.

But what you said is true I think a lot of people would be happy with the upcoming iPhone SE, which is basically a iPhone 14 with single camera, Apple modem and A18. On the assumption that the Modem isn't too bad. ( Not too sure if it will be 8GB or 6GB memory, which could mean getting Apple intelligence support or not )

v7p1Qbt1im• 2 years ago

I think people don't actively notice most of these things. But they sure as hell notice when you take them away after. A good example of this is ProMotion. People don't notice high refresh rate when they first get a Pro. but they do notice when you use it for a few weeks and then go back to 60hz. Same for a lot of other things.

jsjohnst• 2 years ago

You can add a million features to the camera app but she opens it and presses the shutter.

Even the most lax laymen of photographer would notice the tremendous difference in photo quality between an 8 year old iPhone and today. I’d argue even from 13-15 it was a big bump, but certainly going back 8 generations.

ErneX• 2 years ago

AFAIK the 15 Pro Max is their best selling model, so “most people don’t buy the pro” seems wrong.

throwaway2909• 2 years ago

She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED

There are no LCDs in current lineup, I think.

nor would she notice Pro-motion

This is kind of like "no one notices reduced air pollution". Yeah, but some people actually notice and even for those who don't it is a quality of life improver.

All the spectacular advances in computing power are lost on her as this makes zero difference for the Facebook cat video group and Pinterest

Then she didn't need the Pro version or even iPhone 16 at all. I have a friend who does photo/video as hobby and photos he takes are mega cool. He will benefit from pro camera. Another friend does commercial video and only shoots on iPhone. He will benefit from pro video capabilities. Most people will not benefit from a pro. By definition. That's why it's pro.

It's becoming ever harder to justify new models for normies

Is that a problem? I use iPhone 11. It works. I don't feel like I need the 16 or the pro. What's wrong with not having to buy latest devices if they are built to last?

mewpmewp22• 2 years ago

I think people absolutely notice new screens and scrolling, but the thing is with their current setup they have accepted the conditions. It's one of those things when you've tried the new thing, you don't want to go back to the old thing because scrolling will seem laggy, and screen will seem bad. So it's not necessarily that you need it, but once you have it, you can't go back.

rowanG077• 2 years ago

I'm not conflicted at all. All these normies pay top dollar for things they don't need or really want. But the advances are real. And now we have dual stacked oled with insane brightness. We have a supremely high end CPU gpu combo in the m3 Max CPU. Something I do care about.

Basically apple was able to fund enthusiast level R&D by asking people who don't care about to pay for it. Every enthusiast should be grateful.

benterix3• 2 years ago

I have flashbacks from the time first LED screens appeared. They had lower resolution and overall quality (at least for gaming) than the CRT monitors I was using. I knew it will take time before they get on a par with CRT monitors (and overtake them since that market was basically abandoned) but wondered who will pay for all this R&D? Well, everybody did. Everybody were buying crap monitors for decades and at some point these became quite decent - at least models like Apple displays for example.

koliber• 2 years ago

Apple uses software updates to drive hardware sales.

There are some relatively minor iOS features that appear here and there that make me want to upgrade the OS. And one day I find myself with hardware that works for me, but I can no longer upgrade to the latest version of iOS.

midtake• 2 years ago

Your complaint is that the iPhone is too good?

And your assertion that their business would collapse is false. You can already replace batteries through Apple and their business model hasn't collapsed. It's just not "true" enough for you so that you can end your post with a dramatic flair.

Clubber• 2 years ago

I completely agree. I've worked in tech as a coder for 27 years and I find all the features of the iPhone annoying and inhibitive. When the settings app has 8 pages of scroll, something's gone sideways. I'm running an XS Max currently.

wmoxam• 2 years ago

I’m a software developer and I barely care about the new features. I’m on a 13 and the only ‘recent’ change I’m interested in upgrading for is usb-c.

whatjadat2• 2 years ago

"that normie"? Are you 5 years old? You are not in some exclusive elite club, you are just as normal as anyone else.

Saris• 2 years ago

I'm just thankful for the people that do upgrade to every new model, it keeps the used market alive for those of us that want a 2 year old phone for cheap.

giancarlostoro• 2 years ago

My biggest peeve with iOS or iPadOS is that if you sync photos or SMS with your iPad, you will eventually run out of storage. I don't know why Apple doesn't do a "rolling" storage for these apps, it feels so broken. I'm never buying another iPad if they don't fix this, I'll pay their competitors instead who sanely allow you to decide which photos to download for offline viewing, and which ones to keep. I will always have way more storage on my phone than my tablet.

There will also be a time where my iCloud Photos storage will surpass the available physical storage Apple gives you for your phone, so I don't understand this weak design.

Worse is the Messages app, which insists on downloading every gif, photo and video I share to my iPad as well, as if I need them available for offline use all the time, no Apple, if I needed to see any of it, I would download them manually.

iOS and iPad OS need to be smarter about their Photos and Messaging apps, they're really dumb. What's the point of iCloud if it forces everything downstream when I'm not asking for it.

throwaway894345• 2 years ago

I think this was really well written and insightful, but I disagree about the extent to which your girlfriend is representative (and not based on her education or anything). Most normies do notice dramatic improvements in battery life, camera quality, and screen quality. My tech-illiterate family may not know what OLED is or how it works, but they definitely prefer the OLED TV to the LCD. Similarly, they can tell a stark difference between a 5X telephoto and a 5X “digital zoom” photo or a macro photo versus an attempt to take a close-up photo without the macro lens. Similarly they will notice the improvements in low light conditions over models that are 6+ generations older. Further, the AI features (enabled by new hardware), for better or worse, will probably be a dramatic change in how people engage with their phones. I’m writing this from an iPhone 11 and I’m sure I’ll notice some stark differences if I upgraded to the 16, and I even notice big differences when I use others’ newer phones as well.

I sincerely admire your girlfriend’s penchant for simplicity, I just don’t think that represents most people IMHO.

nprateem• 2 years ago

LOL. Your naivety is so sweet :D

New features aren't for users. They're for the media so the company gets publicity and we have conversations like this and don't forget about them.

Imagine if Apple said "we're done, users have all they need", but Samsung kept putting out new features nobody wants or needs, and press releases and launch events... It's obvious what would happen to Apple, right?

Your average user has no idea what the buzzwords mean either, and that's for a reason. God knows why I need titanium, but I know it's strong and probably expensive so helps justify the price. 120fps? Who knows, but it's more than 24 or 60 so it must be good, etc. The features page goes on and on, gushing with how easy things are, high pro quality, time saving, etc.

Features are there to bamboozle buyers and overwhelm them with "benefits" to justify the high price. Frequent releases are for regular publicity. Heaven forbid any of this is actually because users want any of this stuff.

mattbrewsbytes• 2 years ago

Adding features to smartphones for the last few generations is akin to more buttons in the MS Office ribbon/menu. Or any other commoditized product that adds gimmick features.

Its compelling in the sense that these organizations feel compelled to continually release things. No other real reason exists. You could probably classify much of product development for smartphones as bullshit jobs at this point. They are as useful to society as someone adding features to an ERP system.

Certhas• 2 years ago

In the EU we are going to get user replaceable batteries:

https://repair.eu/news/new-eu-rules-smartphones-and-tablets-...

QuadrupleA• 2 years ago

I'm probably as techie as they get, but I'm 100% with your girlfriend. I don't care. The smartphone industry has not delivered anything truly novel in a decade or more, it's been endless fussing about notch vs no notch, which slightly-different form factor is back in fashion, etc. And on a lot of fronts has made things worse - bloated many-GB apps, ads, spyware, attention sucking practices of all kinds, poorly policed and overloaded app stores, etc.

tomjen32• 2 years ago

I am going to have to disagree. You do not have to be a techie to appreciate beauty and enjoy an OLED screen even if you can't tell the technical difference.

