Apple managed to reduce the iPod concept to the super-cheap iPod shuffle. I guess it's a lot easier to do that with a music player than a phone/computer/camera/video player/music player/etc.
Your guess pretty much answers itself and contradicts your initial premise. The original iPod was just music. So there was no 'reduction,' just refinement.
The shuffle served a job that Apple wanted to fill for its consumers [highly mobile set and forget music player for highly active people]. If anything, the iPod Touch was the outlier [an iPhone without the phone]. The shuffle is mainstream, distilled back to the core.
With the iPhone, and iPad, Apple is building 'mobile personal computers.' and have a minimum experience (iPod+phone/camera(s)/application service/motioncontrolled/multi-touch/Always-networked/cloud enabled).
No different than all apple laptops have vidcams, all have wireless, etc. You can't get an Apple Laptop with 'less' than the minimum.
That's the difference between a uniform experience, and the 'open' world. How many times did I install SW on a PC, only to find out there wasn't a driver, or even the necessary HW to make it run. As a developer you want an every _increasing_ set of capabilities to sell your wares… not forking your apps for some 44,000 combos of different screen sizes, resolutions, and graphic accelerators, (when an app experience is not 'in a window' but 'IS the window,' how big your window is is important;-). You can argue that 'oh, write to the API and it will take care of it,' but in reality, when it's 'uncompromising' user experience you're after, a fuzzy icon there, or a little delay here, or shadowboxing an app there is not tolerated.
Hence, if you write an app that, say, takes a picture of the user, and there is no 'FaceTime camera,' Well that sort of sucks for the developer and the user of the app ("Turn the device around and guess where you are in the screen and click the button you can't see")
Or if you use 'shake to XXX' in your app, and there is no accelerometer/gyro/M7/GPS in the 'cheap version,' well that now forks the experience and the code again.
So When Apple says 'yes' to something to be added to the mobile 'family' (after 1000's of 'NOs'), it's there… as a baseline, for several generations. It's what the developers expect and the consumers desire (I never want to say, I can't move to the iPhone 14, because the iPhone 12b was the only phone that supported my NFC wallet application).
The point is Apple has gone for cheaper in terms of casing - but that's not reflected in the price.
How many times have posters on this board dismissed Android or Windows phones as being 'cheap plastic crap'? A U-turn as far as plastic goes.
Now the iPhone 5c brings the worst of both worlds. Plastic casing ... but ... same premium prices. Exactly the same prices they've always charged for last year's technology.
Nobody is expecting any Apple product to be dirt cheap, but instead of using plastic savings to get a bit more competitive on price, Apple is using it to bolster their already healthy profit margins.
Difference is other vendors just mold plastic into a shape and Apple improves upon the plastic by reinforcing it and attaching the metal antenna around the border. Drop the GS4 and the 5C. What plastic will pop off first.
The point is Apple has gone for cheaper in terms of casing - but that's not reflected in the price.
How many times have posters on this board dismissed Android or Windows phones as being 'cheap plastic crap'? A U-turn as far as plastic goes.
Now the iPhone 5c brings the worst of both worlds. Plastic casing ... but ... same premium prices. Exactly the same prices they've always charged for last year's technology.
Nobody is expecting any Apple product to be dirt cheap, but instead of using plastic savings to get a bit more competitive on price, Apple is using it to bolster their already healthy profit margins.
There are two possible reasons why Apple made the 5C out of plastic:
1. They wanted to offer a colored iPhone because they saw a demand for one. In this case, the case wasn't done as a reduction in cost, it was done as a posative feature.
2. The aluminum iPhone 5 case is simply too complicated to mass produce economically in the quantities required for both 5 and 5s production. In this case the price does in fact reflect the case downgrade (let's not forget that the 5C is less expensive than the 5 ever was).
Personally, I think the truth is likely a combination of the two, and I say kudos to Apple for taking a necessary downgrade and turning it into a selling point.
As for the other phones being cheep pieces of plastic, we say that because it is true. Android makers do use plastic because it is cheep, and they don't go to any great length to improve the quality of the device. Meanwhile durring the keynote they explained that they went to great lengths to make the 5C into a solid product even with the plastic case, and even though I have never held one, I am inclined to believe them because that is how Apple does things.
And Samsung has the highest rated cable primetime drama with a multi-ethnic cast at 9 PM!
Arbitrary restrictions are just a kinder way of moving the goalposts.
No idea what you're talking about. Drama at 9pm? A kinder way? What's any of that supposed to mean?
Anyway, you're full of it. Here, from the horse's mouth:
Quote:
There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers,” he says. “I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business."
