Every year it's a new camera, new whatever, but USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables.
Not increasing the price is nice, I guess. Will have to buy more USB-C cables, though. (Technically the low highest end phone is higher, but higher spec, too).
It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
Pre-order Friday, delivery 22 Sept. Probably going to move on it just to get that USB-C, need to see what carrier deals I can find.
It's funny how they show USB-C as a giant leap forward while they were literally forced to use that port and were never interested in doing it otherwise. All that transfer speed bump they're now advertising with USB-C, would they admit that they were keeping their customers away from it just so that they could use their custom port and create an entire accessory ecosystem around it?
Lightning was a very good connector when it first came around. Ever notice how the phones are showcased standing up on just the connector? Try that with micro USB.
Apple co-invented/contributed to USB-C to address their own needs, and were the first vendor to shove it down on unsuspecting Macbook users, getting rid of each and every single other kind of port.
Meanwhile they kept Lightning relevant and useful for a very long time, which I think is a good thing for a "de facto" standard. Should they have switched to USB-C earlier? Probably yes. But now is better than never (even if it's somewhat forced).
To be fair for charging purposes I find wireless charging so good I never use the cable to charge my phone these days. After moving to the Belkin MagSafe stand it got even better, I think Apple could have easily just stuck with lightning until they killed the charging port altogether.
Apple where always good at lying err scratch that marketing i meant, snark fully intended. Steve sold many Apple inventions that actually came from other companies. Even accounting for his less than nice parts of his personality, he was still one of the best CEOs ever. Why? He thought about the products from the customer perspective.
That's awesome this is the first I am hearing of this. I wish Apple would produce their own home automation products. I trust them vastly more than logitech & co...
My home is currently all ZigBee/Z-Wave, but Thread/Matter is an open protocol that can be used entirely locally. I'm cautiously excited about the industry standardizing on it; hopefully this will mean that over time more and more mainstream smart-home devices will be compatible with my local-only HomeAssistant setup.
(I honestly don't know and was thinking Matter and Thread were somehow related and the were both good and I hope someone can confirm or explain what I am missing.)
Thread is a radio protocol. It's basically next-generation Zigbee, using the same radio protocol (IEEE 802.15.4) but with higher performance, lower latency, IPv6 addressing and AES encryption.
Matter is a network protocol which provides a standard API for how smart devices talk to home hubs. By making devices truly platform agnostic, it will end the dark "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" direction which smart devices have been going down.
I'm not sure. ZigBee is available and works great. I heard negative rumblings about Thread/Matter but I'm not sure if the criticisms are valid, or just anti-change curmudgeonry.
Agree - I’ve been using a set of Eve (from memory) power plugs that are thread enabled - my understanding is it doesn’t connect directly to the internet (ie you don’t connect it to your wifi) but you connect to a border hub (ie an Apple TV, or maybe now an iPhone 15.)
So I guess if you trust apple, you can sorta trust these devices as their access to the outside world would be through an apple device.
> It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
The USB-C charging cables can also carry data at USB2 speeds. I'm pretty sure thats the limit of what the iphone 15 usb-c port can handle. (Since they explicitly called out the iphone 15 pro as having hardware support for usb3).
The people who are buying iPhone 15 don’t care about USB-C data speeds. Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
Those people that do care are probably already getting a Pro anyway.
> Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
This is probably more typical for iOS than Android users, because the former restricts very severely what can be accessed from the connected computer; copying data is much faster via cable.
Exactly. If you look at YouTube bitrate for a 1080p video, it's 8mbps, which is 1.67% of the theoretical max data rate of USB2 (480mbps), so there's more than enough bandwidth for CarPlay.
My Prius has wired carplay (which makes the Qi charger seem absurd, although as it turns out the Qi charger doesn’t work most of the time), so I bought a $50 box that plugs into the USB port and gives me wireless carplay.
I got a generic "ATOTO" one that was on sale. I had to upgrade the firmware since there was some audio stutter after about 15 minutes, but after that it's been just as stable as wired CarPlay for me.
As far as "not very polished UX", after connecting it's been nothing but the standard CarPlay interface. The instructions say there's a web UI accessible via wifi where you can install updates or change configuration but I had no need to use it. Just connect with Bluetooth, wait a second, and accept the "Connect to CarPlay" popup.
I was in that camp, but a recent iOS update regressed bluetooth yet again (it skips sometimes in all my cars), so now I’m using the USB iPod support when possible.
This is the first time I’ve ever used data over USB on this phone though. I wish Apple had better testing for their bluetooth stack.
Hell, professional audio interfaces from major brands like RME, with full support for 16+ channels simultaneous in/out high rate audio work fine at USB 2.0 speeds.
I was arguing against having any data connection at all (and just fixing the bluetooth stack).
The only port I want at all is a headphone jack, and that’s easily waterproofed. Since we can’t have that, I was hoping they’d remove the charge port entirely.
I’m a part of general public and I agree. I’d never thought connecting my iphone to pc through a cable because it’s such pita to do so and speeds are absurd for that type of device. All connectivity goes through telegram (thanks to creators for amazing data limits, opposed to email’s 20mb no-exec nonsense).
Considering pretty much the only use case for USB data transfer on the iphone is copying pro res video to an SSD, which can only be recorded on the pro, this seems like a good tradeoff. No point raising the cost for casual users who will never use this feature.
My bad, I was thinking about the Pro models' 10Gbps maximum and was looking for comparisons at that speed. I replaced what you wrote with the phone I had in my head!
For determining whether it's USB 2 or not maybe (and even then it might not be so clear cut).
For actual use the actual practical max speed is far more important. It would be useless if you wanted something better than USB 2.0 and it only did 1.1 times the USB 2 limit for example.
He's saying you're an extreme edge case that's <0.01% of the population and shouldn't expect gargantuan corps to cater for your edge case as it doesn't make financial sense.
I am sick of this "extreme edge case" bullshit when there is 20+ years of historical precedent. We did not go away and this shit did not come out of nowhere. The tech is already there and its maintenance is minimal. Just because some young shits running the numbers in the bay area are obsessed with and surrounded by the latest and greatest doesn't mean the rest of the world marches to their bullshit drumbeat. Especially when we keep seeing the things we used to own turn into rentals.
Stop shitting on the long tail!
And fuckin stand up for your rights and privacy as a consumer!
No, but people not satisfied with what Spotify has are like a tiny percentage of non-mainstream music listeners (whether one can point to X major artist not being on Spotify does not really change that. Even if it still didn't have the Beatles most users could not care less).
It isn't about "major artists". Fuck them, their music universally sucks. It's about underground artists, unsigned, or anyone locked out the bullshit distribution model that is shoved down artists' and the public's throats. It is a very large community.
While I don’t use iTunes anymore and don’t plug my phone in to transfer, I’ve uploaded 400+ GB of Phish to Apple, and I’m able to download and stream it just as well as the latest Taylor Swift album. If I wanted to load my phone up with the whole catalog (still thinking about doing it), I’d probably plug my phone in. But I’m also more than happy to stream those shows and download my favorites. It really is my favorite service/product Apple offers full stop!
If you use Apple Music, you can upload mp3s (preferably ALAC to avoid lossy transcoding because it always converts to AAC) to their servers and stream them from any of your devices. For me it's the killer app for Apple Music. It's the reason I switched to it from Spotify.
actually, in finder, you may enable “show this device on wifi” and…no more needing cables for syncing! :)
…
this probably is not available on windows itunes though.
But it really puzzles me how that feature needs wifi. Regular TCP/IP has everything you need to discover devices on the network and connect to them. What exactly is 802.11x adding here?
I would say it's referring to WiFi on the phone side, rather than the Mac/PC side. Though you can plug an Ethernet adaptor into an iPhone it's very rarely done and so most people would understand they want to sync with their phone over WiFi, as opposed to USB cable.
Apple seems to mostly use Bonjour (mDNS) for these whether using a local network (and indeed that is the case for this wifi sync feature), but they also have a few features/frameworks that can also be setup over an Apple specific "peer to peer wifi" connection which is bootstrapped with bluetooth and switches to peer to peer wifi for fast data transfer, similar but not the same protocol as WiFi direct (according to https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/12885). This is what AirPlay2 does for example. That is one way WiFi could matter for such a feature versus Ethernet.
This wifi sync definitely works with Ethernet on the Mac side (personal experience)
Define "everything you need". Are we talking about finding out other hosts on a LAN? Or modern devices and their capabilities?
There are lots of added protocols (e.g. Bonjour) because TCP/IP alone is not about discovery.
And of course here we're talking about syncing over wi-fi. How would TCP/IP alone, without Wi-Fi enabled, cut it? It would sync wirelessly over ...cable ethernet?
All you need for discovery is broadcast access, and TCP/IP grants that. The discoverer broadcasts, "I'm looking for devices!" And the discoveree replies "Here I am!" Boom, connection is made. This is how game server browsers worked for LAN play back in the day.
Is it really so inconceivable that a phone is connected to a wi-fi gateway on a regular LAN?
Because that is how my network is set up here at home.
Why do you hate capitalism? Not engaging in monthly services, consuming additional ads, or letting Apple sniff your data in the cloud.
I too am saddened by what feels like a deliberate tactic to further cripple the already locked down cable interface. On Android, I could trivially upload and download all of my data without an intermediary.
I take it you're exclusively an apple iphone/airpod pro interpersonal relationship person.
No kids with android. No wife, husband, whatever with android. No friends with android. Just that trusty ole iphone and airpods.
Plus no iPad, no laptops with USB-C chargers, no battery banks with USB-C inputs/outputs, no other ereaders with usb-c, no USB-C desk fan, no USB-C headphones...
Like they said, they keep a Lightning cable in their car. They didn't say that it's a USB-A to Lightning cable. I own USB-C power banks and so forth, and use a USB-C to Lightning cable to plug my iPhone into them.
And with a phone having USB-C I can just use the same to power my phone when I want. Or power my phone from a powerbank without another cable specially made for this brand of phone.
The USB-C is tempting. The only other Apple devices I own are all USB-C - Macbook Pros and an iPad Air. Maybe this will finally get me to switch from my aging Pixel 3A. The idea of dropping $800 on it is still a bit much though.
If you are looking for an alternative because the 3A is getting a little long in the tooth, I would say look at the SE. It doesn't have USB-C, but its a damn good phone for ~$400 (with probably 7-ish years of support). When I was looking to upgrade from my 3A, its what I went to.
Exactly. The really screwy thing with it is the naming scheme. SE 2016, 2020, and 2022. But I love still having a physical button on it. The battery life is better with the 2022, but still not anything compared to the regular iPhone or most flagship phones.
The 2020 or 2016? Yes stupid naming scheme. I’m super happy with my 2020 especially for the price. It’s plenty fast, not obnoxiously big, just a basic iPhone
Yea, the naming scheme is really screwed. They also have the 2022 now. I had the 2020 and got a free upgrade to the 2022. The only big difference between the two is the 2022 does have a slightly better battery life. But I love having the physical button.
I was thinking about the price because $800-1200 seems like a lot for a "phone", but you're really getting something that's awful close to a Macbook in power and display quality, but with a great camera and many times more compact (which usually command a hefty price premium), for less money than a Macbook. It's actually not a bad deal?
I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
Looking at it from $/min you use the device or utility/$ that you get, these phones and laptops are far cheaper than many, many other luxury purchases people buy, such as restaurants, alcohol, or movie tickets.
It packs lot of power, likely enough to replace MacBook, except you can't really do anything other than what Apple thinks you should do with the device. It's far more constrained system than MacBook.
iPad is more or less same, except it lets you extend to a screen (not just mirror with wrong aspect-ratio), but the window management and everything else is still shit.
Neither of those devices adapt to keyboard/mouse yet, and primarily touch only. It does makes sense that they are touch only, but "its powerful" argument becomes less and less useful every release. It may mean different to someone else who plays games, or benefits from Machine Learning things that the phone can perform more each release just because of added power.
> I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
I did drop $3.5k on my M1 Max MBP though and have zero regrets. And I plan on keeping it for 8-10 years. My previous laptop was a 2011 MacBook Pro which lasted about that long.
I just haven't ever spent more than ~$450 on a phone so far. The lag and the battery life on my current phone is starting to get pretty annoying. I might end up buying if it is a significantly better experience.
I went from 3a to a pixel 5 on backmarket, it's a great upgrade and doesn't really sacrifice anything. I am still waiting now for a new pixel, but even the 7/8 don't look interesting enough.
I object, sir! The Magic Trackpad is an outstanding peripheral and I will not have its honour besmirched on this fine platform.
The Magic Keyboard is what it is, which is a perfectly decent keyboard for mainstream users. I like it because it keeps the typing feel consistent between desktop and laptop. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was writing a novel or into competitive gaming, but I don't, so I like it.
The Magic Mouse is an abomination. Not because the charging port location, sure it looks funny, but it's actually not an issue in real life. The actual problem is it's an ergonomic catastrophe. (Which is par for the course with Apple. In its 40+ year history, Apple has never once made a legitimately good mouse.)
Good sir, I withdraw my complaint of the "Magic Trackpad" because I feel no true animosity toward it. I have one of them, but have struggled to find a use for it.
But the "Magic Keyboard" is trash because the "butterfly" keyboard is trash, visited by the hack Jony Ive upon Apple customers for five inexcusable years. Sure, it's consistent with Apple laptops of the era, but if I could wade through shit all day every day for the sake of consistency... I wouldn't.
Even the current Apple keyboards don't approach the quality of the aluminum era; the time when the little Bluetooth one had the curved back edge where the batteries went. I'm typing on a full-sized aluminum desktop Apple keyboard of that era right now. These were the peak of modern Apple (and, I think, chiclet) keyboards in general.
It's sad what people accept for keyboard quality now. I totally understand the resurgence of mechanical keyboards, which are nothing but normal-quality keyboards of yesteryear.
Anyway, we're mostly in agreement here. I just think Apple should give up on the peripherals game, because they're singularly bad at it.
Oh yeah, we didn't even mention the Pencil that you were (are?) supposed to recharge by jamming it endwise into a port and have it sticking out the whole time...
I agree that the aluminium wired extended keyboard (A1243) is peak Apple keyboard and for over 15 years I used them on every device I owned, including Windows PCs. The Magic Keyboard isn't as good, but honestly I perform authentications often enough that integrated Touch ID is worth the marginal (IMHO) downgrade in key travel.
I have a post-butterfly MBP and I too find the built-in Touch ID great. I thought it would be a gimmick, but I use it all the time. Touch ID is one of the big reasons I won't get rid of my original iPhone SE (with the headphone jack right behind it).
But the continued lack of a real Delete key on Apple's laptops is annoying as shit. It has always been stupid, because everybody else manages to put a Delete key on their keyboards no matter how small. But when the Eject key became obsolete, the failure to put a Delete key on every keyboard just proved that Apple hasn't abandoned the infantile pettiness that has marked a lot of its history.
Thanks! But actually... you can't. Apple put a HARDWARE delay on the Eject button. Another WTF move from Apple. Were people being killed by accidental CD ejections?
Regardless of the reason, Apple (per its M.O.) implemented a ridiculously complicated and crippling "solution" instead of simply making Eject a secondary function on some other key... like a Delete key.
So I have always had to use F12 for Delete (via Karabiner).
That's insane. And it's indicative of the Apple approach to computing: do things exactly the way Apple wants and you'll have a brilliant time. (This is my approach when it comes to providing tech support for family. I steer them towards being model Apple citizens and they get great outcomes.)
I like the gestures on the magic mouse, especially the left/right scrolling. I use a Logitech MX Master at home and scrolling side to side never works well for me.
For ergonomics, both are seem to be fine for the way I hold my mouse.
God damn, it’s amazing they get away selling those. They spend so much effort on their software ux but their components for humans to interact with it are dark age’s torture devices from an ergonomics perspective. From a QoL perspective few things are more important.
Seriously. I joined Apple after they acquired our company, and our product required a three-button mouse. They wanted to show their acquisition off immediately at a trade show, but the fact that we brought proper third-party mice to our demo stations set off a minor storm of consternation and knitted brows among management. There was little they could do, however, and we ran the show with Logitech mice.
In classic Apple style, when they finally capitulated and added secondary buttons to their mice, they hid them. Actually, that was the second stupid move. The first was making the entire mouse body the button... so you couldn't keep the "button" pressed and then scroll, lift, scroll some more (because when you lifted the mouse, the button was released). So Apple's workaround wasn't to fix that stupid design, but rather to add little "wings" on the sides of the mouse that you could pinch with two fingers while somehow keeping the mouse mashed down with other fingers, in order to do multi-swipe scrolling.
The "Magic" mouse was an attempt to one-up legit mice by adding a touchpad to the back of the mouse... which you were somehow supposed to swipe sideways across with some fingers, while using other fingers to hold the mouse in place. It's just so gallingly dumb. There's not much else to say.
Oh... except the one where the charging wire goes into the BOTTOM of the mouse! I mean... you can't make this stuff up. Actually, you could, but "Polish" jokes aren't really PC anymore.
If you want a desktop trackpad, the Apple one is about the best you're going to get. The keyboard is, IMO, perfectly fine, and certainly one of the nicer-feeling non-mechanical keyboards around these days.
Yeah, I take it back about the trackpad. It's fine.
That stands in contrast to the ones on their computers, which are too big and cause spurious right-clicks and your cursor to jump to other parts of the screen while you're typing. Ridiculous.
What makes it worse is that the Pencil doesn't work on the giant computer trackpads. WHY? I would've bought that on day one. Talk about utter failure on Apple's part, year after year.
I find the trackpad isn’t necessary because the standard Mac desktop now is a laptop with external mouse keyboard and monitor. If I need the trackpad, there’s one built into the laptop.
You could go to the gaming mouse subreddit and find the latest cutting edge tech, but honestly pretty much any modern mouse will be an improvement from an ergo perspective. Finding one with a decent aesthetic is more of a challenge though.
There are always a lot of comments about ergonomics when the Magic Mouse is mentioned, but never a single citation. Been using one for 12+ years. The utility and ergonomics are great for me. The idea that something has to be shaped for a body part to be 'ergonomic' is pervasive, but I suspect it belongs with pseudoscientific claims such as using 10% of the brain.
Ergonomics is probably the wrong word to use but the magic mouse isn't a comfortable shape for most people. Less subjectively though it's sensor and tracking are terrible compared to modern sensors. All of this can be ignored for most typical work uses I suppose but what can't be ignored is the insanity of placing the charging port on the bottom of the mouse so you cant use it while charging.
Deadmau5 charging is a straight up swing and a miss but scrolling left and right hasn’t felt right on any other mouse on MacOS, and it’s something I seem to do a lot.
It's really short compared to other mice, even other ambidextrous ones. I can't really rest my hand on the magic mouse, it has to hover because of how short it is. This to me is uncomfortable long term. It also just has bad tracking and bad feet that make it bad to use.
I have big hands, the Magic Mouse is simply too small for me to hold naturally and quickly makes my hand cramp. I buy those things you stick to the sides to enlarge them, but they come unstuck within a couple of months.
As far as Logitech's quality has fallen, I'd still say they're better. I'm using a '90s wired Logitech plugged into a full-sized Apple aluminum keyboard right now, and this is pretty much the peak of Apple HID thus far.
The integration of two USB ports into the Apple keyboards of this era was an excellent innovation, which I use daily. Mouse on one side, thumbdrive on the other.
Even more innovative would be having the ports on a WIRELESS keyboard. Instead, we have various proprietary attempts at solving the mouse+keyboard problem.
I haven’t owned an an iPhone or iPad since they dropped the 30 pin connector and headset jack to proprietary lightning instead of USB-C. I bought my first iPad once Apple finally adopted USB-C and I look forward to switching back to iPhone one the iPhone SE has USB-C. I refuse to give any company money when they are being egregious. It was a pure profit play, and I’m not interested in wasting my money on high margin, proprietary, lightning accessories that I knew would be sent to the landfill in due time. Apple held out a lot longer than I thought they would. It’s shameful really.
Nothing attracts downvotes like criticism of Apple. Their decisions are guided by the hand of the divine, so anyone that won’t follow is clearly an unworthy heathen.
An FYI, Lightning (released 2012) predates USB-C (1.0 specs published 2014) by a couple years. I'm unclear on how Apple was able to choose Lightning instead of USB-C given that timeline.
I agree that proprietary connectors are problematic but consider that Apple started selling Lightning devices almost 3 years before the first USB-C phone shipped. They couldn’t have chosen USB-C before it existed - and the industry accelerated that process due to how much better Lightning was than the older USB designs – but by the time USB-C was standardized and shipped, Apple had somewhere north of 300 million devices with Lightning connectors to support.
The USB-C port (even on the non-pro) supports Display Port though, which I think can be quite useful if you pair it with an external mouse and keyboard and have apps that support "extended screen" mode [0].
For example I know of https://shiftscreen.app which is like a fake desktop environment, and the Microsoft RDP client added it last week. I think Github Codespaces or any of those services could probably make a pretty usable experience. Just plugging in the phone in your usb-c monitor and get to coding, could be pretty sweet in some scenarios.
[0]: If you just mirror the screen you'll get black bars and the resolution won't be optimal etc, but apps can render directly to the external display customising the resolution for that monitor. Like how Photos.app behave, not showing the app chrome on the external display. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/windows_and_...
Yup - finally ready to ditch the 2020 SE which, TBH, is still good enough except the battery's toast and has been for half a year at least.
(Worry not though dear mr. Cook, I'll pass it down to one of my kids so the environment won't be hurting while the new toy shows me which gate my CO2-spewing flight departs from. ;))
USB-C is great, but honestly I'm not transmitting data via the port, nor do I care about charging speed. Then it becomes weird that I still have to carry a lightning cable for my Airpods.Would be a huge plus if I can just carry one cable while traveling someday.
I can’t believe they just released the Gen 2 AirPods without updating the charge port to USB-C, especially given the iPhone changeover has been telegraphed for over a year. It’s like they learnt nothing from the MacBook USB-C transition.
They used to sell the case, and each airpod separately (with the total for all three being the same as a new pair), but it looks like they stopped? It was very useful when I ran over my airpods case with my LandCruiser, and it got a bit wonky (but was amazingly still fully functional).
And I wish I could just trade the Type-C case with my lightning case (with at most a tiny refurbishing fee), there are a lot of people who just bought the Airpods pro 2 last or this year and not likely to purchase again in 2 yrs
And then you can't power the phone. Real good on your road trip, while you're draining the battery with navigation.
USB audio adapters are barely even a thing, and the Lightning dongles often suck ass. I mean nearly-unusable sound quality, with weird hiss blasting because of some defective automatic gain function (for example; that was a Belkin).
Getting rid of the headphone jack was indefensible, but people putting up with it was even worse. Worst of all is cheerleading for that anti-customer, anti-quality move.
If your phone has that. And if you run a wire to this in your car and keep it tidy.
Oh, then you need to run another wire for the audio. Whereas with the ancient 30-pin iPod port, you got an audio line out AND power in. And the cool thing about that one is that it was a true line-out: The volume control didn't affect it, so you didn't have to dick around with the volume on two devices (the player and the car radio).
I bought the Lightning-to-30-pin adapter from Apple, and it duplicates all of that. You get the audio line out and power in. A cheap Y cable with USB for power and 1/8" plug for audio solves everything. As far as I know, it's the only solution that Apple has ever sold for a problem it deliberately created. And I doubt anyone, statistically, is even aware of it.
I think the vast majority of people just use Bluetooth in their cars. My car is from 2016 so it has CarPlay. I bought a $50 wireless CarPlay adapter and pulled the cable for a MagSafe dongle through the dash and now I can just plop my phone down so it's held in place, it charges, connects to the car console, everything is super handy.
Lots of cars don't have Bluetooth for audio. For example, we have a 2013 Mini that (somewhat inexplicably) supports Bluetooth for phone calls but has no provision at all for music over Bluetooth. But it does have a auxiliary audio input.
Neither of the other two vehicles in our household have Bluetooth at all, but they both have aux inputs. Bluetooth is a shitty workaround to intentional, anti-consumer stupidity. Just as almost every car (even cheap-O rental cars) integrated auxiliary audio inputs, Apple removed the audio output from their best-selling music player (the iPhone). And when gutless consumers allowed them to get away with it, everybody else followed suit and now we've regressed decades.
Twenty years ago I built an iPod dock into my car, into which I could plop my iPod (and later iPhone) and get power into the phone and audio directly into the stereo system. The phone charged, and delivered good audio quality. As a bonus, it did so without the need to dick around with two volume controls, since the 30-pin connector had a proper (fixed) line-level audio output that didn't vary with volume adjustments on the phone.
This is a level of convenience and performance that very few people enjoy now, and that is pathetic. Manufacturers have intentionally degraded so many of our consumer-electronics experiences with no payoff for us, and very questionable payoff for them.
The iPad Pro went to USB-C with no audio jack 3-4 years ago, and Apple has been selling those adaptors since at least then.
Did you know that the microphone on the wired Apple earbuds don’t work on anything other than Apple devices? Well, one nice thing about the adaptors is that they allow you to use those earbuds on any computer with a USB-C port. I’ve avoided buying new headsets thanks to them.
How so? Everyone I’ve seen using them just tapes the adapter to their earbuds and keeps the phone in their pocket or arm straps while jogging. Seems like you would have the same issue with a 3.5mm audio jack.
Speakers use Bluetooth or a lightning jack in a cradle.
You can also get straight-up Lightning or USB-C headphones. I only have a pair because Samsung's Tab tablet doesn't have an audio jack and Bluetooth latency is terrible for rhythm games.
I do hope the iPhone~USB-C tuple is more fluff resistant and less fussy about aborting charging than lightening. iPhone is the only device I have trouble actually charging.
It's not an issue specific to USB-C. There are also plenty of USB-A/Micro-USB cables that don't have the data pins connected. Typically this is only an issue with super cheap electronics that only use USB-C as a connector for power and don't really follow the spec.
I haven't heard of a phone coming with a charge-only cable. Especially because that cable is usually used for syncing to a computer (iOS)/transferring data from an old phone (Android).
I'd love one for the airport, so I didn't have to trust that the public charging points weren't hacking my machines on behalf of the local government or criminal syndicate or whatever.
USB-C to C cables to spec need the data pins for USB 2 and to support 30W. Beyond that it is cable-specific.
Unless an included cable came with a hard disk, monitor or eGPU, you can be reasonably sure it is USB 2 speeds. If it didn’t ship with a computer either, it is probably 30W max.
No, it is not. According to the spec, all C-C cables transfer data, even if only at USB 2.0 speeds. It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies.
> It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies
Yes it is.
The spec could have been written such that different capabilities were reflected with different physical characteristics. That is exactly what standards exist to do.
Even if we pretend spec writers wouldn't ever have predicted the proliferation of crappy cables before publishing it, this is not a new problem with USB.
It is absolutely a choice made by the USB Implementers Forum.
I suppose hypothetically you could have data capability built in to the power negotiation pairs, so that it wasn't possible to offer charging without also some amount of data... but quite some complexity to add as a trade-off, not an obvious choice.
Conveniently, that's actually the case. A USB-C port should provide no power if there's nothing plugged in, and that's sensed by the data connection pairs. However, to support A-C adapters, you can fake it through the normal connection there.
This is why some things that have a C port won't charge on a C-C cable, but will on a A-C cable, because they don't actually talk to say they need power, but the A port will provide some power regardless, but a C port won't.
Power-only cables should be specified to have a different connector. Vastly different speeds should have a different connector. It should be physically impossible to stick the wrong kind of cable in.
I think you might be missing the point. Power and data in the same cable is a huge advantage of USB-C (both Apple connectors had power and data in the same cable).
Third parties will make out-of-spec cables no matter what. Some of the ways that Apple has addressed this is the "Made for" program which goes back even to the iPod. And the devices themselves detecting and showing an "Accessory may not be supported" error message, again going back to the iPod.
There is no spec for power-only USB-C cables. Anyone making one is doing so against the spec. You can’t use a spec to solve the problem of going against the spec.
Where "compliant" is defined to mean "does the minimum required by the USB spec and thus is legally allowed to carry the USB logo and call itself a USB cable".
Is there a way I can check if a particular cable or company on say Amazon or AliExpress is certified? Obviously those that aren't certified will say they are certified, so if there's like a database of USB-C certifications somewhere that would be super helpful (particularly if it includes all the misc. stuff about USB-C that fall through the cracks like data rate, PD, supported voltages, etc.).
read the reviews? if a cable doesn't work, it'll get flagged pretty damn quickly. i've bought plenty of dirt cheap USB-C cables off amazon and they've all worked fine.
you might get a charge-only cable bundled with some sketchy usb-c accessory. if you do, throw it out. but any standalone cable sold as a cable will do data transfer. the USB-C cables that only carry power and not data is an imaginary problem.
Didn't mean to give the impression that I'm worried about USB-C cables that are power only, that is indeed an imaginary problem.
It's moreso things like PD, is it 480Mbits or is it 5Gbit or is it 10 or 20 or 40. What's the voltages, does it support PD 2.0 oh wait is it 3.0 or 3.1?
To be fair, it's been a number of years since I've tried to purchase cables, so perhaps just grabbing the Anker result at the top will net you most of these features. I just remember having to dig and not getting clear answers one way or another which is the spirit of my question.
i don't have any devices that require 40Gbit, so i can't speak to that. but in my experience, buying the cheapest cable off amazon will reliably give me 20gbit, and will charge all my devices at full speed (i don't know if it's PD2 or 3.0 or 3.1, but i do know that devices pull more power from my 100W charger than my 60W charger)
in practice, in my daily life, all USB C cables work the same. a couple years ago i got one bundled with a device that didn't support some feature, and so i put it in the garbage. problem solved. since then, all my cables work all the time in whatever device i plug them into.
This has always been possible with USB, its not anything specific to the USB-C spec. I have several power-only USB cables, in fact I even have a few USB-A to barrel cables.
not their computers, also Apple usually pushes changes forward, not backwards, in this case using lightning they just diverged from micro USB, and probably now most people have USB-C chargers
I have a feeling that he wasn't carrying the USB-C cable because he expected some kind of guerilla-connector-change suddenly on the iPhone in his pocket, but it is being used with another device.
Even crazier - outside US its massively easier to find usbc cable compared to lightning. I hope those frequent days when some (usually the same but now always) colleague is running desperately around the office interrupting everybody looking for one will be finally over.
I don't understand this. When traveling internationally I've never had a problem locating a Lightning cable.
Though I have to mention, you shouldn't really shop for cables when you're traveling and need a new one. First stop by the front desk, they usually have a huge pile of charging cables people have left behind.
Anyone who has worked in an office outside of the USA has experienced the annoying iphone user asking everyone for a cable to charge his phone because he lost/broke/forgot it.
And not all the offices are close to a shop selling those kind of things nor do these persons feel they might be better off going shopping for one directly instead of disrupting a non negligible amount of workers.
I don't even know why people have to charge their phone midday and can't wait. Even when I am going out and extending the night until dawn, I usually have battery left until I go to bed.
But if you know you won't need to charge them simultaneously, then you can only carry one cable.
For instance, I'm happy that my new laptop can charge on usb-c, so now I don't need you bring a charger for my switch and a different one for my laptop. I just take the smallest one and charge my laptop and switch with it (but not at the same time). I'm happy to know that I will be able to ditch the lightning cable for my next apple smartphone and only keep a single cable for my three devices.
The Pro model being able to record video directly to an external USB-C stick/hard drive is such a killer feature for anyone doing content creation, and easily the biggest reason to pick the Pro over the base model. This is the first time an iPhone has ever had extendable storage like this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it called out much everywhere.
Every iPhone with USB C has DisplayPort alternate mode, it was not particularly hard to do because all these Apple Axx SoC have a DisplayPort output just in case it lands in an Apple TV later.
Good to know. I tried hooking on an old(er) iPad with USB-C to a docking station. It mirrored the screen to another monitor but did not give me an extended desktop. After researching, I learned this was called Apple Studio Display, a feature that comes in iPads released the following year of the iPad I had.
I hope your assumption is correct and they added this, including the mouse and keyboard capability.
I may get accused of being an Apple fan for this, but this is why I dread USB-C. My lightening cables always charge and have data. Having to care about this is a pain.
Why does everyone like usb-c? It is inferior to lightning. With usb-c, the connector on the device can break or come loose (male), with lightning the male connector is on the cable, so easier to replace and maintain long term!
Because having a decent, workable standard is better than having a mess of incompatible cables. I can't wait until we're done with lightning. In almost all of our cables, it's not the connector that dies anyway, it's where the cable flexes at the connector attachment.
I never understood why people say things like this and then turn around and shit on the apple laptops for using usb-c for everything.
I don't think people earnestly and legitimately think usb-c should be used for everything, and the cost of doing so is incredibly high (despite it being rather convenient if all your cables are $25 10gbps/240w 3-meter cables or whatever), it's just a convenient wedge for android fans to argue against iphone.
again, ask those same people what they think of the usb-c philosophy on macbooks and boy you're gonna get an earful. the common factor is always "this guy really hates apple" not "this guy really likes usb-c". they never do, when the chips are down.
Well, in the case of the person you're talking to, I'm typing my response on an M1 Macbook Pro. It's the best damn laptop I've ever owned. Three USB-C ports and I'm happy as a clam (in large part because it _also_ has an HDMI port).
I do have to use USB-C to A adapters now and then, mostly for dealing with embedded systems work, but it's not a big deal - almost all of that happens at my desk anyway.
USB-C has a real pain point when it comes to cable compatibility. It's _not_ a panacea. But those are mostly problems I encounter on bigger computers, such as "oh, my 2TB external SSD seems really slow", and not problems I encounter on my phone. I use a Pixel phone for historical reasons and I love that I can use the same charger and cable to charge my phone and my MBP. My wife has an iPhone, an MBP, and an iPad Pro. Her phone is the only device that needs lightning still. Good riddance!
There's a distinction between "everything should have a USB-C port" and "a laptop should have only USB-C ports."
I do have a (non-Apple) USB-C only laptop for work currently and... while I'd like a handful of other ports directly on there from time to time, it's kind of a marvel how much of a "dock" situation you get out of a single USB-C port and a cheap hub with PD passthrough. One plug and I have mouse, keyboard, monitor, plus more, and it works fine on Linux, the same exact thing can get plugged into a Mac if I occasionally use one and have all the same features... it's pretty great.
That's my point, the connector dying is a big deal, so planned obsolescence is easier with usb-c!
They should have just included a usb-c adapter. Unlike PC peripherals, phone chargers get plugged/unplugged many times every day. It's very easy with android phones for the connector stick thingy on the phone to get loose or damaged.
This feels like a government sponsored enshitification.
Why can't people just get android and let apple be. Why do some people get to force consumer standards other consumers don't like. Android can run on any type id purpose built mobile device.
So long as they are not being anti-competitive, who cares if apple uses PoE to charge phones even lol. Leave my capitialism alone!
I've been using usb-c for a few years on all my critical devices (phone, computer , tablet, raspi) and in all possible situations (car, desk, night stand, power bank) and never had an issue with the connector.
I'm sure it happens to some people but it can't be a big issue or I (as the "IT-guy") would have heard about it.
Currently my phone charges mostly with the second notebook charger I got from work or one of those cheapish Anker PD bricks.
Anegdotal evidence, but all my USB-C phones (three of them) so far have had the connector fail after 2-3 years of use, and it's not due to lint and dust in the port. Cable doesn't click into the port and falls out on its own.