There is certainly a segment where "it takes photos" is a boolean, not a scale (my mum being in that group), and they will be perfectly happy with cheap Androids.

WhyNotHugo• 2 years ago

I can understand and relate to this perfectly. In the past, I used an iPhone 11 or 12. At some point, I got fed up of the issues around FaceID with face mask and/or glasses. I switched to an older iPhone SE with a fingerprint button.

The switch didn't feel like a downgrade at all. I didn't miss any of the new fancy features. The only real downside that I ever noticed is the camera, which doesn't have night mode.

The thing about infinite growth, is that at some point things are "good enough" for users, and they have no reason to upgrade. So companies have to create problems to force them to upgrade, like device locking down the device and not offering new software support, or preventing users from swapping batteries.

wing-_-nuts• 2 years ago

The reality though is that normie needs were accomplished several generations ago. I'll use my girlfriend as a sample of such user.
She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED nor would she notice Pro-motion.

I recently had a similar realization. Last year I finally bit the bullet and decided to build out a decent 'home office' setup. I have a tendency to research something to death before I make a purchase. I read all about monitor resolution, viewing distance, field of view and viewing angle. I had multiple different calculators. I measured my typical sitting / viewing distance down to a fraction of an inch.

After doing all this, I initially thought surely, I needed a 32" 4k 144hz screen. Nothing else would do. Then at the last second after reading up on fractional scaling issues with linux, I decided on a 27" 1440p screen. It's fine.

It turns out I am not the discerning conesour of pixels I thought I was. Yes, I can see them if I look hard enough, but I don't really care. I should have known. The most productive I have ever been as a dev was as a teen coding away on a 800x600 crt!

Maybe I'll eventually get a 4k screen if I upgrade to a 5090 or whatever, but I have found that buying n-1 off the bleeding edge is the absolute sweet spot when it comes to capability.

kjkjadksj5• 2 years ago

I came to a similar realization when I had to go back to a non retina macbook a couple years ago (after using retina). Other than the larger display scaling you really can’t tell or see the pixels at the distance you would comfortably use a laptop. Same thing with my TV. Its 1080p and I can’t see the pixels. I’d have to spend hundreds upgrading my tv and xbox to 4k and for what? It wouldn’t look any better 10 feet away on the couch.

sholladay• 2 years ago

Sounds like she would love the new camera control.

AI is also normie feature. A big one. Say what you will about its limitations and inadequacies but to a normie, GPT is a search engine with superpowers and an intuitive UI. Improved autocorrect and call screening, smart reply in Mail, transcripts and summaries for audio recordings in notes or from phone calls… these are all things normies will love. The technical crowd will dismiss them, afraid of inaccuracy or the model hallucinating. To a normie, it’s just the computer being helpful with everyday tasks. The only real hurdle will be how simple the UI is. Some of these features will be easy to access, while others might not be obvious.

elAhmo• 2 years ago

She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED nor would she notice Pro-motion.

Most people do notice a difference there, maybe not instantly with a few second glance, but using one over another is definitely visible. I do think it is not a reason to upgrade for most people.

I consider myself quite technical, and I also upgrade fairly rarely - with 14 Pro I will either wait for next year or the year after that.

I think there is a main point people usually forget - new phones are not for people who have bought an iPhone in the last few years, rather than people who have 5-6 year old phones, Android users, new people coming into smartphone market. That market is huge and the differences for those people is definitely perceivable. With non-pro version having a lot of the features from a pro version from the years before, it is a great time to buy the latest phone.

geonic• 2 years ago

I have an iPhone 11 Pro. One of the lenses is broken and it makes a weird snaring sound while recording video. Battery life is still okay at about 80% capacity. It does everything I need it to do without fail.

If it weren’t for those defects I’d keep it at least for another year.

rurp2• 2 years ago

You could set her back 8 iOS versions and she probably wouldn't notice. Because she uses none of the hundreds of features released since. Not because she dislikes them, she doesn't know they even exist.

Which seems totally fine to me since those features probably don't solve any real problems that she has. It's weird to me that the tech industry has this implicit idea that every product has to get better every year and users are missing out if they don't follow along. Not all products work that way indefinitely and that approach is driven more by corporate financial reasons than by anything else.

Apple starts from a position of "How can we continually increase our sales of this product", not "How can we make the best possible product for users". There can be a lot of overlap there, but not always. The number one rule with corporate product and sales is: Number Go Up. Consumers shouldn't have any obligation to follow along though.

astrowilliam• 2 years ago

I'm a senior front end React dev and I also don't care about most of the features on my phone. Notes, email, phone, text, maps and my bank. Other than that, I don't care much about other features on my phone.

barnabee2• 2 years ago

Agree that at best the majority of the updates these days are nice to have, if that.

But I’ll buy every other new “Pro” phone if it takes noticeably better photos, regardless of everything else.

barfingclouds• 2 years ago

Yeah that’s how I feel. I feel like the iPhone 7 could handle all the daily use cases just fine. Every phone after is cool but doesn’t accomplish anything

kaycey2022• 2 years ago

Sorry but hi. It’s me, your girlfriend. Only I’m actually in an engineering role.

salad-tycoon2• 2 years ago

I surprised an 18 year old, intelligent and fairly tech savvy, when I showed him the share>find on page search function in Safari. Figured everyone knew that, or at least he and his demo would. No idea how wide spread it is, anecdotal etc.

Lio• 2 years ago

I'd just a like a spell checker that I can trigger on the first click instead of on 10th.

lucb1e17• 2 years ago

Have you tried installing a different keyboard (that's what does the spell checking on Android), or is that also locked down? Genuinely not sure since I don't use iOS, but I figured if custom keyboards are allowed by the overlords then this might be a useful tip

zombiwoof4• 2 years ago

Apple feels like MAGA. Everything is the greatest thinnest fastest ever, with no reality data, and only until next Sept

usaphp3• 2 years ago

I love how ridiculous the scene to showcase Apple's Intelligence ability to tell you what bread the dog was.

Instead of simply asking a women what breed her dog was - he had to open a camera app on his iPhone, ask a women a permission to take a photo of the dog, wait until the AI gives him an answer...

lelandfe• 2 years ago

“Is that rain?” https://youtube.com/watch?v=EP1YAatv1Mc

015a5• 2 years ago

Its so sad how much Siri has degraded even since this commercial; and then Apple Intelligence comes along re-selling a ton of the stuff Siri used to be able to just do.

- "Is that rain?" pulls up a weather widget, but Siri doesn't say anything about it (the correct answer for me right now would be the response "No")

- "Let's get soup delivered" does a google search for literally "let's get soup delivered" with no vocal response.

- The other two work fine.

evulhotdog2• 2 years ago

Agreed. Normally Apple finds genuine uses of their features they’re intending to market. The guy ended up talking to the person with the dog after, which made the use of the AI a bit of a miss.

It honestly felt like Apple didn’t do that scene because normally everything is well thought out.

paperplatter7• 2 years ago

It's weird how they pick unrealistic use cases when there are real ones. Last week I saw a nice plant and wanted to buy the same one, so I used Google's image recognition feature.

kylehotchkiss2• 2 years ago

Apple already has that in current iOS. Take a picture of a plant, click the little icon in the corner, and it'll pull it up for you.

j_timberlake• 2 years ago

"Is this big spider in my office friendly or deadly?" AI: It's a Wolf Spider. Probably.

siquick• 2 years ago

This is a pretty accurate representation of everyday city life in 2024.

wildrhythms• 2 years ago

I live in NYC and no it's not.