Market segments, see? That particular quote is fine. Nothing much wrong with that. But when you start attaching judgements like
Quote:
“There’s always a large junk part of the market,” he says. “We’re not in the junk business.”
on the other segment, that's when you sounds trashy, like you need to slag off your competitors. Apple doesn't need to do that.
How about a quote (and link) showing he’s saying anything at all about dumb phones, since that was your entire point which you got wrong from the start?
Have you held the 5C? If not the shut up. No one in their right mind would call it cheap.
Learn to read I didn't call it cheap. I called it cheaper, in referring to manucfacting. Why don't you pick up a 5C in one hand, a 5S. And tell me? Which do you think cost most to manufacture, and which is higher quality?
How about a quote (and link) showing he’s saying anything at all about dumb phones, since that was your entire point which you got wrong from the start?
Ok
Quote:
Quote:
To Cook, the mobile industry doesn’t race to the bottom, it splits. One part does indeed go cheap, with commoditized products that compete on little more than price.
It's ambiguous about whether the article is talking about the entire mobile industry or just the smartphone industry. I assumed the former, maybe I'm wrong it could be the latter, it's not definitive. I don't think it makes a great deal of difference either way, so it's not the entire point at all. My point is that trash talking makes you sound trashy; it doesn't really matter what you're talking about.
They keep misinterpreting stats too. At one point, they say:
"According to market researcher IDC, Android runs on nearly 80 percent of the world’s smartphones and nearly two-thirds of its tablets."
Google has activated 1 billion units, Apple has sold over 650 million (they say it'll be over 700m soon), the recent worldwide sales share may be 80% but the amount of active Android devices is not 80% of the total. 40% of the Google ones run Android 2.x. Reporters keep making out like the usage stats conflict with the marketshare and they really don't. Apple is selling more premium devices than anyone else. They are only 2nd in overall volume to Samsung and Samsung makes up half of all Android devices.
The point that gets raised about Android volume eventually becoming a tipping point for developer support has some merit but it ignores the fact that relative volume isn't as big a factor as absolute volume here. If a developer targets iOS, they still have a potential audience of 700 million (give or take some broken devices). Even if Android tops 2 billion and outnumbers iOS 2:1 in say 3 years, the sheer volume of iOS users is still really compelling to make iOS a priority, especially considering the portion of iOS models that are flagship models.
you're on the right track. but ... how many of the older models of iOS and Android phones/tablets included in those grand totals are still actually in use? many have have been thrown out by now or are laying insider a drawer in someone's house. the survival/resale/resue rate of iOS products has to be significant higher than the Android stuff too.
Have you actually read any reviews of the 5C? Like at Anandtech? Go ahead, it is on the front page.
This is not a "cheap plastic casing" (unlike some other unnamed companies use). It's a high quality polycarbonate casing. And the reason they used it is not to cut costs. The reason is because some people apparently want a phone in some bright color. And there's no real evidence that this housing is all that much cheaper than the one the 5S uses.
Now, if Apple had thrown some POS together, with some crap plastic? I would agree with you. But that's not what happened.
See above. I don't doubt for a moment that Apple have done a quality job with the plastic. But it still plastic, and much cheaper to make. I liked the feel of my iPhone 3GS - in some ways the rounded edges made it nicer in the hand. But it doesn't have the same quality as the glass and aluminium finish of subsequent iPhones.
I am not denying it's a very good phone. Only that having made it plastic and cheaper to manufacturer, Apple is charging exactly what it has always done for last years model, except this time in a cheaper case. Savings => Apple's pocket.
Good news for shareholders. Bad news for customers.
Samsung's smartphones aren't junk either, but they're selling for $100 to $200 less and often have features that iPhones lack, such as larger screens.
Apple's making the same mistake it made in the nineties. It's assuming that its products are different enough to command a premium price. But as technologies mature, it gets harder and harder to create products that are better enough to justify those higher prices.
Apple's already began to hit that point in the curve. To justify keeping the price of an iPhone 5c high, they've been forced to blather on about color and plastic. That won't wash. Even a third grader can tell that the 'new' iPhone doesn't look any different from dozens of other phones that are also plastic and in bright colors.
There's an old medical adage that, "In the early stages of a disease, diagnosis is difficult but treatment is easy. In the later stages, diagnosis is easy but treatment is difficult." The smartphone market is transitioning from one where new features matter to one where price matters more. If Apple doesn't come to that diagnosis while treatment is easy, it'll find itself in a situation where treatment becomes difficult as millions of once-potential customers are now happy Samsung users. It will find itself on the wrong side of product lock-in.