I think we're all "IT guy" on HN. You are thinking with a survivor's bias. I use to have this problem with android all the time especially when I traveled
In Lightning, the springs are in the device and the pads are on the cable. With USB-C, the springs are in the cable, and the pads are in the device. There are different failure modes for the springs failing vs the tongue that the pads are on failing. One approach is not universally better than the other.
Proper cables, yes, but generally a proper cable works with improper stuff attached to it. You can charge your iPhone and the dubious ebay air freshener or whatever with a proper cable.
If you have two different connectors you invariably need at least two proper cables.
I dropped $1400+ on iPhone 14 (with the apple care thing), but TBH I was disappointed, iOS/iPhone used to be ahead of Android in terms of OS and usability.
Now it just felt like the hardware is wasted on iOS.
I still have the old Android phone, and instinctively use that rather than dealing with iOS. Next device is definitely going to be an android.
its $799. Also if you are an apple fanboy you probably have a 13 or 14 which you can trade in to bring your total price to <$400. Not a crazy tab for something you use 40 times a day.
Is there a reason why Apple have never offered induction charging? Isn't that the best way to charge a phone? We completely avoid the wearing out of the port itself, potentially avoiding repairs and extending its lifetime if spare USB charging boards are no longer available. I'm wondering why every single phone hasn't it.
What do you mean? iPhones support „magsafe 2“ since 2017 (?) and Qhi-Charging since forever. And no, there is no „general best“ - you at least have to deal with the energy that is lost through induction.
You mean wireless charging? My iPhone 11 does it, and I'm pretty sure all of the subsequent ones do as well. Maybe not on the SE. I think the 10 might have even supported it.
iPhone 8 and later support inductive charging. But it's not perfect - my wife's phone was melted by a third-party inductive charging pad that was intended for use with iPhones.
It's pretty wild that Apple has held prices down the last few years in the face of elevated inflation. I decided to calculate the inflation-adjusted price of every iPhone ever, and the 15 line are some of the most affordable (in 2023 dollars).
But the take aways are:
- iPhone 15 is cheapest base model since the OG iPhone in 2007
- 15 Plus is cheapest large iPhone ever
- 15 Pro is cheapest pro ever (and $250 cheaper than the first Pro model, the iPhone X).
The cost of inputs has gone down. What has happened to the cost of storage and RAM (both commodities, I assume) over the last several years? They're still shipping "Pro" iPhones — that cost as much as a computer — with 128GB. That's one way to keep costs down, and to goose the demand for Apple's iCloud backup service.
If people back up most of what’s on their phones, won’t people with more storage also want more space for backups? What things in your mind (other than apps/games) would take up a lot of space on a phone and not be backed up? Or do you suppose they wouldn’t be backed up to iCloud?
People have lots of photos/videos, and when your phone runs out of space, it kindly prompts you to buy iCloud storage. I have several family members who have done this, without understanding what it really meant.
If they understood what the backup was, would they want to pay for it? My guess here is that most people do want the backups and so the on-device storage doesn’t matter that much for photos. Maybe people want to use google photos and avoid iCloud backups and that requires more storage on device? I don’t know about that
The point of this thread is that storage costs have gone down, and Apple has maintained its nominal prices by being chintzy with the onboard storage. Whether it's good for Apple to be paternalistic by pushing iCloud on people is a separate issue. Someone who already backs up to a computer doesn't need it, but is confused by the messages that appear when their phone fills up.
Also note that photos/videos taken on new phones are much, much larger than on older phones, effectively meaning that you can store way fewer photos/videos than before.
FWIW I tried to restore my iPhone backup from my Mac last week, and it totally failed. If I hadn't had iCloud, I'd be SOL.
(This is not a defence of Apple btw - it's unforgivable that they lock down the phone so you can only use their backup feature, and it doesn't actually work).
“One is none, two is one” when it comes to backups. If you have a service like Microsoft 365, OneDrive comes with 1TB of data and can backup photos. You can also use Google and Amazon. There’s even option like Nextcloud and Owncloud for a self hosted solution.
I do have back up of the photos and videos, but the rest of the phone can only be backed up using iCloud or Finder/iTunes on Windows. Both methods are actually impossible to test without a spare phone.
Yes it was. I've kept it in case there is some way to fix/restore it in future, but since I had all the important photos/videos on iCloud, I don't really have a pressing need.
For whoever is downvoting me, not sure why. You can get a storage plan for $1/month for 200GB and 2TB for $10. Not sure how you could possibly compare that to the price of the phone, that would take decades to break even.
>iCloud is very inexpensive relatively speaking. And even the smallest plans have a very large amount of storage.
No, 50GB is not "very large". It's far smaller than iPhone storage, which means people filling up their phones (usually with photos) can't use this plan.
>You can get a storage plan for $1/month for 200GB and 2TB for $10.
No, the 200GB plan is $3/per month not $1.
Also, iCloud is lacking a lot of features that other could services have, such as file versioning or any kind of ransomware protection, block-level sync, cross platform sharing features, and many others.
iCloud also happens to be the only cloud service that ever managed to lose some of my data.
The only thing iCloud has going for it is privileged integration with Apple devices.
I wasn't assuming that either. I was just pointing out that I'm not impressed that their prices haven't gone up in an inflationary period, since some of the inputs for these devices have gone down in price (presumably by a lot).
The iPhone is improving less and less generationally and faces stiff competition. Regarding the regular iPhone, I haven't seen Apple be this far back in display tech in such an expensive product since 2017 when the MacBook Air was still using a 1440x900 display.
The pricing of the 15 pro is pretty remarkable to me considering apple is paying for titanium and 3nm silicon this time around. It's also interesting how Apple has knocked down the price of the Pro and SE models every generation.
I maintain that there’s no such thing as a true exponential function in the actual physical universe. Every one of them is a sigmoid function in disguise, that you may or may not be in the early phase of.
Nobody is comparing the cost of an iPhone in the US to the cost of land in East Africa. They're comparing the cost of buying an iPhone in East Africa to land in East Africa.
Different places have different costs of living, and many consumer goods and services adjust to that in different markets. Apple is notorious for setting international price points insanely high relative relative to local price points.
Are apple prices insanely higher compared to other brands offering exactly same product? Not sure about East Africa, but quick check for South Africa shows that Toyota RAV4 (+30%)[1] or PS5 (+23%)[2] prices are adjusted up from the US counterparts.
Same in India, what makes it worse is the taxation. You end up paying $1000+ for the $799 iPhone. And $1000 is a lot of money. You can live a comfortable life in a tier 2 city with $500 a month. PPP adjusted, $1000 in US is around $4000 in India.
In fact, someone proved that it is sometimes cheaper to fly to and back from Dubai and buy a pro model from there than buying it directly in India.
Another perspective is that apple managed to keep prices more or less at the same level, while it has become more and more a medium-range product: there’s not even the current chip anymore and only USB2.0
Right? Considering USB-C and the fact that they moved most of the pro features into the base model it seems like a great time to upgrade from an older model.
I found myself reading your post, then was like, "Oh hey I know someone who came to this conclusion already... oh shit, they're linking to PerfectRec? Oh shit, I think it's Wally on HN!"
Hah :) I was a senior/staff engineer at a startup where Wally was head of marketing and Joe was co-founder. We all worked together for several years before a successful exit. PerfectRec is their new thing and I was pleasantly surprised to see them in this thread!
Not true. Apple is super disciplined about profit margins. Each business has to be sustainable on its own and each product sells with a hefty margin or is doesn't make the cut.
What does similar specs mean? Just looking at cpu for the first set of results I found[1], one has to go back to the iPhone 11 (released 2019) to find one performing worse than a non-iPhone. Results are closer for multicore and maybe the comparison/benchmark I found was bad for one reason or another, or maybe you mean other specs like the size/weight or cameras.
I may be an odd on out here, but I'm not a fan of the move to USB-C. I don't care about data speeds or charging speeds. I don't even care about durability of the cable as they can be replaced. I care about durability of the charging port on the device and every USB-C device I've ever owned has become "loose" over time. This includes my iPad Mini, so I don't believe Apples has found a solution to this.
Meanwhile, I may have had to replace cables for my older iPhone, but those cables are still solidly in place when I insert them.
Did you ever try scraping the bottom of the USB-C port with a bobby pin? I find over time pocket lint gets squished at the back of the port and stops the cable fitting in as snug. For some reason it seems to be more of a problem with USB-C ports than lightning ports.
You folks just fixed my iPhone 12! It was my first iPhone, and the lightning port "broke" after two months. In the years since then, I just charged wirelessly and made sure I always have a Qi pad available (battery life on the 12 series is not great). I just took a plastic twist tie, the kind you use for PC cables, and aggressively scraped the port's insides, especially the back/bottom since there's no contacts there. Lo and behold, I fished out a lapdog's worth of lint and the phone immediately started charging again.
Thanks, you guys just fixed my iPhone 12. Which previously required me to awkwardly move the cable to get it to charge
With a plastic toothpick I scraped the inside corners. At first nothing came out, but after a few scrapes multiple dust balls emerged. Honestly a surprising amount
I plugged it in, "that snap feeling again..." charging sound
In my experience they aren't too bad. I typically use an exacto knife and just scrape around the bottom of the port for a while until I stop pulling lint out.
I use a sewing needle to pull out lint. Using an exacto knife would scare me, but I'm glad to hear that it works - the ports are more durable than I assumed.
+1 to this. A "pick pick blow repeat" technique with a flosser pick typically gets everything out for me. Surprisingly, it most often ends up being jeans pocket lint.
I’m pretty sure it’s not pocket lint in my case. The loosening happens even on laptops and tablets. The problem is the male part of the connector is inside the device. And it’s quite thin compared to lightning. You move the device around while it’s plugged in and it puts strain on that thin male part of the connector. Next thing you know, the cable visibly can wiggle up and down when plugged in.
Did you try new cables? With USB-C the retaining spring is in the cable, so if it gets loose you just need to replace the cable. With Lightning the spring is inside the charge port in the device, so it's a lot more expensive to replace.
I’ve been saying this for years. Sure, USB-C has better shielding and can reach higher data rates, but I use my phone cable for exactly two purposes: 1) charging, and 2) playing music.
Meanwhile, dirt and sand can get into the new USB-C cables on both sides now, and the tube design is less resilient to being stepped on or rolled over.
I've had several lightning cables fail from moisture getting from my fingers onto the exposed contacts and causing galvanic corrosion. The tube from USB-C seems to prevent that.
Are you sure its a tarnished lead? Lots of lightning cables have one tarnished lead (often on each side) from arcing. If I remember correctly using such a cable in a new iPhone could even damage the matching pin inside the phone, leading to the situation where it would start arcing on a non-broken cable (damaging the same leads on the new cable).
I have had Android phones with USB-C and other USB-C devices like iPad Pro for many years now, and "dirt and sand can get into it" never even remotely crossed my mind. And yes they have been working just fine -- current phone is 3 years old and still doing well.
Every single lightning cable I've ever owned developed a black corrosion on a pin that prevented it from working. Every. single. one. You cannot claim that lightning is durable. It's completely farcical.
Never happened to me. In my experience lightning ports a as close to unbreakable as it gets given that size factor. In contrast every USB-C port seems to get loose or outright break after heavy usage (including lenovo and MacBooks). I will not miss having multiple cables but I will miss the snug and reliable fit that various lightning plugs/ports have maintained over years in my service. It's probably time to move to wireless charging anyways
Wireless stuff is neat I guess… but it takes up much more space and is much less efficient. The power loss alone seems like a big deal that we don’t really consider. Not to mention that it’s not really any more convenient than say MagSafe is. I find my phone uncharged in the morning far more often because I didn’t align it properly with the pad, than because my cable is going bad.
I will say, it’s nice letting my phone stand also charge it… so I’m also kinda a fan.
I could show you my collection of broken lightning cables where the plastic just before the "meat" of the connector is split, leading to visible copper/whatever cables. Which in turn leads to broken copper/whatever cables, which are at best broking the functionality, at worse dangerous (is it?).
Your anecdote interests me because I've the same thoughts but prefer USB-C instead. I've taken care of my family's iPhones and the issues of pocket lint and loose cables have happened far too often for me to ignore.
The occasions I can remember USB-C breaking are on cables that are from no-name brands.
That said, at least it's easier to clean the ports on a Lightning cable.
Exact same experience here. I hate how USB C has the fragile male end on the port and the durable female end on the cable. It’s significantly more complex and less robust compared to lightning. Is this really the only way to get higher charging/data speeds
You're not alone. My lightning to USB-C cables always break at USB-C side but not Lightning side. Also, a USB-C port in my M1 laptop stopped working and needs repair (and no, flossing pick doesn't help). I actually am wary about this change.
It's not like lightning ports are immune to this. The port on my 11 is so busted cables hardly stay in anymore, and you have to apply pressure manually to ensure the device is actually charging.
actually, i had enrolled my ipad air for apple care, specifically to reserve the right to complain, some day, when i am no longer happy with the port feel.
Apple, I don’t want a giant phone that I have to carry in my hands. Make another mini version that costs less than $2k and you can have my money. I already have an iPad or several laptops that I can do “big” things on.
See, the thing is, the market for that just isn't that big. You're a vocal minority.
Apple needs to make phones in big quantities for their economies of scale to function, but the market for small phones is small enough that it only makes sense to produce one every few years. (source: one of their yearly reports, IIRC)
The iPhone mini is 135g. You can use it with one hand. It fits into any pocket. Take it with you when running (or swimming) and there‘s no need for an Apple Watch. Also, you don‘t need to twist your hand when paying but just pull it out of your pocket.
I have read books on this thing, because, guess what, you can change font size on any reader and actually hold it for hours without your arm falling off.
Have cracked every phone so far even with a case. But if you drop the mini, the low weight works in your favor.
Screen is too small? Why not get a second one? I just airplayed the US Open from my mini to my Samsung TV.
I have no idea why Apple does not continue to make the best iPhone, but I‘ll keep this one for as long as I get updates.
I do have big hands. And the 13 mini is the best phone for me. If I upgrade soon, it’s going to be a refurb 13 mini with more storage and (hopefully) a newer battery.
It's harder to make a smaller phone, and they in smaller numbers (no economy of scale), so they need to cost more than bigger phones. But people don't want to pay more for "less", they think a smaller phone should be cheaper. So a small phone will never succeed in the market.
Apple once tried to work around this with the iPad mini by simply not offering that model with the lowest storage, so you HAD to pay their "storage upgrade tax" if you wanted a mini at all.
Age will change your eyes in ways that may cause you to prefer larger screens. I do agree mini options should exist for those still blessed with youth.
If the iPhone or iPhone Pro could be connected to a USB-C dock with a keyboard, mouse and external monitor (or two) and display full fat MacOS; It would be the most impressive mobile device ever created.
I could imagine companies issuing iPhones with MDM and corporate credentials preconfigured. As a developer, that would be a pretty cool workflow.
I already ssh into a remote box to get faster development performance (even from my M1) - a powerful mobile device that could be used as a thin client would be crazy cool.
That's just too niche of a use case IMHO. Samsung is doing it anyway but I'm yet to see anyone using it.
Companies seem to prefer thin client solutions where the employees simply connect to the office workstations. That way, they don't have to provide expensive light and powerful computers, anything that can connect to the internet and stream the image of the desktop does the job and they don't have to deal with the security implications of having to manage a device which is outside of the company network.
Sure, the iPhone can act as the think client but you still need to provide the screen, keyboard and mouse so maybe just slap a cheap computer to those and don't bother with providing company phone which would definitely be more expensive.
So the use case boils down to people that for some reason have access to a screen, keyboard and mouse in many places but don't have computers at these places so they provide their phones as computers. Alternatively, maybe people who would like to save money by having one computer for everything is also a target audience but AFAIK Apple doesn't go after people who want to save money.
You can already do that with an iPad (sans fat OS). If you're using Blink Shell (https://blink.sh) the external display is independent of what's on the iPad too, which works really neatly. This is the exact setup I used as my main dev machine in a previous role.
Would be very nice to see if this works on the new iPhones. A thin client with decent security in your pocket with keyboard/mouse/display at both home and work seems like a very approachable computing setup.
That's what we always hear, and it just never happens. For developers that cost the company upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, it just doesn't matter whether you issue them a $1,000 iPhone and a $2,000 PC, or a top-of-the-line $2,000 phone.
We already have thin client solutions, and virtual machines, and remote development and, and, and...
I doubt MacOS, but... the USB-C port on the new ones does support DisplayPort over USB-C, so you should be able to plug it into a dock with all of those. I'm sure there will be experimentation with what that means exactly, but an iPhone as a thin client might actually be doable very well next month.
This is my dream computing experience. No laptop, no desktop, just your phone and you plop it on a dock with maybe an external SSD and GPU for games. I feel the cloud could even enable this to some degree but that feels kind of gross. It would be so cool to have something like this though.
> I could imagine companies issuing iPhones with MDM and corporate credentials preconfigured
This is already happening with iPhones & iPads, the Dev tools just aren't anywhere close to being able to match macOS. I'm sort of surprised Apple hasn't at least ported Xcode to be able to run on iPadOS.
Always thought we'd go the way of our phones being thin clients - doesn't even need to be powerful right? I previously did development work on a VDI which ran on some cloud. Expected it to be laggy but it worked perfectly.
> The fast and efficient A16 Bionic chip brings proven performance to iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus..
> The iPhone 15 lineup offers convenient new ways to charge… Both models use a USB‑C connector, a universally accepted standard for charging and transferring data
Only Apple can do selling like this. It’s clearly that marketing is at its heart or even in its DNA.
Only Apple can sell you a brand-new phone with last year’s chip and still convince you that you made a deal. I admit that the A16 is still at the top of the chips but you get the point.
Only Apple can bring something years old in the Android phones by making the iPhone supports the universal USB-C and keeps telling you about the benefits it brings to the table. Apparently, Apple was forced by the EU to bring USB-C otherwise, we might not live to see this happening. Anyway, I’m glad they did it.
>Only Apple can sell you a brand-new phone with last year’s chip and still convince you that you made a deal. I admit that the A16 is still at the top of the chips but you get the point.
1. You must have not realized that AMD does the same thing. They cover it up better because they rebadge it under a different sku, but it's still "last year's" microarchiecture and lithography process
2. Reusing last year's chip as a lower end model makes a lot of sense. For one, you don't have to design separate chips for mid/high end. As long as it performs well, who cares when it's from? I'd much rather have a 2 year old iphone CPU than next year's midrange snapdragon, for instance.
1. "A does the same thing as B. Don't you see how wrong you are?" How does this make B better than A? Your position literally makes no sense, and I am super duper not an Apple apologist.
Aluminum unfortunately is incompatible with wireless charging. While I would forgo the latter for the former, Apple seems to think the market won’t. So we're stuck with the glass sandwich. The alternative would be plastic, which Apple doesn't want to do anymore either.
Plastics are compatible with wireless charging. There are plastics that would hold up much better than glass, are lighter, probably cheaper, just better.
Its crazy that people have accepted glass as a "premium" material. It's probably about the worst possible choice.
Do people still break their phone screens? I have never used a case even the naughts. My 3gs, 4, few Android phones, 5s were all cracked. But nothing since ~2016 has cracked at all. I haven't stopped dropping my phone or anything. They just don't break anymore.
I use a case because glass is just impossibly slippery. Breaking the screen is not the worst thing that can happen when dropping a phone. You could also drop it on someone's head or lose the phone by dropping it in the water (or some other inaccessible place) or because it slips out of pockets and bags so easily.
I like my phones to feel rubbery. It makes them far easier to use with one hand as well.
Even using a case and a screen protector I cracked the glass on my 11 Pro Max. Sometimes you're just unlucky. The only other phones I've cracked the screen on was a iPhone 5S (no case) and a Nokia N73. And I'm super clumsy.
Technically, there was no iPhone 2. There's iPhone, then iPhone 3G, then 3GS. The latter 2 had a plastic back. And aluminum does break. It just doesn't shatter like glass can.
Curious what's going on with the stance of presenters? If you look carefully they all stand in a certain way, with a space between their feet that appears to be constant.
This was entertaining to watch because it felt like a parody, a silicon valley marketing sketch. The intros/outros, strained but restrained excitement, over things that are marginal impact.
Like most years, the iphone is iterative. The iphone 15 is better than 14. This is good.
14 was pretty neat with SOS. What was the last "big" update to an iphone, that really shifted the market? Face-ID? removing the front button?
Back in the 2010s there was a TED Talker/grifter who advocated a wider stance to project power and confidence. For a time that notion must have been picked up by political consultants, leading in the UK to the so-called Tory Power Stance:
I've only watched Tim Cook's introduction, but it sounds like his voice is being shifted (autotuned) to sound pitch-perfect. It's pretty uncanny valley and off-putting imho.
The whole presentation evokes the unsettling sensation of the uncanny valley for me. The presenters appear eerily humanoid in their demeanor, posture and gestures. The peculiar emphasis they use on certain words adds to this feeling too. I said this in another comment, their outfits also don't fit with what one would expect in a typical setting, they feel strangely "off" and out of place. Also... the disorienting special effects and the ambiguous nature of the campus visuals (real or simulated...or both? I can't tell) is just ... a lot. I know Apple is going for a certain look with these presentations but for me it's crossed a line. Kind of like watching one of those weird overly produced Netflix shows or something, where the lighting/coloring/etc is all wrong and fake feeling.
The thing that always gets me about these is their wardrobes. Something about them just seems off and I don’t understand the intention behind it. The colors and styles strike me as unusual. Anyone else ever feel this way?
That whole presentation could have been 30 minutes shorter. It's a product announcement not an investors meeting. Show me the products. Make a sustainability PR as a separate piece. Get your name in the news twice. Seems strange
I for one don't understand how sustainability and a yearly release schedule can go hand in hand. Why isn't it a 2 or 3+ year release cycle? Remove the need to upgrade, make spare parts and reuse and recycling more common. Maximize lifespan of devices.
Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea. Imagine if every year everybody tossed their television, monitor, computer, phone, tablet, headphones, speakers and all their other smart devices into a landfill and bought new ones. Now realize this actually happens with phones in some cases and batteries in almost all cases.
Just change your perspective to one of a scumbag C-level executive of a public facing company and you will quickly understand.
> I for one don't understand how sustainability and a yearly release schedule can go hand in hand
The sustainability report is more for green washing and a thinly veiled deceptive tactic to hide their lust for greed
> Why isn’t it a 2 or 3+ year release cycle?
again, adjust your perspective. The point is to push hardware sales and pump the quarterly numbers. Making the phones easily repairable means significant decrease in NEW phone sales which generate the $$$. Let’s be honest, Apple C-level execs don’t give a fuck about the environment, human rights, and any of that. It’s all a show.
> Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea
Apple C-level execs know this. Apple marketing division knows this. Consumers know this. Yet people continue to buy their greenwashing campaign every year and consumers are convinced it’s okay. Oh it’s “carbon neutral” now. Oh Apple installs solar panels at their shitty office, “I am buying into a green company guyzzz!!! save the planet one iPhone at a time”
Support right to repair. Support government regulations. Do not expect these private companies to “do the right thing”
They offer a (fairly generous by industry standards) trade in program.
They take thousands and thousands of perfectly working iPhones, then turn them into raw scrap, just so they aren’t floating around on the secondary market.
Apple realises that most iPhone users aren’t going to switch to android, so reducing the supply of secondary market iPhones, really helps them sell more new devices.
They also scrap a whole bunch of them too[1].
While undoubtedly many of the shredded devices are beyond repair, many of the devices destroyed in the video have no obvious physical damage.
I don't think they release any numbers on the amount of traded in devices that are refurbished and destroyed.
New iPhones are announced yearly, but the average smartphone consumer keeps their device for between 2 and 3 years.[0] iPhones in particular have extended lifecycles; an informal 9to5 Mac poll in 2021 (biased towards enthusiasts) had roughly 4 in 5 people waiting at least 2 years, with almost half of polled users 3 years or more.[1]
So what's actually happening is that the yearly iPhone rush is only a small fraction of the install base upgrading. Sure, there are a few uber enthusiasts that may upgrade every year, but those are a minority, and it's not like those phones go direct to landfills - they're resold. And since there are more opportunities to upgrade, fewer are attempting to upgrade simultaneously, straining supply chains and making Apple's income fluctuate more heavily.
I agree, and I think a longer release cycle of, say, 3 years could actually have the exact opposite effect, cutting the average lifespan of iPhones.
The annual release cycle doesn't force people's hands. You can have a look to see if there's anything compelling this year and if not, just put off your purchase for another year. No big deal.
If the choice was between 3 and 6 years, most people would probably get a new phone almost automatically after 3 years rather than facing the prospect of sticking it out with a very obsolete phone.
A two year cycle would probably have the same effect, only less pronounced.
Also, I think less frequent releases would come with a far bigger marketing push and some actual innovation. This year it's "A16 Bionic for powerful, proven performance".
Anecdata: my current iPhone is 4 years old, and the previous one is in my kid's hands (7 years old at this point, and going to be replaced by my current one because lack of future updates on that one).
The Apple XS just got a new OS version. The Pixel 3 from the same year doesn't even get security updates anymore.
At the end of the day despite what the Lineage OS flashers will insist, lay-people want updated features. Give them updated features for their old phones and they will keep them longer. Keeping them longer is the most you can do when throwaway tech is the norm.
If you need empirical evidence, 5 seconds looking at any market for used phones reflects that.
No one would watch the "Apple's getting rid of leather" video. And it would have seemed weak if their announcement was half the typical duration, signaling that there's not much new here.
Not every marketing piece is going to hit with all viewers. I'm sure some people felt emotionally affected by the opening piece about people's lives that were saved by their watch. It was just a very strange tone/vibe to open a product announcement. It's like the Sarah Mclachlan SPCA piece. It's not the thing you play when you want to pump someone up. Obviously the entire opening portion was to assuage consumer guilt in buying new about to be discussed. It just didn't sit well with me at all. So yes, in this case, the marketing was bad and failed for this member of the audience.
If they didn't put the sustainability PR in there first nobody would have watched it. Approximately nobody cares about sustainability, really (unfortunately)
For the last hundred years tech journalism orgs like macrumors, the verge, appleinsider etc have been producing "the <latest> apple keynote: all you need to know in 10 minutes" videos. if you care about the presentation, watch the live stream. if you are a grumpy grumpster in a hurry don't watch it and wait for these videos to come out on YouTube shortly thereafter
The standard can say cables "must" support things all day long, but that doesn't mean they will. Remember when Benson Leung's laptop got fried by a standard-violating SURJTECH brand cable from Amazon? https://web.archive.org/web/20160206010526/https://www.amazo...
They absolutely do. I have three and use them all the time. Use case (beyond charging) to have them right in the box is that they can be used to transfer data from a previous Mac to a new one upon setup (heir to the good old "target mode" that used to turn a Mac into a USB mass storage device), or for T2/Apple Silicon to debrick the device by entering DFU mode.
Just got a fourth (shorter, different from MacBooks) one with my new iPad, it has data too, which I just used yesterday to restore the encrypted local backup from my previous iPad and perform a new local backup. I bet the cable shipped with these new iPhones is the same as with the USB-C iPad ones.
That sounds highly unlikely, the one that came with my MBP supports everything up to Thunderbolt. But USB is ridiculously complicated, and sometimes better cables fail on shitty devices; I've seen it a few times with camera equipment where I really needed the cable that came with it because higher specced ones just didn't work.
True if they are referring to the MagSafe cable. If referring to USB C to C, they’re mistaken. The charging cable for all MacBooks does support USB 2 data rates.
The charging cables included with MacBooks do not support Thunderbolt. Just USB 2.0 data.
I do have an Apple Thunderbolt cable which supports charging (of course), but it was a separate purchase. The Thunderbolt cable looks similar but is a bit thicker, and has the Thunderbolt logo printed on the connectors at each end.
It's actually not technically possible for a faulty USB-C cable to function as a (> 5V) charging cable without data, because the power delivery negotiation happens over the data connection.
For USB C-C cables PD and passive 5V (5K1 pulldown) is negotiated over a separate CC pin from the USB2 D+/- pins, so it's theoretically possible if the D+/- lines are not connected/damaged.
USB A-C cables are entirely separate, there is no CC line, only a fixed always-on Vcc pin at 5V.
I believe at least the CC connection needs to be intact for a conformant power adapter or device to even output any voltage for charging for a C-to-C cable.
It might be possible to omit the D+ and D- wires, but that disqualifies many legacy charging protocols as well.
No, and juice jacking is entirely possible right now. It's just more difficult to do than many other types of hw attack & too costly to deploy in random indiscriminate public ports, making it less than viable for most cases outside of nation-state targeted attacks.
Generally speaking any documented cases of juice jacking happening are just red teams doing PoCs.
BadUSB-C[0] builds upon the original 2014 BadUSB's HID emulation approach but takes advantage of USB 3.x DisplayPort to process video stream to make decisions & validate the success of the HID emulation steps.
It's too esoteric & expensive to be viable at any scale, but it's definitely functional.
If you bother to read more than the abstract, you’d realize this isn’t an attack. It’s a framework for possibly creating new attacks, which after extensive research yielded precisely zero code execution bugs. Gotta print something after wasting a whole semester I suppose.
When I say unsubstantiated rumor, this is what I’m talking about.
I'm curious about what you think they "tried and failed", and what exactly success looks like for you.
You mentioned "code execution bugs" - what is that exactly to you? I presume you don't count HID emulation, so I'd be interested in what exactly does count.
Code refers to computer code, sometimes called “shell code”. Execution refers to getting that code to run.
They didn’t get anything unexpected to happen on the device. You really should read the paper, it’s a masterclass in making nothing sound like something.
In a word, yes. The code execution CVEs, especially for iOS which is the subject here, all start with <=2014. There has been a huge amount of work since then (accelerated by the research device program).
It’s a favorite boogeyman of the “nation state actors are under your bed” crowd. Which is stupid because they all recommend avoiding public charging and would they be doing that if they were siting on high-quality exploits?
There’s a reason NSO doesn’t target USB, and it’s not because they enjoy creating VMs in the image decoder.
Juice jacking tends to use HID emulation - that's feature abuse, not CVE exploitation.
The point is it isn't viable at any scale - nation states advise avoiding public charging because employees of companies they subcontract have been individually targetted. They're not going to be doing any indiscriminate mass exploitation of the general public with it though.
That’s absurd, no it doesn’t. It refers to a combination of the 2011 defcon demo of eliciting a device to sync data by default and a fever-dream of getting code execution by abusing the USB stack.
You’re thinking of BadUSB or OMGCable.
1) which is a totally different attack
2) not especially applicable to smartphones
3) very much a thing that happens in real life (I have responded to incidents where one was used)
Lastly, there are plenty of CVEs issued for “feature abuse”, that’s a meaningless distinction.
I'm always puzzled when people say that. When you buy small electric gadgets that come with USB-C, almost all of those bundled cables come without data transfer support.
I think this is only true for charging cables that are USB-A to USB-C. I have some of those lying around, also from cheap gadgets. But I would not recommend using them for data transfers anyway.
GP's point is that those are not, by definition, USB Type-C cables (even though a bootleg can still function like one for some use cases), and Apple is not likely to sell USB non-conforming cables.
> Apple is not likely to sell USB non-conforming cables.
I remember Apple intentionally selling non-USB conforming cables for the keyboard on the early iMacs. There was a little notch in the USB cable which meant that it couldn't plug into a standard USB port. The urban legend at the time was that it also meant that they didn't have to include the USB logo on the cable, better matching Steve's aesthetic preferences.
If a USB-C to USB-C cable only had wires for VCC and GND, here's what wouldn't work:
* Data (this one is fairly obvious)
* Power (since the CC wire in the cable is missing, and a compliant USB-C power source will refuse to output power unless the CC wire is terminated on the other end which signals what type of device it is)
Can’t the cable terminate it instead? That would save a lot of wire, and consumer expectations for USB-C reliability are just above “might catch fire” and below “I’d be surprised if the cable was incompatible or failed so quickly”.
You'd end up with a cable that only worked for "slow charging" (5V / 500 mA), and even then only in one direction (because the cable could only pretend to be Rp+Ra or Ra+Rd for one side). It's easier to do the right thing.
then we live in a world with extremely low adoption of this standard. why race to replace lightning with a standard that doesn't have good market penetration?
if you can't walk into the store and pick up a usb-c cable (because we've agreed that cable sold at the checkout counter isn't a real usb-c cable) then why does this standard matter?
Glorifying government intervention into market economics (and forcing a changeover of an entire ecosystem of hardware, producing innumerable e-waste) seems like an odd take for HN's libertarian culture.
Same thing with the sideloading, it's not enough that android lets you do it, apple's business model centered around the iphone as a secure endpoint has to be completely outlawed.
kinda seems the android idea just isn't resilient enough to stand on its own in the market without government intervention to literally outlaw competition with it. given how obtuse and anti-consumer the USB-IF body tends to be, this probably won't end well in the long run.
and this isn't even going into the e-waste problems resulting from the android software lifecycle or the lack of OEM support lifecycle for parts availability, etc - all of which are simply swept under the rug in the headlong rush to coronate a market winner by government fiat.
it's easy to see that with the lack of concern over e-waste, and the lack of concern over sideloading in other situations (like consoles) that this was never really about e-waste at all, it was just legislating a solution to the android vs iphone wars. And that's fundamentally disappointing - fanboy wars should not be the basis for governmental policy and regulation.
In the shadow of encroaching regulatory despotism, the luminous innovation of the iPhone was threatened with bureaucratic shackles by the European Union. The relentless march of progress was halted, as the central planners decreed that every charging port must bow before the altar of uniformity. No longer could Apple's vision for a sleek and efficient Lightning connector reign supreme; instead, the heavy hand of Brussels demanded compliance with the USB-C standard. The champions of individualism and choice saw their liberty erode, replaced by the stifling straitjacket of conformity. The spirit of innovation, once ignited by the entrepreneurial genius of Silicon Valley, flickered in the face of such top-down directives, leaving a world dimmed by uniformity, where the art of technological diversity was sacrificed at the altar of bureaucratic convenience.
I don't understand - many devices that aren't android phones use USBC. The only devices on earth that used lightning were Apple ones, and not even all their devices (laptops) use it.
Standards and interop are good. If the "free market" refuses to align on that value I'm happy for another mechanism to force it to happen. Judging from this thread, I'm not alone in that.
>Glorifying government intervention into market economics (and forcing a changeover of an entire ecosystem of hardware, producing innumerable e-waste) seems like an odd take for HN's libertarian culture.
Not everybody is libertarian here, many are pragmatic, and are not dogmatic when a regulation is good.
For example, we also don't lament how there are standards in power plugs, and we don't have to juggle with 20 competing power outlets from different companies in our own country for the benefit of the "free market", nor are naive enough to believe that the better one would just have "won". That's for "ideal over utility" libertarian types.
The EU states that companies should agree to use the same connector, it does not state which one it should be. If the major companies convene and decide on USB-D in the future they can do that and let the EU know.
Case in point: all companies collectively decided that USB-C was better than Micro USB and moved over. They did not 'delay' anything, it was the process working as intended.
I mean it was actually this forced change that made Apple finally upgrade from the USB2 speeds they were stuck on until now for this connector.
Ironically Apple are also demonstrating on their laptops exactly how you might keep the current connector but add an additional innovative charging connector (MagSafe). They did the same with the pogo pins on the iPads.
I don’t think that’s necessary in any case, USBC itself was essentially designed by committee before a single device was shipped and I’m sure the next standard will be too because that’s what it takes to coordinate the whole market. Innovation still happens. The world doesn’t fall down.