Arcuru• 2 years ago

It's for the casual stalker. Take a picture of a woman's dog to find out the breed, then you can pretend you know it when you go chat her up.

askafriend• 2 years ago

I think it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor. You can tell based on how they shot the scene.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

They could have done a sweet story about a guy finding a loose dog and using AI to identify the type so he could post it online or something.

svnt2• 2 years ago

People really love it when you tell them what breed their dog is right after you’ve looked it up on your phone.

danbala• 2 years ago

plays to the normal tendency of humans not to want to interact with other humans.

ashconnor2• 2 years ago

The photos app can do this today. Press the information I symbol and it’ll will tell you the breed.

mFixman• 2 years ago

These MBA-approved use cases for AI feel like the Futurama parody of The Twilight Zone.

The one from Google the AI a man was using to raise his child convinced him to use Gemini to write an admiration letter to an athlete wouldn't look out of place in the series.

abhinavk• 2 years ago

In reality, you will have to ask the owner anyway if the AI got it right.

strongpigeon• 2 years ago

I’m probably in the minority, but a thing I’d love to see is a much stronger flashlight. It’s silly, but the flashlight is something I use almost daily and having a more powerful one would be quite useful.

rudros• 2 years ago

What a random feature request. In case you're not aware, you can open control center, long-press on the flashlight icon and you get to adjust the brightness of the flashlight. If you're not already at the max level, you might get a slightly (but definitely not much) stronger flashlight on your current phone.

zamadatix7• 2 years ago

I don't think I'd ever heard about this functionality before, thanks.

HDThoreaun• 2 years ago

Not sure how it's random. I use the flashlight every day as well. A better one(yes I have it maxed out already) would be more valuable to me than any of the features they announced today.

semireg• 2 years ago

Except when it’s accidentally turned on in your pocket. Ouch!

teaearlgraycold5• 2 years ago

You’d think they could use all of the sensors on the phone to detect this

NotYourLawyer2• 2 years ago

I agree. It would be so easy to turn it from a book light into something actually useful.

kylehotchkiss2• 2 years ago

Find a cool keychain one to carry with you then! https://darksucks.com/products/quark-qk16l-mkiii-slate-blue-...

Iulioh3• 2 years ago

I think that's problematic from a power consumption point of view (and heat)

heraldgeezer3• 2 years ago

Honestly, buy a real nice dedicated flashlight then. Do we need to waste more rare earth metals, so your phone has brighter LEDs?

look_lookatme• 2 years ago

Just a data point, I have a $800 watch (Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Sapphire) that has a built in LED flashlight, including a red hue. I bought it to have backup GPS in off grid situations and for health and activity tracking, but tbh the feature I would never want to give up is the flashlight. I use it all the time and it’s, frankly, invaluable. I’m not sure if other smart watches have good flashlights, but they should. I almost never use my phone flashlight as a result.

evilduck4• 2 years ago

Apple Watches also have a "flashlight" feature, including a red light mode for SOS and running modes, but they just turn on the screen to full white or red output with some brightness controls. It's not a dedicated LED emitter like yours appears to be but it's sufficient for finding things in the dark or not tripping on something.

tbdenney• 2 years ago

Me too! I thought it would be somewhat gimmicky but I use my Garmin flashlight all the time. For instance I was just trekking in South America and at camp while everyone else was using headlamps to get around at night, constantly shining lights in each others' eyes I could use the more subtle watch light to get up and find the toilet, etc.

francisofascii• 2 years ago

Yep. I use the Garmin 955 flashlight all the time. It is how I navigate my house at night. I didn't know about the red hue option. Nice!

user_78322• 2 years ago

Not really what you're looking for, but a dedicated "proper" flashlight today easily has 1500-2000 lumens. It's a far cry from those old AA maglights, and frankly it's absolutely worth it if you need a torch for even 10 minutes a week.

I have a Sofirn SP35 (USB-C charging, standard 21700 battery) and for about $40 it can be brighter than a car's low beams. r/flashlight's recommended lights is a solid place to start.

fire_lake• 2 years ago

Yes! I bought a 15 pro solely to use the action button as a flashlight. Silly but convenient.

davidy1233• 2 years ago

I've been an Android user since day 1, but am very impressed by some of these features. I'd love to have the half-click to focus feature and other dedicated camera button features, macro, a few other things that put this generation in a next category. I'd like to see them catch up and surpass all of Google's onboard AI features, and it looks like they're working on it. Being able to find a section of a video by a vague description, all on-device, is incredible. And they're finally improving their photo app. If Apple offered call screening, ambient song identification/logging, and allowed browsers to support extensions, I'd be tempted to switch, especially since they have a clearer privacy story. I'm glad strong competition is continuing, especially around privacy.

talldayo8• 2 years ago

I'm glad strong competition is continuing, especially around privacy.

Until Apple releases an iOS platform equivocal to AOSP, there's really not any competition at all. Apple claims to care about privacy, Google proves they do.

njbentley1• 2 years ago

I disagree.

Google’s entire business model is dependent on personal data. AOSP may have privacy features that are verifiable but Google Play Services is not open source and undoubtedly collect lots of data for Google. Most AOSP-based phones all largely include GPS. Sure, you can limit what access GPS has but then you’re sacrificing features. The majority of people probably opt-in.

In contrast, Apple doesn’t need your data for most of the products / services they sell. Privacy is a selling point, so they’re incentivized to build robust privacy features. I’d love to see more commitment to open-sourcing underlying technologies but imo Apple is way more privacy conscious than Google.

I will however give Google credit for their privacy initiatives in recent years. They seem to be taking it more seriously.

kanbara• 2 years ago

i actually dont know how you can say this with a straight face

teaearlgraycold5• 2 years ago

Are you running AOSP without GMS?

fsflover14• 2 years ago

This is a false dichotomy. They both are terrible at privacy (see my other post here with links). Try GNU/Linux phones if you actually care about it.

makeitdouble8• 2 years ago

I'd love to have the half-click to focus feature and other dedicated camera button features

That would be Sony's phones for you. They're great for raw photography, especially if you process it yourself from raw.

Downsides behind...it's a Sony. And they also don't have any interest in AI and advanced software features.

GreenWatermelon• 2 years ago

Lack of interest in AI is a pro for me, not a con.

bitwalker• 2 years ago

iOS does support a form a call screening, called live voicemail, which transcribes the message being recorded by the caller and lets you pick up the call if you want. iOS also supports ambient song identification, with history, which I use frequently. Safari supports extensions, and I believe other browsers can as well, but can't speak to that as I really only use Safari in my phone, even though it's not my primary browser on desktop.

Figured I'd drop a comment to let you know about the others though!

davidy1233• 2 years ago

That's great news, I didn't know they had rolled out those features. I don't really want to rewrite my extensions for another browser, but I'll see how applicable the others might be.

76SlashDolphin• 2 years ago

iOS also supports ambient song identification, with history, which I use frequently.

Does it? I can't find any info about this online and all I can find seems to indicate that you can run Shazam and it scans for some amount of time afterwards but iOS kills it to save battery. It doesn't seem like you can get Google Pixel-like "Now Playing" which I sorely miss on my iPhone 15 Pro.

callalex16• 2 years ago

No user-replaceable battery even though that’s a consumable/wear item?

