Why don't we make the phone 1 inch thick so we can put in a DSLR like camera!
Why don't we make the phone 1 inch thick so the battery can last 30 hours!
Why don't we make the phone 1 inch thick so I can use it on a table and it won't slide (because its so heavy)
Bottom line is the iPhone is about STYLE.
Do you seriously think your defintion of style is superior to the entire iPhone design team? Really?
All right, here’s how I’ve always seen Apple’s lineups in their various categories. A dartboard. Now, for the purpose of this analogy, the center’s not where you want to be. Heck, it’s a dartboard; sometimes you have to shoot for the edges to get your total down by the right amount. What I’m most interested in here is coverage. The area covered by the offerings. If there’s another game or a different way to illustrate a game in which coverage is more most important, feel free, anyone, to chime in. I’ll bet this isn’t the best way to look at it, but again it’s how I’ve always pictured it.
Starting with desktops, Apple has three. A high end workstation, a midrange all-in-one, and a do-a-little-bit-of-everything-as-well-as-Switcher-Joe-would-want low-end product. As we’ve personally seen, and as sales show, the latter two products are incredibly popular with people who just want a machine to quickly and effortlessly do what they think a computer should. That’s most of the population. As members of a tech forum, that’s not generally us. People without interest in our industry don’t really care that they can swap in a new sound card or hard drive or find it fun to have to carefully hook up a PSU to every component. So, really, Apple’s consumer offerings mean more to them than any tower would. As such, Apple tries to cater to as many needs of as much of this group of “I just need it to work” people as they can. What does that mean for coverage? It means big darts, right down the center strip. And what does that mean for competitors? We know how they operate, as well. Apple’s competitors in the desktop arena offer “Choice”, as was previously mentioned. “Choice” for the sake thereof, with dozens of offerings set to fit every niche, everywhere. From enthusiast gaming desktops to pathetic, empty, midrange towers, to those little Linux things that fit in a couple cubic inches. So in an effort to make an everything for an anyone, they wind up making a large number of products, each of which doesn’t appeal to very much of anyone. So we see something like this.
I was going to fill in the whole thing, but really, you get the idea. Laptops are generally the same way. Apple doesn’t necessarily have a “super duper high end” option (and I may get some flak from modern 15” users for saying so), but they do have very good coverage from the low-end consumer up through the low to mid-range professional. You’ll see a fair few gaming enthusiast laptops at the top, where many companies tear each other apart in an attempt to pick the discarded tendons off the bones of the market. And you’ll see Intel’s capitalization of Apple’s MacBook Air chips in their Ultrabook lineup, which fills in some of the market near where Apple’s after, but it’s generally the same thing.
Now for music players. The iPod has the greatest range of product line that Apple offers, but it’s still a concentrated effort to appeal to the majority rather than a specific niche. Apple’s PMPs play only certain filetypes and sync with only certain software, but they are designed for the people who don’t care what an OGG, FLAC, AVI, or MKV are, just let me watch my movie and listen to my music without a filename like Captain.America.The.Winter.Soldier.BDRip.1080p.Dolby5.Dual.Audio.mkv if you please, thanks.
Tablets, then, is one of the simplest markets, but since Apple created it there hasn’t been much reason to expand. We’ve only seen tablets smaller than traditional tablet size pick up since 2010, and Apple threw their hat into the ring there to grant more coverage. If you consider sizes to run from top to bottom on the dartboard, the plotting gives you an idea of what I’m going for (note that I didn’t pay any attention to throwing competitor dots up there; it’s just a general overview. Apple picked two sizes, said “these’ll appeal to the greatest number of people”, and made them into successful products. Instead of making a tablet in every decimal fraction of an inch available–the aforementioned “Choice”–as their competitors did, Apple gave less “Choice” but netted a far larger portion of the market because, again, they aren’t trying to be everything to anyone.
Finally, smartphones. Here’s where we see the most variety (again, didn’t fill in the entire board; see my earlier post about Android fragmentation for a better idea of what this nonsense looks like), but here we also see the smallest differentiation from Apple. One phone. One. Not 20 a year, not 10. One. And yet, this one phone–a phone that is priced at the high end of the market–manages to sweep it away. Not only use, but in popularity of size. MOST ANDROID PHONES aren’t larger than the iPhone.