Learn to read I didn't call it cheap. I called it cheaper, in referring to manucfacting. Why don't you pick up a 5C in one hand, a 5S. And tell me? Which do you think cost most to manufacture, and which is higher quality?
Actually, and no I don't have a link since it was in the comments, someone at Anandtech was explaining that the difference in cost between the aluminum and the ploy cases was nearly non-existent when looked at from the whole BOM price. It was there, but very, very small.
Comments
Apple managed to reduce the iPod concept to the super-cheap iPod shuffle. I guess it's a lot easier to do that with a music player than a phone/computer/camera/video player/music player/etc.
Your guess pretty much answers itself and contradicts your initial premise. The original iPod was just music. So there was no 'reduction,' just refinement.
The shuffle served a job that Apple wanted to fill for its consumers [highly mobile set and forget music player for highly active people]. If anything, the iPod Touch was the outlier [an iPhone without the phone]. The shuffle is mainstream, distilled back to the core.
No different than all apple laptops have vidcams, all have wireless, etc. You can't get an Apple Laptop with 'less' than the minimum.
That's the difference between a uniform experience, and the 'open' world. How many times did I install SW on a PC, only to find out there wasn't a driver, or even the necessary HW to make it run. As a developer you want an every _increasing_ set of capabilities to sell your wares… not forking your apps for some 44,000 combos of different screen sizes, resolutions, and graphic accelerators, (when an app experience is not 'in a window' but 'IS the window,' how big your window is is important;-). You can argue that 'oh, write to the API and it will take care of it,' but in reality, when it's 'uncompromising' user experience you're after, a fuzzy icon there, or a little delay here, or shadowboxing an app there is not tolerated.
Hence, if you write an app that, say, takes a picture of the user, and there is no 'FaceTime camera,' Well that sort of sucks for the developer and the user of the app ("Turn the device around and guess where you are in the screen and click the button you can't see")
Or if you use 'shake to XXX' in your app, and there is no accelerometer/gyro/M7/GPS in the 'cheap version,' well that now forks the experience and the code again.
So When Apple says 'yes' to something to be added to the mobile 'family' (after 1000's of 'NOs'), it's there… as a baseline, for several generations. It's what the developers expect and the consumers desire (I never want to say, I can't move to the iPhone 14, because the iPhone 12b was the only phone that supported my NFC wallet application).
Difference is other vendors just mold plastic into a shape and Apple improves upon the plastic by reinforcing it and attaching the metal antenna around the border. Drop the GS4 and the 5C. What plastic will pop off first.
Cheap relative to the nano/touch however the shuffle was more limited in features.
There are two possible reasons why Apple made the 5C out of plastic:
1. They wanted to offer a colored iPhone because they saw a demand for one. In this case, the case wasn't done as a reduction in cost, it was done as a posative feature.
2. The aluminum iPhone 5 case is simply too complicated to mass produce economically in the quantities required for both 5 and 5s production. In this case the price does in fact reflect the case downgrade (let's not forget that the 5C is less expensive than the 5 ever was).
Personally, I think the truth is likely a combination of the two, and I say kudos to Apple for taking a necessary downgrade and turning it into a selling point.
As for the other phones being cheep pieces of plastic, we say that because it is true. Android makers do use plastic because it is cheep, and they don't go to any great length to improve the quality of the device. Meanwhile durring the keynote they explained that they went to great lengths to make the 5C into a solid product even with the plastic case, and even though I have never held one, I am inclined to believe them because that is how Apple does things.
Yes it is; the iPhone 5C is $80 cheaper than the iPhone 5 was, and is actually better in a number of ways (battery, camera, LTE bands).
Yes it is; the iPhone 5C is $80 cheaper than the iPhone 5 was, and is actually better in a number of ways (battery, camera, LTE bands).
"Was" at introduction?
Thanks Tim!!! Your statements just made my day.
And Samsung has the highest rated cable primetime drama with a multi-ethnic cast at 9 PM!
Arbitrary restrictions are just a kinder way of moving the goalposts.
No idea what you're talking about. Drama at 9pm? A kinder way? What's any of that supposed to mean?
Market segments, see? That particular quote is fine. Nothing much wrong with that. But when you start attaching judgements like
on the other segment, that's when you sounds trashy, like you need to slag off your competitors. Apple doesn't need to do that.
That's all. No FUD. Just disappointment.
"Was" at introduction?
"would be now?" is meaningless. Apple doesn't sell the iPhone 5 now. They never sold it at any other price than the price at introduction.
Here, from the horse's mouth:
How about a quote (and link) showing he’s saying anything at all about dumb phones, since that was your entire point which you got wrong from the start?