As far as I can see, both the USB standard and the standardization of charging plugs have been a massive success. Do you remember back when literally every phone had a different charger and plug? I don't see how that was good for the consumer, for innovation, or society at large.
Even while Apple could have innovated, did they? I'd say that their insistence on Lightning has been a massive drain on society and purely rent-seeking behaviour.
Startups and large companies can still innovate, they just can't screw over their customers while doing so. Seems like a pretty good deal for all sides to me.
It all looks really nice, until you start wading through the dredge of fast charging, thunderbolt, displaylink over USB-c and whatever they’ll add in the future. But hey, you can basically charge over the same connector. Which was however already possible because all phones support the same wireless charging standard.
> It all looks really nice, until you start wading through the dredge of fast charging, thunderbolt, displaylink over USB-c and whatever they’ll add in the future.
Show me a standard with this many features without these problems.
> But hey, you can basically charge over the same connector.
Yes, I can charge all my devices with one cable. Isn't that amazing?
> Which was however already possible because all phones support the same wireless charging standard.
Weird, doesn't work with my current phone. I guess it's not a phone then?
What’s the model? I’ll be calling the EU so they force all the manufacturers to support the qi charging standard that is actually useful.
Oh and of course lightning cable is the spawn of evil and glorious USB-C can do no wrong and any concrete criticism is hand waved away. Really shows you know what you’re talking about.
> What’s the model? I’ll be calling the EU so they force all the manufacturers to support the qi charging standard that is actually useful.
You know that USB-C isn't just charging, but also data transfer, right? I'd be up for this if wireless charging also supported USB-C speed data transfer. Since it doesn't I'm not interested.
> Oh and of course lightning cable is the spawn of evil and glorious USB-C can do no wrong and any concrete criticism is hand waved away. Really shows you know what you’re talking about.
I dislike non-standards, and I like standards. Why are you trying to paint my criticisms as so incredibly emotionally laden, when they are simply based on technical disadvantages? Is it so hard for you to accept that, for most people, this is a very good step?
You do know we have the technology for wireless data transfer already? And it has even been standardized!
You like bad products as long as they’re standards. Anything that is wrong with the bad product is handwaved away as just too hard. The true sign of the connoisseur. I suppose you’re also one of those people crying about the dear loss of their precious headphone jack.
> You do know we have the technology for wireless data transfer already? And it has even been standardized!
Yes, and it's not as fast as cable-based data transfers, and it is not part of wireless charging technology. Do you even read 10% of what I write? Or do you just scan my comments far enough to find something you can dunk on? That's what all your comments seem to be, but I'd like to assume you're capable of more.
If you want, you can try again without throwing all those assumptions at me. But given what and how you're writing, I'm done here.
Are you sure about this? It it is not explicitly written somewhere it is not mandatory to use USB-C. There has to be some documents stating the exact name USB-C or the designated standard codes etc. how can this be enforced otherwise?
And how the heck will the industry innovate if one or two companies can not shift to a new connector and prove it?
> Are you sure about this? It it is not explicitly written somewhere it is not mandatory to use USB-C. There has to be some documents stating the exact name USB-C or the designated standard codes etc. how can this be enforced otherwise?
Why don't you just look up the law yourself if you don't believe me? This has been discussed to death.
> And how the heck will the industry innovate if one or two companies can not shift to a new connector and prove it?
How did the switch from Micro-USB to USB-C happen? Simple, the industry standardized on it. You can add as many connectors as you want, as long as you have the standard connector as well.
Yeah it's much better for the 2 trillion dollar company to be the sole entity in existence that doesn't use the same cable everyone else uses so they can inflate their accessory ecosystem!
Yes, companies should be punished for creating superior products and earning a lot from selling them! Or perhaps it’s the dumb customers, spending all their money on those overpriced phones using inferior cables! The EU knows much better than the market, they’ll decide what’s best for us, we can’t be trusted to make our own choices!
Technically more than one kind of device, and that device happens to number in the billions, with that many cables already existing in the world for about a decade now.
Do you think USB-C will be around forever? Hint: it won’t. And then all those cables will go to waste.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make... basically everything we have will go to waste at some point. That does not mean we shouldn't reduce waste in the mean time.
I'd wager that a large majority of iPhone owners already have USB-C cables from some other product. But even if there is a small increase in wasted cables for 2-3 years as people acquire new cables, it will easily be offset over the next 5-10 due to reuse across multiple products.
At this stage it's genuinely hard to envision something replacing it - they're pulling 40gbit over this connector, running full pcie, displayport, etc. Most devices including these new phones are still using USB 2 speeds because it's good enough.
At least I don't have to carry Lightning cable and can just borrow a friends cable if I forget. And next time you try to backup 256GB iPhone with no iCloud Photos - good luck with this painful experience on a premium product.
I wouldn't be surprised if USB-C was the end-game for physical connectors, and the future was wireless. I'm honestly surprised Apple hasn't extended MagSafe (the iPhone version) with data support yet, their alignment makes it much for feasible there than with Qi.
In my opinion, this was the most yawn-inducing Apple event yet, and I thought last year's couldn't be topped.
Is all this this really the best we can create? A shared port standard, a button, a yet-again better camera? Anything else? No new touch surfaces, haptics, sensors; no new hardware capabilities other than yet-again faster chip.
Software enhancements are magical, no argument. But this is the chance for Apple to show why their hardware is unique. Others play with form (fold! twist! spindle!) or maybe design, but Apple chose this time to make the big lead be the port they were forced to use.
I was disappointed. But perhaps my expectations are reality-distorted still.
Lower power 5g, variable refresh, much better camera, moving from 7nm to 3nm, new GPU designed so they finally don’t suck at gaming, AVI hardware decoder, USB C, better battery life, smaller notch, etc.
They’ve hit a lot of my upgrade points with this phone.
USB 2.0 on the 15 is kind of a joke considering it came out in April of 2000. 60hz, USB 2.0, getting a bit dated. I know a bunch of people will excuse it but at that price I think it's not ideal.
Oh and RIP 13 Mini, you'll be my phone until I can't use it anymore I suppose.
Sounds like the A16 just doesn't have the I/O block for USB 3. They are using the chip from the last generation for the base model.
Though to put this in a realistic context, I am curious what percentage of iPhones have ever, over their usage lifespan, made a data connection over USB. I suspect that percentage is low single-digit percentages, and -- again speculating -- I would wager they are almost always by users with the pro models.
Is it lame that it's USB 2.0? Yes. Will it matter at all for the overwhelming majority of users? Not in the slightest.
It definitely serves as a differentiation between Pro and base, and I'm sure they'll get some additional pro upgrades by people just looking at a piece of paper and deciding that they must have USB 3.
However the lack of USB 3 IO on the existing chip from last year is a very real limitation. The Raspberry Pi 4 supports USB 3 via a separate host controller (the VL805) communicated with over PCI-e, given that the core SoC doesn't have the IO blocks...basically the same deal. That VL805 by itself is almost the size of the A16. Now of course Apple could make a USB 3 host controller dramatically smaller, but then they'd have a new SoC.
>It's not a matter of a dedicated processor block on the chip.
Yes it is. It’s just rare for any modern SoC to leave out an XHCI controller, which the Pi and countless others have in their SoC. Apple was an outlier
FWIW the A16 Bionic and earlier have a USB block, they just don't have a USB 3.0 block. They added one in the A17, probably porting over from the M1/M2.
For that matter, neither does the BCM2711 on the RPi4. It leans on an external chip -- almost as large as it -- for USB 3.0 functionality.
I have had a company mandated iPhone for about 4-5 years.
First year, I tried to transfer data via USB.
After I accepted that Apple hates me personally and does not want me to transfer any of my voice memos, photos, or videos, or documents, or files via USB (I don't have a macbook), you are indeed correct and I'm one of those people who does not make a data connection via USB to my iPhone. But while stat is true, as with all such stats, devil is in the details :).
I got around this limitation by adding my home NAS to the Files app. On the iOS side: set up the SMB connection in Files, hit the Share button on files I want to transfer, point it to a folder on the NAS, and transfer. On the PC side, I just grab the file in Explorer.
Airdrop works well for sharing files to other people's iOS devices, but I'd argue SMB is actually better for my use case. Airdrop sends files to a Mac's Downloads folder. SMB transferred files go exactly where I want them on the first try. The difference is just a couple extra taps in the 'Share' modal.
Though I must admit this isn't a solution for everyone. I doubt many iPhone users have a NAS stood up at home and would be happy to spend money on the 'simpler' solution of purchasing turnkey products and services from Apple.
Why would I use a lightning cable when getting data on or off the device is faster over Wifi. It's kind of a trick question, why don't you use this slower protocol? See no reason to upgrade it no one uses it!
It really isn't a trick question. If your needs are 100% satisfied through wireless, why would you ever care? I suspect for the overwhelming majority of iPhone users, even if the wired option was infinitely fast they would never have used it. We're long past the days of an iPhone suckling on iTunes.
The exception to this -- and there are exceptions -- tend to be "pro" users. If you're actually using the iPhone for video production in any way, USB 2.0 is a brutal limitation, and has long been a noted annoyance when you're transferring massive video files. Lucky for those people they'll be Pro buyers and will enjoy USB 3 (and maybe WiFi 6E? Not sure if this was delivered).
I'll raise my hand and say I still sync my iPhone over USB. Happy to move to WiFi, I just haven't, as my existing workflow works fine. I also have an old 2015 MBPr, so that plays into it as well.
Most likely, they weren't looking at the A16 needing to support USB3, since it was a phone chip (iPads now running on Mx chips instead), and Lightning didn't support USB3. The USB-C mandate was only a year ago, and I expect they probably were planning on exactly what goes into the A16 a year further back, so unless they respun a new A16x chip that had the USB3 controller, there's no point where they could have forecast the A16 actually needing to support USB3 until it was too late.
> I am curious what percentage of iPhones have ever, over their usage lifespan, made a data connection over USB.
It's actually a security vulnerability to do so, I'm very cautious to never click trust and I wish there was a setting to disable USB (data) entirely.
When that dialog pops up which asks if you want to "trust" the connected device, saying yes creates a token which is exchanged between the phone and the host and stored on the host. That token has special privileged with iOS and can exfiltrate some data from the phone without user interaction (this has become more and more minimal over the years, with the original iPhone as I recall it could literally take a full backup like from iTunes -- and there wasn't even a prompt on the phone to allow that). That token can also be exfiltrated from your computer and inserted into special boxes made by companies like NSO which have in the past utilize proprietary exploits to basically privilege escalate that minimal access and exfiltrate data from locked iPhones.
I sound like a conspiracy theorist and I should probably just delete this.
I'm a techie apple nerd and I've never made a data connection over usb. Just use google photos/icloud drive/air drop to transfer data to my desktop computer
USB3 (on USBC) is actually asymmetric signaling so you need either a separate chip or digital logic to handle muxing the signals around which is extra cost Apple probably doesn't want to eat. The USB-2 pins on USBC are symmetrical so nothing extra required.
Any suggestions? I see Best Buy has some open box minis for $630 and there are plenty of 3rd party refurbs for around $500. Feels like I'd have been better off buying a brand new one for $600 yesterday.
Can't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier. Only other authorized resellers either don't sell phones (B&H, Adorama, Staples), have a limited selection which is in-store only (Target, Walmart), which leaves only Best Buy and right now I see everything on backorder. Now that Apple isn't taking new orders there's a good chance those will be cancelled.
And then there's the roulette wheel of buying from Amazon or Newegg where you might get a refurbished phone advertised as "new" if it isn't a literal brick in a box.
Still comes down to my fault for being slow to act. I said I wished for a warning but you know what they say about wishes.
(For context of how slow I am, I'd be upgrading from a SE (2016))
Check the stores. I remember seeing old cycle products still for sale the week between announcement and the release date.
Not necessarily true this time but you might get lucky.
I will say the 15 Pro is a little smaller than the 14 Pro, and while it isn't a small phone per se, it's a lot smaller than most Android flagships. That's something at least.
USB 2.0 is a missed opportunity for bringing Stage Manager/screen mirroring feature from iPadOS to iPhone. This is already possible with iPad and a USB A + HDMI -> USB C adapter (plug keyboard/mouse into USB A, monitor into HDMI, and USB C into iPad).
Just like with some car manufacturers, if you want e.g. increased safety or radar cruise control, you also need $10k of leather seats and sunroofs; by removing previous Pro models, Apple basically adds a massive price premium to the zoom lens.
As this is honestly the only thing I would need from a new phone, my wife and I stay on our iPhone XR year after year. I just can't pay $1500CAD merely to get more optical zoom than my existing phone :-/
They were selling the 13 Pro after the 14 Pro came out? I was pretty sure they always removed last year's Pro from the lineup when the new Pro comes out. Meanwhile last year's baseline models will stick around at a reduced price.
Has the EU legislation factored in the USB-*(D?) might come next? Hopefully it doesn't slow down adoption of new technology.
The main downside instead of buying a lightning cable that always work we now have to decipher the 10 minor variations of USB-C's various speeds/power now with zero consistency in naming schemes or amazon titles.
The iPhone is literally the last hold out for USB C. I'm pretty sure every modern Android phone supports USB PD and I think the EU is requiring PD charging as well, but nothing on connectivity speeds.
EU legislation has review built-in. No way it's going to be slower than switch from lightning.
Also from other commenters say Apple implemented USB 2.0, so you don't have to care about type of USB-C cable you're buying - these are for advanced features which as it seems are not present in iPhone 15.
I see, Apple is giving the same price for iPhone 15 for all 3 carriers.
But if you check 14/13/SE, then if you do not chose Verizon, the price is $30 higher. I bought a 13 mini yesterday morning, which is when I experienced the extra $30, and I assumed it applies to all the iPhones.
Apparently, current year iPhones are excluded from the $30 surcharge for non Verizon subscribers.
Also, all iPhones sold on apple.com are unlocked, even the $799 ones. Only exception is if you buy with an ATT subsidized contract.
Didn’t they announce something of the sorts for the watch? I don’t think it’s a full on LLM but basic things are now using the on device Neural Engine instead of making a connection to the cloud.
They're probably 2-3 years from being able to run worthwhile LLM inference on device assuming they started a week after chatgpt dropped - and that's pushing the timelines. I'll be surprised if next year's pro can do it. I won't be surprised if the 2025 does. I'll be surprised if the 2026 doesn't.
LLMs are only one niche of Machine Learning, which Apple is utilizing heavily for audio transcription, search, image and video classification, image2text, video-to-3D-model, on-device search, photography and videography improvements, and more.
disappointed but not surprised, even (the infamous /s) chatGPT isn’t even half-way to Apple quality standards yet and Apple still has to make it useful, not just clever or impressive
Siri is nowhere near Apple quality standards as it is. had a fun experience with Siri the other day where I ended up sending someone the message "I'm just leaving now what the fuck are you doing", because it heard me, and showed absolutely no acknowledgement. Not the sort of message I ever want to send to an ex, but here we are.
I think the omission of usb3 is because of the reuse the Apple silicon from last year which doesn’t have the builtin usb3 IP. Let’s wait for next year’s non-pro models to see if they are really cheapening out.
The video side of things is super interesting - 4k60 ProRes is an absolutely insane amount of data (something like 12GB/s IIRC?), and the addition of ACES really makes it usable for professional work where a larger mirrorless from Sony/Panasonic/Nikon/Canon wouldn't be practical.
I also found it very interesting that their pics of this feature were with Davinci Resolve on the screen and not Final cut Pro - I guess when it comes to colour, there's no better tool.
I despise Apple products and I despise Google products, for very different reasons. Can't we get an alternative? Bring back the Windows phone! Or a Blackberry!
I had a Lumia 830 until the bitter end (of security updates—2019 I think) and I agree it was really nice to have a third competitor. But I also got it back out of the drawer the other day and was reminded of how buggy it was, especially after the upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile (on my phone I had a nasty memory leak that made the browser unusable after going a few days without rebooting, and an issue where photos you just took would get deleted if you viewed them immediately after pressing the shutter without waiting a few seconds). I also think you can't print with it, at least not without a third-party app, so AirPrint on the iPhone was very nice for me.
Definitely ahead of its time in certain UI concepts, definitely didn't get the attention it deserved to iron out some big defects!
I used to feel this way, but I can't remember the last time I installed a new app that I still use. This is much different from when mobile apps were a thing and I would find something delightful every week.
I can't understand why they invest so much in gaming. Gaming on such small devices is too uncomfortable, both for your eyes and your posture. In addition, with cloud gaming you can basically run any PC/Console game on any device provided a good-enough connection (eg. Nvidia NOW, Xbox cloud gaming etc)
But how much % of these mobile gamers are using iPhones, I wonder.
AFAIK developing countries are dominating mobile gaming for a simple reason that they cannot afford PS/Xbone/PC. Ergo no iPhone for them to begin with.
A surprising amount. Genshin and many Gatcha games are GPU intensive, even on such a small screen.
It might be because they code very inefficiently, and they might also be doing a ton of crypto and anti-hacking calculations in background, but these games are surprisingly taxing for the phone they're running on.
Because gaming is one of the last remaining markets that apple can dominate in and profit. Microsoft spent a lot of money on Activision to claw back against apple
If your eyes hurt then switch to literally any other apple device, Apple TV, Mac, iPad, iPhone… they all have access to Apple Arcade. When cloud gaming streams asset objects and not raw video, then it’d be a contender. As of now, it’s too expensive and is losing to mobile games
The other comments are right in saying mobile gaming is huge.
But, if you are referring specifically to the new GPU with accelerated raytracing, I want to add something more.. Remember that for many years now, every innovation that Apple has produced has been secretly developing towards AR!
For this reason it makes perfect sense.. Raytracing is SUPER important for the kind of rendering needed to make AR/VR look realistic
So the only compelling reason to upgrade from the 14 is...USB-C, where people are saying the 15 (non-Pro) runs at USB2 speeds?
This was one of the most lackluster Apple launches in recent memory. I long for the day when Apple actually innovated on this product line. Now they're simply treading water and only making good changes when forced to (EU requiring USB-C).
I will give credit where it is due for Apple -- the M2 MacBook Air is phenomenal, even as a software engineering platform. The form factor is fantastic, the weight is awesomely light, and it's a true joy to use. Sadly, innovation on macOS is about as bad as the iPhone, but I suppose I'm more okay with that because being my workhorse machine, I want predictable stability more than I want interesting features.
Edit>> I love how people are asking "what are you doing with data transfer anyway?" Such deflection of the principle of the issue, but keep on trying as if any answer I'd give would satisfy the question. I adore Apple products, I don't adore a clear stab at yet more greed from the company that has had the top market cap for years now. I'm intelligent enough to see this for what it is, and not simply dismiss corporate greed because some people may not use the device the same way as others. Putting USB3.2 in these phones is possible. Putting Thunderbolt in these phones is possible, though that comes with the Intel complication. The tech exists and has for many years now. They chose not to bother on the lower end phones so they could create yet more divergence between the product lines trying to create FOMO for people so they'll buy the higher end phone.
I mean, everything is "better". If cameras are important to you, you now finally have a bigger sensor that allows for 2x zoom at around the existing quality. The chip is faster and more efficient, so battery will get better too.
If you wait 2-3 years between phones, you get something that's more significantly better. I've seen tons of comments here and elsewhere saying the 15 isn't that compelling compared with the 14. Is it supposed to be? Updating your phone every year isn't that common IRL. This is more compelling for people coming from iPhone 12/13 or older.
The changes between iPhone generations and phones in general used to be huge and always cause for excitement. IMO, it's a sign of maturity and welcome that phones are now making steady progress instead of frequent paradigm shifts. It felt like electric cars were in a similar state till quite recently where it felt like anything you buy will be quite outdated next year which is bad for a huge investment.
Exactly. It seems like a lot of people don't realize this. We will never get that insane rate of innovation in smartphones again. These small incremental updates are what we are getting for the rest of our lives. What innovation we brought in a year, will now take 10 years because smartphones have matured and unless there is a major paradigm shift, this is more or less the final version of smartphones.
The entire computer and internet industry has been maturing too. We are getting to the point where the only significant increases in processing power are coming from spending more on the silicon. Internet companies have secured their markets and it hasn't changed much in the past 5-10 years.
If you want further crazy levels of innovation, it's time to look elsewhere. Computers have had their time. Now it's time for the next big thing. Maybe that's AI, quantum computers, gene editing, or nuclear fusion. Hell I doubt it, but after some years maybe cryptocurrency will have a breakthrough and we'll go rushing back to it. This is a story as old as the wheel.
Computers will continue to improve, but it's gonna be gradual which in itself can be incredible. I just bought my wife a tiny computer for $250 to play some old games via LAN together. The thing is ~1/4 the size of a mac Mini and faster than my old gamin PC from 10 years ago. Easy to cough at being faster than a 10 year old computer, but given the tiny size and cheap price, it's incredible! It's not as incredible as going from a bad camera in your phone to a camera good enough to not take a standalone camera on vacation, but amazing nonetheless. You only see it though if you actively take inventory of past improvements.
IMO, taking a look back and appreciating the sum of incremental improvements is something we should do much more of frequently in all areas of society and life.
For sure. I think computers and the internet will continue to be more innovative than most other industries, but the rate will be slower than what we are used to.
There was a time when performance would double every couple of years, but now we see around 10% performance gains over the same amount of time. Nothing to scoff at, but not enough to drive as crazy innovation as was previously commonplace.
I wonder where the market will go after we've exhausted lithography.
Except it isn’t compelling to people with an iPhone 12 because we’re on the third S year in a row. Design hasn’t changed, camera bump has just gotten worse, yay USB-C but only nerds use that and everyone else will be pissed about needing new cables.
It isn’t compelling compared to anything after the 11, and they should be aiming higher.
My notes on the upgrade from 14 to 15 I took during the announcement:
* Twice as bright screen
* Dynamic Island
* Smaller bezel
* Contoured edge
* New better plastic back
* Big camera improvements
- 48MP main camera vs. 24MP
- Faster focus
- Much better telephoto
- Improved portrait mode
* Better color
* Better low-light performance
* No shutter lag
* Turn on portrait mode after the fact
- Smart HDR for better lighting
* Live voicemail transcription
* Longer battery life?
* Satellite emergency / roadside assistance
From what I understand the battery life is equivalent (they seem to have shaved some weight off instead?) and the live voice mail transcription works just fine on my iPhone 13 Pro with the iOS 17 beta.
Unless you simply don't trust Apple's security promises (in which case why are you using Apple devices), iCloud backup is now E2EE encrypted [1]. A bit of wringing to turn it on, but totally worthwhile.
There are differences between iCloud and local backup. For example, iCloud backup doesn’t backup your Notes or Health data but local backup can. Sync != backup — without a backup, if you sync a bad change you’ve lost the data.
Both of these are stored in iCloud (if you enable) and are backed up in the cloud (and E2EE). All other large repositories of data are not sourced from my Apple devices
I think they do, but my guess is that most people don't keep their phones long enough for that to be the reason to stop using the phone. Usually the phones get damaged/lost/too slow to run modern apps etc.
Whatever I please. It's irrelevant what I may use it or not use it for.
The point is that the technology now is far past USB 2 (and has been for some time despite Apple's persistence on using Lightning with such slower speeds) and the only reason they have for not putting USB 3 in the 15s (non-Pro) is greed. They were forced by the EU to convert to USB-C, so it looks to me as if they did the absolute minimal amount of work and effort to be any more consumer-friendly than they have to be.
You are attributing malice, but they explained things pretty clearly in the presentation.
They are reusing the SoC of the 14 pro in the 15 (as they always do), which doesn't support USB 3. On the 15 pro they have support for USB 3, and you can bet it will propagate down the iPhone line next year.
The state of the current extraction-based economy is such that you have to differentiate Apple's greed (less cutting edge usually, costs more) vs Google's greed (wants to track you all the time).
I'd rather the up-front greed that may force me to pay for a Pro model rather than the ongoing & increasing greed.
Maybe not "malice" exactly, but Apple has been obnoxiously anti-USB-3 on iPhones for many years. Not only could they have planned ahead for the port change, they could have been supporting it over the lightning port.
It was especially bad when they added prores without a way to offload footage at a reasonable speed.
And there probably is an element of spite where they don't want the upgrade to USB 3 to come too directly aligned with the USB C switch.
>I love how people are asking "what are you doing with data transfer anyway?" Such deflection of the principle of the issue
I think it's a legitimate question from people trying to understand the use case -- I haven't done a USB data transfer with my phone in years. I wouldn't want to pay even $5 more to get faster cabled data transfer.
Imo it's finally offering a bit better image quality than 5 year old 12mpx sensor overprocessed into watercolor. At least I hope, iPhone 13 pro photos become a badly prompted stable diffusion once zoomed a bit.
Not disputing your point of view, but wasn’t this always the case at some level? The <version> to <version>S was, to my memory, never that big, so you were really looking at two year cycles for major updates.
No comment on whether the 13->15 jump was big enough to be worthwhile, just that I think that’d be more comparable than the 14->15 jump.
Better cameras, faster processors, capable GPU, titanium case, better OLED screen with higher max brightness, satellite emergency assistance. As far as the philosophy of incremental improvement goes that’s pretty good.
Looking at the A16 chip and the neural engine on it, I am really happy to see machine learning and "AI stuff" moving onto my phone, away from the cloud.
I can't wait to see phones becoming a place for _useful_ AI use cases — with the privacy improvements of on-device computation.
This isn't really new for Apple, they've been doing as much AI stuff on device as possible, there isn't really any change with the A16 as far as I'm aware, just more bigger.
Is anybody else somewhat underwhelmed by the innovation here? Faster CPU, different colors, new case, better camera, better battery, thinner bezels etc. Same thing we see every.. single.. year..
I'm glad they're taking risks with the Vision Pro, but it feels like the phone has become a highly conservative platform.
Maybe this is just the reality of having a product that sells as many units as the iPhone does every single year.
Phones generally are "done." There's no more unidentified use case. Calling, texting, music, camera, internet - those had been around since before the smartphones.
"New", as in the last 20 years, are location-based apps (Tinder, Uber), video, and payments (NFC or biometrics + online)
There are other phone vendors, but their innovation within the last 5 years also peaks at "higher screen refresh rate" or "in-screen fingerprint reader" (which didn't solve any use case that a backside fingerprint reader couldn't also manage.)
That phones are "done" has come to be my belief as well. And I think that's a good thing. We'll have small improvements in performance and battery life and cameras - and that's all that I expect at this point. That could change if new sensors are added - artificial nose? spectrometer?
Where new innovation will occur is with watches and VR headsets.
This rhetoric is strange to see. It's a smartphone. What kind of innovation do you expect?
Large jumps in design language don't happen out of nowhere. Design is an iterative process that more often than not is limited by what technology can offer. Not to mention cultural acceptance.
Phones will remain phones until technological progress makes it economical to explore the more esoteric design spaces you're thinking of.
Dynamic Island, USB-C and camera enhancements make me glad this is my upgrade year (I have a 12). I will probably grab the base Pro model for $200 more due to even better camera though, but I would be pretty happy with the 15 regular as well. I stopped with the big phones a few years ago... the battery bump is nice, but my phone goes everywhere and I prefer the regular size in my hand and pocket.
I don’t quite get all the comments that are expressing disappointment- I think the camera and particularly the zoom is a great upgrade versus my 12 pro, and there’s a bunch of other nice to haves.
I’ll probably upgrade next year though not this one. Expecting major improvements and new features every year is odd to me.
These incremental gains add up over the 3-4 years that I feel is a reasonable minimum phone life.
Do people expect Apple to proclaim “our new version has incremental upgrades, only buy if your phone is a couple years out of date”?
Product launches are always a lot of theatrics regardless of the company.
I don’t think anyone actually takes them any more seriously than a mcdonalds ad implying eating their hamburger will make one more like the cool sports star being paid a million to hold the hamburger.
It takes great photos. I never use the port. Dynamic Island is an Emperor's new clothes marketing scam where they've just moved the bezel even more in the way than it was and managed to convince people it's a good thing.
But just my perspective on it, I will have to replace all my lightning cables with usb-c, and the usb-c ecosystem seems like a nightmare to me from what I have seen.
It's overblown how much of a nightmare USB-C is. Yes there are many problems with the ecosystem, but it's still really not as bad as using both lightning and USB-C like Apple does, nor is it as bad as micro-usb.
At my desk I have a laptop, keyboard, and mouse which typically all typically get charged off a single thunderbolt 4 cable. You can have anything from games controllers to bicycle lights to remote controls sharing a single charger. No need to fuss with adapters, or having a rats nest of different cables, or charge-only cables with microusb/usb-c/lightning at the end. C to C cables are also very nice since they allow phones and usb-c only laptops to charge any other USB-C device, and you can't accidentally flip them around the wrong way.
The technology itself is great. It's the flawed implementations, the lack of standards enforcement, the confusing labelling of different types of cables, and the very gradual and slow death of lightning/micro-usb/USB-A that's really holds things back. Once you figure out what you need to buy, and finish buying the appropriate products that you need, it is nice.
> Yes there are many problems with the ecosystem, but it's still really not as bad as using both lightning and USB-C like Apple does[…]
People underestimate just how stable lightning cables are. After 11 years they have two types of certified cables in terms of data and charging capabilities, and you can tell them apart by whether the other end is USB-A or USB-C
- 70% of people have been buying the absolute cheapest lightning conforming cable they could find on amazon. They buy them in 3 packs, use them until they inevitably catch fire or fray within a few months and then throw them out and use the next one.
- 25% of people buy the cheapest lightning cable they can find on amazon that is rated for MFI. They've been burned enough by the bad cable and are just savvy enough to know there is a made-for-iphone program of "approved" lightning cables that actually conform to standards
- 5% of people buy OEM first-party cables from Apple
...
Now you will see:
- 70% of people buying the absolute cheapest usb-c conforming cable they can find on amazon (which is not "really" usb-c but the plug fits so who cares). They will buy them in 3 packs, use them until they fray or catch fire and then throw it out and use the next one
- 20% of people will buy the cheapest certified usb-c cable they can find on amazon because they are just tech savvy enough to know there is a difference and that its worth finding a good one. But this cable will likely only be usb 2 speeds.
- 5% of people will buy a premium usb-c cable with usb 3 speeds for 10Gbs transfer because they actually use and care about it.
...
As you can see, on the low end nothing changes. Most people will still buy the absolute cheapest cable they can find and have no idea what they are buying or care that there is a difference. These people will still benefit from being able to use the same cable for everything because it fits in the hole and thats all they care or understand.
But at least now there are more options and power available to the tiny percent of the population that actually does care and understand the difference.
All in all, its only upsides. Everybody wins. The only real downside is throwing out whatever collection of lightning cables you might already have.
Remember that as cool as transfer speeds sound, almost nobody transfers stuff using a cable off their iPhone. 99% of people will airdrop a few photos off, download music from spotify/apple music, and stream or maybe download from netflix or disney plus for offline viewing. But really VERY VERY VERY few people are transferring using the cable. For the people that do, they are probably transferring huge video files they recorded off their device and they will know to get a good quality usb 3 compatible usb-c cable. But thats like 1 out of 100 people, if that.
> 20% of people will buy the cheapest certified usb-c cable they can find on amazon because they are just tech savvy enough to know there is a difference and that its worth finding a good one. But this cable will likely only be usb 2 speeds.
If you don't need data transfer, there are reasons like cost and cable thickness/flexibility to get a charging-only cable.
Most people need very few cables over USB 2.0 speeds, and they typically don't need those to be very long.
Unfortunately, there are a bunch of non-conforming USB-C implementations (original Switch models, Raspberry Pis, and tons of other charging-only gadgets) such that it is not possible at any cost to standardize on a stack of USB-C cables with the same properties.
The annoying part is that cables still tend to not be labelled with their properties, it is challenging to determine if a device properly supports power delivery and cables rated > 30W, and there aren't a lot of tools to diagnose issues or cable capabilities.
While there are different kinds of USB-C cable, they all support at least as much as a lightning cable. So while it's annoying when they're badly labeled, it's hard for me to see this as a downside in comparison to lightning.
this is only true if you accept the circular definition of "well, if it does less than lightning then it's not a true USB-C cable".
in practice there are lots of usb-c cables that don't do data, which all lightning cables do. they're just not officially certified ones. which means they're not "real" usb-c cables.
again, the problem is it turns out in practice virtually nobody is using "real" usb-c cables, and if you want to stand on the formal definition, then we can formally say the standard has no real market penetration and can reasonably be disregarded until it catches traction.
if you can walk into a bodega and be assured that the lightning cable sitting on the shelf is going to be a certified and approved cable with data transfer, and the usb-c cable probably won't, then that's kinda all that really matters.
(and thus, we can see why certification programs like lightning exist. the $2 lightning cable on the bodega counter probably has better capabilities than the $5 usb-c cable on the counter because of the certification process.)
Just about any USB-C cable you buy that isn't a "data" cable just means its not rated for the ultra high 3.0+ speeds. It's incredibly rare to come across a USB-C cable that has absolutely no data connection, they practically all support at least USB 2.0. I've never come across a cable that didn't support at least USB 2.0 speeds that wasn't just otherwise broken, or was some weird one like USB-C to a barrel adapter or something.
There are some sold for privacy which do not have the data pins.
However, I believe this prevents negotiation for power delivery. Even if not, you need the CEC pins for the cable to function and that is a data channel as well (there are firmware update specs over CEC)
I've bought lightning cables at the dollar store that are single-sided (one side has "UPSIDE" written on it, you can't flip it over), power only
edit: I buy a lot of cheap USB gadgets (fans, flashlights etc) so I checked my cables. Not one of my USB-C to C cables are missing data. Plenty of USB-A to C cables are, though. So as long as you avoid USB-A you may be fine.
I've seen a bunch of uncertified lightning cables on Amazon, but not any power-only USB-C cables, despite looking through a lot more USB-C listings.
I have no idea what fraction of the USB-C cables are certified, but they're not broken. They have the wires because people want the wires. For such a basic feature, this is more effective than certification.
I have devices that only works with Usb a to c cables. I also have devices that doesn’t accept the same. ditto for e-marked cables, and passive charging cables. I now need to get a usb c cable tester and label each cable and device.
Same. I have a few “USB-C” devices they inexplicably won’t charge from some (mostly Apple) USB-C chargers. But they work fine with some other USB-C chargers and all USB-A chargers with an A-C cord.
But, with these phones, I can at least get rid of the dozens of Lightning cables I’ve accumulated. And only a few of my devices are still USB-A, so I imagine I’ll be all C soon enough (probably just in time for USB-D or something else).
USB C devices are supposed to have resistors on the CC pins to help negotiate power delivery with the port supplying power and to allow detection of pin orientation[1]. But to save a few pennies (or because no one read the USB C specs), many cheap devices don't have these resistors and USB-C chargers that implement PD are almost certainly configured to not supply any voltage at the VBUS pins until a connection is actually detected. As a result these devices won't charge from a spec compliant USB C charger. Cheap chargers on the other hand may be nothing more than a basic 5V 1A USB A charger with a C port instead and happily supply power on the pins regardless of the CC pin status. Likewise A-to-C cables would do the same thing, since A chargers just supply 5V continuously without any negotiation.
Yeah, but some of these aren't "cheap" devices (Wahoo fitness devices have this flaw). Wahoo actually calls out Apple chargers in their doc, which is super annoying because it's NOT an Apple problem, it's shit design/penny-pinching from Wahoo.