They even invited “Mother Earth” herself to their last presentation to talk about how much they care about the planet! Were they just lying to our faces then?

pama• 2 years ago

The battery specs are not in the press release, but you can find them at the very bottom of this page: https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/

Up to 33 hours video playback on iPhone 16 Pro Max8

Up to 27 hours video playback on iPhone 16 Pro8

jdlyga• 2 years ago

AirPods are still Apple’s best product. Depending on your ear shape, you might find that regular AirPods fall out and AirPods Pro with their silicon tips work better, or that silicon-tipped earbuds like the AirPods Pro don’t fit well and only the regular AirPods stay in place. It’s great that Apple is finally adding ANC to regular AirPods so people have options.

ptmcc• 2 years ago

I have the basic gen2 AirPods that I got for "free" in some Apple deal a few years ago. Was a little skeptical I'd ever really use them at first but hey the price was right and if not me maybe the spouse would use them.

I freakin' love them. Wireless and device handoff just works. Great for running, never fallen out in thousands of miles. Great for taking calls even in noisy places like an airport. And I even sometimes use Siri with them despite generally hating voice control anything.

Totally sold on them, all skepticism erased. I'll buy a new pair the same day these eventually die/break/get lost. And my spouse has their own pair now, too.

Never thought I'd be so impressed by something as boring as earbuds.

cmcaleer5• 2 years ago

Phishing email operators rejoice: Apple still are not showing emails in the Mail app, and will even scan your phishing email and rephrase it while recognising and pushing it as a priority notification.

I actually like the idea, but I worry a lot that it will lead to non tech-savvy (and tech-savvy-but-hurried) people to getting rekt. It’s still obscene to me that they don’t show the sender’s email before clicking in. It not only removes valuable information to screen emails with, but if there are tracking pixels, they fire since you must open the email for further screening. (Sender email can ofc be spooked, but this catches most spam I get)

infinitedata• 2 years ago

You can open an email without loading the tracking pixels.

benhurmarcel• 2 years ago

they don’t show the sender’s email before clicking in

Even after clicking, you have to tap twice on the sender's to open his details and see his address.

And if he's in your contacts and has more than 1 address, there's no way to know which one sent the email.

mercutio23• 2 years ago

You view the contact card. The relevant email has a RECENT label.

StrLght• 2 years ago

if there are tracking pixels, they fire since you must open the email for further screening

What makes you think that? Email message content is plain HTML, tracking pixels are usually implemented as `<img>`s with unique link.

I'd expect Apple engineers are aware of that and they can render HTML without external resources, and only then pass it to their LLM. Also Mail.app is already capable of doing that -- you can disable loading external resources by default in settings on iOS and macOS both.

tmaly• 2 years ago

I am not seeing a real benefit to upgrading. I wish I could just swap in a new battery myself once I have gone through enough charging cycles.

I just upgraded to an iPhone 15 pro from an iPhone 13 pro a few months ago.

Honestly, I felt like the iPhone 13 pro had better battery life.

My friend confirmed the same thing between a regular iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro.

Not sure if it is software or hardware or both.

chrismatheson• 2 years ago

You can. I took my 13mini to Apple paid the Apple tax and now I’m happy to not be forced into a uncomfortably larger physical device for at least mother year or two

dangus2• 2 years ago

Why would you see the benefit to upgrading when you just upgraded to the previous model? That's an unreasonable expectation. That would be like complaining that the 2025 Toyota Camry isn't good enough to upgrade to from your 2024 model. Of course it's not!

I also really don't understand what the hangup is with the batteries.

You bought a $1000 phone, $99 to get a new battery is reasonable.

I get it, the cost should be $20 and it shoulde be an easy DIY job, but it seems like you're actively refusing the solution. You undoubtedly spent more to upgrade to the 15 Pro than to replace the battery in your 13 Pro.

smcleod• 2 years ago

I'm a little disappointed they all only have 8GB of RAM, I would have thought that with the world of AI we're all living in now we'd get at least 12GB for our $1850-$2850.

nisten• 2 years ago

How much RAM?

djhworld• 2 years ago

I have a 15 Pro Max and I like it, I actually switched from Android last year so I've only been in the iPhone world for a short while.

The camera button/gesture thing on this new model seems decent but none of the features really seem that compelling to upgrade, the "visual intelligence" which is supposedly reserved for the 16 models just seems like Google Lens with maybe tighter integration with the OS features.

Additonally the 16 doesn't have more RAM which I thought they might have done given the local LLM models, so not really a compelling upgrade.

raydev7• 2 years ago

For fun, revisit the iPhone 6 announcement thread on HN[1], coincidentally posted 10 years ago today. I love going back to these to see how people responded.

The more things change...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8292029

just_tubes• 2 years ago

What a wonderful perspective. Feels like we're talking about the same topics.

raydev7• 2 years ago

The 16GB complaints brought back some traumas as an iOS dev. So many support issues arising from that. It was actually criminal Apple was still selling that as the base at the time, and iOS wasn't able to deal with restricted disk space very well either.

brcmthrowaway• 2 years ago

What an archive. I wonder if who is still posting from 10 years ago

ksec5• 2 years ago

Plenty.

beretguy3• 2 years ago

A lot of people complaining how big the iPhone 6 generation is.

I’ll continue using my SE 1st Gen with 4 inch screen for as long as I can.

Tade0• 2 years ago

My SO was using one until it started behaving erratically.

It's the little iPhone that could and it's such a shame that its most recent replacement - the iPhone 13 Mini is both such a brick in comparison and did not have a successor.

What's worse there's hardly any choice nowadays in the sub 70mm width, sub 150g weight category. I guess people collectively resigned themselves to holding their devices with both hands.

thr0w• 2 years ago

I’ll continue using my SE 1st Gen with 4 inch screen for as long as I can.

I held on for so long, but even with a healthy battery, modern apps just crush it. I'd open Uber and go from 100% to 60% by the time my ride arrived. Caved and bought the new SE and mostly hate it in all its giant rounded slipperiness.

eigenvalue2• 2 years ago

I get so much utility from my iPhone that it’s worth many times what it costs to me. So I’ve been on the upgrade program since it came out and get the new model every year. I always look forward to getting the new phone, even though at this point the improvements are incremental. But it’s very much worth it to me just to get better looking videos and photos of my small children. And stuff like better battery life has obvious utility. I’m just on my phone so much of the day and use it for so many different things that having it be a few percent better in a bunch of categories is a no brainer. And it’s often more than just a few percent!

stephenitis2• 2 years ago

I prefer having my old phone as an emergency backup.

eigenvalue2• 2 years ago

Yeah, but I have my old iPhone X for that which is good enough for a backup.

thom4• 2 years ago

Does the new camera button thingy happen to be a fingerprint scanner as well? I live in a constant state of rage with Face ID, longing for my iPhone 8 Plus with its Home button and the ability to pay for things in one fluid motion.

winstonp• 2 years ago

It's not. Your problems with Face ID seem to be of a super minority of users -- 99% of people I know have no problems with it.

thom4• 2 years ago

It’s not a blocker, just that it’s strictly more work, every single time.

makeitdouble8• 2 years ago

If Face ID constantly fails for someone they'll get another phone, so even if 95% of current users are happy it's hard to tell how well it works.