And what does Apple do about the rest of the market? They keep selling their old phones. By the time the model hits “keep selling” status, it has become a midrange model. And once they keep selling it long enough, it becomes low end. And this has worked incredibly well for them. Half of purchases (or so, right? Someone correct me) are the brand new model, the other half is split between the older two.
And that’s all well and good, but taking the iPhone models by themselves doesn’t account for the rest of the variety in the market. So what do we see when we look at the entire market? Well, we see a number of gigantic “phones” at the high end of the spectrum that… no one is buying. Again, it’s something like 10% of the market–a market where the iPhone already enjoys purchases in the other 80 or so percent (barring the extreme low end of the smartphone spectrum). Is that niche of 10% really worth an entire product when they already command the near entirety of the rest? What happens to the hyenas when there aren’t scraps for them?
Finally, the big takeaway from this illustration is as follows: Apple doesn’t appeal to the needs of absolutely everyone. Because they don’t try to appeal to the needs of absolutely everyone. In my view, Apple is content with making big darts, throwing them extremely accurately, and letting the rest of the industry fill in the scraps around their throws. That’s why I don’t see the appeal to making a “phone” in a part of the market where next to no one is buying or making any money, nor do I see the appeal to making a “phone” when that part of the market isn’t doing well because people can’t–or just aren’t–using the device as it is marketed.
As I mentioned before, a dartboard might not be the best way to illustrate this, but it’s what came to mind immediately when I first thought about Apple’s lineup in relation to customer need and want, fabricated or otherwise.
Please, guys who like nested quotes, don’t quote this whole thing. ????
Yes! Then they should have made the whole case thicker by the same amount. I can' t believe they would release it like that. I was going to trade up my iPhone 5s, but if there is a bump I'll wait .
In my view, Apple is content with making big darts, throwing them extremely accurately, and letting the rest of the industry fill in the scraps around their throws.
It was a waste of time for you make all those illustrations because it doesn't prove anything. Apple isn't playing darts. For all we know they are playing billiards and plan on running the table. That would leave the competitors without a shot at all.
It was a waste of time for you make all those illustrations because it doesn't prove anything. Apple isn't playing darts. For all we know they are playing billiards and plan on running the table. That would leave the competitors without a shot at all.
No, Apple sees a lot of pitches, and when it sees a pitch it likes, it swings for the fences and hit it a home run.
Then they’re doing the worst job of it of any company in the markets in which they’re invested. ????
Is there any market that they are not invested in? The 4.7 and the 5.5 are filling some gaps. Next up a watch and perhaps a TV. Certainly we don't know the details of their plans, but apparently they are expanding their reach in many areas especially now with health, home and car.
Is there any market that they are not invested in? The 4.7 and the 5.5 are filling some gaps. Next up a watch and perhaps a TV. Certainly we don't know the details of their plans, but apparently they are expanding their reach in many areas especially now with health, home and car.
And after 38 years in the computer industry they’re selling three (four) models instead of 20 or more? I can’t see how anyone–least of all you–could justify the idea that Apple is trying to fill every niche when the opposite has been their entire business model for the last 17 years (said business model netting them incredible profits and popularity where before, when they did try to do this, the opposite was true).
You remember the mess that was the Performas and Quadras and the LC models.
You remember the mess that was the Performas and Quadras and the LC models.
There is a difference between throwing pasta at the wall to see what sticks when you are struggling to make water boil versus everything sticking. Apple is in the latter position now.
There is no protrusion.
The device in the picture has not been fully assembled yet!
As soon as they complete the assembly by attaching the sapphire wafer everything will be smooth, flat and awesome - as it should be!
Link? Because that's quite a statement, especially after this:
It kind of amazes me that you know for certain that an unannounced product that you claim does not exist is not a quality product. LOL Do you see how silly that logic is?
There is no protrusion.
The device in the picture has not been fully assembled yet!
As soon as they complete the assembly by attaching the sapphire wafer everything will be smooth, flat and awesome - as it should be!
Link? Because that's quite a statement, especially after this:
It kind of amazes me that you know for certain that an unannounced product that you claim does not exist is not a quality product. LOL Do you see how silly that logic is?