And there are USB-C chargers (provided with Google phones and Belkin USB-C car chargers) that will charge the devices. So, I guess they're ignoring the lack of negotiation and just providing 5v? No idea.
So, consumers are left guessing what will work or won't. And carrying at least two chargers (one "dumb" and one "smart/PD").
Yeah I'm aware of this issue, and specifically check for c-to-c compatibility, this falls under the category of "flawed implementations" because these devices are NOT to spec.
It's common for rechargeable lights to not support c-to-c cables and require a usb a to usb c cable.
For phone users who only want to charge their phones, it's fine. It's hard to go too wrong.
For people who want to have e.g. 100W+ of power while feeding a signal to 4K60+ external monitors it's kind of a nightmare unless they know that "just use Thunderbolt 4" "trick".
While a bit of a tangent, I also love how Apple likes to make this EVEN MORE confusing by not supporting displayport MST in MacOS, causing most thunderbolt 4 docks on the market to be incapable of supporting multiple monitors when using MacOS.
So if you have say a 16" MacBook Pro, you need to get not only Thunderbolt 4 which is a rare spec, you want to ideally get ~85-140w PD not ~60w, AND you need to get an expensive dock that can split up the two HBR3 displayport channels instead of a regular MST Thunderbolt 4 dock.
Thankfully Apple has a solution to consumer confusion caused by all this. Buy a $1600 Apple studio display, connect it directly to your Mac, use the monitor itself as a dock, and everything will be compatible. Stay in the safe walled garden.
It is true that Apple makes thunderbolt support more difficult. A 6 years old XPS 13 supports 3 monitors with TB3 while you meed an M1 Max to support that configuration.
Surprised Apple didn’t go with thunderbolt. I wonder if they are worried about Intel’s licensing or something. It seems more apple-like to go with the higher performance, more straightforward standard.
USB-C is a mess. Whoever decided to fix the annoying compatibility issues of USB mini/micro/blah blah by just solving the physical port problem should never be consulted on anything again.
I mean... do you really need thunderbolt for a phone? Are you powering multiple 8k displays and daisey chaining a hub connected to an external raid storage array?
I get that it would be cool. For the ipad i think it makes sense to do that, but your phone...? Let's get real. Fast charging over a standardized cable with 10gbs transfer speeds is gonna be just fine.
If you shoot videos longer than a few seconds on your iPhone, you will appreciate a way to get them off of your phone at a non-glacial pace.
For professionals shooting significant amounts of video, this is more than a convenience feature. Once your device's internal storage fills up with video, which does not take long at 4K60, now your "camera" is a paperweight until you can dump that footage.
Obviously, only a very small percentage of people are using their phones this way. But I think Apple really values that market.
the pro 14s and 15s are plenty fast and could be used as work horses for a lot (most office work I'd wager) with a KBM and an external display. the only issue is it'd be kinda hard to take calls without a headset, but that's a good reason to take your old iphone out of the drawer, right? ;)
Not exactly my experience. I've owned a handful of USB-C devices, and there are devices from major manufacturers that will only charge from a USB-A to USB-C cable. No C-to-C cable convenience; you need to carry a Frankenstein C-to-A-to-C cable. Yes, Philips, this /is/ bullshit.
Such devices are not to spec, and check for this quality before purchase, and avoid products with fail to meet the spec. I've managed to avoid buying any products without C to C compatibilty.
This is largely what I'm talking about in the last paragraph of my post.
That's not the greatest advice. I saw my mom charging her phone with a fat, meter long, USB-C cable. I asked her why she was using such a short cable. She admitted it was annoying to use. She said it was $35, but it was fast charging! It was a 100W 10Gbps cable.
The majority of consumers don't do anything that needs more than 2.0 speeds and 30Wish charging. If they do, they can probably afford name brand cables.
In the next few years consumers will start getting laptops that need 60W, but most cables can do that now, and it won't be common for a few years now(Phones still had microUSB when I bought my laptop, many people have even older ones).
This is why the iPhone was nearly the last Apple device to switch to USB-C. Plenty of people will be irritated at having to buy bunch of new cables, and they've been accumulating Lightning cables for a decade. And unlike something like Micro USB, lightning cables don't often wear out.
But it is better to finally make the jump. I've never been unhappy with Lightning, but almost everything else I own has now switched to USB-C.
My brother has an iPad with the Lightning port on it, and has to get new cables every few years because they start fraying and breaking around the bottom of the connector.
And he isn't really rough or abusive with these cables either.
Where as I still have MicroUSB cables from 10 or 12yrs ago that still look and work like new.
That sounds like a “your brother problem”. Especially that an often touted negative of lightning cables is that the only movable part is inside the socket, which is harder to replace — so it makes even less sense why they could go wrong. My guess: he is buying cheap Chinese ones that have lower quality and you compare it to some higher quality ones.
As many people can vouch for: lighting cables can easily work for many many years without any trouble whatsoever.
This definitely has to do with handling. I always wad my cables up and stuff them in bags, no care to careful winding or anything—but they last forever, as long as I’m the only one using them.
What I don’t do is hold them under tension for long periods, or use them stretched taught then bent 90° right next to the connector. My wife and kids ruin cables in a few months, and that’s how they do it. I didn’t get what people were talking about with apple cables being fragile, until I saw that.
I developed my habit because the same behavior is bad on ports, too. I’d developed an unconscious avoidance to doing those things before I ever owned an Apple device, or had one at work. So my Apple cables last forever unless my wife or kids get ahold of them.
Contributing to this anecdata, it's the same for me. My cables last forever, my spouse runs through them at an accelerated rate. Coincidentally, they use their phone in bed with it plugged in...
Plug in, move as far away as possible, turn port away from direction of the wall outlet, to use it. Bonus points for also resting it on the bent-at-the-port cable. Yep, that’s the maneuver my family members use to ruin all our cables. Similar with laptop and tablet power cables—get far from the outlet so the cable’s under tension, turn device so port’s not facing the outlet.
Mine last forever, except that one time I handled the Lightning connector with wet hands before plugging it in. Phone was fine, thankfully, but I cleaned some sooty deposits from the socket.
Hmm, I've known several Apple users who have experienced the same thing. Both with branded Apple cables and third party ones. I seemed to notice lighting users having more dead cables than USB-C users seemed to, and it seems to me that lightning cables more frequently omit robust strain relief for aesthetic reasons.
The most frequent tendency I notice among people who have their cables fray is they use their phones while charging, but if you do certain things on your phone like long gaming sessions, you are almost forced to use your phone while it charges. So blaming the user feels a little bit like "you're holding it wrong" to me.
Where I did notice a difference between USB-C and lightning is that the lightning PORT seemed more durable than USB-C ports. I own multiple phones with flaky USB-C ports, whereas lighting ports seem much more durable.
It's an old problem that was a real problem. I personally have never had any cables fray, except for every white Apple cord I had owned.
Up until a few years back when I noticed my replacement cord for yet another bad Apple cable felt different. Haven't had any issues with them after that. I assume they changed the manufacturing process.
In my experience, it's actually Apple cables that break pretty easily. It usually doesn't happen at the Lightning side, but at or near the strain relief, i.e. close to where the cable meets the plug.
I've seen this happen for Apple MagSafe, Lightning, and I believe even USB-C.
Definitely not, Apple cables (not just Lightning, the old Magsafe ones and laptop USB-C ones too) are the worst for crumbling under stress at the point they bend near the plug. That rubbery coating just seems somehow worse for it than anything I've seen made/sold by anyone else.
I noticed (I don't have one) the new Magsafe ones for the current MacBooks have changed to a braided fabric looking coating/sleeve instead.
I guess there will always be someone who can damage any cable. I've never killed a lightning cable myself, and only ever seen someone else (my own mother) do it once -- and it wasn't the connector that broke, it was the cable at the strain relief. Hell, the cable still actually worked, but I was uncomfortable with the state of the cable and bought her a new one.
When I was doing Android phones, I was going through a new Micro USB cable about every month or two. Never long enough to fray the cable itself, it was always the connector flaking out and refusing to make a good enough connection to charge reliably.
Flimsy cables are flimsy cables and they will break and fray. USB-C, Lightning, whatever.
The first-party Lightning cables from Apple have always been pretty flimsy so if Lightning cables have a bad rep in general, that's probably why. That's Apple's fault but not anything specific to Lightning.
I've had a lot of Anker Lightning cables and they're about as bulletproof as a cable can possibly be.
> and they've been accumulating Lightning cables for a decade.
This is why I don't think Apple's electronic waste argument makes much sense. All devices I've bought in the last 5 years have been USB-C, while iPhone users were stuck on Lightning. If Apple had switched back then all those users would've been buying 5 years worth of cables that work with everything, rather than cables that work for only a few devices from a single manufacturer.
That makse sense: USB micro-B has the part that wears out (i.e. the spring making the connection) in the cable; Lightning has it in the port.
Although I haven't really had a Lightning port fail on me yet, having the component more likely to eventually break in the cable rather than the device makes a lot of sense to me.
The brick is still USB-c and the macbooks still charge on all usb-c ports. The magsafe cable is just a nice to have. Also frees up one of your USB ports for use.
My MagSafe MBP still accepts charge via USB-C. In fact I don't know that I've used MagSafe at all with it other than a handful of times borrowing someone else's charger.
Most USB-C devices really only support DisplayPort for video output.
There's an HDMI "alt mode", but almost no device uses that directly; most USB-C-to-HDMI adapters and cables are accordingly really combined USB-C to DisplayPort and DisplayPort to HDMI converters and translate one protocol to the other at the electrical and logical level.
The USB-C ecosystem is so confusing because the port can do so much.
Worst case scenario, you get a cheap cable and you're stuck at the same charging speed and data speed as what lighting could do. It can only get better for you; lightning is an ancient port.
I know I’m in the minority but I preferred the smaller lightning cables to these USB-C cables that were designed to carry 100x the power that a phone would need.
> USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables
Bought a Motorola G6 in 2018 for €199. It takes "fantastic" photos, and came in a "stunning new" (!?) color of black(ish). It's pretty much indestructible, runs Firefox with uBlock Origin, and it's "better for the environment" because every year you don't buy a new phone, the environment is happy.
> and it's "better for the environment" because every year you don't buy a new phone, the environment is happy.
This seems wrong. I am still on an iPhone Xs Max from 2018 and it still gets software updates. It looks like the last software update on the G6 was in 2020. The lack of even security patches limits the life of the phone for many people.
The primary reason I'll eventually need to upgrade is because of 5G support. Coverage is getting worse as 3G has been shutdown and all new towers are focusing on 5G. My battery life sucks now too, but that can solved easily.
The older iPhones still hold resale value pretty well too, which means most iPhones have a second life as a "cheap" option. Combined with the software updates you mentioned, that's pretty good for the environment. The best case scenario is most iPhones get to be used by multiple people and new iPhones contain a lot of recycled material. That's not too far from reality.
The problem with tech is nothing is ever "good enough." Sure, you could make a phone that is durable for 10 years... but someone will invent new battery chemistry, CPUs will get considerably more powerful/efficient, and Sony will come along with even better camera sensors.
So it's really not possible for that high-end "old" phone to keep up after a few years. That's true for most consumer tech, even if the pace is slowing down somewhat. An expensive LED TV from 2013 will not compare favorably with a good value mid-range one today.
We can either stop innovating, which is also bad for the environment (technology improvements allow for vast efficiency and energy-use improvements in a huge range of products), or we can make sure things have a lot of re-use value. That can be done through the used market with good repairability and software support, and by making sure phones can be recycled and also use a lot of recycled materials.
People have been saying that the new iPhones are unimpressive/shit for years. Yet, compare an iPhone X to an iPhone 15 and the leap is clear. Incremental improvements are unimpressive, but do build up over time. You can only realize that by taking a pause and look back where you were 10 years ago.
I also still have an XS and don't plan on upgrading until updates stop. I thought it was this cycle, but apparently not. Supported until 2025. That's pretty reasonable!
I have an 8 plus and the only reason I'm gonna buy the 15 this year is because they're no longer supporting it. 6 years of support for a phone is pretty damn good.
> The lack of even security patches limits the life of the phone for many people
Maybe. (I'm not one of them, but ok.) But that doesn't have much to do with the environmental impact? It's still greener to keep phones longer, even if they don't get updates.
Android is notorious for aging out phones much faster than Apple. You could use 8+ year old phones with the latest security updates up until very recently.
I've been with Android since my the very first G1. I'm not an iPhone hater, I think they are great phones, I'm just happy with Android (for now) and see little reason to switch yet. That being said, the one thing that could probably make me switch is this issue right here.
I have the Pixel 5a, it was released in August 2021 and Google only guarantees support for that model up to August 2024, that is for both full OS updates and just security patches. As of the Pixel 6 series and after, you get 3 years of full OS updates, and 5 years of security patches (that's 2 extra years after full OS updates stop).
To compare, the iPhone 13 series was released in September 2021 and will continue to get support up to 7 years after its release (Sept 2028).
So far my Pixel 5a has been the best (reliability-wise) phone I've ever hard and it sucks to know that after August 2024, I'll be vulnerable to future security vulnerabilities.
Samsung offer only slightly better support by increasing the full OS support to 4 years instead of Google's 3 for the Pixel. Same 5 year for security patch. That's not enough for me to go back to Samsung and deal with their OS bloated with apps I can't uninstall (it's been a while, maybe it's better?)
My 4a potentially just got its last update. If I don't any security updates going forward, not sure if I'll put a third party image on it or toss it. I'll probably try the first, and if it does work well, the second.
GrapheneOS receives OS updates for another year. It's pretty simple to flash with a web-based installer.
If it feels too slow, try disabling "Secure app spawning". It's a security improvement over Google's Android by GrapheneOS but increases app startup time. Especially on slower devices like the 4a.
By far the biggest intrusion window these days is your browser. Latest firefox with ublock origin is simply the safest of them all, saving bandwidth, blocking youtube ads, saving battery, your eyes and so on.
Plus, currently plenty of androids have 5-6 years of guaranteed security updates. To be honest I wouldnt ever want to use much older phones even if patched up to date, too clunky, making bad photos (I have kids so this is top priority), not up to most network standards and so on
Probably all of them, but that’s only cause, unless things have changed, it takes 3 years to get said updates in the first place.
I remember before I switched to iPhone I would wait and wait and wait and wait for the latest android and updates and a whole new version of android would roll out before I would even get the previous version.
Samsung promised 3 or 4 years of updates in 2019, and then updated that pledge to 5 years for the flagships. What's exciting about Samsung's pledge is that it made this promise for some of the mid-range models in the A series, which are fairly affordable.
My S21 Ultra is in its 3rd year and regularly updated. Should get 5 years of updates, and I intend to keep it until then.
Also, the writing is on the wall that the EU will force phone makers to years of updates, changeable batteries and availability of spare parts.
It's also noteworthy that Google has the ability to update many system services via Google Play. The poor track record of updates from phone makers basically demanded it. In other words, an Android device that hasn't received any system updates in a year or two is still fairly usable.
I have an A70..I was just looking for when it will lose its software updates. The last update I have is from Dec 22, but I can't find information when it will expire.
You asked which Android phones get five years of security updates? Directly from Google, only the Pixel 6 and up, most likely in reaction to Apple's better support policies. Other manufacturers? You have to research it because it varies: https://www.androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-16586...
Ideally Google would mandate a minimum number of years for both feature and security updates that matches theirs of three and five, respectively. Having said that, these really are wasting assets thanks to storage wearing out, but that's true of all phones, regardless of manufacturer.
It really isn't, given how much of Android will get updated during those security fixes only years. Many of the builtin apps will still receive feature updates, likely even beyond that window.
Iirc Apple iOS includes more features than Android in the core OS. Google Services still receive updates and only things like the UI and system settings stay the same. Most people I know don't care at all about updates.
But I agree, it's great how Apple supports devices for 6 years with major updates. It would also be possible for Android phones if SoC & phones manufacturer actually cared.
I have an ancient ipad. It still gets major updates, but not necessarily all of the best features from those updates. Maybe that is a hardware limitation or maybe not.
I also have a Pixel 5. It received Magic Eraser, which used to be a key feature of newer Pixels, as part of a regular Photos app update.
I'm still getting major updates too, but, tbh, they aren't that critical. Chrome, GMail, Maps, YouTube, Calendar, Messaging, the app store itself (including UI) and the core web browser will keep getting updates well beyond the end of life.
There really isn't a direct comparison here, but I wouldn't switch in either direction due to updates.
If I’m not mistaken, apps that use embedded web views don’t use the installed version of Chrome do they? If that’s the case, that’s a major security issue by itself.
Their pledge has started in 2019, and the promise for 5 years of updates is fairly new. I remember they first promised 3 or 4 years of security updates.
Apple has unparalleled support for older devices, I think we agree.
For operating system updates, Samsung pledged 4 years of updates for the flagships starting with S21.
The difference between Android versions isn't big. I also mentioned in another comment that on Android, to cope with phone makers not pushing for system updates, Google can update many system components via Google Play. And apps remain compatible. Being 2 versions behind the latest Android is OK.
While Firefox on iPhones does not allow extensions like uBlock Origin, Orion browser will allow you to install both Firefox and Chrome extensions, including uBlock Origin.
Ancient android might not get security updates, but is actually still very usable. The vast majority of apps will still at least run and talk to their servers on a 10 year old phone.
I have a nexus 5x which I wanted to repurpose for… anything at all. It can’t even update itself anymore. Play services update just locks up or whatever. Play store is broken and can’t install anything. The thing is useless as a smartphone.
My iPad 5 got an iOS update last month-ish? And a security patch last week. All of my kids run iPhone 8.
These days "security" has been perverted so it is mostly not about protecting you from attackers, it's about preventing you from accessing your own data or running the apps that you want. You are the threat that they are securing against. Less "secure" means more freedom for you. Less "secure" can also mean more real security for you since you have to leave the mainstream which is what actual attackers target.
And a lot of the complaint is about "cases where customers reported being fraudulently induced into
making payments", which would agree with the ancestor comment.
Honestly I don't know. I copied and pasted the text and punctuation from the original document and it put them there. I also didn't do the research. The office of Senator Warren did. You can quibble with them. :)
It’s not that you’re completely and totally wrong that makes me mad, it’s that you state everything with such an authoritative tone that people won’t doubt it and will get into a bad situation based on what you’re saying.
> Once you notify your bank or credit union about an unauthorized transaction (that is, a charge or withdrawal you didn’t make or allow), it generally has ten business days to investigate the issue. The bank or credit union must correct an error within one business day after determining that an error has occurred.
I've had multiple family members wait months to sort things out like that. Visa fraud experience is usually immediate, checking/savings accounts not so much.
Kitkat(Android 4.4) is 10 years old and I have experience with it. You can't update Signal since last year and you can't use it anymore since soon after that. Whatsapp didn't work anymore after May. And most(all?) of the phones bought 10 years ago didn't have kitkat yet.
Those two are the apps that survived the longest (Try getting any matrix client to work on it). Others broke sooner, most of them because the app developer has to enable TLS1.2 to be able to use it for HTTP APIs and many web servers disabled responding to older versions a while ago. Firefox (the one which allowed all extensions) still works. Great! But I can't message anyone anymore. On a phone.
TBH I put most of the blame here on app developers (supporting older stuff is not that hard) and some of it on the device manufacturers.
I'd actually like to see a list of real world security incidents that occured on EOL android devices. Not out of date browsers. (Chrome can still be updated) but devices no longer getting OS security updates.. something tells me it's very very rarely if ever an actual issue in real life.
In the article it explains how Google and the ransomers are doing a cat and mouse thing. If your phone is not keeping up, that could definitely be an issue.
An anecdote, but I've never heard anybody from my social circles to have their phone hacked. I keep reading about all these holes, but somehow they don't seem to be widely exploited in the real world.
Plenty of people do it... And it doesn't actually backfire often - the worst that seems to happen is your phone will self-install unremovable adware if you visit the wrong website.
And? My android phones last on average 3 years, do everything I need and cost less than €200. The exception is the current Fairphone 3 I am using, which I paid 350€ and I am expecting to use for at least 5 years, possibly 7. How can one justify paying 3x the cost if not just to continue keeping myself tied into Apple?
The hardware on those 300 euro phones are awful. iPhones last longer in both software support and actual usability.
> How can one justify paying 3x the cost if not just to continue keeping myself tied into Apple?
It's not rocket science. The experience you get using an iPhone vs a cheap Android for 5 years is not even close to comparable, and while you do pay a ridiculous premium for an iPhone, there are obvious reasons why someone would want to.
The hardware is just fine. My old Nokia 6 from 2018 can still play Mario Kart just fine.
I hate to see that I am starting to sound like an activist, but I also hate to see how even the supposedly smarter-than-average people in tech lose all sense of perspective when they see shiny overpriced trinkets.
Why should we care if "the experience is not even close to comparable", if it is brought by a trillion dollar corporation who denies people even the most basic rights and fights as dirty as it can to keep its unfair advantages?
(And please notice that the above paragraph also applies to Google and Samsung, so please don't make it sound that I am arguing for team Android here)
My iphone is currently 6 years old, and still getting security updates from Apple. It works as well as it ever did (I spent €60-ish for a battery replacement a year or two ago), and I hope to get at least another year out of it yet.
It cost me about €600, and I also enjoy knowing that I've generated that much less e-waste compared to my prior Android life, where I had to discard phones every 2 or 3 years.
First, let me point to Fairphone which is also providing 7 years minimum of updates, but most importantly, it does not lock me into their OS and I can install anything I want (in the case, MurenaOS).
Second, I'd love to be proven wrong, but I can bet good money that if we look at a distribution of activated iphones per model, we will see that most users probably stay a lot less than 6-7 years.
Third, it's not about iPhone vs Android. It's the fact that we are discussing things like "getting security updates" when in fact we should be asking ourselves "why aren't we free to install whatever system we want on our own device?" I don't really care so much about the fact your phone cost 600 or 6000€, what bugs me to no end is that we are effectively paying trillion-dollar corporations to let them remove our freedoms.
Is that what the majority of people are buying, or are you just pushing down some numbers while forgetting that it does not reflect the reality of the consumer market?
My last two iPhones have been the SE model and I know a number of friends who have one. The previous smaller iPhone SE (2016) was a lovely phone and still getting updates.
What I was responding to was that it makes little sense to talk about "Androids aging out faster" as some kind of valid justification to pay the premium price of iPhones.
If you manage to make do with the cheaper version of iPhones, ok. But your case (and mine) are outliers, and even in that case Apple's products are not better from an ethical/environmental/fair trade point of view.
Are we stuck in a loop here? I'm not arguing about the price of any particular model. I'm arguing that (a) most people buying iPhones are not doing with "longevity" in mind, they are just buying the "most phone they can afford" and trade every 2-3 years and (b) even the ones that are buying iPhones based on "longevity" (i.e, TCO) are ignoring the fact that there are other alternatives with similar characteristics while being better from an ethical standpoint.
Not if you compare with the Fairphone. The Fairphone uses materials that are a lot easier to be recyclable and is supported for as long as Apple devices.
Looks like you are talking about two different things in one sentence. About security updates -- while it is true that Apple provides security updates much longer than Android phones and this is something I care a lot about, I need to point out that the vast majority of people (outside HN or similar "tech forums") don't upgrade phones due to lack of security features but lack of latest features, missing nice cameras, or if the battery has bad battery or damage.
Wow, I don’t think that’s true at all. Most people can’t afford a new phone that frequently. I know amongst my techno elite friends your estimate holds, but for almost everyone else I know they rarely upgrade and it’s more about when it physically falls apart than any desire to participate in an upgrade cycle.
IDK, maybe apple price-dropped today and T-Mobile hasn’t caught up, but that’s similar to what I’ve seen in the past when I’ve looked at buying through them.
0% interest isn’t $0/m. When you live paycheck to paycheck, as most Americans do, that’s a very important detail. Most people don’t have disposable income.
But even that do they don’t value phone upgrades. When I see their ancient phones I sometimes remark they can get a phone with monthly terms and they just shrug and say the sad device with cracked screens and ancient cameras and crap display resolution and brightness is good enough for them. It baffles me, but most people just use their phone for texting, occasionally a map, and a crappy camera. Only in my tech friend circle do people keep up.
64% are living paycheck to paycheck, now whether they opt to get a new smartphone or not is not clear.
What is clear is the statistics you linked and I could find were polls of either people buying a new phone, which would be structurally biased towards people who are buying phones make frequently and are not buying used phones, or they were surveys of people with some relationship with a mobile or tech related site or product. These don’t seem like very unbiased surveys - but they do seem like sources apple or a phone maker would care about. “Of the people we care about in our marketing, they buy every 2-3 years.” I know in my family my wife’s family inherits our old phones and would ever show up in such a poll, nor do people buying off eBay, or even used from Amazon, etc.
Maybe a single mom working three jobs to raise their five children really does feel compelled to have the newest iPhones and puts her kids needs behind a high resolution screen, but I somehow believe she’s just not counted in market surveys of phone buyers.
Living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t mean there isn’t room in there budget to do anything else. They may spend $20 less per month on food to buy a phone. Do you really think that households who are making six figures “who are stretched thin” have no discretionary income to reallocate?
If given a choice between every single citation I could find on the internet and your anecdotes of what your family does, which one do you think is more reliable?
I already cited why I don’t believe the sources I could find as well as those you provided are reliable of a common experience as they’re clearly designed to be market research among those people who regularly upgrade smart phones. That’s a much more useful metric if you’re a smart phone company than a census style survey. They aren’t trying to make a social statement but optimize their release cadence. What people do who don’t upgrade regularly or buy their products new aren’t interesting to them, so they aren’t designing these surveys to capture people not already in their product cadence orbit. But, I suspect I can guess which you consider more reliable.
I’d not the median household income is 70k, which means half of all households make less than that. The median personal income is $40k.
Again, we aren’t getting remotely close to 99% of people are upgrading every 2-4 years.
> I already cited why I don’t believe the sources I could find as well as those you provided are reliable of a common experience as they’re clearly designed to be market research among those people who regularly upgrade smart phones
On the entire internet every source cites 2-3 years but you choose not to believe it because it doesn’t support your worldview?
And in the US, even the MVNOs that are targeted toward lower income buyers subsidize phones where you get them for “free”.
But you’re telling me on the entire internet you can’t find one statistic that supports your claim?
Not sure about 8 years, but I know at least 3 people who use iPhone 8s still and have no intention of stopping, so that's 6 years. I know at least one person who had an iPhone 5 until it broke earlier this year.
I only stopped using the 8+ because it got destroyed, and "upgrading" to a newer used one was almost the same price. Otherwise I'd still be rocking that touch button.
I guess this will only lengthen as we go forward, as the initial jumps between successive phones were large, and they are much more incremental nowadays. An iphone XS is good for 5 more years easily.
Anecdata: I have a friend who refuses to update from an original iPhone SE because he hates the larger form factors AND because it functions perfectly fine for his needs.
I know multiple people still using an iPhone X (2018), for whom cost is not an issue.
The main reason for the majority of the general population to upgrade is because the phone literally breaks (screen, stops charging, radio malfunctions, etc)
My iPhone 7 will be 7 years old in a few days, so close. I haven't found the need for anything that has gone into new phones since then that would justify the cost.
On a 6 year old iPhone 6 here. Solid, charges quick, no battery issues, good pics, you name it. I may upgrade to go all USB-C but may wait to see if the 15 has issues.
My daily driver phone is an iPhone 7+, which Wikipedia tells me is from 2016. It works great and people often compliment the pictures from its camera.
That's not "8+ years old" but it's in the ballpark :)
You said "I'd guess 99% of the population makes a phone last 2-4 years." Which is obviously false if the average is 3 years. An interesting data point neither of these articles have is the standard deviation. One of the articles says 8% of people wait more than 5 years.
For me at least the battery seems to degrade significantly after 2+ years. I have a OnePlus 7t that is 3 years old and I use it heavily almost every day. I should consider wiping it to see if that improves battery life.
Several of the phones I've upgraded from were due to the onboard storage wearing out. A couple were because of water damage, which is less of a concern these days.
The charging cable was obviously not the leading factor when the purchase decision was made. It doesn't matter much that a different platform that runs different software and has different capabilities had models available with USB-C. Different phones for different folks and that's ok.
I think people forget that Lightning predates USB-C by a few years, and the alternative at the time (USB Micro B) was hot garbage.
Should Apple have stuck with Lightning for an entire decade? No. But any switch away from Lightning was going to cause pain for customers already invested in the ecosystem, and there was a time when that ecosystem actually made the most sense.
I think it has a bigger impact than you realize. The last iPhone I owned was the 3GS. I don't particularly like iPhone or Android; I'm hardly a fan boy. But, I'm seriously looking a iPhone 15 variant as my next phone.
I have USB-C for virtually everything and have no interest in dealing with keeping a second set of cables for one device. It's an extra expense, headache, and environmental waste I don't want. The change to USB-C makes an iPhone a viable option for me. I look forward to a refreshed SE line with USB-C as well.
I'm not thrilled about all the cables and dongles/adapters eventually going to landfills, but believe the move will be better in the long-run. I wish Apple made the move earlier.
I'm not underestimating the impact of the switch and I am as in favor of it now as I was years ago. All else being equal, I would go for the USB-C device every time.
The point I was trying to make was that an android phone having USB-C isn't the most important factor for the person who posted. This is evidenced by the fact that they purchased the iPhone anyway even though USB-C options existed.
Then buy a used iphone, which will not be made obsolete a year later due to lack of software updates, but continue to get new ones for 8 years and actually has the hardware capabilities to drive it for that long.
This is what I do. I just upgraded last year from an iPhone 6 to 8, and it's working great for me. The next stop would be an 11 I think, and that's only if I end up getting into the Peak Design ecosystem and the dashboard mount's built-in wireless charging capability doesn't work with an 8.
Just bought a Moto g42 for ~113€. Gonna buy another one as a spare since one of my hobbies is destroying mobile phones. My favourite phone so far. OLED display, Headphone jack, 5000mA battery, LineageOS support (Android 13, Motorola still on 12), totally worth it IMHO.
My G6 has lately been getting extremely laggy. 8 seconds to launch Firefox + uBlock, 4 seconds to get a keyboard after tapping the address bar; I don't use it much for more than texting or calling people, but it's a bit ridiculous. And there used to be plenty of space on the 32 GB built-in storage (and there's always abundant space on my 256 GB uSD for photos and media) but even with fewer apps installed now there's less space available.
Have you ever had to reflash yours or anything like that?
No. I don't have many apps (very few in fact) but did not notice anything speed-wise. The plastic cover tends to get dirty and is hard to clean, but I can live with it.
Those people who point out that these phones don't receive regular updates, please note that at $199 you can buy a new phone every 4 years and still be more environment friendly.
Android phones need replaced much more often than iPhones, due to how slow they get and lack of updates. There is a reason the resale value of iPhones is 2-5x any Android phone.
Still using an SE 2016 because it has the perfect size and still works fine. I would happily buy a new version if it would come with usb C and have a similar size, but I don’t hold my breath. Small phones don’t seem that popular :(
The 2016 SE was "peak iPhone" for me. Still has a headphone jack. Has a lightning connector (albeit, like you, I'd prefer USB-C). The size is wonderful. (I cannot understand the obsession with gigantic phones.)
I'd be using one right now if anyone (including Apple) tested their goddamn UIs on that screen res anymore. It started getting really bad back in like 2018, and today even the 13 mini will awkwardly cut off views here and there. I imagine using the OG SE must be torturous.
Three most baffling thing about it is I see this comment in almost every iphone thread. I know so many people irl who have the same opinion including myself.
If there are any Apple execs in this thread: please listen to your customers! We are screaming for a flagship mini!
I'd argue the opposite! The segment is a minority, but the need within that segment is strong. It is not a 1 size fits all product, and 2-3% of your customer base might leave if a competitor fulfills that need. For your main revenue generator, that's not insignificant. See the Prego pasta sauce story https://www.enablemarketing.ie/can-business-learn-spaghetti-...
Assuming that there is a fixed cost associated with the mini production line, and assuming they sales and service based revenue from mini users isn’t a lot, it doesn’t make financial sense to have the mini line.
Also, where exactly are the users gonna go? The smallest is probably one of those Samsung foldable ones. But you’re really underestimating how bad android ecosystem can be (this is coming from someone who’s been hardcore android fan until recently). Maybe I’m getting older, but I really like the part where a lot of things with apple just work.
Exactly. Apple can influence what their customers want to some degree, rather than listening. Only has to be better than Android.
A cleaner example is Bluetooth audio vs jack. iPhones had both forever, but BT wasn't popular. One day Apple coaxed everyone onto BT, probably realizing they can make a killing selling AirPods that way. Samsung thought maybe this would send a few customers their way, so they started advertising that they still have a jack, but nope.
> The segment is a minority, but the need within that segment is strong.
The only issue I see with this argument is that it doesn't matter to Corp if a small minority really wants Thing, it only matters if selling Thing makes more money than not selling Thing.
I think the problem is that the same people who care a lot about their phone's form factor also care about features. We need an iPhone Mini Pro with high end cameras. I'm not going to settle for so-so pics of my toddler.
Unfortunately, there aren't enough of us to merit it. The 12 mini was a trial balloon for how well a smaller sized phone would sell, and people didn't show up for it. On the plus side (no pun intended), it looks like the yearly increase in average phone sizes has halted.
It's worth nothing that there are practical costs for a smaller phone: You can't fit as much battery into a smaller package, but people want to use a smaller phone the same way they'd use a larger phone.
It sold a single digit percentage of total iPhones the quarter after the 12 series dropped, which is... millions of units. Not to mention the 2020 SE came out a few months prior to the 12 lineup's announcement, so a lot of people who wanted a small phone had just got one.
The idea that nobody bought it isn't true. It sold under Apple's expectations, but if they set their expectations correctly and didn't cannibalize a large portion of potential buyers a few months before announcing it, I think it could work.
The real story here is that they don't have to make them because people will buy whatever is available. When my 13 mini is getting old, I'll buy a standard size phone because it's all I can do.
They had to cut the Mini line because it was bankrupting the company. It's not like Apple can afford to have a product that only sells a few hundred thousands units a year, are you kidding?
Price is flexible. We have no insight on Apple's finances, but how much is that line losing money by? And is it losing money at all, or is it a strategic decision?
At the scale Apple operates at, and the egregious margins on their products, I wouldn't be so sure it was a financial decision.
I'm really bummed there isn't a Mini - I'd be happy with getting one every third generation, even. For the size of my hands, the center-of-gravity is too high in the 6.1" phones, so I can't comfortably hold it with one hand.
Writing this on an iPhone mini. It’s the best form factor for me. I don’t want to lug an iPad mini everywhere, and that’s what big phones feel like to me.
There was a time for a year or so that I carried an actual cellular-enabled iPad Mini in my front right pocket instead of an iPhone. I had to stop because it has no SMS app for the SIM card (or vibrate motor, or ability to host an Apple Watch) so I ended up carrying an iPhone as well alongside.
Then the XL or Pro Max or whatever (huge phablet) came out and I used that for a while. The added battery life is lovely.
I finally settled on the non-max Pro, because it is as large as you can go and still be operable with one hand. The Pro Max is a two-hands-always device. If I'm going to do that I might as well carry an iPad Mini.
The small phone in general seems dead. Android phones don't even have good small options anymore.
I'm hoping that folding phones are here to save the day in a "the king is dead long live the king moment" as screens have become so big, they're now overflowing to being small again.