Given the numbers the SE is selling, it might totally be a factor, on top of the price.

jacobn3• 2 years ago

The fact that they have touch id on some of the ipad side power buttons, but not on the iphone, is so annoying. Face id is both great and terrible, and complementing it with touch id to cover the >5% of cases where face id fails would be such an improvement.

sswezey• 2 years ago

I really want the touch id from iPad. It's so much faster and reliable that face id. I think together would be a winning combo, but given the option, I'd take the ipad touch id over face id.

usaphp3• 2 years ago

How is using face id for payments not a fluid motion? Double click on the side button and it’s ON to make payments, no need to do anything else. While on Touch ID you have to first initiate the payment and then unlock with a finger (2 steps)?

renewiltord2• 2 years ago

Touch ID works faster for me. I have it on the iPad and Mac and it's good. Face ID frequently fails, especially if I'm in bed.

thom4• 2 years ago

With Face ID you have to take your phone out, double click, then hold it up to your face and wait for it to work, then hold it out to do a contactless payment. With Touch ID you just take your phone out of your pocket with your thumb on the home button and pay instantly (you don’t have to initiate anything).

bombcar2• 2 years ago

Too many payment terminals are at weird angles where it’s hard to be in NFC range AND angled at my face.

_ph_6• 2 years ago

May be not an earth-shattering update vs. the 15, but overall a lot of improvements. Probably more so for the plain iPhone 16, as it gets the A18 SOC, the Pro seems to have mainly one CPU core more.

As I am on an iPhone 13 Pro Max, still in total absolutely a worthy upgrade for me. I certainly look forward to it. The advantages vs the 15 I can see so far:

- updated SOC, somewhat faster, but up to 30% more power-efficient which turns into

- larger battery life. Thats something everyone will welcome, I guess.

- better camera: 48mp wide angle, 120mm tele lens, 4k 120 Hz.

- a bit larger screen, too bad they at least didn't name any other screen enhancements

- the shutter button. A ton of functionality built into one single button. Pressure/touch sensitivity, haptical feedback. That should greatly improve its usage as a camera.

- all the AI stuff. We need to wait how it delivers, when it arrives (especially, if you are outside the US), but that could get interesting when it delivers.

While there wasn't any big surprise or outstanding change, for a year over year update a lot of things and definitely very nice for everyone with an older phone than the 15.

KoolKat232• 2 years ago

They mention battery life in this release 11 times without saying how long the battery will last. Please Apple, even just a typical usage number would be great.

It's been many generations since I've had an Apple device, and each year they release a new one I try figure out how long the battery lasts, to no avail. Nobody I know has bought a Max Pro either.

With Apple, you never know, it could still be 10 hours battery life. I mean they just released "ground-breaking" features like moveable icons, something I think Android had since Android 1. My point is one never knows.

jacobn3• 2 years ago

The only number I could find was 22/27 hours of video playback for 16/16 Pro, you can compare that to older models on https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/ that might give some indication?

KoolKat232• 2 years ago

Thanks this is perfect. That's really decent battery life.

nashashmi3• 2 years ago

is there anything that says why they were able to reach this feat?

callalex16• 2 years ago

Still no user-replaceable battery even though they claim to care about the environment.

lurking_swe3• 2 years ago

You can never please everyone. Not sure if you realize, it’s trivial to get a new battery replaced once every 3 or 4 years. Apple store can do it, as well 3rd party repair shops in most cities. Takes 15-45 minutes, depends how busy the shop is.

Perhaps you’re more annoyed about right to repair in general? That’s a different story…

relaxing• 2 years ago

moveable icons

what’s this?

ksec5• 2 years ago

They said 16 Pro Max having the best battery life ever without actually comparing to 15 Plus which was the previous battery king.

system23• 2 years ago

+%0.1 is +%0.1 legally. Shady marketing tactics from Apple as usual.

zdw• 2 years ago

Finally, they've matched the Zune in excellent color choices.

jacobn3• 2 years ago

So a lot of Apple Intelligence is still vaporware then?

From [1] "Additional Apple Intelligence features will roll out later this year and in the months following", i.e. later in 2024 and then in 2025, and the not-available-at-launch features appear to be the stronger ones, e.g. ChatGPT integration?

Any word on improving the dictate-to-text keyboard feature? I could only find "In the Notes and Phone apps, users can also record, transcribe, and summarize audio", but that's different.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/09/apple-debuts-iphone-1...

peterweyand38• 2 years ago

And I would pay a thousand dollars for this as opposed to finding a used earlier generation model for fifty bucks why? It's hard to tell if this is supposed to be satire or not.

NotYourLawyer2• 2 years ago

You probably can’t even find an original iPhone for $50.

internetter• 2 years ago

iPhone 6 is around $50 on eBay

Havoc• 2 years ago

6.3 inches on iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches on iPhone 16 Pro Max — the largest iPhone display ever.

People want this? My current 6.7 14promax is already in hindsight too big for single hand operation.

Realistically I'm probably skipping 16 anyway. Top end 14 is still adequate for everything I need

jjcm• 2 years ago

Are they actually changing the physical dimensions of the phone? My understanding was it was just a reduction in the bezels

hbs18• 2 years ago

The 16 Pros are slightly taller

redbell• 2 years ago

You know what really caught my attention with the 16 Pro Max? The 6.9-inch display, with a resolution of 1320x2868 pixels [1]! However, I’m a bit skeptical about this choice. A 6.9-inch screen size is quite rare in the smartphone world [2]. Samsung tried something similar back in 2020 with its S20 Ultra (and Note 20 Ultra), only to revert to 6.8 inches with the S21 Ultra the following year—and they haven’t looked back since. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve heard some say the size was just too big.

So, will Apple be the one to make this a new industry standard for flagship devices, like they did with the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack or excluding the charger from the box? Perhaps, but for now, I remain cautiously skeptical.

_____________________________

1. Apple hasn’t officially listed the display resolution on the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s product page, but thankfully, GSMArena has all the technical details available: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_16_pro_max-13123.php.

2. AFAIK, aside from Samsung, only two other major brands have experimented with this display size: Motorola, with its Razr 50 Ultra (2024), and Huawei, with the Pocket (2022).

pwagland• 2 years ago

Apple do list the display resolution, at least on the [compare page](https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-16-pr...)

2868-by-1320-pixel resolution at 460 ppi

odux• 2 years ago

Famously iPhones and especially iPads have weird dimensions and they are primarily for up/downscaling[1] from the other iPhone sizes so that apps still look the”same”. While 16 pro max is 6.9 inch and 13 pro max for instance is 6.7 inch, both have a resolution ratio of 19.5:9.

[1] https://iosref.com/res

lofaszvanitt3• 2 years ago

The faster new 6-core GPU in A18 Pro delivers stunning visuals for next-level gaming, benefitting games like Death Stranding.

----

Hm, Death Stranding in the official article? :DDDDDDD

KronisLV2• 2 years ago

I don't quite know how the developers would fit a game like that in a mobile device. I still recall my PC GPU struggling without upscaling. It's not even available on something like Nintendo Switch either, yet here it is for Apple devices: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/death-stranding-directors-cut/...

Guess it's a testament to how far hardware, modern game engines and competent developers can all go.

lofaszvanitt3• 2 years ago

Me neither, but do you know what the game is about? :D

wkirby2• 2 years ago

Give me a new mini. I’m begging you.

vvladymyrov• 2 years ago

+1 . I have nothing to upgrade to from my iPhone 12 mini. Probably will replace battery and keep it running for couple more years.

wkirby2• 2 years ago

Same boat. My storage is getting full (had a baby this year), so I’ll likely go refurb 13 mini with the biggest drive.

teaearlgraycold5• 2 years ago

Anyone else disappointed they increased the size again? I feel like my 15 Pro would be better a little smaller as is.

mfiguiere• 2 years ago

Apple Discontinues iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max [1], so iPhone 16 is the only new phone that can be purchased with Apple Intelligence.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/09/apple-discontinues-ipho...

airstrike• 2 years ago

Looks pretty cool, but honestly I don't even know what model I own. They all feel the same ever since X

alasdair_2• 2 years ago

The satellite stuff is the reason why I'd buy it. I only need to use it once to be worth the money.

steelframe• 2 years ago

I used to care about my photos a lot. After accumulating a few decades worth of photos I've gotten to the point where I don't care about my photos at all.

