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The entire announcement is an exercise in masking that they're running out of ideas. Excessive lectures on environmental footprint. Lots of cultural/humanitari
by dahwolf 3y ago
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.
- Aloha 3y agoAt some point every product category become functionally feature complete. The price increase signs to me that they expect people to upgrade less often.
- ryandrake 3y agoIt'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.
- pocketarc 3y agoIt'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.
- wayfinder 3y agoOK 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.
- saurik 3y agoDo you feel like the changes Apple is making to the camera are improving the camera along the axes you care about?
- wayfinder 3y agoI 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.
- gnicholas 3y ago> Oh boy, more megapixels. Yawn. There aren't any even any more megapixels this year. It's the same 48 as last year.
- isatty 3y agoI’ll take the better water resistance/proofing/reduced engineering cost from not having user replaceable batteries any day. Had to replace an iPhone battery exactly once over the last 3-4 years and it was done for free with applecare, in and out in 30 mins.
- extr0pian 3y agoRegarding "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.
- jh00ker 3y agoI see what you did there!
- slipshady 3y ago> free with applecare So about $200 depending on what model you have then? I pay for AppleCare+ for my iPhone 11 (mostly because I like not using a case) and it's not free.
- noitpmeder 3y agoDon't you pay a subscription for applecare? So not exacty free
- tiborsaas 3y agoQuartz wristwatches have replaceable batteries since their invention and waterproofing the is not really an issue. > free with applecare That's true in your case, but if someone buys a used model then they might prefer to do it at home especially because of budget issues.
- jh00ker 3y ago>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?
- scarface_74 3y agoIt 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.
- sudosysgen 3y agoIt took literally 7 seconds to put in the cover correctly, and if you got the warning all you had to do was press on a bit more. The Galaxy S5 Neo did not have any flaps over the ports.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd 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? https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-mini-review https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-mini-review > 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.)
- sudosysgen 3y agoI 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. And the S5 sold only 15% less than the iPhone.
- jjoonathan 3y ago"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.
- dbbk 3y agoNo one says that they have to release new phones every 12 months though.
- qup 3y agoIt'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.
- spiderice 3y agoBut 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)
- yunohn 3y ago> 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?
- londons_explore 3y ago> Generative Siri LLM's that are actually good are about a year old now. I'm surprised that wasn't enough time for them to get them into Siri.
- spacecadet 3y agoI 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"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jmyeet 3y ago"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+.
- sharts 3y agoWhat 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?
- sytelus 3y agoThere 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.
- astrange 3y agoThere are "3D photos" exposed through apps like Polycam. The model building is an OS framework though.
- gpt5 3y agoThey 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.
- dmix 3y agoNothing 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.
- tomcar288 3y agoits 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).
- adventured 3y agoIt is strange to see that sentiment on HN, given the context: this is what commonly happens to mainstream tech. The desktop PC has been in that boring mode for 15 years or more now. With small, incremental improvements, if you're lucky. DDR5 instead of DDR4. A 4tb HD instead of a 1tb HD. A faster SSD. A 25% faster processor. etc
- tomcar288 3y agopersonally, 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.
- toddmorey 3y agoLet's hope more companies to run out of ideas and put the focus on environmental impact.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Phurist 3y agoNot 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.
- deveac 3y ago1. 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.
- motoboi 3y agoI'm sorry, man. This is Stockholm Syndrome. The 3d capture and the wearable finger thing could have been a software update. The dedicated button is just bollocks. You lose the visual indicator of silence, which was a great thing.
- deveac 3y agoI'll take one click activation of any software script humans can dream up and string together via shortcuts. You can keep that reminder of whether you muted your phone. :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blackhaz 3y agoIn 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.
- rnk 3y agoYou don't think usb-c is a bold and incredible new enhancement to the iPhone?
- poulsbohemian 3y agoThanks 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.
- SergeAx 3y agoThere'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.