The only reason I can see for the ubiquitous big phones is addiction, which is widespread now. If you're using your phone all the time, yeah the bigger screen makes sense so you can do more on it. If you're only pulling it out rarely for a few necessary things, better if it fits in the pocket easily.
I have a 13 mini now. Even if they still made mini phones, my next one would be larger simply because as I get older (I'm 53), my eyesight is getting worse.
I suspect I'm not alone. I think the population of iPhone users is getting older.
I've got a 12 mini and I'm disappointed that they wholly discontinued the line. Unfortunately those of us who preferred smaller phones were apparently in the minority.
I was hoping they'd use the smaller bezels and newer materials to make the 13 Pro smaller with the same screen size, but they did the opposite (bigger screen, same physical dimension). Wouldn't have been mini sized, but anything to reduce size would be nice.
Putting the usb-c aside, I think the iPhone 15 is quite a nice upgrade, at least coming from a 13 pro. I’m mostly interested in camera features since it has replaced my DSLR camera. Nice look as well with rounded corners. The pro looks like something from the 90s but I really like it (I’m from the 80s).
Are all the display options using PWM now? I’ve been staying with the XR because the XS caused headaches for me. Curious if they’ve gotten their frequency up to a bearable level.
I was really surprised when the most disappointing feature of my 14 Pro was the camera. The overprocessing is horrendous in low light, and the constant switching between lenses is annoying when taking everyday photos.
It's funny because in contrast to the old perception of Android phones being fiddly and iPhones "just working", Google's camera software has been way more point and shoot since the original Pixel. Sure, it's also hyper-processed, but in my experience it provided a more reliably "good" result across a range of situations.
And whereas Pixel software updates just kept delivering better and better photos on the same hardware, I know with this 14 Pro I'm going to be stuck with this out of the box performance until I upgrade in several years.
Apple has bad color balance for quite a few years, it can also manifest like this. People not knowing much about actual photography see it as cool instagrameish tweak, and who generally doesnt like to imitate more successful people they follow (I guess successful happy balanced people who dont need to follow others).
I have physical 10x zoom lens on my samsung. Its a massive advantage in almost any situation barring almost total darkness. I take of pictures where subjects are clearly visible and take most of the frame, compared to everybody else with phone who has tiny figures who go to smears when digitally zoomed. If for nothing else, i am not changing the brand, good pics of my kids are simply too valuable to us.
If Samsung can do it, I am sure Apple can do it even better. No clue why they dont.
I know a lot of people are apprehensive about the Apple Vision Pro, but seeing that I'll be able to take Spatial Videos with the iPhone 15 Pro Max was a huge feature for me. I can't see myself ever taking those videos with the headset itself, but if I can do it from my phone and re-watch the videos later, that's a massive QoL improvement imo.
That alone makes the upgrade worth it for me since I'm planning on picking up the Vision Pro!
That was one of the more realistic complaints about the vision pro, "why would you take photos with it instead of experiencing the moment directly". A few people suggested that the iPhone will probably come into the equation, and it seems they were correct in that thinking (the timings suggest Apple had it planned this way.)
Have you been to anything involving kids performing in front of parents? Half of them are experiencing it through their phone. Very few people experience moments directly. The funny part is that unless something crazy happens very few of those videos ever get watched.
I definitely try and be mindful about when I'm pulling out a camera or my phone to record versus being in the moment, but I do know in my family we tend to look at the stuff we record pretty often. Just about every other night before we go to bed one of the kids is saying "I want to look at pictures", aka lets go flip through some random spots in our lives and relive those memories together for ten minutes as we wind down in the evening.
This thread has turned into an acid test for exhibiting spectrum behaviour.
There are a few fervent voices that don't see any issue at all, neither for themselves or others around them. They're perfectly entitled to share this view, this isn't a criticism of that - it's more an interesting display of what people see as normal or acceptable.
I sit on the other side of the fence. I pay respect to the fact that in our world there are people that get upset about a simple plastic protective barrier, or someone not taking off their motorcycle helmet, or those wearing any technology that films them such as Google Glass or Snap's Spectacles, and even laws about filming others, displays or media. We have more than enough dot points to know that wearing a headset like the Apple Vision Pro in such a social setting is going to be bothersome for others (and for most, the wearer as well).
Apple needed to demonstrate the feature and did so accordingly, but just because it's Apple doesn't mean it's now socially normal. It seems clear that the primary use case will be filming spatial video on an iPhone and then using/experiencing that later. Especially as this means multiple angles can be captured spatially without special equipment.
Oh, yeah, I agree I don't know I like the idea of going to a kids dance recital and seeing people with the Apple Goggles on. I was mostly addressing this idea:
> The funny part is that unless something crazy happens very few of those videos ever get watched.
I do agree some percentage of people definitely just shoot long videos and take a million pictures that nobody looks at, but in my household we look at them all the time. But I'll only take like one or two photos and a short 10 second video of my kid going down a slide, not try and record the entire trip to the playground every time.
I feel that's not a reasonable comparison, filming something with a camera versus wearing a headset.
While I agree that holding up a phone in front of your face presents some degree of being disconnected from the action, I feel wearing a headset where one's entire view of the scene is a computed feed via cameras is totally disconnected.
So I do still agree that it wasn't a reasonable suggestion that people would be filming important life events while wearing their APV headset.
It's a human behaviour questions. So I don't feel my age is relevant here, since I am not everyone.
If you think it's reasonable that a person is going to be strapped into a headset at a child's birthday party, then that is indicative of what you believe would be socially normal or acceptable behaviour. I dare say other family members or guests won't see it that way.
In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
There is a not subtle difference between picking up a phone and filming something versus living an event where the only visual stimulus one receives is a second hand video feed. The discussion here seems to be pinned to an idea that this is equivalent, I can say very confidently that it is not.
Side note: I don't live in a bubble, I'm pretty accustomed to watching the stage via other people's phone screens when I don't have a direct view. I also film when I have someone in mind to share it with. However the idea that people are filming to use the footage is largely wrong, they're excited and enjoying the moment and want to capture that somehow, so out comes the phone, they might show some of it to a friend later, or a social post, but largely it's unused and not looked back upon. This behaviour is not comparable to wearing a headset.
> If you think it's reasonable that a person is going to be strapped into a headset at a child's birthday party, then that is indicative of what you believe would be socially normal or acceptable behaviour. I dare say other family members or guests won't see it that way.
> In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
which is precisely why apple is selling the concept of the curved front display, with high-res internal cameras to pass through an image of your face and eyes. if they can pull it off well, it should look like your normal face, so the appropriate social cues will be there.
>which is precisely why apple is selling the concept of the curved front display ...
This feature of the headset is so others can pop-in, or gauge when the user is unavailable (i.e. when the wearer's eyes are entirely occluded.) Which is how those features were largely demonstrated by Apple(sans one setting where everyone in a meeting was wearing one). While this makes accomodations for a person wearing a headset it doesn't "unwear" it and doesn't solve the issues around wearing a headset in public/social situations. There was significant umbrage taken to Google Glass (and still to Spectacles by Snap) and these both are relatively minor adornments in comparison. Even those wearing ordinary motorcycle helmets run into similar. It's not an old-fashioned thing, it's a human connection issue, some people don't even like speaking through protective glass shielding.
At this stage we are quite far down the rabbit hole from the original conjecture. There indeed seems to be a small number of respondents that feel singularly wearing a headset in public won't be irksome for others, or be too disconnected from reality - time will tell how this pans out. I feel there is already sufficient evidence, but a few aren't convinced.
Thus the feature from Apple to allow the recording of spatial video directly from an iPhone, without needing to adorn the AVP seems to be the pragmatic and realistic use case scenario.
Well, not anymore. You can now take a wide landscape shot of some beautiful scenery, and then go home and sit on a couch all by yourself to look at it with a VisionPro. Allegedly, it's impressive, almost like you were there ;)
I regularly go back through my videos of my kids and watch them, and show them to my wife next to me. We then both feel emotional seeing how small they were.
And since the Photos app introduced the memories feature, where it creates montage videos of themes like "baby years" or "summer 2022", you don't even need to go back yourself.
Then you're going to the wrong concerts. Lil Pump? Maybe. (Not to say anything against hip hop as a genre, but i've seen insta stories and as you say they're just seas of phone screens in the crowd. Disgusting)
At good jazz or alt rock concerts people take their phone out to take a few videos and pictures and then enjoy the rest of the show. For the really good concerts they make you put a sticker on the camera of your phone.
Well I see Vision as just a secondary computing platform like using an iPad. Something you throw on, on the couch after work, and chill for an hour or two messing around, while messaging people in the Vision (sending photos back/forth).
So basically you wouldn't need to put it on to watch them but you'd regularly already have it on, instead of, say, watching TV. VR googles for those videos aren't exactly a hard requirement either if you're on the go.
If it stops being a novelty like "see this amazing experience in VR" where you hype yourself up and put work on doing it just for that - sure - it's not very amazing. But when it comes normal and integrated into a computing platform you already use daily it's definitely a plus.
I don't think so. The metaverse is the obvious endgame for entertainment. The only question is how long it takes to get there. Zero marginal cost everything is just a continuation of what made software so succesful so I think it should be clear to HN users why the idea behind the metaverse is so powerful.
It's software plus cameras, they're stitching together video from various focal lengths. I don't think the non-Pro Max models will ever be able to do it.
Rewatching the event video, it sounds recording spatial videos is supported on both 15 Pro models (time stamp ~1:17:30). I don't see anything on the compare iPhone models page though: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
The batteries are replaceable. If you are talking about having a second battery that you can lug around for when you need it, there are battery cases for this.
While the EU is a factor, the EU's mandatory ruling came too late to affect this product. In term's of iPhone release schedules only the iPhone 17 would fall into needing mandatory USB-C.
The USB-3 controller is in the A17 chip and not a separate component, considering the lead time for chip design and production it seems Apple had the transition in mind for quite a bit longer than the recent legislation changes in EU parliament.
As a timeline: the EU Parliament only proposed making USB-C mandatory in September 2021, and then only formally approved it in October 2022, prior to that it was just the EU's serving suggestion. Enforcement only begins on new product introductions from the latest October 2024, Apple release their Phones in September, meaning both the iPhone 15 and 16 could realistically still use lightning without infringement.
However now that Apple has introduced USB-C EU member states can safely fast track the law without affecting their economies (despite certain HN fantasies, forcing a major phone supplier out of the market for lolz is not good for a country.)
Not so as the mandate only applies to newly released products sold in the EU, not existing products.
Also as the Pro's USB3 controller is in the A-series chip and not a separate component it stands that Apple had already planned the change over -before- the EU even tabled it as a mandatory requirement.
Sure you could say that they saw the writing on the wall, which is certainly a factor, but they could have just as easily switched the port without deeper integration into the device just to satisfy a legislative requirement.
On the other hand one could equally say: Apple have been transitioning their entire lineup to the type C connector over several years and now would be an appropriate time to bring the phone into the fold.
The idea that Apple bent to the will of the EU is largely overblown, it was an obvious change and their hardware indicates that they've been planning this for a while.
Do you have a source for "newly released"? Everything I can find talks about "new" only.
I am not surprised that Apple have planned this for a while, because the EU have been pushing this for a while even before making USB-C mandatory. Previously it was only a recommendation for micro-USB, and Apple was practically the only manufacturer that didn't adopt it.
If it was such an obvious change, why did it take them 5+ years longer than other manufacturers?
Bear in mind they are preempting the mandatory change by one product cycle. It’s hardly an argument for a progressive change that wasn’t directly the result of inbound regulation.
If regulation is the case, then they could have waited until iPhone 17 and implemented as nothing more than a port change.
That's not what's happened though - the USB3.0 controller is part of the A17Pro chip.
It's trivially debunked that this change is in response to EU enforcement merely by observing the timeline of EU legislation and elementary understanding of chip design and lead time/mass production.
This isn't suggesting that they didn't see the writing on the wall, but it's patently evident that the decision was made even before the EU considered making type C the mandatory connection standard.
As I said already, it's just as likely this is part of their phased transition into the type C connector.
Also these MFi arguments for lightning are nonsense, not only are the fees minimal, but they persist with type C.
The EU forcing Apple to switch to the type C connector is largely a HN fantasy. It was happening regardless.
You think Apple was dragged kicking and screaming into being able to sell the same accessories they have already developed but with a different connector?
Once the EU signaled they were going to mandate this, there was no reason to do it any sooner. When Apple changed from 30-pin, there was an uproar. “Now my iPod Alarm Clock doesn’t work with my new iPhone!”
Now gets it both ways: more sales, no blame. “The EU made us do it…”
I wonder if we could ever hope for it to get a 3.5mm port. I am rocking a pixel 5a with a broken screen, but I haven't found a good update yet. An iPhone with an audio jack would make me leave android in 10 seconds.
Because I hear this less and less, your comment does stand out - what really piques my curiosity. Could you share your primary motivation for wanting an analogue audio jack? Like you do you have some great old headphones, or is there some other compelling reasons that I don't know about? No reason is silly, it's just something I'm really curious about because I come from the other side where I moved to wireless long before the jack was removed.
I can barely keep my own phone charged. Yet one more thing that needs charging is a huge turn-off.
The latency on bluetooth is killer. I guess most people don't notice, but I notice. There's a irritating delay between every action, and when watching video the sound is noticeably behind.
There is often interference when in frequency-heavy zones. Busy pedestrian intersections, trains, using the microwave.
I switch between devices with regularity. My computer, my phone, my corporate phone. Keeping one set of headphones paired between multiple devices is a nightmare.
I don't like keeping bluetooth on. Why do I need to place yet one more source of power drain on my devices, and why do I need to enable yet another broadcasting signal from them?
Dollar-for-dollar, lower cost wired headphones are higher quality than wireless ones.
I am prone to losing headphones, having them be miniaturized and untethered is not a bonus. Heaven forbid they're not even bound together and are instead individual unconnected earbuds. I can count in the double digits the number of people I've seen before my very eyes lose one half of their earbuds, to say nothing of the number of people I've encountered who are just dealing with losing one of them from some prior event.
Bluetooth headphones are a product with value, but not to me. Not having a headphone jack felt, and continues to feel, like a heavy handed bitch slap straight to my face every single day.
The latency drives me crazy (although some BT5 headphones are getting close to 30ms). The airpods I have tested have all had noticeable (definitely over 100ms in perfect conditions) latency. Some people don't notice it, but it drives me crazy. Especially when talking on the phone.
The audio quality of airpods is still subpar compared to $70 wired headphones.
I listen a lot to classical music and airpods 2 still makes becken (two cymbals smashed together. Don't know the English name) sound like someone throwing a rock into a pool.
I lose several pairs of headphones every year. Headphones being smaller is not a feature for me.
I have one pair of BT headphones. They have about 90ms latency, which is borderline intolerable (but better than every airpod). I use them for podcasts.
I plug my phone into speakers all the time (at work. I am a musician). A 3.5mm jack makes that a non-thinking operation.
Not OP, but I used to use a decent pair of wired, in-ear headphones with the male Lightning to female 3.5mm adaptor since I found wireless headphone quality during that time to be subpar up until the airpod pros came out. I still had a lot of issues with this configuration however as the adapter was flimsy and would break frequently, and since the DAC was now placed in the adapter itself, the audio quality was noticeably worse than in the previous 3.5mm models. But even with good bluetooth headphones, bluetooth just doesn’t have enough bandwidth to listen to music at high fidelity.
I used to be in the same boat until i finally bit the bullet and got a phone without a headphone port, but i wish i didnt have to. I don't like using a dongle, for example its easy to lose them when you detach it from the headphones to plug them into your laptop. Charging headphones seems silly to me, wired is more convenient, you can replace the wires and you're not limited to crappy Bluetooth headphone quality
AirPods are not 100x better than wired. If you are not bothered by latency or audio quality, great for you. I usually don't mind audio quality, but the latency drives me insane. My wired headphones have 25ms latency. In perfect conditions airpods2 have 5x that paired with an iPhone. The only times it does not bother me is when listening to podcasts.
The DAC in the dongle I got with my iPad pro is noticeably worse than my pixel 5a.
Small (anec)data point, but I got invited last week by my local Apple Store to attend the event there and upgrade on the day. Never had that happen before, and have a history (that Apple surely knows) of buying 6 months after launch and then holding for 4-7 years.
I get the impression — admittedly having not watched the event — that Apple feel the need to work hard and drum up interest for this release.
I think the entire industry is. Many aspects have reached their peaks, more isn't always better, phone screens for example. CPU performance hasn't improved as fast as previously either. Things are faster and going to get even faster, but not in massive leaps.
I imagine they are or will start trickling "new" features. Be it USB3/4, Thunderbolt, WiFi 7 (or higher bandwidth light or UWB standards). Just because the other races aren't offering much besides better numbers.
I'm happy with this pre-recorded style by Apple. It's really high quality so it's fun to watch even I've never considered to buy anything. Though this session is a bit boring script for me.
That doesn't mean that covid is an acute pandemic. You have to weigh risks and potential consequences for society. Hospitals aren't filling up with new cases, aren't they?
RE long covid: This is just the fallout that's being worked on. I also don't care about unverified estimations tbh. The numbers game in the pandemic was off and politicised in almost all countries all over the world.
I think the need for a special presentation for yearly iterative updates to a phone and watch is pretty minimal these days. Just put out a press release
funny how first ever 3nm cpu, ray tracing and console grade games on smartphone, titanium case and state of the art new camera crammed in thinnest case found no excitement on tech forum, but physically inferior usb-c that causing all kinds of hardware problems considered worthy.
Well, now you can swap iphones as often as android due to broken connector. Or buy apple care and off warranty repairs from Apple. Another hundred millions for Apple, thanks EU!
Shouldn't be so surprising, just as many people (hopefully much less) are arbitrarily consooming product as are pragmatic—especially in a severely lame economic environment—when it comes to the value something brings into their life, and usb-c to any pragmatic person was probably the most relevant inconvenience to getting the most value they can out of their device.
I've never owned an iPhone, and mainly think of the phone I do have as at best a minor addition to my life, but put a battery-efficient modem in my mac and I'll be all over that, because it lets me keep my phone off almost all the time.
Aside from that though, it's always neat to see incremental innovation anyway, but it would all be superfluous to me even if I was in the iPhone game.
i had a perfectly good Air 3 essentially die on me because the lightning port wore down and the hassle of getting it fixed was outweighed by getting a 5 with USB-C. same thing with my Mini 2 before that. touchwood, all of my USB-C devices have lasted perfectly well (including a Switch that is older than the Air 3). USB-C also puts a lot more of the stress on the cable, which is much easier and cheaper to replace, and (as pointed out in the event) the switch means you can use one connector for a wide variety of devices. i've long owned Apple devices (certainly iPads) and i'm only annoyed they took this long.
Felt like I was watching a presentation made with AI actors. The long pauses, PR-driven language, it was all so sterile and politically correct. Very cringe.
Apple over the last years has made a very conscious effort to have a set of speakers with diverse backgrounds.
It’s good in many ways, but also hard to ignore just how obvious that effort is once you realise it’s there. That’s true for all presentations, including the dev talks at WWDC.
It is hard for me to push aside the impression that nowadays the speakers - regardless their background - are entirely chosen for optical reasons. My only favourite moment in a recent big presentation was the M1 chip part with Srouji. That guy is not made for the camera but man he lives hardware with every fibre of his soul.
Good summary. I can’t take huge corporations seriously when they virtue signal to this extent. Apple cares so much about diversity, while kids mine their cobalt in the Congo.
I think that's fine honestly, if you want to maximize your talent pool you have to motivate the entirety of society to become interested and not just the groups already overrepresented. For example it's not like women are genetically predetermined to lack interest in hardware, that's a social construct.
There is a whole segment of society that cannot watch a 12 minute video unless there is at least one offensive joke. They are the audience of every right-wing grift YouTuber and dirtbag leftist podcaster.
Everything else is "politically correct" according to this segment.
Yeah, the psychotic robo zombies controlling the corp takes its toll. Jobs also had this cult like woooism aura, but these "people"... are straight from They Live :DD.
It's not just the announcement videos, it's also all of the WWDC recordings. Technically they're pretty good, much better than the api documentation, but just deeply unsettling.
I'm starting to buy into these rumors that Apple might buy Disney, because they're doing the same wooden performances as the kids on Disney Channel. Lots of weird hand motions.
Yeah, the presentation style often screams "I've taken exactly 3 acting classes to learn how to present". The style is remarkably uniform too, like they're constantly remembering how to move their hands.
The linked website looks like something from a company that knows they don't even have to try at all and they're guaranteed to sell more phones than any other company in the world, and it shows.
And, yet, ~20% of the population will see this news release, and talk about how clean the lines are, and how perfectly worded every sentence is, as if it was handed to us from God himself on stone tablets.
Spatial Video in this generation says everything. They want to win Spatial / VR with the ecosystem - it's truly the only way: AppleTV (Spatial Content Specific?), iPhone 15, M(x) Processors for creating / editing.
Apple is ready, but I still don't think people want to wear something on their face. That said, I've put myself in timeout over Apple Watch - still wrist naked, but it's inarguable that it's a successful product line.
A few years ago, Apple and Google were in a battle to dominate the AR space and made heavy investments (ARKit and ARCore) that I think have paid close to zero dividends. I'm not sure if any of that work is carrying over this spatial push, but I don't see Google following suit. I think it could be neat, but the addressable market is going to be tiny.
I wonder if you'll be able to connect a harddrive to the phone via USB-C and send all your photos to your harddrive. (even if the process took a Mac to help facilitate) That'd be the best feature as people have all so many photos and at this point they have to live on the cloud. But whether they admit it or not, the cloud can be buggy and it's very common to lose photos or videos if that's the only place they live.
IMO, this was a pretty weak announcement. They spent so long talking about environmental stuff, like getting rid of leather, that it felt like they were trying to pad the presentation to reach a reasonable length. There were a few new things (more optical zoom, slightly smaller bezels), but these were all leaked in advance.
I was also disappointed to hear that the satellite stuff is limited to 2 years. Is it going to be yet another subscription after that?
I didn't see the announcement, but I saw this blurb on Engadget:
> The company noted that while leather is popular for things like watch straps, it has a serious impact on the environment, particularly at Apple's scale.
Is that actually true? I remember reading a few years ago that there was actually a big glut of leather: people still eat steak and hamburgers, and without a market for the cow hides then that material is wasted. That is, I thought the leather market was largely a byproduct of the beef market, and that reducing leather usage won't have a measurable impact on reducing the number of slaughtered cows.
you're right, this is greenwashing. I sell into the market sometimes and the hides are basically wasted unless you try hard to line up buyers. plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere. It's true that factory-raised beef is bad for the environment though, as they eat grains that are fertilized from oil via Haber–Bosch. It's also true that tanning uses lots of nasty stuff, but there is vegetable tanning which works well and sourced from nuts and stuff.
> you're right, this is greenwashing ... plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere
Sounds like you might be doing a bit of greenwashing yourself. The carbon came from the atmosphere, but the cows make methane, which is much worse. Also they spoil the land and water. And also you're not counting the carbon used to actually raise them, like the gas in the equipment and the transport.
Now calculate the use of the agricultural machinery to get the same number of calories from plants.
I have no idea how cows "spoil land and water". Have you seen a cow?
No one ever said plant based food is carbon neutral. But it uses way less carbon than cows. And yes, I've seen a cow. Many. They spoil the land by trampling it and the water by having their excrement run off into it.
The land with cattle on are the most productive, as they get quite a compliment of natural fertilizer from the cattle. I would say cattle do not spoil the land, but improve it. This can't help but be the case, given the way grass responds to being eaten.
Additionally, once the grazers improve grass life, the water-table improves. The worst lakes in our area are surrounded by fertilized annual crops. Their water is polluted with nitrogen fertilizers and are very poor quality, with blue-green algae blooms, and as a result are not swimmable. My friend lost a dog to such a lake.
The land with active grazers in contrast, is very good at preventing this problem. The best lake for 200km around me is surrounded by grass-fed cattle operations, and there is absolutely no problem with algae blooms.
I think a central problem of our time is that educated elites are detached from reality, not seeing things like what I mention above, and so are acting upon their false perceptions, causing great harms as a result. The Apple announcement today about leather acts to confirm my suspicions about this.
Thats not how that works, just like the water cycle there is a carbon cycle.
You can’t produce “more” greenhouse gases in a closed system, the system will ebb and flow; until you dig up megatons of carbon that has been stored for a few hundred millennia and insert it into that system.
(same story with polar ice caps and the water cycle)
The water cycle is actually the perfect analogy. The form of the water is almost as important as the amount. When you take all the water out of the ground and put it on the surface, and then a bunch evaporates, sure, we have the same amount of water. But we're still in big trouble because we don't have usable fresh water.
If you take a bunch of carbon in the grass and convert it to methane gas, sure you have the same amount, but it's a lot worse for the planet.
My current (and if I understood correctly: the current scientific) understanding of the carbon cycle does not indicate that methane is significantly more harmful than other forms of carbon release, mostly due to the fact that it does not have a significant lifetime in the atmosphere.
The issue remains, squarely, on adding to the carbon cycle. The harmful values of methane output is directly correlated with the oil based feed which GP mentions.
The water cycle is a great example because it is filtering the water as it goes, rapidly producing fresh water that rains on the land. Methane, likewise, is a short-lived byproduct of excess animal activity, and in a steady state sustainable mode, we have equality. The problem is the finger of oil on the scale, not the grass-raised beef, just like how excess bovines produce excess methane.
Don't forget about the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer that is sprayed over crops that gets washed into the water. The Mississippi river and the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is an example. Where i live, cow pasture land mostly is untouched.
Also, cows have feet and digestive systems so it takes more equipment and diesel for harvesting and processing grains.
They don't kill cows to make leather. The cows are raised for meat and milk. Actually, NOT using leather is worse for the environment because now you have leather which has no use and you're creating pleather or whatever replacement.
> plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere
This totally ignores the land use issue. Cattle absolutely decimate natural areas. e.g. significant areas of the midwest/great plain that were prairie with deep roots to store carbon are now pasture. Pasture grass has comparatively shallow roots and limited ability to store carbon.
Hasn't the midwest host large herds of grazing buffalo for millenia? I think the last I read about this stuff, most cattle farmers want their grass to still be the old school deep-rooted stuff, if other grasses take over it is a symptom of overgrazing.
- Grazers improve the capacity of grass to carbon capture
- Some land is ONLY able to grow grass. The alternative is desertification, and so livestock is the only option to produce food. edit: unless you bring in fossil fertilizers.
I think what you are doing is definitely better than some of the specific agriculture feedstocks for cows that increase the enteric emissions of cows to make them grow quickly. That said it isn't carbon neutral - the digestive systems of cows produce methane from food. Methane is between 24- 29 times more impactful then carbon for global warming.
Cows still have a signifiant impact on especially as a function of how large the industry has become.
And to your point - wasting hides is also not great. Would be great if we were less wasteful in general.
I suspect that because of conservation of energy, methane is a highly reactive over the short term, but ultimately an insignificant element in the big picture IF you ignore the massive oil inputs humans are adding to the system. That is to say, methane on its own is not a reason to discourage digging up oil to make grain, which is used to feed cattle.
It's hard to know for sure. The most common analysis, following the PEFCR standard, takes the carbon impact of cows and then divides it up in a certain ratio between flesh and leather products, then adds the tanning and production steps. Arguably it would be fairer to treat leather as purely a byproduct, which would dramatically reduce the resulting carbon footprint numbers for leather.
I'd go as far as saying that leather accessories are actually even better for environment since they easily outlast any fabric or silicone ones.
It's really just shameless greenwashing from Apple, nothing more.
I read that article, but I disagree that the conclusion is "Leather itself is a driver of deforestation and not just a secondary byproduct."
That is, what I'd like to know is whether all those cows in Brazil would still exist even without a leather marker, but just for their beef. The linked research sort of tries to make that argument, but it doesn't really provide any convincing evidence.
Replace killing cows with micro plastic pollution, slap Apple price on it and call it an eco improvement.
In few years full reverse, cleaning up the planet while supporting free range happy lives of cows. Really, who actually buys this in-your-face bullshit? There are proper technical improvements to talk about.
I learned recently that microplastics are primarily from fabrics. Our polyester/synthetic workout clothes shed them in the washer and they end up everywhere. Plastics also generally have a pretty low carbon footprint, ironically.
There are interesting second-order effects. For example, this will tend to make wholesale leather less expensive, for producers of third-party bands and other small items (I assume that large items use a different type of leather, since they require larger swathes).
I'm surprised they're pricing these new fabric bands at $99. If they sold these alongside leather bands, would they sell at that price? Seems like they're trying to position them as a replacement for a premium product, but without any proof that they are worthy of the lofty price.
On one hand they talk about getting rid of leather, then they talk about getting something with a "suede" feeling. I hope we aren't replacing leather with microplastics-infused future garbage.
Of course that's what's happening. How else would Apple reduce its microplastic footprint come 2035, if they didn't stealthily increase it in 2023? Perhaps they'll cut down on microplastic pollution with a return to 'natural' materials. I wonder if leather might fit the bill?
I wonder how much worse accidental UI interactions will be due to smaller bezels. I alredy despise phones that I have to pick up _really_ carefully not to engage some completely unwanted gesture.
Yep, I see pretty much zero reason to go with the 15 Pro, other than to avoid the terrible colors of the 15. The Pro Max gets the better camera, but the smaller Pro seems like a lousy deal — especially if the smaller bezels result in more accidental touches.
Woah, fairly confusing. Looks like the base Pro gets the same "pro camera" according to this: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
But the zoom options are different so it's clearly not the same.
They also talked confusingly about optical-quality zoom, or some such thing, on the lower end phones. They made it sound like you can either take a 48MP photo or a zoomed 24MP photo. Sounds like digital zoom to me...
I have recently been led to believe that people eat so much beef that so a ton of potential cow hide goes to waste instead of being turned into leather because there isn't enough demand for leather (compared to beef).
Is this true or false?
If it's true - then how is leather bad for the environment?
I don't eat beef - but it's interesting to me how many people eat hamburgers and then look at someone with a leather bag like they're the devil.
As with a lot of things environmental - this seems purely idealist and not realist.
They are imagining it like an elephant killed just for its tusks. For some leather goods made from certain animals this might be true, but today almost all parts of the animal usually have a buyer and end up getting used in some way, even if it's just ground up into dogfood.
Instead of supposing something, how about you take Google for a stroll and figure out the (very interesting) answer to this yourself. Spoiler: leather actually has a profoundly grave impact, and it’s not just a „free“ by-product of meat.
There are a lot of days I'd be strongly tempted to answer that with "Google", but that's unfair since they usually just kill the product rather than actively making it worse.
> is there a company making worse products every iteration?
Very many companies that built a brand around quality before being quietly sold to a private equity firm are doing just that, to maximize profits for as long as they can while the brand still has a good reputation.
It can be really obvious if you’ve owned a quality product for many years and then go to replace it, only to see that the current rendition is effectively a cheap knockoff.
People have had the option to use bluetooth headphones since 1999. Removing the headphone jack from iPhones wasn't some revolution. Apple simple took away a choice.
Bluetooth audio was awful for a long time, and not a serious replacement for wired headphones until very recently. It's clear that companies remove the jack to simplify manufacturing and cut costs, but at least BT headphones are usable nowadays. So as much as I disliked the trend when Apple started it, I'm not as annoyed by it anymore. Save for the hassle of BT pairing, which can sometimes be wonky, but this isn't an issue on Apple devices, AFAIK.
I personally know a lot of people who didn't realize wireless headphones were a thing pre-Airpods. They seriously thought Apple created that market with the first wireless headphones.
I imagine a lot of people didn't know or think about wireless headphones until Apple made it a thing.
I'll mention GM, since they are taking CarPlay and Android Auto out of their new vehicles so they can charge a subscription fee for worse versions of the same features your phone already provides for free.
But where would the marketing budget be deployed? I enjoy seeing how they produce the event but the content this year wasn't interesting enough to keep my attention
IMO, it's not mature if the battery life is one day. The product it is seeking to replace (a "watch") can last for years on a single battery. Most people wouldn't mind charging once every week or two, but a "watch" that has to be charged every day is not a mature product in my book. It's especially embarrassing because Garmin and various Chinese companies (Amazfit) have sleeker watches that run for weeks.
Apple could sell a lot more watches if they upped their battery life game. I guess they want a watch that can do a zillion things, one day at a time. I prefer a watch that can do a few things, for a couple weeks at a time.
I find the Amazfit display to be very nice, and it lasts 2 weeks on a charge. I have no idea why Apple is stuck at daily charging for the AW9. I could pay $800 to get an AWU, and then use it in low-power mode for up to 5 days, but that seems absurd. The Amazfit GTR 4 is 1/4 the price and the battery lasts 3x as long (as low-power mode AWU)
Daily charging is for normal use, including > 2k nits in sun, with always on display. Low power mode gets around 3 days (all sizes I've tried).
But, you point still stands high, especially since it's also using AMOLED! I naively assume the Amazfit is using a much lower power processor. I've played 3d games, at what looks like 60fps, on my Apple watch. I...don't understand why I should be able to do that.
> I've played 3d games, at what looks like 60fps, on my Apple watch. I...don't understand why I should be able to do that.
Exactly — it feels like Apple is going with a high-power device that gives modest battery life, when what I want is a lower-power device with extended battery life.
1) Wireless reverse charge from phone - you go take a shower remove phone from your pocket and remove your watch and put on your phone - 10 min shower + 5 min shaving should be enough to charge to 100% as some android phones with 100W fast charging
2) wireless charging via some smart apple watch bands with chargers coils inside macbook on the left side and right side of touchpad - so that every time I type on macbook it charges my apple watch
They won't fit new iPhones, IIUC. Third parties will still make them, but they won't be available as rapidly as Apple's cases.
I'm curious how much they're charging for this 'premium' new FineWoven material, which they pitch as a replacement for leather. Will they price it the same? Will people be willing to pay that much?
How many leather cases do you go through per phone? I think they just said they're not making any new leather products, not immediately killing all existing ones. I'm sure the sales channels will eventually dry up though.
Interesting. I still have my iPhone6 leather case (been meaning to throw it out) - it's a bit worn around the edges but it still holds and isn't gummy.
Currently I find otterbox cases are fantastic grip/slide ratio that I prefer to my old leather case.
I don’t personally use leather, but I have been lead to believe that it is the longest-lasting and most repairable material. Are those people just lying to justify their purchasing habits?
You should take better care of your things. A leather case every 3 months is unbelievably wasteful. This type of careless behavior is killing our planet.
I appreciate that you rephrased this from your original comment, which was incredibly dismissive.
But this is still condescending and hyperbolic. I'm as surprised as the next guy that anyone would go through multiple iPhone cases per year, but I don't know anything about him, his family/habits/clumsiness, so I would not make such judgmental remarks.
And from a practical perspective, you will win zero converts by telling strangers on the internet that they are "killing our planet".
The new-er leather cases are no where near the quality of the X, Xs series leather cases. My 5 year old Xs leather case was like a baseball glove from my youth. These newer ones, like the one on my iPhone 14 just doesn't wear the same.
I haven't had a case since the 6, which was nice. I could imagine that as time went on and volume went up, they had to source lousier leather. The cynic in me also wonders if they didn't keep their leather products as nice so that people wouldn't miss it as much after it's replaced by FakeLeather, or whatever they're calling it.
Small (anec)data point, but I got invited last week by my local Apple Store to attend the event there and upgrade on the day. Never had that happen before, and have a history (that Apple surely knows) of buying 6 months after launch and then holding for 4-7 years.