I used to obsess over megapixel count, portrait mode, FPS, lighting, and so forth, because I used to think that these amazing images would be priceless in the future. Well, the future came and went, and to me they actually ended up being worthless.

At one time I cared about other people on the Internet seeing pictures of me and my friends and family doing things and being places. Now I don't want anyone on the Internet seeing pictures like that. I especially don't want bots to scrape the photos to build a dossier on my activities that data brokers can add to my profile that they then turn around and sell to whoever's buying.

So these days I don't ever bother even taking photos of anything any more. Instead what I do is try to be 100% "in the moment." I try to notice the small details, feel the emotions, immerse myself in the experience. I look for the things that make an impression. I find that a camera will always -- I mean, always -- detract from that.

I suppose that's my way of saying that there hasn't been a camera feature for a phone that I've cared about for many years now. For me the 2017 Pixel 2 was the point where phone camera technology got "good enough" for anything I ever wanted to use it for. Which, these days, is almost nothing.

benoau2• 2 years ago

Really interesting observation, but I would say there are still moments that can delight like we restored an old iPhone of my partner's and came across videos and live photos of our oldest when they were a toddler.

Whether this is actually worth the many, many thousands we have spent on our smartphones to preserve rare moments that matter amongst many that really don't is another question. If smartphones never had cameras at all we'd almost certainly preference our own "lower resolution" memories over carrying a small, cheap, lightweight digital camera everywhere in case of something special.

ip26• 2 years ago

It’s not even about terribly special moments. Stitched together, those videos and Live Photos of even small moments help me remember what they were like then.

hug2• 2 years ago

This comment seems completely at odds with history and how people actually acted prior to the smartphone revolution.

Film camera sales proceeded on a steady incline from their invention until the introduction of the digital camera.

Digital camera sales increased year on year for every year of their existence prior to the introduction of the smartphone.

Approximately everybody wants to have photos of their precious memories, and the idea that people wouldn't have kept buying digital cameras if smartphones didn't incorporate them is, to be frank, a little bit silly.

The primary difference between digital cameras and smartphones was that every family I knew had a digital camera, where every person I know has a smartphone. And every single person I know uses the camera on their smartphone very regularly.

lobochrome• 2 years ago

Yeah agreed kids are the difference. Everything else is either dabbling in being an artist - which most people are not - or noise.

Shawnj2• 2 years ago

Honestly I just have an RX100, physics means that it will always be able to take optically better photos than an iPhone even though the post processing is definitely “worse”. It fits in my pocket just as easily as a phone and I can take both normal photos and selfies pretty easily. It’s not the cheapest option but I appreciate having better image quality in a form factor I can easily shove in my pocket.

j_crick2• 2 years ago

For that reason, I bought some Fuji X100 and just take pictures with it if I need, for at least it's a fun exercise for actually thinking about what exactly do I really want to capture and why.

technojunkie• 2 years ago

I could have written all of this myself. It exactly mirrors how I progressed to the same conclusions. Very well said!

hu3• 2 years ago

I went the opposite way.

I used to not take photos because I never went back to see them. And even if I did, one the best moments to review THAT photo is when I am talking to someone else about a related memory.

Now with Google photos, if we are talking about that one time when I was a kid driving a tractor, I search for tractor in photos app and presto, like magic the conversation about that memory has a nostalgic photo to boost the moment.

Family loves it!

11235813212• 2 years ago

When you get older, the photos aren’t for you, they’re for the descendants of you and your siblings, and their communities during funerals etc.

It sounds like you needed a healthy correction from too much sharing and organizing, but just a few shots will be treasured.

rolisz• 2 years ago

Come on, my grandkids won't sift through 200GB of photos. They'll look at 10-100 at most and then get bored.

alecco• 2 years ago

Grandkids will probably be able to make a VR reconstruction from a couple of bad photos.

flakeoil• 2 years ago

I doubt that the descendants will be that interested to be honest. It's not like we today pour over the images that exist of our parents and grandparents.

Having thousands upon thousands of images to look at does not make it better.

It's nice to have a couple from each year maybe, but the huge amount of pics we have today is just ruining the experience and value of the pics somehow.

As they are stored somewhere digital on a device or cloud makes them also somehow less accessible even though technically they are more accessible. If they lay around in an album on a coffee table or a book shelf makes them more visible. It makes it also a nice way of talking about the pictures with friends or relatives when someone pics up the album.

lm284692• 2 years ago

That was fun and interesting when your entire grandparents history fitted in a 100 pages album

Now that you have 40000 selfies with silly faces and 25000 pictures of burgers it's going to be way less interesting

futureshock• 2 years ago

I think that for every deceased family member there’s one random photo in a frame somewhere in the house. We have piles and piles of old photo albums from family that has passed. Those will never get looked at again.

Photos are incredibly devalued now.

csomar• 2 years ago

This has nothing to do with the iPhone and more with your social life. You went from a pro social network stance to a pro privacy one. That change meant you are taking less photos.

This is not happening in the real world, though. Everyone is on tiktok today and they need these powerful cameras more than ever.

nemo1618• 2 years ago

These days, most of the photos I take are with disposable cameras that I buy whenever I go on a trip. Despite the name, the high cost of the camera makes each shot more precious, and I much prefer the low-fi film grain style to whatever black magic is going on in my smartphone sensor. Also, the novelty/nostalgia makes people smile when you ask them to take a picture of you. And then there's the anticipation of sending the film off for development, not knowing what will turn out well and what will be an underexposed mess. Highly recommended.

Mistletoe2• 2 years ago

I feel this but I also just google photos and it will show me slideshows from trips or moments in my life in the past and I'm like wow I forgot about that wonderful moment. Please keep photographing.

dleink2• 2 years ago

I don't take pictures for the internet, I take them for the memories and to try to add a little artistry to the things in my life.

I also think cameras can be a positive part of "the moment" wherever that is. Photography and dealing with a camera can be a meditative way to see reality.

lm284692• 2 years ago

Ironically the only photos I connect with are the ones I took (and I'm still taking) with my dad's 35mm slr from the 80s. It's the one he used to take all my childhood pictures and I'm confident I will be able to take pics of my kid(s) with it.

I shoot maybe one roll of film a month on average, so about 400 pics a year, 1/10th are keepers, that's 40 good pics per year and I remember where I took every single one of them since I started this in 2018.

uneoneuno• 2 years ago

I got a crappy 25 year old Kodak that takes 110 cartridge film at a thrift store for $5. Those 24 pictures seem more real than the 1000's on my phone. Remembering where you take them is cool

jajko• 2 years ago

You don't have kids then, at least no in kids age.

I did first part of the curve like you - full frame nikon, amazing photos, milky way in the night camping etc. Now I just carry around phone (Samsung in my case, use that 10x physical zoom quite a bit).

The stuff I can snap or record, most of it would be uncatchable with camera - I would have to run around with it constantly like an idiot and shove it in everybody's face, missing much more from those unique moments. Its not so much for me but for everybody else not being there, ie grandparents, so the question is - do you care more about you being in the moment, or sharing the moment with your closest ones. Its amazing how better connected they are with whats happening to their grandchildren living not so close to them, compared to a generation ago.