Don't tell me you're a socket account for sog(?)
Seriously, though—he could be right. I said up above that these lower strips at the top and bottom of the back could be filled flush with plastic "or something". Maybe that something is "sapphire"*. Maybe that's what all the "sapphire" rumors are about. Nice and beveled like the corners of the 5 and 5s, but with no anodization to scrape off and undentable as well.
*I can't bring myself to type "sapphire" without the scare quotes when talking about pure, colorless alumina. I still don't know how such terminology is legal.
All of which involves me buying a new one. Upgrades mean I don't need to buy a new one. Can't you see how buying a new one uses infinitely more energy than keeping the old?
1. The total mass-energy of the universe is finite
2. Buying a new one uses infinitely more energy than keeping the old
One of these statements is factually wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elijahg
I was referring to the iMac, obviously a phone hasn't got upgradable RAM because it would be a pointless and completely imbalanced size vs longevity compromise. The iMac doesn't need to compromise on features vs size though, but Apple does anyway.
Desktop RAM expansion only gives the illusion of extending the longevity of your computer. You computer has a longevity limit: pick a target number, say 5 years (whatever, it doesn't matter). So here's what you do: you order your computer with the amount of RAM that you think you'll need during the next 5 years. You already do that for CPU. You don't order not-enough and then complain that you can't expand it later.
Now, a lot of people who argue in favor of user (RAM) expansion, argue that it's more economical because (they claim) RAM prices go down as chip density increases. (I'll assume for sake of simplicity this is true and ignore supply gluts as having any impact). Economic self-interest is a completely valid argument (especially for those with lower income), but you're not making that argument. You're trash talking about Apple being not "eco-friendly" and "infinite energy" use? WTF? Is this really about energy consumption? If so, I would argue that I saved energy by configuring my MacBook Pro with sufficient memory for the next 4-5 years at the start, and that you're wasting energy because you support the retail RAM expansion industry, which has to mount chips on DIMM modules, package them for retail sale, and then ship those all the way from China or Korea to local stores or warehouses. Additional fuel is burned to get it to your doorstep and into your computer.
Ha! And then dumb the old RAM sticks, what a stupid reasoning this was. Good post sir.
I just didn't believe the person sincerely cared about ecological impact and was taking cheap shots at Apple because they didn't like the elimination of user RAM expansion from the iMac. Most techies just bash Apple directly for that either because RAM expansion comforts them (whether they ever use it or not), or because they don't want to pay Apple's prices for factory-installed RAM. I wish people were more open and honest about their biases instead of hiding it behind some bizarre conspiracy that claims Apple is destroying the ecology or consuming infinitely more energy.
If Apple doesn't make the computer you want to buy, then buy something else. This is how the free market works, and it's the only way to get Apple to change what they offer for sale. The only way. Whining in forums about "obsession with thinness" and "eco-friendly" is either cheap shots or impotent frustration, and I'm gonna call it out every time.
Comments
Because this is supposed to be the final design?
All right, here’s how I’ve always seen Apple’s lineups in their various categories. A dartboard. Now, for the purpose of this analogy, the center’s not where you want to be. Heck, it’s a dartboard; sometimes you have to shoot for the edges to get your total down by the right amount. What I’m most interested in here is coverage. The area covered by the offerings. If there’s another game or a different way to illustrate a game in which coverage is more most important, feel free, anyone, to chime in. I’ll bet this isn’t the best way to look at it, but again it’s how I’ve always pictured it.
Starting with desktops, Apple has three. A high end workstation, a midrange all-in-one, and a do-a-little-bit-of-everything-as-well-as-Switcher-Joe-would-want low-end product. As we’ve personally seen, and as sales show, the latter two products are incredibly popular with people who just want a machine to quickly and effortlessly do what they think a computer should. That’s most of the population. As members of a tech forum, that’s not generally us. People without interest in our industry don’t really care that they can swap in a new sound card or hard drive or find it fun to have to carefully hook up a PSU to every component. So, really, Apple’s consumer offerings mean more to them than any tower would. As such, Apple tries to cater to as many needs of as much of this group of “I just need it to work” people as they can. What does that mean for coverage? It means big darts, right down the center strip. And what does that mean for competitors? We know how they operate, as well. Apple’s competitors in the desktop arena offer “Choice”, as was previously mentioned. “Choice” for the sake thereof, with dozens of offerings set to fit every niche, everywhere. From enthusiast gaming desktops to pathetic, empty, midrange towers, to those little Linux things that fit in a couple cubic inches. So in an effort to make an everything for an anyone, they wind up making a large number of products, each of which doesn’t appeal to very much of anyone. So we see something like this.