I get the impression — admittedly having not watched the event — that Apple feel the need to work hard and drum up interest for this release.
Super weird. I've had iPhones since day 1, but never gotten such an invite. They must know that demand will be weak. I was thinking I'd upgrade my 13 mini, but after seeing this lineup I may stay on the sidelines for now. I expect there will be some sales coming in a couple months, at least through carriers.
I recently switched from android to the iphone ecosystem; I had a 3a and then a 4a, and recently updated to a 7a, but it never really clicked with me -- just too big.
Got a 13 mini; I kinda don't like a bunch of aspects of the iphone ecosystem, but the mini form factor is really perfect.
I liked my 11 Pro before the mini, but if I'm going to go back to a non-mini phone I'll have to toss some of my jeans, whose pockets are too small for non-mini phones. I do find typing on the 11 Pro to be easier than on the mini, since the keyboard is wider. But I love to swipe-type on the mini.
You can probably find it for awhile "in the channels", i.e. 3rd party retailers like cell-phone stores for a little bit longer until their stock is depleted.
Not strictly speaking, but in this case there were hardly and exciting leaks. Some people care about USB-C (I don’t), and some people care about the new zoom levels (I do, but not enough to buy an enormous phone).
If they actually cared about the environment they would have spent that time describing how easy they made it to replace the screen and battery on every announced device.
In their defense, iPhones haven’t changed much, and IMO that’s a good thing. I still use an iPhone SE and haven’t experienced any issues. I have a much older iPhone which i stopped using a couple years ago but it was the same, and I suspect it might still even support the latest OS and apps
This satellite thing... carriers around the world gonna love it when Apple decides its time to leave them out from the equation and will use Musk's satellites.
Was it only weak because you knew about the new things in advance?
The switch to USBC seems pretty significant. As well as the 3mm chip in the pro models.
The move to USB-C is a big deal for some people, but it’s hardly a headline feature for a new phone. The new manufacturing technique is nice, but only if it translates into tangible benefits for the user (which were not apparent from the presentation).
It’s just another way of increasing margins and justifying it with platitudes about environmentalism. Corporations co-opting things for profit.
It’s why you can’t get a paper bag at many grocery stores today. Those bags cost them a lot of money that’s now going into their pockets while you are forced to buy bag after bag (because who always has a bag on them?!) that only becomes a net positive after thousands of uses. Which it never will come close to.
I really liked the Mother Nature part. It may be greenwashing but it’s encouraging to see the world’s biggest company taking these steps.
Planting forests, installing solar grids, carbon neutral offices, that all costs the company, it’s not cost savings disguised as green actions. Sure it has marketing value, but that’s hard to measure.
Smaller plastic free packaging and shipping by sea on the other hand could be made to save money without care for the environment. Being able to market it as green is just an added bonus.
Computer prices should continue to fall as they have since the 1980's. Only Apple raises prices to prop up a business that has come to rely on irrational, cult-like behaviour.
Pretending to be ecologically-focused while at the same time trying to get people to "upgrade" is the height of hypocrisy. Back in the day Apple hardware was high quality and, IME, built to last. Today, the company is focused on convincing people to dispose of working computers and generate more electronic waste.
The stock price dropped more after this iPhone annoucement than it has after any iPhone announcement in the past.
> Available starting on September 18, iCloud+ will offer two new plans: 6TB for $29.99 (U.S.) per month and 12TB for $59.99 (U.S.) per month, providing additional storage to keep files, photos, videos, and more safe, accessible, and easy to share.
Interesting to see Apple finally bumping the upper limit on iCloud storage.
I am very disappointed in myself and in their trade in offer. I made the switch from Android to iOS after 15 years or so of being an Android die hard in July, with the intention of considering the 15 as a trade in. They offered me £635 for a 14 Pro Max 256. Less than half what I paid 2 months ago.
I feel like this is an epic joke. Except the joke is on all the suckers paying $1k for essentially the same phone, but wow, now with a usb-c port. Please Tim Apple...take my money faster. Even better, please strap it to my head so I can be even more disconnected from other people.
Do you really need to upgrade your 3 year old iPhone if you think about it? Those are still quite fast and can do everything you need. To me it seems like a waste, but you do you.
Even upgrading from last years phone would be worth it for the ability to record spacial video. I want to start capturing 3D vids as soon as I possibly can.
It's just marketing - there are apps where you can already record spatial video such as record 3d. They didn't mention any improvement to lidar. You can even use any truedepth iphone if you are Ok making 3d video using front camera.
I have a 4 year old phone and I don't see anything worth upgrading. USB-C, yay! But I already have a Lightning cable at home, is that worth hundreds of dollars?
I plan on buying one, and I have a 3 year old android phone. I would have upgraded sooner, but I basically wanted an iphone 14 but with USB C so I don't have to get new cables. Now I can get that.
This has been the only reason I've not been using an iPhone for some time now.
I love just having one cable that charges everything (phone, laptop, headphones, tablet, you name it - desk fans, white noise machines, thermometers, cameras etc etc etc)
My only problem is that I wish it was easier to tell what cables can do what things. Only some of my cables are able to connect to displays/power my laptop
"The fast and efficient A16 Bionic chip brings proven performance to iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, powering the Dynamic Island, computational photography capabilities, and more. With two high-performance cores that use 20 percent less power and four high-efficiency cores, the 6-core CPU is faster than the previous generation and easily handles intensive tasks while delivering extraordinary battery life. The 5-core GPU has 50 percent more memory bandwidth for smooth graphics when streaming videos and playing games. A new 16-core Neural Engine is capable of nearly 17 trillion operations per second,"
Even Apple can't resist the numbers geekery - it's just a phone - nothing revolutionary.
I am sad that the Pro is getting rid of the silent button. It is solid and I know when it's activated and I know it won't accidentally be on. Not sure I really need another push button. That silent button was/is a key feature of iPhone for me.
I don't think I've ever intended for the phone to be anything but silent. It's a much better experience for users to be able to remap what the button does, instead of depending on the few users who still depend on ringtones.
I kinda feel the same way although I am excited to be able to use the "action" button for other things and just leave the phone muted/silent permanently (as it is currently).
Another unnecessarily long event with essentially meaningless long sentences and long pauses to show off the new Iphone, exactly the same one as before, $100 more expensive.
I will buy it though. Gotta get rid of my Iphone 7. Time has come
Am I wrong or is iPhone 15 usb-c is usb2 just with a different connector. Seems to me like only the pro is getting usb3 even though usb3 was first released in like 2008.
Update: confirmed in iPhone specs page.
I imagine most people - especially those not using the Pro models - only care about universal charging. I think I’ve connected my iPhone to my PC for data transfer maybe two or three times since I switched ~six years ago, and even on Android I used network shares and such more often than not.
I’d agree most people can happily just use WiFi speeds for most tasks, but I’m just shocked that apple would aim to save money or force a product differentiation by using usb2. It’s fairly ancient now.
I wonder if the base A16 simply doesn’t support USB 3 and they weren’t motivated to change that - the 14 Pro/Max last year was still limited to USB 2 after all.
USB C is definitely more universal, it is used for laptops and peripherals and other random devices. Qi charging is mostly limited to phones and certain phone accessories, which usually also have USB C.
Maybe it matters to you, but I can't remember the last time I used cabled data transfer capabilities on any phone. As long as fast charging is supported (which, I'm sure it does), 99.9% of users won't care at all.
I am a bit surprised there isn't a Thunderbolt controller in the Pro, though. Seems like they already have the IP since it's part of the iPads already.
might be more popular with that crowd that doesn't backup on icloud but to their local desktop. For that non icloud folks I wonder how many use cable vs wifi.
I’m using WiFi 6 (not even 6E) for that and the limiting speed factor for me seems to be the SSD that I am writing the data to. I could throw money at that to make it faster, but I also don’t really care because I’m asleep while it’s backing up anyways, just like how you probably couldn’t tell me how long your iCloud backup takes.
that's very weird, what's the BOM savings here? Seems like a custom part regardless, is it the controller chip that's cheaper? USB C for 2.0 seems baffling I agree.
ouch, yah without some alternate explanation it kind of reeks of a deliberate caste system being created in the Apple ecosystem. Only certain folks would get it.
Actually BOM will differ because lightning can do USB2 so it’s probably reusing the same chip. USB-C needs a different chip and is harder to route too so I’m not surprised.
It’s no coincidence that Intel just released info on thunderbolt 5 spec yesterday. How much money could it really add to goto the next usb? Is there some kind of hardware design he’ll going on behind the scenes
"USB4" is really thunderbolt 3 with a few compatibility tweaks. As such, it's a very different beast from USB3 (which is much closer to the USBs that preceded it): more like "external PCIe" than "USB".
I am absolutely baffled that Apple (and others) haven't updated their smart assistants with a competitive LLM. With Apple's privacy shtick and their mobile GPU efficiency, I was convinced we'd see something today. What am I missing?
I think Apple missed the boat on LLMs and was surprised by the success of ChatGPT.
They are no doubt working on an LLM-based Siri now, but they don't rush things, and they don't preannounce things, so we'll only hear about it once it is ready. And they are probably going to use a different term for marketing it rather than using a generic term like LLM.
I don't think they missed the boat, I think they recognize that LLMs aren't Apple-ready yet.
They don't roll out half-baked products, and they won't be comfortable placing the big disclaimers that ChatGPT relies on. They'll incorporate LLMs if and when they can guarantee that what Siri says will be consistently accurate and extremely difficult to abuse.
LLMs as they are now are not a drop-in replacement for what people use voice assistants for.
If you ask it a question it doesn't know the answer to, "I don't know" is better than making up a bullshit answer. That could be potentially hazardous at iPhone levels of scale, giving everyone easy access to what appears to be a very intelligent AI chatbot without them understanding that it shouldn't be relied on for a lot of information people will ask it.
They would get an immediate benefit from using an LLM for intent recognition - i.e. knowing that a user wants to search or set a timer, etc. Current Siri is really bad at this. I'm sure even a fine-tuned Llama 7B would be a massive improvement over Siri.
Agree that Siri isn't very good, and have been quite stagnant. It was released in 2011, that's 12 years ago!? Sure it's probably better now, but not 12 years of development better?
But, at the same time. ChatGPT and the likes have a very different failure mode, that feels even less Appley. Like saying actual fake stuff, or saying it understand that you want to turn the AC on when your son leaves school coming home - but then just not doing it, or doing something completely different. With current Siri the failings are at least very obvious…
It is phone voice assistant and if you learn how to use it, it works great as intended. The problem is when you want too much interaction. ChatGPT can fake it, Siri - cant.
They definitely missed the boat in my eyes. The speed at which others have been able to produce meaningful assistants with LLM is astonishing. Considering Apple also have an approach where they announce and release in November / early the following year, to have nothing revealed seems like a missed opportunity to me.
No half-baked products? Have you ever tried using the translation feature in the book app? That is the most infuriating, dumb piece of software I have seen in a long time.
Apple has consistently missed the boat on every major technical advancement, when compared to android. But when they do catch up, the quality is unmatched! Hoping the same with LLMs. I am sure they’re already working on it.
Not going to happen until Apple can fully control the bounds of the output generated by the LLM (which no one is capable of doing right now). A handful of instances of it spouting...unfriendly stuff is enough to dent Apple's reputation, and so they aren't going to take the risk.
When they talked about Siri on-device on Apple Watch 9 they briefly said Siri had a ‘new transformer model’ and talked about improved dictation accuracy.
Honestly was half expecting more along those lines as part of the new chip announcement for the iPhone 15 Pro, but apparently not.
There is a rumor that Apple is working on an "embedded" "SiriGPT". Imagine "ChatGPT" but on device, no API calls, no extra latency. And all apps on your device can use this "SiriGPT" instantly to enrich the user experience.
Siri in its current form is constantly "hallucinating" all sorts of stuff as it is. "Hey Siri, turn off the lights in the kitchen." -- "Sure, now playing a continuous stream of U2 on all of your speakers!"
LLMs can't guarantee factuality. They're great for the conversational component, but they're a seriously bad and responding with reliably factual information. More important that its ability to deal with complexity would be an assistant's ability to respond to a request correctly.
That's abusing a turn-of-phrase to provide a counter-argument. Of course no one can guarantee universal factuality. But relative to information we're seeking from an assistant (schedules, email data, messages, music preferences) it is very easy to obtain highly accurate data. But LLMs don't work like that.
The conceptual model behind LLMs utilizes frequency to generate a reasonable response to a query. But that's a bad fit when you're looking for data accuracy that isn't represented by the model. If your model says most dental appointments occur on the 15th and responds so but my appointment is on the 17th, it's not only useless to me it's detrimental.
it will be more profitable if they sell the Siri entry point to the one who bothers to do the research , the same way they sell the search box to google.
I was not going to get a new iPhone since I really like the size and shape of my iPhone 11 Pro. However, if the 15’s usb-c interface will drive my Apple Studio Pro XDR monitor, then sold!
The thing I enjoyed during the presentation was the original iphone on the table in the left side of the screen just before Sribalan Santhanam started to talk about the ray tracing.
* Nice camera upgrade on the pro (for people who really care about the focal length/etc)
* Satellite roadside assist in US
* Spatial video looks great. Even if I can't play it back yet, I can begin recording things with it now to render it in the future. I think that's big.
* Custom button vs. vibrate toggle: As long as the haptic feedback distinguishes between vibrate and ringer and silent, then it is suitable. I just need to know what setting it's on while it's in my pocket.
Where's the removable battery? Is that not coming until next iPhone? What about third-party app stores? Love to see their walled garden come crashing down.
When were these things ever more than pie-in-the-sky solutions to litigation? this is apple we're talking about, the EU had to threaten to axe them from a third of the world if they didnt comply with USB-C laws.
As far as I know, laws exist because there are people in the world who are so clueless or twisted they need to be prevented from doing blatantly stupid things that harm others by force, and apparently Apple is so stupid they can't just play fair and respect your right to repair (take it to us so we can overcharge you, you damn well aint fixin it yourself or else youll break it you idiot lol!!!!), or right to own one charger for all your technology (please invest in our outdated charging standard that only made sense back when our competitors used those god-awful micro USB cables with the two teeth of death), or your right to own the headphones you'd like (buy our $150 wireless earbuds that are even more difficult to repair than our phones because headphones that didn't need batteries and were powered by two wires that worked on anything made after the 80's were ACTUALLY polluting the Earth, you could technically use those if you buy our overpriced adapter, but you're literally polluting the planet you psycho!). Their excuses for doing these things make no sense, and either go back to greenwashing, planned obsolescence or walled garden locking.
I don't blame folks for buying Apple, the software is great I'm sure (I personally hate it, but I use Windows XP with the classic theme and oldschool WinAmp almost every day so to each their own) and I respect the people who enjoy it, but everybody needs to play by the rules, and when Apple is clearly not with their hardware, f*cking people over and lying about it, maybe we do need laws to keep them in check, because Timmy Apple isn't making me buy an iPhone for my whole family because they won't implement RCS.
I had heard somewhere that the first batch of a new electronics product (like the iPhone 15 if you pre-order right now) is more likely to have manufacturing defects and other subtle issues. So it is best to wait a few months to buy a new product.
Does anyone know if this is true? If so, how long is optimal to wait to have the highest probability of all the kinks being worked out? Like when should I buy the iPhone 15?
I don't think this is true these days and especially not true of this phone release.
IIRC, Apple will have made somewhere close to 20k phones before getting anywhere close to mass production and as the ID didn't change that much, the risk is pretty low on there being a long term material issue.
If the ID changes next year (just going off manufacturing rumors), I might wait a little, but this year seems like no risk.
If you live anywhere near an Apple Store, there's not a great incentive to wait. Everyone seems to have their pet story of that one time Apple didn't replace a thing they thought should be replaced, but generally the in-store employees will swap out a defective device without hassle.
I haven't bought a new iPhone since the 5. I typically would wait a year and buy a used year-old model for half price (with AppleCare). But I didn't do this after the XS, and now with Pro and non-Pro models it's incredibly complex to find the best value since used prices are so dynamic and there are so many models to choose from.
Might be time to just buy a new one with USB-C and use it for 5+ years.
I don't get the logic of removing the mute toggle switch. It is very convenient to put the phone in silent. Didn't have to open the phone. Plus it was easy to check if the phone was silent by just looking for the orange marker.
They should have first turned the volume buttons to action button. I dont use the volume button.
I’ve literally never taken my phone off mute. I think fewer and fewer people are using the ringer and it doesn’t make much sense to dedicate one of only 4 buttons on the device to it.
Why do people think iPhone 15 doesn't support USB 3.0 speeds (HW capable)? iPad Mini has A15 Bionic chip which is USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (up to 5 Gbps). From: https://www.apple.com/my/ipad-mini/specs/
USB-C port needs to have controller. On video they clearly showed that A17 USB-C is SoC (on a chip). Are you implying that A15 doesn't have USB-C controller SoC?
Is Nvidia about to have an iPhone moment? Nvidia releases an AI-based phone with an assistant you talk to, no other UI necessary. It could remain aware during calls like an available assistant so you can direct it to do follow up tasks, like check calendars, etc.
It could completely change the paradigm and disrupt Apple's business model entirely.
Nothing in Nvidia’s past even hints at them being able to pull off half of what you wished for and consumers are not interested in an audio-only phone. There are just way too many things that work better with a screen (like pictures or games, also I like to read articles not listen to them).
The only think Nvidia has going for them is hardware and CUDA, I don’t even think they are very competent in the software department let alone consumer-facing software.
I'm sad to see lightning go away. It has auto centering edges, unlike USB-C, which makes it much easier to plug it in by feel. USB-C could have adopted a connector like the lightning plug, but no they insisted on wanting small thin pieces of curved metal that could be crushed when you stepped on it (which I have done with USB-C cables).
Having had both Android and iPhone, I just used a toothpick on my iPhone and it never took more than a couple seconds. I find myself picking my Pixel 6 with a very fine sewing needle for like 15 minutes before my cable will seat properly.
This whole Apple presentation could be an email. Really there is nothing worthwhile showing, which is OK by the way. However making it a full blown 1h video felt weird for Apple.
Literally best feature they released is USB-C which they only did because of EU regulations to begin with.
I think metal cases are overrated. The longest lasting phones I have had have always been plastic. I drop things a lot and the plastic one's just tend to break in ways that don't stop the phone working.
Of course plastic has it's own issues with recycling and heat removal etc.
There sure are a lot of comments here about USB2. I can’t imagine anyone actually giving a shit about it though. Wifi, Bluetooth, airdrop, etc. are all perfectly fine. What are you people plugging your phone in for other than just charging?
Frustrated I just got AirPods 6 weeks ago with lightning. Would have been amazing to be entirely USB C for the first time ever with my next iPhone purchase. But that's probably a couple years off, maybe my airpods will be dead by then
How does the camera on these new phones with mirrorless cameras at less than $1000 price point?
Dedicated cameras have around 20 Megapixels but much larger sensor size - but does it really matter if the most I would do is print them into a photobook?
If you don't fiddle with the phone camera photos much and are happy with them, there's not much difference. A $1k-ish mirrorless is a much more capable camera but it doesn't fit in your pocket and has about as many controls as a nuclear reactor control room.
Why does everyone like usb-c? It is inferior to lightning. With usb-c, the connector on the device can break or come loose (male), with lightning the male connector is on the cable, so easier to replace and maintain long term!
I wasn't going to go Pro but between the borked USB port on the regular models and the better cameras and native Resident Evil on the Pros, I think they got me. Their fucking marketing department is too powerful.
I want to run Assassin's Creed Mirage on a phone, that sounds really cool. I've wondered for years why people have to buy all these portable consoles when the iPhones in their pockets already out spec them.
All of my lightning to USB-C cables break at USB-C side, never Lightning side. I have so far 2 USB-C ports in various Apple laptops that stopped working and need repair. I am not enthusiastic about this change.
Man, I really miss that Playstation microsite making fun of the Xbox Kinect. I think of that guy saying "WE have BUTTONS!" every time someone pretends that having buttons is a revelation.
New iPhone threads make me laugh. I could never imagine replacing a one year old laptop/PC just because it had a new port. Especially if I had a bunch of cables for the old port anyway.
This felt like really let down release. I am usually the first one to upgrade iPhone no matter what but this year I felt no attachment to any of these "new" things. Just didn't cared at all.
The things I would have cared:
- Dual screen
- AR/3D photo/video features in phone
- Much better battery life
- Full satellite communication
- OS-wide AI features, massively upgraded Siri, AI-first mobile browser, auto-complete, spell+grammer check, rewrites
- Even more AI features: Better reader-mode, PDF mode, maps infused with AI, super-res videos with structure from motion, flower/bird/food/tree/everything ID, so on and on.
What's going on with Apple?
The 2020s were "Internet in your pocket" and 2030s should be "Super smart AI in your pocket". Apple product managers feel so completely out of touch.
For an apple user on HN, you're expecting them to act like Oneplus.
Apple doesn't (usually) do something first, but they often do new things well.
LLMs have been mainstream for what, nine months? They aren't going to go all-in on new LLM features that quickly. And if/when they do, it'll just be labelled Siri with new capabilities.
Satellite communications is incredible complex, and, I expect, difficult. Hell, for SOS you need to pause and point your phone in a particular direction. The scale just isn't there.
Spatial video was announced, which is exactly what you are asking for in bullet two.
Like, I don't get what you're saying. By the way, we're in the 2020s now. The 2030s are... ah, six years away.
Hmm, quite a few of the features you've listed are not only in the next iOS, but already in older versions and the current.
AR already exists with the lidar-enabled apps, maps is already AR enabled in landscape mode, 3D Video "spatial" recording was announced.
AI features such as sentence auto-complete, upgraded spelling and grammar are already announced for iOS 17, due out in a few weeks.
AI identification of objects is already present and links through to Siri knowledge for explanations/further information (e.g. what breed of flower, landmark, type of cat is this?)
3D photo/video features did come to the pro phones
flower/bird/food/tree/everything ID is in the new OS, it identified a plant genus in one of my photos yesterday. Pretty cool!
I think there is a market for an Apple silicon competitor to the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. Apple has proven that performance doesn't have to come at the cost of battery life.
The only big limitation of the Lightning connection for me was video output (limited resolution and compressed signal).
I hope the USB-C on the 15 Pro gets rid of this limitation.
The only noteworthy thing about this is the USB-C cable, and even then, Apple being Apple, they capped it for iPhone 14 at USB 2 speeds, and USB 3 for the Pro.
Zero innovation, miss the Steve Job's days when people were shocked by Apple products. I believe their M chips their most innovative thing in a long time.
I'd have to concur... like at a time where I thought the diminishing marginal returns for CPUs on computers had really kicked in (like, there's only so much speed I need for web browsing), the M1s came along and made me go "holy shit", even while still, in fact, web browsing.
It seems like their strategy the last few years has been to pretty much just downgrade last year's Pro model to be this year's non-pro. The only differences between the 14 Pro and the 15 are:
I could feel my social credit score rising with each nod in agreement, as the UN SDG AAA+ rated company, with WEF endorsement, told me how my consumerist lifestyle will not affect the global boiling.
I wish Apple would return to pre-COVID live keynotes. But that would mean demos would fail, wifi networks would be crowded, audible boos and gasps from price announcements. Yeah, Apple isn't going back anytime soon.
Yeah they're so type-A and "we are the best at this" that they end up being overproduced hostage videos with the presenters standing wide-legged and bug-eyed reciting very human words at the camera.
The pandemic is over, bring back the theatre stage with a live audience.
That and the lonesome father looking at photos of his (dead?) family in a dark apartment really left a bad impression from me on the headset that I can't shake. I will never "unsee" that. Sure, use it for work...but at home, no way. Baffled that Apple thought would jive well considering how much attention they put into those presos and makes me wonder how much of the headset marketing team is single & childless.
The "mother nature" sketch was... interesting. And throughout the presentation I thought well it seems this new generation iPhone doesn't bring anything new, it seems like a finished product. So not creating a new one every year would probably be better for the environment than whatever efforts and greenwashing they do engage in.
The excessive use of what felt like drone cameras, or steady cam, and continual camera movement played a part. It almost feels like they were trying to pretend you were watching it in AppleVision™.
You might love the Devolver Digital E3 Press Conferences. They've done a masterful job dismantling the E3 presentation format, but I find it's generally true for all these kinds of longform corporate product ads.
> A huge leap forward for iPhone with a gorgeous new design
I do like iPhone, I actually have a personal one and work provide me with one too, I like their security aspects. But can how can they say with a straigh face this is a new design ?
Many people claim they are a few inches taller and 30lbs lighter than they are with a straight face all the time.
Claiming a device has a new design when it actually has a few different design elements does not seem like too much of a stretch, for an advertisement.
Higher than changing the internals? Changing the silence toggle to a button? Changing the material of the body?
If you do not expect marketing departments to call that a new design, you simply will not be happy with what pretty much every other business does and will do.
> Claiming a device a new design when it actually has a few different design elements does not seem like too much of a stretch, for an advertisement
I don't personally see the new design. This is Apple, king of "design" and the designers/creatives go to company (for good reason) but this is not a new design. This is a, moderate at best, alteration. I'm also not saying it has been a bad design, it's just not new, even for them.
Maybe it's the advertising world that is tilting me more and more in my later years.
This reminds me of a (maybe bad taste) joke about how UI & UX was perfected a few years back but designers had to keep creating huge Medium articles on their font and logo creations that curved a few pixels from the original.
This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades.
Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing.
We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable, and it’s not even something like the charging cable is crazy awesome and charges your phone instantly, it’s that it’s now just the generic port that everything from moms vibrator to your laptop to every other god damn phone on the planet uses.
And this absurdly mundane and completely valueless “update” has moved you to take a perfectly good $1000 plus phone and junk it to buy a brand new $1000+ phone, just so it can share a charging cord with a used vibrator?!?!
And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, which generated profits that make the rockefellers and gettys look poor, can do.
No wonder everyone’s so in love with chat GPT, we are awed by our absolutely stunning mediocrity.
I fail to understand your point. What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old?
Do you think the and thing when you buy a new dishwasher, a couch, a chair? That it’s mediocre?
Smartphones are not the future anymore, there’s people starting university soon that always had one, and never lived in a world without the iPhone.
Also, besides arguably the first few iPhones, Apple never distinguished itself from the competition with the technology it uses, but by the quality of its offering, which is why bending phones or poorly designed antennas are more important for them than having the newest tech available half a second after being commercially viable - that’s what Android OEMs do to differentiate.
I know that for me, personally, having a new iPhone with USB-C is a must have feature, which is why I have my iPhone 11 still chumming along.
Do you think the and thing when you buy a new dishwasher, a couch, a chair? That it’s mediocre?
Those are things that you replace every 5 to 10 years. People do see innovation with those products because they only look at new ones occasionally.
If people have the same expectations of their iPhone, and they get off the upgrade treadmill of a new phone every 2 years and start buying every 5 years that would mean Apple's iPhone sales would drop by roughly a half among the core group who buy every new model. That would have a very significant impact on their share price.
LOL it would not.
People buy iPhones on average every three year. The yearly upgraders are just a vocal minority.
I’ve had moderately tech savvy people move from an iPhone X to an iPhone 14 and literally describe the jump as “mindblowing”.
All is relative, but HN users on average want absolutes, and repeatedly fail to understand how they’re part of a mostly irrelevant opinion bubble when it comes to being relevant as average consumers.
I upgraded from the Xs to the 14 Pro. The camera is superb (as an amateur photo guy), the display is better, I like the always on screen, performance is snappier, RAM is bigger so apps don't close as often, and it's sturdier. Fell down and instead of breaking somewhere it made a dent in the asphalt.
just upgraded from an 11 to a 14 pro, initially was excited, now i'm disappointed every time i go in to edit a photo shot in raw. these are still commodity cameras--all it takes is an overcast day to make photos a blotchy mess
It doesn't match my experience. It's easier to take a decent photo n rough conditions on the iPhone, than a camera. I have Sony a6400, Ricoh grIIIx, Fuji X100V and X-T5.
With the iPhone (and androids too) you just point and shoot. With the cameras you do have to fiddle way more or use bracketing and still edit later. The phone does bracketing for you without you even noticing. Plus, the iPhone at least (not sure about android) very easily remove people walking behind the thing you were photographing
i think we're talking about different things: you, the ability to get something passable with minimal effort; me, the ability to get something nice with all the time and effort i can reasonably give. i was a photographer as my sole profession about ten years ago, i am still waiting for the iphone to catch up with the a77 and pancake 50 i used as a backup at the time. the physics part is not easy, there's just so little light to work with
In our family, we upgrade an average of ~2-3 years because of our mobile plan. My wife got recently an iPhone 14 Pro, I got her iPhone 12, my Xr goes to my MIL, and so on.
Coming from Xr to 12 is mindblowing for me for someone who has a poor eyesight.
Every year exactly when new one is available, I do. I just think of most devices as rentals, effectively. Sell the old, buy the new. The delta is the cost of having a new phone with fresh battery and newest features, which to me is worth it for the relatively low cost.
> What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old?
The ability for it to replace a macbook air if you add a keyboard/mouse/screen for one. How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro? There's still so much they can do.
Even the previous iPhone had lots of great actual new features. Always-on OLED display. Action Camera mode. Auto focus capable front-facing camera. Dynamic island. 2000 nit brightness capable screen. Satellite SoS. Car crash detection.
Once every object in the frame is mapped to 3D coordinates, exaggerating the parallax is trivial (like rendering a video game for 3D glasses / VR), but to your point, figuring out what was behind those objects (to fill in the negative space that remains after translation) is a guessing game, equivalent to various smart fill / magic eraser features. Originally they used only context from the same photo, and nowadays they also use generative AI. Not always great results.
It's not about if predators have good eyes, it's much more about your brain expects to be processing depth information based on the difference between the two images (will having your eyes effectively 4cm+ closer together feel weird?). The images from each camera will clearly be different to your eyes but maybe your brain easily adapts.
Others have said there are algorithms allowing all the objects in a scene to be distorted/rerendered in such a way that this can be corrected for but I am extremely skeptical of this without evidence.
Keep in mind that you're commenting in the thread about the iPhone 15, not the iPhone 15 Pro. With your comment you're comparing the new iPhone 15 with the features of last year's iPhone 14 Pro. The Pro features are always more extensive, just as this year's. The following year, most of those features typically trickle down to the non-Pro iPhone.
They introduced LIDAR into the iPhone Pro 12 and every Pro since has had it. So if you want that 3D camera (which works great, btw) you gotta spring for the Pro.
Using your smartphone as your computer is one of the most “tested as a consumer failure in the market” features ever. Many have tried, all failed miserably.
Convergence is cool on paper until nobody uses it because it makes no practical sense. Useful to give great tradeshow demos, and that’s it
I've never been this consumer, but I imagine the hangup is that by the time you've added a keyboard and display to your backpack, you could've just added a laptop instead at a similar weight/size, and while the separate laptop means foregoing the continuity of state, you gain the ability to start your "large mode" session by merely opening a hinge, which is less friction (literally and figuratively) than docking disparate components.
I sometimes bring my laptop "just in case" when going to a friend's place.
If I could just plug in my phone to their USB C monitor that is already connected to a mouse and keyboard that'd be amazing for quickly using YOUR device.
Why would anyone need this? Because I could have my ssh keys and some software on it - sure I could have a bootable USB drive and try to boot their desktop (or laptop?!) from it... but that seems more involved than being able to converge your phone.
It's just that nobody nailed the software side of it. Apple could but they just don't care. Linux tried and they will keep trying
This is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. A phone OS on the phone, plug it in, get a desktop OS on a desktop. It worked pretty well, even for the limited hardware at the time.
If a device supports Displayport Alternate Mode on USB-C, there are docks that work like how you're imagining. But I do agree, for a lot of devices the mobile OS just doesn't really have a great desktop experience.
I'm not sure about the current distinction between iOS and iPadOS (Apple seems to periodically decide that these are the same things or different things depending on mood), but plug a mouse, keyboard and monitor into a modern iPad and you have... a surprisingly okay desktop for many use cases.
>The ability for it to replace a macbook air if you add a keyboard/mouse/screen for one.
I fail to see how this is in any way an improvement over just buying a MacBook Air and having the screen, mouse and keyboard built in. Thew laptop is way more portable.
The battery in my two years old 13 Pro Max already lasts two days with normal use. I expect the new phones (at least the big ones) to last even longer.
Current 12MP cameras are actually 48MP sensors, which use pixel binning for better color and noise. You’re bound by physics here, not corporations.
I didn’t check recent sensors, but 24MP ones would be 96MP with binning. Sony makes multi-mode sensors which can produce different sized outputs to optimize details and image quality for a given light amount.
Computational photography is like artificial flavoring. It looks fine, but lacks the finesse of a big sensor. Also, “dreaming” things in photography is a no go in some contexts.
Also, I think some iPhone models have emergency satellite communications already, no?
Android phones are a lower-priced commodity. Apple products are luxury goods, like designer shoes or prestige cars. Apple will sell you last year's iPhone at a discount, but only on the clear understanding that it is visibly a cheap, old iPhone. If the basic form factor doesn't change between generations, you can guarantee that the color will.
Apple's profits clearly vindicate this as a business strategy.
I buy a new dishwasher when the old one has broken beyond repair. I certainly don't buy a new one following the latest BoschCon where they theatrically announce they are using the British Standard plug for power delivery now.
When is the last time you watched a Keynote by GE CEO announcing a new dishwasher? The point is that they are pretending like its some sort of revolutionary new product instead of a run-of-the-mill minor cosmetic upgrade
That's probably because the dishwasher market won't respond to marketing in that way. There's little caché in owning the latest dishwasher.
Apple though has enough customers that they can separate and target segments individually.
I realised a few years ago that I'd stopped watching the Apple keynotes or checking their website.
Back when Jobs did them I watched all Apple keynotes but at some point I just stopped. I think this is because the keynotes are refocused on segments that respond to them best.
I still buy Apple products but sporadically. I'm not going to rush out for the latest iphone. I treat iPhones like dishwashers and only only replace them when they break.
However, there are people that will respond to fashion and that's who the keynote marketing is for.
Apple is big enough to treat each segment differently. Hence no pictures of middle aged, white blokes on the website, even though we're a sizeable part of the population in my country. We don't just respond to that type of marketing so it's safe to ignore us. I'll just read 3d party reviews when my phone finally needs replacing.
If there was a fashion market for dishwashers you probably would see the CEO of GE announcing their new products.
It's the most successful durable product line in history in terms of revenue and units sold. It sells far more than dishwashers. The tech also tends to be a lot more of an upgrade than a dishwasher gets.
> What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old?
Certainly one that other phone manufacturers have had in their phones for the past 8 years? I jest, because I haven't cared that my phones have had USB-C for even longer than that because I've been wireless charging instead. I do believe iPhones do that these days though.
> What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old?
How about an OS that's not walled-garden shite? One that any competent programmer could write an app for -- in any language they chose -- and offer for download to all comers without getting Apple's permission and without paying Apple a dime?
How about a development system built in to the phone so you could add a keyboard and a mouse and write an app, compile it, and install it without ever leaving the phone?
How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
How about being able to replace the main battery myself, in my home, without trashing the entire fu*king phone?
How about selling the phone with a decent protective case that still allows the Qi charger to work?
How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
I've been building chips, computers, and operating systems for decades. I know the subject like I know my own name. There is no technical reason Apple couldn't do all these things. They choose not to because not doing them makes Apple more money.