Also, how much of these memories our kids will have once adults - 'you know, daddy wanted to be in the moment so sorry not many photos or videos from important moments of your childhood' is pretty lame to me, but thats me. I still see purpose of photography as service to others rather than me, me and me all the way down.

Since kids are so active, there are some cool things like very slow mo videos that give completely new perspective - process it in 30s if needed at all and share. Completely unavailable even in current 5000$+ cameras. And yes on big screen you see various errors and less quality, but nobody I know watches it on big screens anymore.

chongli2• 2 years ago

Honestly, the more photos I take with my phone, the more I find myself craving a film camera.

It's not just the look of film which I find more appealing than digital photos, the physicality of the whole thing. Operating a film camera (especially older ones like Leica rangefinders or large format view cameras) is a very hands-on and deliberate process. You don't take a photo with an old camera, you make a photo.

This means you need to spend a lot more time composing the shot, focusing on the subject, metering the light (or using the zone system [1] if you want to go really old-school), setting the lens aperture and shutter speed, and finally taking the picture. In the case of a large format camera, you find yourself ducking under a dark cloth and focusing the (upside-down) image on a piece of ground glass, even using a magnifying glass for critical focusing!

The deliberate process doesn't stop with exposing the image. It continues into the dark room with creative control over the development and printing processes. From a single negative you can spend hours making test prints and playing with the exposure of the final print, using techniques such as dodging, burning, and masking. You can also do some crazy things with an enlarger; even producing wall-sized prints at home!

barnabee2• 2 years ago

I haven’t cared about megapixels for a long time. My “real” camera is a decade old and has just a 16 megapixel sensor.

With the right lens(es) it still destroys every iPhone.

I don’t see myself getting rid of it for a phone camera any time soon. If anything, I feel the opposite and want my camera with me (rather than just my phone) more of the time.

That said, I also still take loads of photos on my phone and look forward to that camera becoming more capable. And I completely hear and am on board with the argument about enjoying things in the moment and not getting stuck behind a camera, or worse, obsessing over posting to social media.

Everything in moderation, I suppose.

0points• 2 years ago

larger display sizes

LOL. Glad I grabbed a Mini before they was discontinued.

numbers2• 2 years ago

Usually when the Apple event is going on, my iMessages is pretty active with different sets of friends talking about it.

The non-techy group of friends only commented on the colors, size of the phone, and how there's nothing interesting to convince them to upgrade from the 13/14/15 models.

The nerdy group really got hyped on the Apple Intelligence part, only qualm being that it's not going to be released on day one. They also had screenshots to share of previous chips like the A16 and A17 to compare. The video specs were all followed by positive emojis because almost everyone has kids, pets, or things they like recording. And at the end, some even lamented the fact that the default storage is only 128GB on the smaller Pro model.

As someone who's very interested in smartphones, I found it kinda interesting how Apple seems to be sharing more data points on performance and specs instead of "useful features" that most people would notice.

evulhotdog2• 2 years ago

I suspect it’s because they don’t have a lot to brag about this year feature wise.

It feels like a “off” or “s” year. Some minor improvements and technically a new phone but nothing to write home about.

russellbeattie• 2 years ago

Only 8 GB of RAM across the phones. Still.

This is pretty insane to me. For a $1,000 device to limit itself like that seems crazy. iPads have up to 16 GB, so it's obviously useful. From games to the browser - and especially on-device AI and ML - they all could use way more RAM.

Apple's tech decisions are always an enigma.

kalium-xyz• 2 years ago

If its 95% recycled. Where did apple recycle that titanium from?

baby6• 2 years ago

I just made the switch to Android last week following the release of the pixel fold 9 pro. I couldn't wait for Apple to release a fold, they took too much time, and every new iPhone just looks like the one from 5 years ago.

I haven't had an Android phone in something like 10 years and I really think that Apple is about to start losing its monopoly due to the folding phones. They're the main (only?) reason to move to Android and leave the Apple ecosystem now.

The folding phone has now basically replaced my tablet, my phone, and my e-reader. It's just such a huge technological leap to just be able to open it up in the subway or in bed and get access to the massive screen on demand. It's actually much more comfortable to hold and type on this way that I'm writing this comment sitting on my couch with the phone unfolded in my hands.

eightysixfour2• 2 years ago

The rumors point to next year.

top_sigrid• 2 years ago

I don’t think they do, do you have any source? A slim phone is expected next year, while foldable iPhones seem definitely to be in development, but rumors do not point to next year.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/03/foldable-iphone-unlikel...

hbn3• 2 years ago

I really think that Apple is about to start losing its monopoly due to the folding phones

We're half a decade into folding phones and I've only seen a handful of them out in public. They're still too expensive, and they haven't solved the issue of the foldable screens being incredibly scratch prone, and having random failures where they spontaneously break along the fold crease. Not to mention none of the OEMs offer great solutions for pain-free screen replacements that I've seen.

I won't say Apple will never release a folding device, but I can't see foldables going beyond a niche enthusiast product in the long-term. Even though the folding screen technology has improved, it seems like there hasn't been much progress in resolving the issue that if you just press a nail into one you have a permanent mark in it. That already makes it a non-starter for women with long nails, who are constantly clicking their fingernails against their phone screen when they type.

Modern foldables have gotten pretty good at being a foldable. But the iPhone is damn close to perfection at being the candy-bar phone people are used to. Using it doesn't blow your mind, but I think if you gave most people a top-of-the-line foldable and then an iPhone to use for an extended period of time, they'll end up being happier with the iPhone.

gerdesj• 2 years ago

Would all Apple employees and 'fluencers here, please hold their hands up.

... gosh.

STELLANOVA3• 2 years ago

It's really bad even for Apple. I really expected something more than a button and riding the wave of AI introduced months ago. We can see that technologically (mostly in hardware part) Apple is slowing down and can't innovate at the speed it was before. They still had a chance to add new stuff but for some reason skipped it - Wifi 7, support for JPEG XL, more base memory/RAM... Profit margins are going down and they really struggle to make it high as before. The fact that AI will not be available in most of the markets Apple is getting money from is really concerning and will probably hurt in the long term. The best part of this event is that AI actually pushed Apple to make really significant upgrade on base models.

enraged_camel• 2 years ago

This comment and its infinite variations get posted literally with every Apple product announcement. So exhaustingly unoriginal at this point.

STELLANOVA3• 2 years ago

Not really. This is the first time Apple is betting on something that will not be available in huge portion of the market they are selling iPhone. This never happened before and Apple never directly connected almost all features of the hardware launch with geographically limited area. AI is the only reason why someone should upgrade from iPhone 14 and lower and yet it's only going to work in limited part of the world (China and EU are not going to have AI).

canucker20162• 2 years ago

Wi-Fi 7 support is confirmed - during the Apple announcement, the summary card of new features showed a "Wi-Fi 7" in the lower right hand corner.

see https://www.pcmag.com/news/iphone-16-and-16-pro-get-wi-fi-7-...

No idea why they didn't announce it.

Maybe they had a rule, "discuss camera and ai features only"?

j_crick2• 2 years ago

Hopefully they'll also bump up the SE next spring and keep the button on it.

beretguy3• 2 years ago

No 4 inch device. I’m disappointed. I’ll have to continue using my 1st gen SE.

tehnub2• 2 years ago

Anyone know why there's a 1 nit minimum brightness that apparently wasn't on the previous models?

gigatexal• 2 years ago

I think if I were in the market for a new iPhone the non-pro ones are more than enough for me. I’ve a 14 pro max and I don’t use all of it or its pro features.