I was going to fill in the whole thing, but really, you get the idea. Laptops are generally the same way. Apple doesn’t necessarily have a “super duper high end” option (and I may get some flak from modern 15” users for saying so), but they do have very good coverage from the low-end consumer up through the low to mid-range professional. You’ll see a fair few gaming enthusiast laptops at the top, where many companies tear each other apart in an attempt to pick the discarded tendons off the bones of the market. And you’ll see Intel’s capitalization of Apple’s MacBook Air chips in their Ultrabook lineup, which fills in some of the market near where Apple’s after, but it’s generally the same thing.
Now for music players. The iPod has the greatest range of product line that Apple offers, but it’s still a concentrated effort to appeal to the majority rather than a specific niche. Apple’s PMPs play only certain filetypes and sync with only certain software, but they are designed for the people who don’t care what an OGG, FLAC, AVI, or MKV are, just let me watch my movie and listen to my music without a filename like Captain.America.The.Winter.Soldier.BDRip.1080p.Dolby5.Dual.Audio.mkv if you please, thanks.
Tablets, then, is one of the simplest markets, but since Apple created it there hasn’t been much reason to expand. We’ve only seen tablets smaller than traditional tablet size pick up since 2010, and Apple threw their hat into the ring there to grant more coverage. If you consider sizes to run from top to bottom on the dartboard, the plotting gives you an idea of what I’m going for (note that I didn’t pay any attention to throwing competitor dots up there; it’s just a general overview. Apple picked two sizes, said “these’ll appeal to the greatest number of people”, and made them into successful products. Instead of making a tablet in every decimal fraction of an inch available–the aforementioned “Choice”–as their competitors did, Apple gave less “Choice” but netted a far larger portion of the market because, again, they aren’t trying to be everything to anyone.
Finally, smartphones. Here’s where we see the most variety (again, didn’t fill in the entire board; see my earlier post about Android fragmentation for a better idea of what this nonsense looks like), but here we also see the smallest differentiation from Apple. One phone. One. Not 20 a year, not 10. One. And yet, this one phone–a phone that is priced at the high end of the market–manages to sweep it away. Not only use, but in popularity of size. MOST ANDROID PHONES aren’t larger than the iPhone.
And what does Apple do about the rest of the market? They keep selling their old phones. By the time the model hits “keep selling” status, it has become a midrange model. And once they keep selling it long enough, it becomes low end. And this has worked incredibly well for them. Half of purchases (or so, right? Someone correct me) are the brand new model, the other half is split between the older two.
And that’s all well and good, but taking the iPhone models by themselves doesn’t account for the rest of the variety in the market. So what do we see when we look at the entire market? Well, we see a number of gigantic “phones” at the high end of the spectrum that… no one is buying. Again, it’s something like 10% of the market–a market where the iPhone already enjoys purchases in the other 80 or so percent (barring the extreme low end of the smartphone spectrum). Is that niche of 10% really worth an entire product when they already command the near entirety of the rest? What happens to the hyenas when there aren’t scraps for them?
Finally, the big takeaway from this illustration is as follows: Apple doesn’t appeal to the needs of absolutely everyone. Because they don’t try to appeal to the needs of absolutely everyone. In my view, Apple is content with making big darts, throwing them extremely accurately, and letting the rest of the industry fill in the scraps around their throws. That’s why I don’t see the appeal to making a “phone” in a part of the market where next to no one is buying or making any money, nor do I see the appeal to making a “phone” when that part of the market isn’t doing well because people can’t–or just aren’t–using the device as it is marketed.
As I mentioned before, a dartboard might not be the best way to illustrate this, but it’s what came to mind immediately when I first thought about Apple’s lineup in relation to customer need and want, fabricated or otherwise.