Apple is not refusing to do any of these things for cybersecurity or privacy reasons either. I eat, sleep, and breathe cybersecurity and I get paid for it. Apple could do everything on this list with zero security risk. They know this but they choose to lie and say otherwise.
Fuck apple and their horse. They are everything that is wrong with engineering under the control of rapacious capitalist greed.
None of what you mention is important to me (an iPhone / Apple ecosystem user) and no, I am not ignorant to Apples forced limitations . If I actually wanted the same as you I'd buy an android and use linux as my OS, but I just want to forget that my devices exist - I want them to melt away into the background like a dishwasher or a sofa and let me get on with living my life.
> How about being able to replace the main battery myself, in my home, without trashing the entire fu*king phone?
You can already do this, either getting the parts/tools thru Apple or on your own [0]
> How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
> How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
Those are fair, altho personally I've been using bluetooth headphones for 5+ years, only going wired when cycling or gaming, and I'm pretty happy with it.
The rest, approximately 0.01% (uneducated guess) of the consumers in the smartphone market will want or care about those things. The regular consumer doesn't want their phone to do everything and be everything, they want it to work for their use-case when they're expected to work, and be relatively easy to use.
Anyway, you seem to be a niche consumer, why aren't you looking for a niche product to match instead of complaining about a mass-market product that never has and probably never will fit your needs?
> Anyway, you seem to be a niche consumer, why aren't you looking for a niche product to match instead of complaining about a mass-market product that never has and probably never will fit your needs?
The issue that's hard for many to admit is that in many case Apple makes the best devices from a hardware and quality standpoint (I also like iOS better than Android, but that's more subjective). If there were other players in the market making devices at Apple's level that also had some niche features we probably wouldn't see so many complaints.
> How about an OS that's not walled-garden shite? One that any competent programmer could write an app for -- in any language they chose -- and offer for download to all comers without getting Apple's permission and without paying Apple a dime?
There are enough cross compile frameworks available. Sideloading is comming in the EU, i think till 2025.
> How about a development system built in to the phone so you could add a keyboard and a mouse and write an app, compile it, and install it without ever leaving the phone?
Will officially be possible with sideloading.
> How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
Use 15$ Bluetooth Buds from the 1000 different suppliers? Or use the dongle.
> How about being able to replace the main battery myself, in my home, without trashing the entire fu*king phone?
Is already officially possible.
> How about selling the phone with a decent protective case that still allows the Qi charger to work?
The Leather Case for example is working perfectly fine with Qi Charging.
> How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
All software will be exploited. Did you see how suffisticated the last exploit was? They build and own software cpu to execute their payload.
You're working overtime to figure out reasons to be aggravated by literally nothing. You want "innovation"? Then be wowed by Vision Pro's lenticular display, sensor fusion, low latency and high resolution and what not.
We care about phone charging cables because smartphones are no longer the toys we got wowed by 15 years ago. They're now an indispensable and highly functional tools we use every day to do actual work. And guess what? We charge them every day.
If you want to experience child-like wonder and be wowed by big movements, move into a field that's developing. Smartphones are a developed field, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Also, iPhone & iPhone Pro are offering some really decent upgrades. 48MP camera (that actually works, and not just says "48MP" like many others) prism optical zoom-in 5x and so on. Lightweight titanium is also a good improvement in day to day usability and comfort.
And this "charging cable" for iPhone Pro also offers 10x faster data transfer which matters to many of us.
Haha yeah. Their language was hilarious “we’ve been doing this for years guys! Now you can charge your iPhone with the same cable as your Mac and iPad!”
I guess they have to spin it. Good on the EU pushing the issue.
The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along? They've included a usb-c to lightning cable in the box for awhile. Apple remembers the 30 pin transition and the customer complaints so they have tried to make this move a bit more staged. Even then, I've already seen tons of complaints from non-tech users about having to buy new cables.
> The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along?
Definitely not in phones, because Apple is the laggard in this case. Many Android phones were already USB.
Also, there was that whole thing where the EU wanted to cut own on e-waste and mandate USB-C as a common charging standard, and Apple fought it tooth and nail.
Woah your comment is out there. Most people on this thread are honestly commenting on a highly visible product that people interact with heavily every day - lots of opinions as a result. It isn't some higher level conspiracy.
I've never seen a camera in a phone better than a $500 camera, never mind $1000.
They are way more useful (portable, always present) and do lots of cool processing to get usable images in low light etc., but image quality is not competitive with a good lens on even an ancient DSLR. Shallow depth of field in particular - phones generally do it with software, and it's always jarring how fake it looks.
Your recollection of the past might be skewed. Approximately 10 years ago we also celebrated cables - the switch from the 30 pin cable to lightning.
Stuff like that has always been there and celebrated, but it fades in memory over time.
Well at the time, there was something to celebrate for a new cable. Existing cables had huge connectors (30 pin) and in the case of USB micro had a life of maybe 1-2 years max from the pins and/or teeth wearing out.
The problem is that USB-C has nothing useful to offer over Lightning. Apple could've updated Lightning to support faster data if they wanted, and even then most people rarely use their cables for data anymore because of iCloud and AirDrop.
So this time around, it really is nothing to get excited over. I will even say it's a downgrade, because I have yet to experience a USB-C port that feels as strong and satisfying to plug in/out as Lightning.
Well don't forget that was Apple's original intention with Lightning, including getting a commission on every cable sold. Remember when iOS would give a warning about "unsupported accessories" every time you plugged the phone into a non-Apple/MFi cable or charger?
The backlash from the public as well as pushback from accessory manufacturers had Apple quietly remove the warning and drop their plans.
I’m not GP but I would personally love for the smart watch to replace the smartphone so that I don’t have to carry one around. I know that’s sort of possible in some places, but it isn’t where I live as many of the Apps necessary to interact with society require a smartphone.
I’n sure the blame for this belongs more on the app makers than the device manufacturers, but I think it’s still an answer to what your asking.
The problem is: how well can you interact with a phone the size of a watch? I mean, for some things, yeah, it works fine. But other things? There's a reason why phones have been getting larger (no iPhone Minis anymore). Even Android side, expect Google to always assume there's a companion phone available, because the interface for adding in info will continue to be terrible, simply due to form factor constraints.
Or glasses get small enough. Gesture and voice will continue to improve. Apple Vision Pro (and other AR devices) will continue to improve. It's not hard to see a path where today's phone format goes away and/or becomes used only for certain situations.
I don't think there is a blame to put on app-makers. The Apple Watch is a companion-product by design.
Apple's target-group for the Watch is every iPhone user, they know that with patience they can sell an Apple Watch to every iPhone user out there.
So there's little incentive for Apple to create a Watch that doesn't require an iPhone, and little reason for app-developers to assume you own a Watch but NO iPhone...
I agree.
The Apple Watch is very useful, but I'm not happy about having to buy an iPhone to go with it. With luck the Pixel watches might become good enough to replace it.
The idea that computerised phone upgrades are a metric for the progress of our society (instead of hmm reducing hunger and suffering in the world) is revealing
What else do you really want from this technology ?
To add fuel to your fire: This USB C does not even support fast charge, it is same as last year's 20W, whereas now some phones (if not vibrators) claim to support 100W fast charging over USB-C.
This is what I’m interested to see. Lightning was limited to USB2 (?) speeds, USB-C offers a much bigger menu of capabilities. How many of them does the iPhone 15 utilize?
I suspect not much… this generation seems like “fine, EU, we’ll swap the connector.” It’ll take another product design cycle to take advantage of the new possibilities it offers (beyond continuing to sell iPhones in the EU)
>Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing.
I also remember when the WWDC crowd and the buying public got excited for mundane evolutionary shit, like incremental iPod updates, like the introduction of an rudimentary color screen...
This argument has been made for at least 10 years now and I don’t get it. No one is awed by a USB-C port, it’s just convenient.
Maybe it’s the fact that Apple has these giant events every year, that people think they’re going to get something revolutionary every year. Or maybe we were just spoiled that we lived through the 90s and 00s, but this is crazy talk. If revolutionary tech was released every year, what makes it revolutionary?
Most people don't update every year, and when you start looking at replacing a 2+ year phone the camera updates alone are usually well worth it. The Pro is adding 3d video capture for the upcoming vision pro.
With that said, the smart phone of today is a solved problem. The industry has converged on a slab of glass form factor, and while it plays at the edges with foldable or flip phone styles they really aren't that popular. Most technology advances are evolutionary, to expect something else is unrealistic.
IMO, the most interesting thing from Apples presentation was the focus on gestures for the watch. When will the Vision Pro get small enough or the watch gain capability to project a screen is the question, because then we will have moved beyond the phone form factor.
You're exactly right, I think the watch form factor is where I see it going aswell. I can't understand why companies are throwing millions into developing a light weight Pipboy as the next big think. A phone is mostly a content consumer at this point. Sell me screen freedom with voice as the primary interface for the OS.
But there's actually nothing to improve in a modern smartphone. Not even better CPU and more RAM and storage, because we don't need them. The only nice to have thing would be a better battery life, but faster CPU and more RAM will only make battery life shorter.
> This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades.
> We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable
Your comment is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this generation of Apple, its fanboys, and tech fanboys more generally.
People are not wrong to want what they want. People are not wrong to appreciate features they find useful because these features simplify their lives. The charging cable matters. It's a fucking phone. The convenience surrounding use of the charging cable will matter more to people than some fiddly little improvement to the camera or bandwidth or some thing that's not central to being a phone.
Probably best to reserve judgement until independent benchmarks come out, but the new GPU cores _may_ be quite a big deal. The GPU core used in the last few gens of iPhone chip (and the M1/M2) is now quite old, and was actually supposed to be replaced last year. This one should be expected to be a significant leap forward (though, again, don't believe Apple on this, wait for independent tests).
How large is the overlap between people who care a lot about playing games on their phones and those who can afford buying the latest $1000 smartphone every once in a while? Because I'd think the former are mostly teenagers.
I guess by games you mean console games,mobile games are huge now.
I have a steam deck and bought all nintendo and sony portables in the past,would be great if I can play some on my iPhone,which is always available to me.
You sound spoiled. How often would you like a technical revolution? I could honestly use a break. We just got off of the crypto train(supposed finance revolution) and are now jumping on to the AI train with LLMs threatening the future of work (correctness be damned).
You actually do not need to upgrade the iPhone today. Usually you have about 7 or so years of software support.
At this point it's the degradation of the non-user-replaceable battery that's driving upgrades.
Having to get a phone to an Apple store, let alone mail it in for a 'battery service' and have no phone for a few days, is a surprisingly big obstacle to just replacing the battery and keeping an older phone running for another few years.
Not to mention lack of software updates for many otherwise perfectly fine Android phones + lack of drivers/specs/image signing/locked bootloaders making it hard for community to take over.
Makes me think of entitled people who expect magical R&D to materialize out of thin air and land in their lap per an arbitrary unit of time of 1 calendar year.
The entire announcement is an exercise in masking that they're running out of ideas.
Excessive lectures on environmental footprint. Lots of cultural/humanitarian story telling, a pile of non-relatable tech info where they only briefly showed the embarrassing "up to 10% faster", dull/static presenters with their fake excitement.
Even the Pro model, typically the only model where they might add some actual features of any significance just to seduce you to pay more, is now nothing more than an "extra bling" model.
No fresh new demos of 3rd party developers either. All of this shows the maturity and advanced state of the platform.
Here's an idea that would actually impress all of us regarding environmentalism: user-replaceable batteries. As simple as it was 15 years ago. And no, I'm not interested in tech apologies about glue or there not being space. There's space. It's purely a matter of will.
It's not just the lack of ideas, but the direction they are taking their existing ideas in is just not interesting anymore.
One thing I'm kind of having a mini midlife-crisis over is that I'm slowly realizing that I am no longer the target market for tech products. I didn't see anything... anything today that resonated with me. Aren't marketing materials supposed to do that?
It's all about things I don't care about, like the camera. Oh boy, more megapixels. Yawn. I don't really even use my phone's camera that much. Dynamic Island notifications? I turn all notifications off to avoid distractions. Display brightness? I'm constantly turning it down because it blinds me at night. Gaming? I have an old Playstation 3 and a nice size TV for that. Carbon neutral? Unpopular opinion but that doesn't even rate as a top-10 driver of my purchasing. As you say, give me a replaceable battery!
The marketing all depicts people 20 years younger than me horsing around taking selfies, people who, I suppose, care about things I don't. I didn't even recognize any of the music. I'm a boring, frugal, old white guy, who uses his phone as a tool, not as a lifestyle, and my wallet is apparently not interesting to Apple. Sad to be left behind.
Brother, what would actually excite you other than the replaceable battery? You game on a PS3. You're self admittedly boringly frugal. At this point, frankly it's not just Apple that isn't marketing to you -- no one is going to market to you except maybe Depends in a few more years. Companies make products for people who spend money.
Wow, that Depends comments cuts to the bone, LOL oh my! Well done..
I guess what I'm looking for is a "Wow, that improvement is significant enough that, this time, early-adopting will make a huge difference" announcement. I remember around 2011 when hard drive prices-per-gigabyte took a huge drop to the point where what you got for your money was astoundingly better than what you could get a year earlier. I haven't bought a hard drive since then. Yes, prices have continued to go down, but the slope is not what it used to be. I'm still on a computer from 2014 because that was the last major increase (in my judgment) in what you got for your money. CPUs and GPUs are getting better, but only incrementally so. I typically look for those inflection points/discontinuities to make a tech purchase.
For example, if a phone manufacturer suddenly came out with a huge sci-fi level leap in battery technology, where, maybe paired with a stripped down OS I could get a week of battery life... That would be exciting. Or, if the phone's hardware and OS suddenly became powerful enough to plug in as a true desktop replacement and run desktop applications natively, where I could actually throw away my desktop workstation, that would be pretty awesome.
OK but you changed, not Apple. Apple was leaving behind older people when you were young, so I don’t see why everyone is entitled to be part of a product’s target market.
Some of us do still appreciate these improvements. I greatly appreciate a better camera for example. I actually don’t know if the 15 has as an appreciable improvement but the 14’s camera is still a far cry from the quality of a professional camera in every situation but a un-zoomed shot in moderately bright daylight lighting. There is still major work to be done.
Do you need a high quality camera? No. The movie Tangerine was shot on an iPhone for example… but visually, it does not look fantastic. Some people don’t care about image quality but for the people that notice and care, they appreciate it.
I went from the 10 to 14 and that was a massive improvement. Highlights (the brightest areas on a scene with both very dark and very bright spots) were massively overblown on the 10.
It’s much better on the 14, for example, although you can still tell the parts that would have been overblown previously, especially with HDR mode on, and I don’t love it — but at least you can still see some detail now.
Was 12 to 14 an improvement? Don’t know - didn’t have a 12.
Is the 15 improved from the 14? Until I get my hands on it, I couldn’t say. It’s just a lot of marketing right now.
> The marketing all depicts people 20 years younger than me horsing around taking selfies, people who, I suppose, care about things I don't. I didn't even recognize any of the music. I'm a boring, frugal, old white guy, who uses his phone as a tool, not as a lifestyle, and my wallet is apparently not interesting to Apple. Sad to be left behind.
Today a company announced a marginally better product to remain competitive with it's competitors. When you need to buy a new phone, Apple is hoping that they've made the n+1 (or the n, or n-1) version that you will prefer to buy.
You haven't been "left behind" because a company made an ad with young people in it.
It's just the routine of it. It's been 15 years of "better than last year". It's hard to be excited about that for so long. It's just a slightly better phone. And that's OK.
I think I’m in a same demographic (maybe not old, but not young), and… I have no idea what Apple couple possibly add to their phones that would interest me.
Like, please, no more resolution or LIDAR on the front facing camera, it might start picking up wrinkles.
Same, I'm a middle-of-the-road user. I piggy back on the better hardware once every 3-4 years but haven't noticed a meaningful difference in my total experience since the iPhone 6s. Almost every new iOS feature is also entirely lost on me. I recently even needed to Google how to fully shutdown my phone. If there's any growing value, it would be in apps. There's an app for everything.
Nothing wrong with any of this. Most products in my home are no longer exciting.
> It's all about things I don't care about, like the camera. Oh boy, more megapixels.
Ok, it's the same 48. I'm not in the market either, but I would be if I'd be single. I currently have an iPhone 12. To get the newest 48 pixel camera would help me make killer photos for my Tinder profile that I just couldn't do that well with an iPhone 12. I think I'd see a 10 to 20% improvement in Tinder matches.
It doesn't matter whether that's true or not. I know that's how I'd feel if I'd be single.
I'm happy I'm not single, lol. Given that I'm in a relationship, I don't feel the need to shoot the sharpest pictures so I can have an edge on Tinder. However, I can imagine there are many social media savvy people that would feel that way.
The cameras seem to have the same number of megapixels. Maybe you, as a frugal old white guy, would appreciate having USB-C and no longer having to pay for the proprietary Lightning connector.
Regarding "better water resistance", there have been a ton of phones released in the past that have had water resistance standards of at least IP 67 and that had a user replaceable battery. That part of your argument doesn't hold water.
My iPhone's battery health has been stuck at 83% for nearly 15 months. It was only 9 months old (purchased brand new) when it reached 83%. Apple will not replace with Applecare unless it is below 80%. Something doesn't add up there.
>better water resistance/proofing/reduced engineering cost
This is a myth. Look at the Samsung Galaxy S5 (IP67) & Sony XP10 (IP68). (Yeah, I'm a big Louis Rossmann fan; I learned this from his videos.)
Even if it were true, are you telling me Apple couldn't engineer a solution to the problem and turn it into a key marketing element boasting their innovation?
Waterproofing in terms of actually being able to use the phone under water or not breaking when it falls into water (i.e. it will switch itself off when submerged and after it dried it will work again)?
There is a technology called “rubber o-rings” that has allowed for waterproof/resistant user replaceable battery designs in cell phones since they came out.
Nothing wrong with that, it's a mature platform. Features for features sake isn't very interesting either. Besides maybe the price I'm happy with small refinements, as I dont need a new phone every year, my iPhone 14 Pro is 100% as useful as it was last year and is extremely rugged, I'm sure it will last another year+ absent a bad accident.
A slightly faster CPU+slightly better battery+slightly better screen(?)+better camera is all I really care about.
Not like any of us are having performance issues with the last few models for 99%+ of use-cases. Software is extremely stable too.
1. ability to begin capturing 3d video for the devices of tomorrow to render is a sea change. I want as much as my video as possible to be captured this way, starting today. Can't reshoot the past
2. dedicated hardware button for programatic software execution is fantastic
3. wearable turning your fingers into a button allowing execution from simply moving your fingers is insanely cool
These three things alone are more exciting than anything I've seen in a while. All in all, great ideas that are absolutely pushing the envelope of how we interact with these devices. Love to see it.
its not that they're running out of ideas. It's just as good as it can ever get, period. I mean the paper clip came out 100 years ago and you don't see 15 versions of that. Every device reaches a point after which it's way more than good enough.
personally, I'd only like to see them get cheaper and maybe longer product life ( i hate replacing everything after just 7 or 8 years).
personally, i'd like to see big tech get into new areas that actually matter. It only takes a quick look at maslow's hiearchy of needs to get good ideas: take a look at that lowest tier (shelter, food, water, medical), that's where over 60% of consumer spending goes in a developed country, considerably more for the latest generation (now in their 20s). And in poor countries, the lowest tier is like 99% of their spending.
"Running out of ideas" isn't how I'd characterize it.
I'd put it this way: the device (ie a phone) is now a fully-developed mature product and platform. It browses the Web, runs apps, takes photos/video and plays music/video.
Phones pursued the largest possible screen, first by removing the home button (which, to this day, I still hate and I find gesture replacements to be inferior and inconsistent eg swiping up depends on orientation) and then with the "notch". We lost Touch ID (which I vastly prefer) for Face ID, which is pretty much the sole cause of "iPhone is unavailable for 27 minutes" when the phone sits in your pocket. There are lots of threads all over the Internet about this.
So what Apple (and Samsung) now do is fight commodification, which will lower prices. Forced obsolescence, phones the only really last 2-4 years, incremental component upgrades, sleek materials and a moat of app availability (ie Android vs iOS).
There's really no reason a fully-featured phone should still cost $1000+.
There is NO dirth of ideas. I was hoping for duel screen, full satellite communication, 48hr battery, 3D audio/video/photos etc. These are the things that are very challenging to get right and I think only Apple can make it happen in a way to make mainstream. But nothing came through.
They allow bi-directional satellite communication with rescue team, 29 hours of continuous video playback, just announced 3d photos coming later this year.
Sounds like they are pretty close to what you are hoping for.
"What losers, they didn't even change the world this year!"
That's unkind. The forward extrapolation is unkind and untrue: Generative Siri and AR are clearly in the pipeline. You can see the infrastructure if you look.
It may be worth forcing replaceable batteries with legislation, but I'm inclined to wait until after AR settles to do it, since executing on AR will involve pushing the limits of what's possible with battery/display/compute tech.
Remember those memes of people looking down at phones and running into telephone poles / glass / wet concrete? Those will come back once there's a good alternative.
Apple has a 2.75 trillion dollar market cap. You don't need to feel sorry for them. At their valuation and multiple they better damn well be delivering the most amazing stuff you've ever seen on a regular basis.
It's a hedge against the degrading performance of software. There's definitely some feeling of "your phone can only be so old before it functions incredibly slowly", no matter how it feels at launch.
But why shouldn’t they? Incremental upgrades are great for both Apple and the consumer as long as Apple supports their old hardware (which they do better than just about anyone)
I guess I deserved that. I will agree that iPhones are incredible and that we're a spoiled bunch. But still from a iteration point of view, this one was historically underwhelming.
Which might indeed mean some longer running projects weren't ready yet and the next edition is better. I think generative AI is coming.
I guess what I'm looking for is purpose and meaning.
"Titanium is harder"
Well, so what? I don't use my phone as a hammer.
"We made up a name for a core and added more of them"
Yes? And what does that do? Will this enable new software? Or just run it slightly faster? And whilst that is a good thing, if everything is near-instant already, what does that bring?
> Generative Siri and AR are clearly in the pipeline. You can see the infrastructure if you look.
You mean the M1 chip on iPad Pros wasn’t enough, but the A17 Pro on the new iPhone 15 pro is the “infrastructure” for better Siri? But wait, they’re not announcing that yet, so maybe we need the A18?
Thanks for this. I just bought a Watch Ultra two weeks ago, so wondered if I had missed out not waiting for this announcement. I can't see that the Ultra 2 offers anything new. Battery life, form factor, feature set - I'm at a loss to identify anything meaningful that has even changed let alone improved.
Not fair I think... in a world where most companies produce profits without a single care for the world we live in, I welcome a company like Apple that has shown a path to a better future in some areas.
They still have a long way to go I think... but advancements like that are also advancements.
What can one expect when the majority of people that are employed by a particular company share the same values?
How can there be any innovation with group think and a small minority of decision makers insulated in their bubbles from the rest of the world and simultaneously need the share price to stay stable?
There's no ideas, there's nothing else to improve here. We don't need nothing new in phones for several years now. Except maybe more battery life, but it is out of Apple's control.
I am writing this from 5 years old Android phone, and all I really need now is a fresh battery.
I once met an Apple engineer at the first iphone centric WWDC, they told me... in quotes, but not a quote- "the products that wow people are the ones that steve uses himself, if steve doesnt us it, its shows"
In addition to replaceable battery, which is great, I'd do the following:
- Remove all excessive animations from the UI. Please stop wasting my battery and my brain cycles on nothing. iPhone 1 to 4 had sufficient level of animation. iOS 16 level of animation is nauseating.
- Make the phone to fit into a human hand. No need for a shovel.
- Non-slippery material. (I'm currently on X and it's like holding a half-used bar of soap in the shower.)
- Remove excessive gestures, corner sliders, pop-ups, etc. The UI is a mess. Simplify everything. Less is better.
- Redo all the UI elements. This mess of excessively saturated flat shapes is dull. Initiate return to skeuomorphism, but at a slightly different angle. Especially get rid of oversaturation everywhere.
- Increase contrast of UI elements.
- More detailed report on processes consuming system resources, something like a Task Monitor.
It wasn’t “simple” 15 years ago if you wanted water resistance.
And before you trot out the Samsung phones, if you didn’t put the battery in securely (and it warned you on the screen) you lost water resistance. It also required a rubber flap to be closed on the headphone jack.
And out of the 130 million phones that Apple sells a year, what are the chances that you think someone will do it wrong, a connector will break, etc and you will hear sone more hysteria about it or another *gate?
And what could possibly go wrong after a couple of years with this design?
> The plastic battery door still has a rubbery seal on the inside, so you'll want to make sure it's securely snapped on each time you replace it. (And yes, the phone still reminds you to do this each time you start it up.)
I said S5 Neo, not S5 mini. Thr link you sent is completely unrelated.
I've had an S5 Neo for years and had iPhones as well. It was a completely fool proof design. The worst thing you could have done was break the back cover, which no one did, and that's a 5$ fix. It's a non issue, and no one would have complained if Apple did it.
> So the only compelling reason to upgrade from the 14 is...
Your brain has been rotted by product marketing and tech consumer hype fanaticism.
If your phone is a year old then the only reasons to buy a new one are
- you make a living developing software for that phone
- you make a living writing about that phone
- you are a hobbyist or enthusiast who loves phones and wants to spend disposable income on them
this kind of rhetoric has no place on HN, and it's sad that it has been so casually normalized among the android fanbase.
super tired of "brainless apple sheeple only buy because of blue bubble!" and similar stuff, it just is constant and offensive and android fans know it damn well, they just know nobody is going to call it out either. Doesn't belong on HN.
You're right that nobody should be calling anybody brainless here, but please don't react to that by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
- 3D video that can only be played on their 3500$+ device.
- camera is marginally improved, no difference from 2-3 years ago when looking at the pictures with the naked eye
I think this is the parent comment's complaint, no? Go back a decade and the rate of improvement in phones meant there was reason to be buying a new one every year (just like computers in 90s). Now that innovation is slow, it's just this year's update to a consumer good rather than a leading edge of a tech revolution.
With the older phones and the 90s computers, they were patently inadequate for the jobs they were doing. Every upgrade gave incredibly useful capacity.
Now the phones are more than adequate. The upgrades are often fairly nice. Some years we've had 20% increases in processing speed or a doubling of the RAM be greeted with a yawn.
And this makes sense because we aren't really constrained for most of our uses. But the phones were not generally tripling in capability in years past.
Buying a real camera was the best travel decision I've made. Everyone thinks phone cameras are just as good until you actually get a decent camera. And they are just as point and click. Seriously, phone travel photos are garbage in comparison.
Nah. I use an XT-4, and while it's certainly a better camera, it's quite easy to take a worse photo with it than with a new iPhone.
Yes low light perf is better with a camera, sharpness too. But unless you use HDR bracketing you're DR limited in a lot of every day situations that the general public will be disappointed with. Blown out highlights or indistinguishable shadows. The iPhone or other high end phone will stitch multiple photos with HDR automatically. People prefer that.
Auto-focus is generally not as good as with iPhones either. The amount of computational power in the SoC dwarfs modern cameras, and while you can get very good auto-focus, you've never heard of any iPhone user complain about the camera not focusing on the right subject.
Still, wouldn't trade the XT-4 at all. It's ceiling is vastly higher than any phone camera if you know what you're doing and understand the limitations.
Which lens/lenses do you use with your XT-4? I am in the same situation, I have an iPhone but while the photos it makes in certain situations are better I would prefer the XT-4 in other situations, if I have the camera with me that is.
I have the 16-80mm kit lens, and also the 23mm F/2. Both are good lenses.
What I have noticed with this XT4, and I don't know if it's a general problem or specific to XT4/Fujis, is that it's very prone to choosing slow shutter speeds. I normally shoot effectively in aperture priority, but when I first got the XT4 it was constantly picking too slow of a SS to capture people/kids.
The way I fixed that was to go into the settings and find the "auto ISO" section, and set a minimum SS of 1/125s which works well for most everyday situations. Then bump up the ISO ceiling to something very high like 12000. The idea is that if your SS is too slow you basically have an unusable image, whereas at least with high ISO you can denoise and have something useful.
I used to travel with a DSLR, and while the photos were phenomenal in comparison to my phone's output, the ease of minor edits, photo reviewing and management, backups, and posting them were strong enough reasons for me to ditch my camera setup.
I now travel with an Insta360 X2 that is much more convenient and compact, but there are certain types of photos (night time, star trails, light trails, portraits, etc) that phones and action cameras are just laughably bad at.
Micro 4/3 body with the Olympus 45mm 1.8 is the bees knees. The glass literally slaps. I've had people IRL gasp when seeing photos the thing produces, especially if they haven't touched a real camera for a few years. Yes the iPhone Pro cameras are good, but you can't beat physics.
But... the best camera is the one you've got on you, so I can't blame anyone for the convenience factor, I also take pictures primarily with the iPhone.
> - you make a living developing software for that phone
I fall under this. I'll be upgrading from an 11 Pro this time around mainly because I've let my battery go bad.
We can do most things from the simulator and when we need bluetooth or CoreLocation we can always run the app as a Mac app and use the computers chips.
The job title is a nice excuse to get the latest and greatest but it's not strictly necessary.
I've also dropped it a fair amount of times without a case so it's in rough shape. I'd be lying if I said the USB-C port and Ti shell weren't contributing factors to me upgrading.
Thank you, because you just took me on the Planet Earth: I’m using a 14 Pro and I upgraded from a XS and the change was impressing. Now… I was just being victim of the hype :D better save these money!
Yeah, far be it for me to expect a 2.76 TRILLION dollar company to actually innovate within a single year. My apologies for having such expectations. And my brain is the one rotted. Okay.
I love how downvotes are used here to punish those you disagree with. Such fun. I guess this is now Reddit.
I was hoping they would move to SCSI. I understand it would change the dimensions somewhat, but it's ridiculous that in 2023 I cannot connect my iPhone to my Quadra 800.
Sad at the cynical comments here regarding Apple's environmental commitments. Does Apple have a tendency to exaggerate? Sure. But this is also the most ambitious set of climate-related adaptations I've heard from a corporation at their scale, and it seems to be deeper than just marketing fluff.
How can we expect to change things if even meaningful moves to make improvements are automatically cynically dismissed?
People get burned by the "carbon neutral" bullshit that corporation heralded for so long (this time it's "high quality" credits...perhaps it's actually good, but who knows ? they're still showing forests).
And aside from recycling, this whole effort was about "investing in renewable energy projects around the world", so another kind of throwing money at someone who might or might not do something with it. Won't matter to Apple's green message.
Now recycling efforts are nothing to sneeze at and are commandable. Ambitious ? I don't know.
For anyone who works in electronics refurbishing or recycling, it rings extremely hollow as corporate greenwashing, because Apple devices are notoriously and increasingly hard to repair, and getting impossible to reuse due to software interlocks. The best way to be environmentally sound is to prevent the scrapping of already-manufactured devices, and Apple steadfastly stands in the way of this, because a robust used device market would hurt their profit margins.
But is Apple going to sell a Lightning to USB-C adapter? What the hell am I going to do with all of my lightning cables????
UPDATE: Okay, that was a tongue-in-cheek comment but Apple is doing the most Apple possible thing: they really are going to sell a $29 (?!) adapter that will allow you to use your Lightning charging cables to charge the new USB-C iPhones:
im also wondering if theyll including a charger with the phone this time? their excuse for removing it was that most people had a charger already so it was better for the environment not to include one, but most iphone users only have lightning chargers
I am a satisfied owner of an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and every phone I’ve owned since the iPhone 3GS has been an iPhone. I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Having said that:
The Dynamic Island has to be one of the biggest cons any large company has pulled off in a while, and I’m surprised that a) Apple is continuing to double down on it (it’s the second listed “feature” at the top of the linked article), and b) people still buy that it’s a good feature.
I’ve said this since they announced it for the 14, but it’s a gimmick that Apple is trying to tout as a selling point to cover up their inability to reasonably get rid of the notch.
It doesn’t functionally do anything that they couldn’t do without the notch, yet the notch still gets in the way of many apps/UIs. Yet I still see many Apple apologists coming to its defense.
The notch isn’t the end of the world, and the Dynamic Island is an ok “make the best of the notch” in lieu of getting rid of it, but touting it as a selling point is a bit deceptive (to put it nicely), and unfortunately, people continue to fall for it.
If it's between the dynamic island and high quality sensors, I will happily accept them keeping a notch. It makes sense they'd try to make it a selling point, as it is somewhat unique to iPhone in how they've really leaned into making the most of it.
> It makes sense they'd try to make it a selling point
To an extent, but not this extent (i.e. the second listed feature in its second generation). Among the things I care about the iPhone featuring, this is probably somewhere between #20 and #50.
And it’s not even that much better than just showing this information to either side of the notch, or somewhere below it (in other words, what they used to do since the notch was introduced).
I see the DI maybe once or twice a day, if that, for a second or two.
Again, it’s fine as an alternative, but it’s not the selling point they and DI apologists are making it to be.
> I am a satisfied owner of an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and every phone I’ve owned since the iPhone 3GS has been an iPhone.
I think this is the majority of iPhone users, and it really might behoove you to actually try an alternative (and give it an honest go, not a couple days and then returning the device or something). For years I was convinced I was missing out on the bliss of iPhone because I was on my crummy Galaxy phones which were clearly inferior to genius wrought Apple devices. So, a couple months ago I finally caved in and bought my first ever iPhone and… it’s just a phone. In fact, some things really suck.
For instance, when I tried to reply to you I tried to select the text in your comment to quote you and it took me 6 tries to select it (and I didn’t even select it all I gave up because moving the dumb cursor is just impossible so I wrote in the missing words manually). I never had those issues on my Galaxy, text selection just worked.
Add to that the lack of a back button (or any buttons at all), a keyboard that has no period or number row on the main page, no backtick key anywhere(!), crappy auto correct that corrects words I’ve already typed and moved on from, no customizability, no feature discoverability (I’ll often have no clue that a gesture exists or something unless I Google trying to figure something out), terrible volume controls, bad notification display, no option for TouchID, and did I mention I hate this stupid keyboard?
Anyways, I’ll gladly switch back to an Android in a year or two. Maybe I’m just used to Android’s quirks and an Apple user would hate all the Android features I like, idk. What I do know is that the phone brand does not matter. The features differ very very slightly, and the performance differences are negligible from my normal use cases. There is no superior phone brand, it’s all just preference at the end of the day.
Sorry for the long rant by the way, it’s not directed at you but more at the general zeitgeist in the comments I’ve been reading here. It’s crazy. I must be taking crazy pills or something reading how impressed people are with the most mundane features.
Completely agree. In terms of the mental gymnastics that Apple fanboys sometimes go through, dynamic island has been the biggest head-scratcher for me in terms of their willingness to defend it.
One of the features of my S10 I ended up loving is the ability to charge my (wirelessly chargeable) headphones via my S10 which can act as a wireless charger
The S10 line is long past its feature-updates timeline and may have just received its last security update, so I fear yours and my S10e are soon to be retired.
I will greatly miss the SD slot and headphone jack...
This might be asking too much, but it would be neat if the phone was on a low battery (less than 10%), when you plug in a peripheral like the Airpods it will know to instead charge the phone from the plugged in device. Or for that matter, to be able to plug one iPhone from another iPhone without any risk of your phone's data being accessed.
I was searching for your comme t since 3 hours or so. Now that the event is over, do you know whether an iPhone 15 can charge another iPhone 15 directly ? A Pro?