"would be now?" is meaningless. Apple doesn't sell the iPhone 5 now. They never sold it at any other price than the price at introduction.
If you say so.
I woke up a little late today, but this is just the sort of article I like to read to start off my day.
Haha, screw Android, screw cheap people, screw Fandroids, screw clueless analysts and screw people who desire junky devices!
It's good to see Apple coming right out and telling it like it is!
Samsung phones ARE cheap plastic crap. They bend ad are flimsy to the touch.
Hmmmm... not the one that I have.
Have you held the 5C? If not the shut up. No one in their right mind would call it cheap.
Learn to read I didn't call it cheap. I called it cheaper, in referring to manucfacting. Why don't you pick up a 5C in one hand, a 5S. And tell me? Which do you think cost most to manufacture, and which is higher quality?
How about a quote (and link) showing he’s saying anything at all about dumb phones, since that was your entire point which you got wrong from the start?
Ok
It's ambiguous about whether the article is talking about the entire mobile industry or just the smartphone industry. I assumed the former, maybe I'm wrong it could be the latter, it's not definitive. I don't think it makes a great deal of difference either way, so it's not the entire point at all. My point is that trash talking makes you sound trashy; it doesn't really matter what you're talking about.
They keep misinterpreting stats too. At one point, they say:
"According to market researcher IDC, Android runs on nearly 80 percent of the world’s smartphones and nearly two-thirds of its tablets."
Google has activated 1 billion units, Apple has sold over 650 million (they say it'll be over 700m soon), the recent worldwide sales share may be 80% but the amount of active Android devices is not 80% of the total. 40% of the Google ones run Android 2.x. Reporters keep making out like the usage stats conflict with the marketshare and they really don't. Apple is selling more premium devices than anyone else. They are only 2nd in overall volume to Samsung and Samsung makes up half of all Android devices.
The point that gets raised about Android volume eventually becoming a tipping point for developer support has some merit but it ignores the fact that relative volume isn't as big a factor as absolute volume here. If a developer targets iOS, they still have a potential audience of 700 million (give or take some broken devices). Even if Android tops 2 billion and outnumbers iOS 2:1 in say 3 years, the sheer volume of iOS users is still really compelling to make iOS a priority, especially considering the portion of iOS models that are flagship models.
you're on the right track. but ... how many of the older models of iOS and Android phones/tablets included in those grand totals are still actually in use? many have have been thrown out by now or are laying insider a drawer in someone's house. the survival/resale/resue rate of iOS products has to be significant higher than the Android stuff too.
Have you actually read any reviews of the 5C? Like at Anandtech? Go ahead, it is on the front page.
See above. I don't doubt for a moment that Apple have done a quality job with the plastic. But it still plastic, and much cheaper to make. I liked the feel of my iPhone 3GS - in some ways the rounded edges made it nicer in the hand. But it doesn't have the same quality as the glass and aluminium finish of subsequent iPhones.
I am not denying it's a very good phone. Only that having made it plastic and cheaper to manufacturer, Apple is charging exactly what it has always done for last years model, except this time in a cheaper case. Savings => Apple's pocket.
Good news for shareholders. Bad news for customers.
"We're not in the junk business."
Yeah, f*ck you Samsung.
Standing ovation for Mr Cook.
I am in full agreement!
Samsung's smartphones aren't junk either, but they're selling for $100 to $200 less and often have features that iPhones lack, such as larger screens.
Apple's making the same mistake it made in the nineties. It's assuming that its products are different enough to command a premium price. But as technologies mature, it gets harder and harder to create products that are better enough to justify those higher prices.
Apple's already began to hit that point in the curve. To justify keeping the price of an iPhone 5c high, they've been forced to blather on about color and plastic. That won't wash. Even a third grader can tell that the 'new' iPhone doesn't look any different from dozens of other phones that are also plastic and in bright colors.
There's an old medical adage that, "In the early stages of a disease, diagnosis is difficult but treatment is easy. In the later stages, diagnosis is easy but treatment is difficult." The smartphone market is transitioning from one where new features matter to one where price matters more. If Apple doesn't come to that diagnosis while treatment is easy, it'll find itself in a situation where treatment becomes difficult as millions of once-potential customers are now happy Samsung users. It will find itself on the wrong side of product lock-in.
Learn to read I didn't call it cheap. I called it cheaper, in referring to manucfacting. Why don't you pick up a 5C in one hand, a 5S. And tell me? Which do you think cost most to manufacture, and which is higher quality?
Actually, and no I don't have a link since it was in the comments, someone at Anandtech was explaining that the difference in cost between the aluminum and the ploy cases was nearly non-existent when looked at from the whole BOM price. It was there, but very, very small.