Please, guys who like nested quotes, don’t quote this whole thing. ????
Yes! Then they should have made the whole case thicker by the same amount. I can' t believe they would release it like that. I was going to trade up my iPhone 5s, but if there is a bump I'll wait .
In my view, Apple is content with making big darts, throwing them extremely accurately, and letting the rest of the industry fill in the scraps around their throws.
It was a waste of time for you make all those illustrations because it doesn't prove anything. Apple isn't playing darts. For all we know they are playing billiards and plan on running the table. That would leave the competitors without a shot at all.
No, Apple sees a lot of pitches, and when it sees a pitch it likes, it swings for the fences and hit it a home run.
Then they’re doing the worst job of it of any company in the markets in which they’re invested. ????
In before someone tries to tie Mighty Casey to this analogy. Then again, that might be too old for most.
Is there any market that they are not invested in? The 4.7 and the 5.5 are filling some gaps. Next up a watch and perhaps a TV. Certainly we don't know the details of their plans, but apparently they are expanding their reach in many areas especially now with health, home and car.
And after 38 years in the computer industry they’re selling three (four) models instead of 20 or more? I can’t see how anyone–least of all you–could justify the idea that Apple is trying to fill every niche when the opposite has been their entire business model for the last 17 years (said business model netting them incredible profits and popularity where before, when they did try to do this, the opposite was true).
You remember the mess that was the Performas and Quadras and the LC models.
For the rest of the 90% we want our ultra thin phone. Thanks.
Here is how sog35's dream phone may look like.
Introducing the thinnest iPhone yet...
There is a difference between throwing pasta at the wall to see what sticks when you are struggling to make water boil versus everything sticking. Apple is in the latter position now.
Unless she's playing with herself it doesn't sound like one hand in her pocket is doing much.
Is this not the worst thing that ever happened? A .7mm protrusion. How can we sleep at night.
There is no protrusion.
The device in the picture has not been fully assembled yet!
As soon as they complete the assembly by attaching the sapphire wafer everything will be smooth, flat and awesome - as it should be!
That might explain that little yodel sound she keeps making.
Put a magnetic strip on it and we can make payments with that new iPhone.
Link? Because that's quite a statement, especially after this:
Don't tell me you're a socket account for sog(?)
Seriously, though—he could be right. I said up above that these lower strips at the top and bottom of the back could be filled flush with plastic "or something". Maybe that something is "sapphire"*. Maybe that's what all the "sapphire" rumors are about. Nice and beveled like the corners of the 5 and 5s, but with no anodization to scrape off and undentable as well.
*I can't bring myself to type "sapphire" without the scare quotes when talking about pure, colorless alumina. I still don't know how such terminology is legal.
All of which involves me buying a new one. Upgrades mean I don't need to buy a new one. Can't you see how buying a new one uses infinitely more energy than keeping the old?
1. The total mass-energy of the universe is finite
2. Buying a new one uses infinitely more energy than keeping the old
One of these statements is factually wrong.
I was referring to the iMac, obviously a phone hasn't got upgradable RAM because it would be a pointless and completely imbalanced size vs longevity compromise. The iMac doesn't need to compromise on features vs size though, but Apple does anyway.
Ha! And then dumb the old RAM sticks, what a stupid reasoning this was. Good post sir.
Ha! And then dumb the old RAM sticks, what a stupid reasoning this was. Good post sir.
I just didn't believe the person sincerely cared about ecological impact and was taking cheap shots at Apple because they didn't like the elimination of user RAM expansion from the iMac. Most techies just bash Apple directly for that either because RAM expansion comforts them (whether they ever use it or not), or because they don't want to pay Apple's prices for factory-installed RAM. I wish people were more open and honest about their biases instead of hiding it behind some bizarre conspiracy that claims Apple is destroying the ecology or consuming infinitely more energy.
If Apple doesn't make the computer you want to buy, then buy something else. This is how the free market works, and it's the only way to get Apple to change what they offer for sale. The only way. Whining in forums about "obsession with thinness" and "eco-friendly" is either cheap shots or impotent frustration, and I'm gonna call it out every time.