The iPhone 14 battery is considered user serviceable (but not the pro), the iPhone 15 pro has now adopted the 14's design. Basically the rear panel is now straightforward to remove, when before one had to go in through the front.
I assumed it was meant for occasional use by people on the go (like on an airplane without a charging port) who need to charge their AirPods case.
It seems unlikely that people will routinely charge their AirPods from their phone when they could just as easily use the same charger that they just charged up their phone with.
The battery inside your headphones is negligible. Each (for Airpod Pro) is ~1% of your phone's battery. The case has a little over 10%, if charged from 0-100%
I carry a cable that has USB-A/USB-C on one end and USB-C/Lightning on another. Works great, but this particular has a connector that is a bit bulky and doesn't fit some cases (not my problem tho)
It might work without plugging in the iPhone, but I imagine most times it would be plugged, overnight or whatever.
This is honestly a pretty great feature, and actually makes me more likely to buy an Apple Watch. I don't want to have to bring another charge cable with me, and now I wouldn't have to. I wonder what the charge speed is though — I wouldn't want to have to charge it overnight.
EDIT: Thanks for clarifying, it took me a while to understand based on what they had said and what Ars reported. I can see that it's just the same as how you can plug any peripheral into an iPad and charge off its battery. Now you can do the same with iPhone...big deal.
No, I think you connect a cable from the iPhone's charge port to the AirPod's charge port.
Apple's page says this under the USB-C section:
>The new USB-C connector lets you charge your Mac or iPad with the same cable you use to charge iPhone 15. You can even use iPhone 15 to charge Apple Watch or AirPods. Bye-bye, cable clutter.
With a footnote that leads to this:
> The included USB‑C Charge Cable is compatible with AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB‑C).
They don't support wireless charging from phone to airpods. That would be great, and is available on some android devices. This was referring to being able to charge your airpods or watch by plugging them into your phone with a cable.
There is a zero percent chance that I would ever want to boost my AirPods case, (which I charge every few days) while draining my iPhone (which I charge daily). If I had an Apple Watch, I would not bring the puck charger with me anywhere. I don't think that "most people" would; a subset of iPhone users have purses, and a subset of iPhone users have Apple Watches. I'm pretty sure the intersection of those two subsets is not even close to the majority of iPhone users.
The "charge iot thing wirelessly from phone" feature on my Samsung phones for the past few generations isn't used every day but it is useful every so often. E.g. go on a trip but forget smartwatch charger. No problem the phone can do it in a pinch. Or: family member gets their phone wet causing it to not charge wired until it dries. No problem my phone can charge their phone wirelessly.
Where have you seen Apple mention this ability? In the presentation they specifically called out being able to charge airpods via iphone _with_ a cable, not wireless charging between airpods and iphone.
I am surprised apple hasn't included this ability yet. My pixel 6 pro also has this ability.
Aah good catch, I misinterpreted it that way from the arstechnica liveblog. You can charge them from the phone using a USB C-to-C cable (airpods) or C-to-puck cable for the watch. Not quite as convenient, but still good to have.
This is just a very standard feature of dual-role USB devices, no?
I was also really hoping for wireless "MagSafe-out" charging for the Apple Watch, which would come in very handy when traveling – often there's limited outlets on hotel nightstands, and sometimes I just forget the watch charger.
Yeah, my solution for traveling has been a Satechi Quatro power bank, which has built in Qi and Apple Watch chargers. It's not MagSafe so lining up the phone on the charging pad is a bit fiddly, but it means I can charge my phone/watch/battery all from one USB-C plug and don't need a lightning or watch cable.
If I'm traveling with a computer too I use a 2x USB-C wall wart to fit everything in one plug. Not perfect, but beats the rat's nest of cables that it replaced.
Since the Qi charger isn't MagSafe it doesn't really work for topping up the phone from the battery on the go, so I often end up tossing a short Lightning cable in my bag anyway. Will be nice to have USB-C eventually and not worry about that (but I intend to drag this iPhone mini out for a good 5 years).
I've been using mostly wireless charging with my current phones; and watch (you have to there) mainly because the lightning port would usually be the first thing to die.
I wonder if they'll sell cases alone for existing AirPods.
I keep my iPhones for many years before buying a new one and never had the lighting port die. What happens though is that the port gets dirt inside and stops working. There are tiny brushes (available on Amazon) which solve it and the port starts working again.
Nevertheless still good that now only one cable is required - especially since the iPad and iMac use USB-C as-well.
Not sure what to do with the AirPods - hopefully the wireless charging directly from iPhone 15 will make it unnecessary to have to carry the cable for the pods.
I'm looking forward to the day when I need to pack only USB-C cables when we go on family vacation, but it's still going to be a couple of years until we replaced the last device with lightning port (especially iPads seem to last forever).
Apple promised in 2012 that it would support lightning for 10 years - yes the EU helped push them to USB-C but they had a good reason for not doing so before 2022. And it kinda worked out perfectly, in the 11th year they switched, right after they had met their promise.
They made the commitment, nobody made them do it. I dont think they needed to promote a 10 year horizon, they should have cooperated more strongly in the USB=C spec and not made stupid commitments
I'm old enough to remember when USB was promoted as the end of cable madness :).
The idea was that you would have one cable from your computer, and all devices would be chained. Life would be so simple.
Instead we have several USB cables, plus HDMI and DP, and lightning, and probably some I've forgotten. Thankfully we lost the enormous parallel ports. Although many EU televisions still use something equally bulky.
Call me a curmudgeon, but nothing in the last decade or so of smartphone development has sparked the least bit of interest or excitement for me, this included. Battery life maybe? Seems like a matured product category. Which is fine - maybe we just leave them alone and last as long as possible. Or keep churning about notch vs no notch, smallish vs. largeish vs. smallish again, etc.
I have a 4 year old Xiaomi phone, which had excellent specs at the time of purchase. Now, phones with more impressive benchmark scores and cameras exist... but I'm not into gaming on my phone, and somehow the battery is still great, so it still does everything I need.
Any low-end Android phone is more than capable enough for 99% of daily use for less than half the price and you can get things like extended battery and, of course, USB-C charging. And yet Apple keeps eating into Android's market share. Apple owns their market on the strength of their marketing.
It just doesn’t make sense to go wireless only, like even as the presentation showed, there are great usecases for wires, like moving data fast to external storage during video recording. Also, charging is much much slower without a cable, and then we didn’t even talk about debuggibility, servicibility, for no reason whatsoever. Apple is not hurt by usb-c, they have been using it for many years on their own dime. They just waited around so if anyone takes offense (see other commenters) they can freely point their fingers at the EU. They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
Based on an analysis of their product line up and past actions, I believe their ultimate intention was to introduce USB-C as the port for iPhone "Pro" models and remove the port entirely from the regular non pro models, in favor of wireless charging. You can see a proto version of this in the current iPad lineup: the Pro and Air (mid range model) have USB-C, while the base iPad uses Lightning.
You're right that USB-C can transfer data very fast in comparison to Lightning, but most casual users likely don't do this at all. They primarily use cloud backup solutions. This is somewhat supported by the fact that data transfer speeds on non pro models of the 15 are the same as Lightning.
Additionally, Apple had much more control over who could legally produce cables and accessories with Lightning due to owning the standard, which isn't the case with USB-C.
I really think the only reason it didn't shake out like this is because wireless charging tech just isn't where it needs to be. It's possible that Apple thought it was going to advance faster. They had one very ambitious product they were going to release for wireless charging that got completely canceled a couple years ago: theverge.com/2021/8/5/22611234/apple-airpower-wireless-charger-working-prototype
Do you know how rare it is for Apple to announce a product and then alter it at all from what they said when they announced it -- much less straight up cancel it?
They could have gone the iPad route, but part of the problem is that iPhones are a status symbol/conspicuous consumption product as well. There are plenty of people who buy the latest "Pro" model as a way of signaling status. This move would likely have caused a lot of confusion in general for less tech savvy people. It's no longer "Do you have an iPhone charger?" it's "Do you have an iPhone charger or that new new one?"
>They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
I really doubt this. Apple has never been one to shy away from making decisions that can be decried as shameless profit grabs. Example: removing headphone jack. Removing wall brick charger from phones.
They could not have predicted that the EU would introduce unprecedented legislation forcing them to this standard and they fought it vehemently.
That prediction always seemed premature to me. Wireless charging still can't compete with USB fast charging for speed, and cables are more portable then even the sleekest wireless chargers. While I imagine Apple will ditch cables as soon as they think it's feasible, I just don't think that's going to happen for at least a few more years.
My prediction is that Apple's going to introduce some sort of "MagSafe Data" protocol — some kind of high-bandwidth NFC that runs through an autonomous controller chip that comes up before the rest of the device, such that it can be used to DFU-restore / JTAG / etc. the phone, just as Lightning currently does.
Which is a lot of the people who have bought new vehicles in the last 5+ years. And I can't think of any way to work around it that wouldn't (or at least couldn't) be some horrendous kludge which probably wouldn't work very well.
I'd never say never obviously but dropping ports entirely would have to be a terrible decision anytime soon. (And one wonders what assurances Apple has made to auto manufacturers adopting CarPlay.)
> And I can't think of any way to work around it that wouldn't (or at least couldn't) be some horrendous kludge which probably wouldn't work very well.
One could always dream of head unit updates for wireless carplay support...
Where "work quite well" means "latency". It's even a sub-header in TFA linked above. It's the reason we didn't buy a dongle for our new Hyundai Ioniq 5 (which inexplicably still uses USB-A in 2023, and no wireless CarPlay), because every single review for every single dongle at best said, "...and the latency isn't all that bad." Oh, it'll be bad for me if it's bad enough for a reviewer to notice. Grabbing the cable when I get in the car isn't nearly as annoying as waiting for my button press to register.
There's brave as in people whine because it's pushing the envelope but it can be easily worked around (see headphone jack) and there's brave in the sense of foolhardy which I have to believe all wireless would be in the next decade. (On a phone. Seems reasonable on a watch especially one advertised as suitable for fairly extreme conditions.)
It fits a use case for some but it doesn't appeal to me.
- Plugging the phone in is so easy.
- With Wireless Carplay presumbably I'd have to futz with the phone anyway if both of our phones are associated with the entertainment system
- I still have to take the phone out of my pocket to put it on the wireless charging pad. That is actually the hassle, not plugging the phone in
- If I don't care about charging my phone, I assume my phone is going to heat up in my pocket and drain the battery while I'm doing Wireless Carplay stuff
- A lot of my driving is short 10-15 min trips. Can put a pretty decent charge into my phone during that time with the wired connection. Not with inductive charging.
yes, but I've heard many, many negative things about it (lag, slow charging, phone overheating, etc). I don't think I've ever heard of anyone actually liking it.
I think that's largely due to car manufacturers being shit at software. The previous generation of my current car was absolute trash when it came to CarPlay. Even the wired version of it sucked.
The 2023 model had the entertainment system massively upgraded. Wireless CarPlay is seamless and fast. The wireless charging pad isn't amazing but it does the job just fine.
It's orthangonal until however you're charging it can't keep up with demand. A 14 Max on a standard USB-A -> Lightning connection is already really marginal. Like, I can drive for an hour with waze running and the phone plugging in (wired carplay) and it'll charge maybe 5%.
What kind of amperage is your car putting out? Older cars really struggle to power phones. In some cars, it's possible to upgrade the USB port - otherwise, you may be better off using the 12V port (cigarette lighter) since you have wireless CarPlay available to you.
In my Fusion, I'm stuck using wired Android Auto, so I am unfortunately not able to use the 12V port for charging.
You can get an adapter to change that wired android auto to wireless. I've done this in my ute. Then with my s22 I can use the 12v port with a QC3.0 compatible charger and get above 1% per minute charge whilst still having android auto running.
The adapter plugs in to the USB port for android auto and then offers up a wireless connection. Everything is automatic once set up.
Wireless CarPlay works great in our VW. What sucks is that when Apple abandoned Qi wireless standard the wireless charging pad in the car doesn’t work well or consistently with the MagSafe design.
They’re technically QI compatible but they don’t work as well with those chargers — much harder alignment issues and therefore less stable and reliable charging in my experience.
I had wireless CarPlay in my last car and every single iOS update would brick the connection somehow. Eventually muscle memory for just plugging in the damn phone took over.
I suspect they have a few things to work out with regards to CarPlay wireless connection(s) before they could remove ports on the device, in addition to the other comments on this thread.
I honestly didn't know non-wireless carplay existed until you said something. Everyone I know just keeps their phone on a charging pad somewhere in the car.
Now that it's become like the USB-C port on the iPad (at least at high end) I doubt it will go away, but maybe the SE will be replaced with a watch-like "no ports" phone someday.
The reason for USB-C was to adhere to a common standard. Getting rid of the port entirely and depending on a MagSafe charger is just the same as insisting on lightning, and you would have to buy special cables or devices for it.
But its like fundamental physics and it doesn’t make sense to ditch wires — it will always take more energy and more loss to transport anything in a medium of distant molecules vs a tightly coupled one with interesting properties.
And for what benefit? That port is already water-proof.
I don't know about spite — I feel like they were holding off on moving the iPhone to USB-C for so long precisely because they had already planned on going portless "soon", and it would have been silly to do two of these "brave" transitions in quick succession.
recording your footage directly to external storage is kind of a dependent feature though. They are angling on the prosumer / low end commercial videography with that.
I suspect lots of people who would be happy to shoot on a phone have upgraded to blackmagic specifically because you can just swap the card and keep rolling.
The cynic in me knows the real reason for them to be a carbon neutral company is so that you don't feel bad purchasing another one of their phones since it was produced "neutrally".
According to my research (1) wireless charging increases the consumption between 40 and 80 % depending on how well you align the coils.
It would be very much Apple move to take something that wastes enormous amount of energy (given the number of people who have iPhones) and claim it is eco-friendly.
12.7Wh per battery for the iPhone 14, times a billion iphones. Assume a worst case scenario of full battery usage per day per phone, which gives us 5 billion watts or 5 gigawatts.
Doubling that power use if everyone switched to low quality wireless charging (50%) would require another 5 gigawatts, or a few thousand more wind turbines.
Bigger than I thought in a worst case scenario, but still not too bad.
Especially if wireless charging prevents premature replacement by reducing port failure, as the embodied energy is estimated to to be the majority of the energy involved in the lifecycle of a smartphone.
Running an Air Conditioner in a small room for an hour (~500Wh) uses the same energy an iPhone would take in ~40 complete charge/discharge cycles. Of course, the numbers look big when you scale them up but as a percentage of total energy use, it's marginal to non-existent.
Back of the napkin: hundred million iPhones recharging their 13 Wh battery once a day every day from zero to full for a year is about 60 % the electric energy that this power plant [1] makes in a year.
Not huge amount of energy, but not negligible either.
Not negligible, but also a small cost of the total cost of the iPhone system. call it 500 megawatts for 100m iPhones, which for moderately expensive generation capacity is ~ 2million per megawatt of capacity, works out to $10 per phone in electricity. A typical power plant has expected lifetimes of ~25-50 years, which if we assume a generous 5 year phone lifespan, and a 25 year plant life...
That works out to $2 per iPhone to build power plants to charge the iphone every day for it's an entire life. Not bad for a device that costs hundreds of dollars.
Do yourself a favour and just buy a magnetic adapter + cable such as Baseus magnetic zinc [1]
You will:
- save money to buy new phone (cable costs just ~10$)
- it's magnetic so even more convenient to use
- magnetic adapter protects connector from dust getting inside or getting broken
- you use the same cable with adapters for usb-c, lightning and micro-usb to charge different gadgets (even older airpods pro)
- at least baseus cable supports both fast charging (20W) and data transfer (usb 2.0)
If cable brakes (at it did brake for me after ~1 year of use) you just buy new one for 10$ instead of new phone for 1000$. Keeping old phone is the most environmentally friendly option.
non-pro iphone 15 usb-c is still just 2.0 speed and most likely doesn't support usb-otg
Do not use those cables under any circumstances. They're not safe. The USB spec is not designed to accommodate chargers like that and they're a fire/device ruining hazard. Get a good usb-c cable from a reputable manufacturer.
I'm still glad they are moving to usb-c but not going to clap my hands to Apple for that - but will clap EU for that. (will clap even more if EU with clab Apple with baseball bat with new battery repair law).
However if still someone consider buying this new iphone only for usb-c it's a good alternative to keep old phone and save money (since there was almost no innovation since iPhone X especially in non-pro models).
So the idea is that you leave the adapter plugged to the phone port at all times and then use the magnetic cable. You need one adapter per device, right?
(Sorry if questions are naive, I've never seen one of those).
Yes. I am using such adapter for many years now, every single device of mine are charged with the same cables. Headphones, keyboard, mouse, phones, portable speakers, iPad, android, simply everything. Quite convenient!
That's correct - I keep adapter plugged all the time (they are very slim) to my iphone 13 mini (but worked great even with my iphone xs) and another to airpods pro, micro-usb to my logitech mouse, and usb-c to my vape and android phone (I'm mobile dev). I just bought 2x such cables so that I have 2x lightning adapters and bought few to my family as gift so it's easy to share.
I mean if connector brakes inside your phone - I had 2 iphones that was hard to charge even after cleaning the port. The idea is that you keep adapter inside the phone all the time so iphone female connector doesn't brake because of constantly plugging in and out charging cable.
Android pre USC-C had this problem bad since there was that little piece of metal in the middle of the port that had to make contact and it always got bent.
No it’s in the phone now, unlike how it was with lightning cables.
You could stick a toothpick inside a lightning port on a phone to remove pocket lint, you can’t do this with USB-C without a higher risk of damaging the phone.
USB-C on the phone side has a protrusion that slots inside the cable end the same as previous usb cables. This is the fragile part, but it’s still a big improvement over micro usb.
Before wireless charging/data xfer/debugging one had to physically plug the phones in for development in addition to wear and tear from charging so I’ve worn out the micro usb ports on many android devices.
It's worse for the battery though, because it heats up more while charging. Or rather, to compensate for that it has to charge slower to keep the battery safe.
I've had (a different brand) of magnetic adapter break devices (it wasn't a cheap one either, it was the most expensive and highest rated at the time).
Something about the USB circuitry doesn't like how the magnetic adapters partially connect sometimes. I don't pretend to understand the failure mode but I have a very funky Valve Index controller now.
I bought into the 'Volta' ecosystem and the adapters started degrading within 6 months. I would only trust a product from a major electronics producer, not these random brands on Amazon. If none of the big players have this as a product, it smells of a reason why it isn't a thing. Otherwise, I really wanted it to be. I hate the damage plugging cables in and out of devices does to the phone's power sockets over time.
I've tried similar devices and they're only good for charging. Try to push any data through it and there will be all sorts of slowdown and erratic data transfer issues.
I'm iOS dev - I use such cable for data transfer (programming via Xcode) every day. Also no problem with syncing images with photos.app. Also no problem with fast charging - I recommend some well known brands.
But if you need usb 3.0 speed then you will need new iphone 15 pro
I believe magsafe charges slower than the port, and I've also heard concerning things about the long term effects wireless charging has on battery health.
I’m sure there is plenty of anecdotal evidence out there that goes either way on this. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max that’s almost 4 years now that I wirelessly change every night and the battery health is 83%. I think that’s pretty good for a device I constantly use every day. I’m still on the fence on getting a battery replacement from Apple while I still can, as this phone is still perfectly fine for my needs.
I have similar anecdata. My iPhone X still has 88% battery capacity. It still easily lasts a full day of light/intermittent use and gets charged each night on a wireless charger. The battery life is now noticeably shorter in cold weather.
I'm in the same boat except that i bought one used. Battery health was also at 83% when i bought it, don't know what its now but lasting a full day so i dont care.
What do you mean "while you still can"? Will they discontinue battery replacements for the 11 at some point? At 80€ its a no brainer once the battery does start to deteriorate more
Actually I wasn’t aware that you can still get batteries officially replaced on older devices, it looks like they can go back as far as a 5S. I just assumed they cut off battery service once they stop updating iOS on a model.
Its fine for everybody's needs - unless youre shooting weddings or movies or something no one needs to spend 800+ USD on latest iphone, they can just buy one from a few gens back for less than half of that
magsafe (the one apple call in iphone) is wireless charging and yeah it charges slower. But this magnetic charging with adapter is still wired connection and fast charges (20W) so it's faster and probably safer for battery. This more behaves as magsafe macbook connector (which is wired).
I loved my magnetic adapters, got them off of amazon for quite cheap. The same "brand" didn't produce tips that fit lighting AND usb-c, but by carefully looking at the product images I found two "brands" that seemingly used the same design and had compatible tips.
The problem was, though, that the magnets were too weak - they would constantly disconnect
Hi, how long did you use it? I bought some knock-off version of magnetic adapter and it broke in a few weeks of active use, so I very curious about your expirience with it.
I have been using it for around 1.5 years. I'm iOS dev and nomad so I use it intensively every day. Definitely more often than typical user that plugs just 1-2 times a day - since I just don't like wireless Xcode debugging
Doesn't really matter. I would even argue that its more environmentally friendly to switch expensive phones more often.
(of course just a thought but!)
IF people can buy a cheap phone or an expensive but older phone, the older phone still works often better than a new cheap phone. So when he 'upgrades' the old phone gets reused and saves one cheap phone.
The only thing worse than Apple fanboys is anti-Apple fanboys projecting.
No one is going to claim this. The fact the Pro gets 10Gbit USB 3 _is_ interesting (particularly for anyone using the phone for video), but certainly not revolutionary or genius.
I am not an anti-apple fanboy (I own enough of them to qualify). I am an electrical engineer who had experience with apple fanboys in the past, when explaining why I think a switch to USB-C would be good.
Back then people were grasping for straws to explain why apple is right to keep lightning, now that apple has made the switch the very same people will now praise the decision they argued against a few months prior.
It is fascinating how people will convince themselves of things if they want to be true. And a cautionary tale, I wouldn't exlude myself from falling for similar thinking in other situations.
They didn't force apple to replace lighting to USB-C everywhere. Just Europe. If Apple decided to replace it everywhere is because it's obviously superior.
They are making really really hard not to switch to Android. I was just expecting a folding phone, and have been wanting a folding phone for years. Now Samsung has a mature folding phone that looks like a much better alternative...
Technology advances might seem stupid to some people, but what matters is where people in general put their money in. There’s a reason the fold is Samsung’s flagship phone, and Google just came out with a folding phone. And apple is about to lose me as a customer for more than a decade. I bet I’m not the only one.
Curious what other devices people have that use USB-C? The only one I have is my Nintendo Switch. So for me, this is mostly an inconvenience having to get new cables for my phone. I'll miss Lightning.
Nearly every single device I use regularly that can be USB powered is USB C at this point. Just from looking around, my mouse, my Android phone, both my work and personal laptop, my Switch, my portable speaker, my headphones, my iPad, my Raspberry Pi, and even my Pokemon Go Ball.
At this point I actively avoid buying any devices that are not USBC because there is an alternative to any product I could want. Products shipping with micro USB in 2023 are almost always indicative of a cheap product or an old product that hasn't received any meaningful updates.
The only glaring examples are Apple phones/accessories, which I avoid, and sadly fitness devices. My water bottle and watch both have proprietary connections, I assume because a water proof USBC connection is just not feasible on small devices. Hopefully some kind of standard gets established there as I've had products that look like they have very similar connections that almost fit but they don't actually charge.
> Products shipping with micro USB in 2023 are almost always indicative of a cheap product or an old product that hasn't received any meaningful updates.
This is only somewhat true. Some products are decent quality, but they’re not really “tech” products, they just do power delivery via MicroUSB. Also there are some high end products that have not switched and are huge pain points. Like Logitech makes these very good wireless mouses that are still micro USB.
I’ve wanted a USB C iPhone for years, but will be skipping this because I’m already setup to have to support 4 different types of cable: Lightning, USB C, and Micro USB (and USB A)
For Micro USB and USB A I just have converters that I can slip onto a USB C cord which works because I have to use them less frequently, but I have high quality Lightning cables.
Plus all the other stuff I have that I’d have to buy a new version of to fully get rid of Lightning: 2 Apple TV remotes, AirPods Max, at least a new AirPod Pro charging case and my basic iPad.
It sucks. I’ve wanted this for a while but it’s probably going to be at least 3 more years before I get to demote Lightning to the same category as USB A and Micro USB
I just wish Apple had sucked it up and done this sooner before they got forced to. I really do think the strategy was to eventually have at least the non Pro iPhones go completely portless.
My USBC mouse is Logitech. It's the sideways mouse that is supposed to help with carpal tunnel and it's been fantastic after I got used to it. I'm actually surprised that they have any current mice that are not USBC.
Is it an older model that is popular that they just aren't changing because people are still buying them? If you're willing to try something new you might be surprised by the improvements they have in their latest lines.
My headphones, laptop (MacBook), work laptop (also MacBook), Nintendo Switch, external hard drives, and external battery all use USB-C. None of these were intentional switches for me, just the default option. At this point, my phone is the only cable I have that isn’t USB-C, so this will be super convenient.
My partner’s phone (an Android) is already on USB-C, so this will also let us share cables, which is a huge plus.
You didn't need an adapter, just a cable. In recent years, that cable came included with the iPhone. And it's the same cable used for charging the phone.
It doesn't matter whether the adapter is stubby or long (like a non-adapting cable), it still cost like $20 for no reason, despite being "such a well integrated ecosystem"
When it came to apple, that kind of stuff has always been pure puffery and marketing anyway. "Their hardware is the best" people would say, while their computers sat at 100% fan, choking under the strain of running basic apps with no real cooling, while the user worked around a stuck "C" key and being careful with their inflating battery.
At this point I don't have any portable electronics which do not use USB C (kind of by design, I have so many USB C cables and almost no microUSB left and don't want to buy more of the latter) and only have a handful of things in general which still use MicroUSB.
So, my phone, tablet, steam deck, power bank, bluetooth-to-wired audio adapter, all use USB C. Same with any of the laptops I'm looking at getting. Thus, all I ever need to carry is a power brick, a USB C hub, a C-to-C cable and an A-to-C cable and it'll be sufficient for everything.
Everything else I have is micro USB: my phone, my ereader (PocketBook), my reMarkable tablet, my bluetooth headset, my bike GPS, the lights of my bike, my portable batteries.
I fear the day I will have to replace all of those with USB-C because, currently, I can travel with only one small charger (as long as I don’t take my laptop).
I do not follow your reasoning. There are extremely small C chargers and if the replacement is gradual, you could also just carry C male-micro USB male cable(s) and micro USB female to C male adapters. Such adapters adhere to the specification, it's C female to legacy USB which is not.
I have phone, tablet, headphones, laptop, steam deck, graphics tablet, art light box, and various battery chargers and camera lights & accessories that all use usb C. Kindle and Fitbit is about the only thing I use that's not USBC I think.
At this point basically every gadget in my house not made by Apple, and even then most of the gadgets made by Apple.
MacBook, iPad, Studio Display, Switch, Sony headphones, Kindle, my wife’s Pixel phone, Steam Deck, Raspberry Pi. The only micro USB devices I have are some old portable chargers. The only Lightning devices I have are my phone, my AirPods and, for some reason that still escapes me, the external trackpad Apple sells.
If the only USB-C gadget you have is the Switch you must not have bought many gadgets in the past five years. Which actually isn’t a bad thing, good on you.
My Kindle Oasis and my Bose QC35 are my next most often charged things after my iPhone, and they’re both micro USB and only three years old. The only USB-C device I own is a kitchen scale. I have more mini USB and full-size USB-B things!
MacBook Pro, wireless mouse, an audio mixer I think, a couple other things. I still use a lot more USB-A/B but it's creeping up there. I probably won't upgrade this generation but the switch is in the category of utterly inevitable and mostly will mean I have to buy some adapters and maybe a couple cables by the time it happens.
Isn't the Switch some "almost USB-C but not quite" thing? I remember issues with that.
Most everything is moving towards USB-C but it's slow; I want Milwaukee and them to have more USB-C charging devices for the smaller battery charged things.
Usb c devices i own: Apple MacBook laptop, Lenovo laptop, Sony headphones, Bose headphones, bike lights, headlamp, probably more. Lightning is the odd one out for me.
iPad, MacBooks, Chromebooks, Nintendo Switch, and basically every IoT gadget and other toy that used to use Micro-USB, for the last couple years they've all been USB-C. Even the cheapo stuff. I was ecstatic to throw away all but one (just in case) Micro USB cable I had. I won't jump for joy getting rid of Lightning cables, but OTOH I won't miss them either.
For me it's Steam Deck, Soundcore Headphones, Phone (I use android), Laptop and Pill Dispenser (a medical device). It's nice just to grab my high speed steam deck charging brick and a spare USB-C to keep all that stuff in charging rotation overnight when out of the house.
I don't necessarily "miss" lightning but it was a superior design. With USB-C the cables are female so you're more likely to break off the connector on the device instead of the cable, which is cheap and easy to replace. Lightning didn't have that problem.
I disagree. In my experience of having both of these for a number of years I never had to replace a USB-C cable because it was broken. I had to replace the lighting cable more than I can count.
Laptops (Work MacBook and a Thinkpad) and i do not use the magic thingy for charging. My phone and my switch. And i used those things on travels surprisingly often.
Do you use lightning for charging your phone when traveling and mag save for your macbook?
Multiple different wireless headphones. Wireless keyboard. Wireless mouse. Game controllers. A non-Apple phone. Multiple laptops. E-reader. A rechargeable flashlight. A rechargeable lantern. External battery pack.
For me I’ve got my Nintendo Switch, headphones, soon my new phone, and a vape that all charge on USB-C. I’m excited to have one cable to rule them all, personally.
Most things I have and still use, use usbc for charging or power. Or lightning.
Peripherals, usb-a is still what you usually get, just going by what’s common on store shelves. Just got a new kit at work a few weeks ago—all these brand-new devices are made to plug into A, even if the other end is usb-c. They come with A-to-c cables, or else are A-only. In the former case, I can at least fix it by just using c cables I already have.
But, overall, the peripheral world as most people experience it is still A-first. C options are usually more expensive, may be part of why.
I have none at all. So I'm not so happy about this. It means I will have to throw away lots of good lightning cables I've amassed over the years. Thanks EU, I guess.
These guys are insane. Every year the bloody product looks great (EDIT: not visually/aesthetically, looks like its got great features) and then the next year it somehow is even better. Satellite connectivity is fantastic. I believe T-mobile is bringing some of that too. If we get satellite backup calling or satellite data in the coming years it will be incredible.
I think I'll wait another year before I upgrade my iPhone 13 but this is great stuff.
At the end of everyone is a line "this is the best _____ we've ever made". well, duh. it would be insane to make something worse than the previous version.
>Every year the bloody product looks great and then the next year it somehow is even better
It's literally the same design since the iphone 11.
You need to see them side by side to notice the difference but any other user won't be able to tell at a glace that you own the 15 and not an older model.
It's not, but the improvements have been extremely incremental. The internals of the 14 were redesigned for better repariability, and the 14 pro model moved the camera into the middle of the screen.
The memes will be great on how apple's designers opened last year's CAD files, changed the radius of the corners and called it a day, and can kick back till next year while being paid boatloads.
Given the way those antennas work I doubt that. From what I understand they did some neat tricks to send very simple signals for the SOS stuff in the absence of that.
I can believe that. Perhaps network carriers will just place Starlink terminals with solar cells everywhere. Not having to do fiber or have sufficient connectivity in a mesh might make the whole thing fantastic!
Yeah, it feels like it's perfect as a phone. I absolutely love it. I'm actually quite surprised that they take what I think as a perfect product and still add stuff to it. Very impressed by Apple in every way. Great product. Great engineering.
Somehow they always dodge the reverse Osborne effect, haha!
I was really hoping Apple would tell the EU FU, and remove the port altogether. Some sort of wireless data only or some new port like magsafe, but for data.
That is not their job, and they'll be happy to tell you it isn't, and they won't get fired for that. Their job is to do whatever they want insofar as the board doesn't replace them.
You mean like how AAPL drops nearly every time they have some kind of announcement? Yeah, I don't know if that's a good indicator of customer frustration.
"charging while using" is a pretty core use case. Are you expecting people to buy a bunch of cords with big dongles on the end? At that point the EU probably would still have grounds to take action since "magnetic attachment point port" isn't exactly "no port."
If you're tethered to a cord that's attached to your phone in a specific spot can you be said to not have a "port" even without part of the cable going "into" the case?
I suppose the lawyers would get paid a bunch to figure out how flexible the definition of "port" in the regulation would be. "Port" in networking is obviously purely a concept vs a physical hole. "Port" in shipping is also more conceptual, no two ports need share the same layout.
Removal of the jack dramatically downgraded the quality if you care about it, wireless protocols are simply no match for high end audio. Suddenly ultra cheap phones sounded properly better.
Of course marketing sold it as benefit, which for some it was since they are ok with average quality. Considering thick brick that current iphones are for quite some time, space taken by port was never the issue, unlike stated originally as reason for removal.
You can't hear AAC compression artifacts. Or do you have an ABX test?
And if you could, it'd be balanced out in outdoors use cases by the lack of wired audio artifacts, namely cable telephonics sending walking impacts into your ears.
Anyway, AirPods do support lossless audio now. (Well, next year.)
Not all "really nice" headphones are high-impedance, and if they were a headphone amp isn't a source, it's an amp.
The source is the DAC and the DAC in that dongle is better than most audiophile DACs are. Remember, audiophile equipment is scams made by small companies and iPhone dongles have bigger R&D budgets than their entire industry.
How would you connect your iPhone to HDMI for example?
Port charging is faster and more efficient than magsafe.
The USB-C data transfer speed is great for data exchange. It is, afterall the "Pro" model.
My car is old and cheap and doesn’t have Bluetooth. Needing to swap between Lightning and USB-C dongles when my wife and I swap over music duties is annoying enough, it’d be far worse if one of those was some magnetic thing that could slide off when I try to prop the phone up in a cup holder.
The removal of headphone jack is no longer a daily hindrance to me, but it's become at best "every 3-4 days I swear at my company-mandated iPhone for not having a headphone jack" :)
If they remove all jacks, that's so many devices I own, and use-cases I have, poof gone!
I bought a lightning-headphone adapter, and may have to get a USB-C to headphone one (assuming it works). Well worth the expense, and you can just leave it connected to the headphones/stereo.
Oh I have 6. That's the minimum I need to have any hope of having one when I need it (in the car, in the home office, in the office-office, in the backpack, etc).
(I can't "leave it connected to headphones" as my iPhone is not the only device I own; I have multiple headphones and headsets ; and I move myself and my iPhone quite a bit. The nice thing about 3.5 was universal and ubiquitous. Every headphone or headset worked with every phone tablet and music device. Lightning without 3.5mm is just a constant pain in my keister :)
But, the context of this sub-thread as I understood it, is - if they discontinue all the ports completely / go wireless, one could only use bluetooth headphones. And that's the suck because:
1. I already have a number of very nice headphones I planed to last me a lifetime
2. Bluetooth headphones have built-in obsolescence (battery, new protocols, etc)
3. Lag! I like to play synthesizers / make music on computers and tablets. Or play games with Kishi. Bluetooth is a pain for such use cases.
I was kind of expecting the "lowest spec" one to be magcharging only, but maybe that wouldn't really work with a "low spec" and the high end ones use USB-C for external drives and other things.
Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485271
Apple ditches the Lightning connector in favor of USB-C after 11 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37484897
(Before the announcement) iPhone 15’s shift to USB-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37480508