What’s even crazier is I am tempted by the pixel fold — that looks amazing for content consumption which is what I use my phone for the most.

ungreased0675• 2 years ago

I wish there was a 16 Mini being released as well. I prefer smaller phones.

iansinnott• 2 years ago

Curious to see if the apple LLM can interact with any messaging apps other than iMessage. Even amongst my American friends i only have a lone contact that I keep in touch with using iMessage.

kraig911• 2 years ago

I wonder when the iphone 21+ comes out what are we going to call these things? And will they still use software services like AI to differentiate? I mean let's be real they could totally offload AI stuff to the cloud and keep it somewhat 'private' I fear apple is using AI as a way to sell hardware when really it's the same thing with a little more RAM.

indianmouse• 2 years ago

Really boring. Phones,,, apart from the actual functionality, Apple devices have started to become really really boring...

One is addiction (deaddiction mindset is becoming a thing) and the next is the fanboism (understandable and unstandable) which actually creates more aversion than anything!

While there is nothing wrong, the price to value justification is a like vampirism and surrounding ecosystem and hardware and specs are fine, but the real value of everything that is present is not realised by everyone.

Honestly people, how many of the actual iphone users even look at the photos taken in the phone after a day or two? probably 0.0001% (who may be pros who wants to make a statement and probably help fuel the hype for the company!) or some professionals who are stuck (sucked into) the ecosystem (for whatever non-debatable and (some good) reasons!). For the rest, it's a pride to own something costly! That's it. There you go... I said it.

It's like I'm owning a device which most people can't afford and I think I'm super and standout,but in reality, it's such a self obsessed and narcissistic feeling and nothing else!

It's their marketing and product placement and business tactics.

I just need a compact phone for making calls and don't want a device which I will proudly show in front of my face wherever and whenever possible... That's really annoying.

Good that I moved away from Apple ecosystem completely and I'm still alive.

Just too much hyped year after year...

That's the case with most manufacturers and just not these guys!

mixmix• 2 years ago

The iPhone SE 2016 remains to be the best smartphone Apple has ever released. This year, my wife made me replace it with a 13 mini, and it feels nothing but a downgrade: too large, too heavy, camera bumps, no headphone jack, no touch ID, atrocious PWM, etc.

Sure, I understand people have different needs from mine and appreciate they have a choice, but it saddens me that I don't anymore, and all I want is a modern (read: not discontinued), compact device that can do what a 10-year-old smartphone could do and gets out the way.

sam296817494• 2 years ago

The concern I have with all the features and options being added to phones in general is the complexity it adds to using them.

steve_adams_865• 2 years ago

I really hope next year they bring back Touch ID and throw it on the action or camera button.

I’m using my action button, I like being able to assign it to ProCamera, but it’s not as useful as it could be. I miss Touch ID.

I’m not sure why but Face ID fails for me quite often. Maybe 25% of the time. I have to make a real effort to ensure it works. Straighten out my glasses, hold the phone up and look straight into the camera, ensure good lighting, etc.

Though sometimes it will randomly work in nearly pitch black conditions. How the hell? I miss Touch ID.

Klonoar4• 2 years ago

TouchID is what’s kept me on an SE all these years.

sharpshadow• 2 years ago

I don’t know how it is now but when I was holding the locked iPhone 12 or so of a friend infront of my face I got a tingle feeling inside my forehead. Did anyone experience that?

xhruso00• 2 years ago

The iPhone 16 is only USB2? Embarrassing.

switch0073• 2 years ago

Still hackable by Cellebrite right?

They want you to put even more of your life on your phone but the security is just smoke and mirrors.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

You get the phone for speed for their killer apps, previously it was stuff like instagram, camera, chat, games, now it’s AI and how it will enhance all apps. The slow roll out isn’t great, but Apple is gonna real bake it in. “Show me all my unread messages from the group chat”

fionaellie• 2 years ago

It's so stunning the word appears 13 times on this page.

smellybigbelly• 2 years ago

I wish they’d add a terminal app.

evilfred2• 2 years ago

why is Pro have a massive 6.7" minimum? ugh.

jFriedensreich• 2 years ago

I wonder if i will ever be able to replace my 13 mini.

ibash• 2 years ago

Though mine has been pretty indestructible. No case only mine, have dropped it a bunch and has a few dents, but the screen is perfect and I still get great battery life.

wslh• 2 years ago

I think the issue with the critical comments on Apple's new releases is that Apple is like Coke, no matter what they do, except for obvious glitches [1], it doesn't significantly impact their success. Apple is incredibly smart in capitalizing on opportunities, like designing and producing their own chips (TSMC's Apple Silicon), privacy advantages, and more. Additionally, there's a 'Hollywood-esque' aspect to the company that adds to its appeal.

[1] https://archive.is/uQszo

calini• 2 years ago

So happy I got a 15 Pro, I couldn't care less about that button.

nojvek• 2 years ago

After seeing the Diamond article, I kinda want Apple to make a diamond glass indestructible scratch-proof shell.

That would be a flex.

Refusing23• 2 years ago

i feel like android phones have become boring too

there's just not much new going on. small improvements here and there..

i have a ton of options for my phone, special settings, options to download other apps, to further add new features

and i will probably never bother. i wanna use my phone as little as possible

mdtrooper• 2 years ago

These kind of news is in this site (hacker news, instead tech products news)...it is a Eternal September: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

vertical91• 2 years ago

To be honest, I think that after years of incremental updates apple has maxed out the number of "value" features. I don't see a strong reason why Apple has to come out with new features every year.

Expecting ground-breaking new features every year is a bit crazy, unless there is a new breakthrough like solid state batteries. Like what's going to be there next year? Flush side buttons to make the phone thinner? Why not apply all those additions in a single iteration and wait 3-4 years to come up with a next major upgrade? Consumers are not dumb anymore and can see through their marketing gimmicks

Terretta6• 2 years ago

groundbreaking

They need to put two Spatial Video cameras on the top right and top left of the phone in landscape, to record 3d video at or a bit wider than pupillary distance.

Given a way to watch them, Spatial Video memories "sell" the AVP and/or (if zoomed in) 3D TVs, and the perspective also gives fantastic clues to photo processing algos, 3D model generation, more.

walterbell• 2 years ago

Can footage from two iPhones be combined?

napolux• 2 years ago

My iPhone 14 Pro would be enough until the new Siri will come out in my language. So probably around iPhone 18.

My language was not even mentioned yesterday (italian)

datahack• 2 years ago

I haven’t seen more people less impressed by an Apple product release since before the iMac came out.

For all the discussion, this was so mid it hurts.

I feel like people are poking the product release with a stick. C’mon. Do something.

crowcroft• 2 years ago

My hot take – we've gone past peak camera for most people.

Yes, there is an audience that want more and more camera, and the pro caters to that. For a lot of people they just want a pretty good camera that they can quickly capture their memories with, they don't really care for the phone to be wrapped in a camera with a dedicated button etc. I also think in terms of all the AI image processing vs. just giving a natural image the quality peaked at the iPhone 13.

I think the camera button is neat, and of course no one is going to avoid an iPhone because of it, but I don't know if it's really going to drive sales more any other small iteration would. Again, the innovation continues to comes from software features.

graublau• 2 years ago

steves keynotes were better than DEI lineup + campus drone porn

system23• 2 years ago

Everytime when they say "stunning" I want to punch an apple employee.

BigParm• 2 years ago

I'm not a fan of their website's aesthetic. Looks like they let the devs do it without hiring an artist.

sosuke4• 2 years ago

I’d like a small phone with the newest screen and camera features. The phones with the features keep growing in size,

iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

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