Blah blah blah, Apple is doomed, no innovation, Cook sucks, Steve would never… etc. We’ve heard it all for the last 13 years. I’ve heard even more for the last 36 years and 1996 and 97 were terrible because Apple WAS 90 days from bankruptcy at its lowest point if not 30 days.
Unannounced product lateness and delays are always to be taken with a huge dose of unverified-rumor skepticism. Reading into it and making bold statements of fact because of the rumor is entertaining at least. Thanks for the morning laughs.
Blah blah blah, Apple is doomed, no innovation, Cook sucks, Steve would never… etc. We’ve heard it all for the last 13 years. I’ve heard even more for the last 36 years and 1996 and 97 were terrible because Apple WAS 90 days from bankruptcy at its lowest point if not 30 days.
Unannounced product lateness and delays are always to be taken with a huge dose of unverified-rumor skepticism. Reading into it and making bold statements of fact because of the rumor is entertaining at least. Thanks for the morning laughs.
Whilst I agree with you, iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and probably 16 aren’t different enough.
Blah blah blah, Apple is doomed, no innovation, Cook sucks, Steve would never… etc. We’ve heard it all for the last 13 years. I’ve heard even more for the last 36 years and 1996 and 97 were terrible because Apple WAS 90 days from bankruptcy at its lowest point if not 30 days.
Unannounced product lateness and delays are always to be taken with a huge dose of unverified-rumor skepticism. Reading into it and making bold statements of fact because of the rumor is entertaining at least. Thanks for the morning laughs.
Whilst I agree with you, iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and probably 16 aren’t different enough.
It's called (Apple) iteration refer to Google or GM if you want the baby and the bathwater thrown out every 3-5 years, with the result being an immediate redesign from the ground up every time.
Apple would never make a product that doesn’t add to their revenue. A folding iPhone would only steal sales from the regular iPhone and truth be told there’s still a crease factor that nobody has overcome yet
My pet theory is that these squarer 7” to 8” form factors which those folding phones unfold to are in an input zone of death, thusly limiting usage while unfolded to reading and watching activities. You can’t thumb type and you can’t touch type like on a 0.75” spaced keyboard.
As soon as you want to type a message, it’s just easier to fold it up and type on the outside screen. That’s why the outside screen is out there.
Then the flip phone style of folding phone doesn’t buy you anything. They unfold to a regular sized 6” to 7” 2:1 aspect ratio phone. The only thing offered is “coolness” factor, as most everyone can put 6” to 7” phones in pockets and purses.
Not sure if there is a set of aspect ratios where it would work out well for folded and unfolded. For a laptop or tablet, 5:4 or 4:3 folded and 8:5 and 6:4 unfolded sound like good usable ratios for both.
Gboard is available for folding phones and has split keyboard options for thumb-typing and floating options. Samsung also uses a native split keyboard option and the Chinese brands also do the same.
Apple has had split keyboards, floating thumb boards, and swiping thumb boards on iPadOS for a long while too. There hasn’t been a lot of usage uptake versus just using the scaled down QWERTY layout.
And as such, text input is worse than on a regular 3” wide thumb board on a typical 3” wide phone. The iPhone has a left or right shrunken keyboard option for better one-handed use too, but not much uptake there too.
There are lot of super cheap 7 to 8 inch tablets on the market, but the vast majority are e-readers. The iPad mini isn’t a big fraction of iPad sales otherwise there would be more versions and more regular changes to the hardware.
So, the pet theory is that these folding phones that unfold to 7 to 8 tablets don’t have a feature that customers really want to pay the cost for, and therefore limit sales.
May be it will be a different story if the prices are driven down to $1000 for most of the big folding models, but that only means the non folding models can be driven down in price to $500.
If this report is true, (a huge IF) a folding iPhone would be the first major design change since 2007 and the original 4GB iPhone. Yes, Apple has lost it, they've been riding the Ghost of Steve Jobs influence ever since.
Oh for crying out loud. Have you seen the current tech for folding phones? It’s garbage. Apple is not going to put its name on a crappy product that has a crease right in the middle of the screen. If and when the technology allows making a reliable phone with a creaseless screen, they’ll make one. Until then we’ll have to make do with Tim Apple lack of creativity and inferior, boring, not-at-all innovative products like AirPods, AirTags, Vision Pro… </s>
There is nothing 'garbage' about the state of almost all current folding phones and creases are a tradeoff and literally invisible in use.
They are tradeoffs, like the notch and big bezels. Remember those?
Two things stood out at MWC. One, probably the entire Mercedes fleet of shiny black mini vans with tinted windows, and two, the amount of folding phones being used by visitors.
EVERYTHING about folding screens is GARBAGE.
The horrible plastic feel of the screens are garbage. The creases are garbage. The hinges are garbage.
The creases are NOT 'invisible', they're incredibly visible and awful.
I agree that the notch is horrible, and should never have happened, the pill is the same, it's distracting and awful. But that in no way negates how completely crap folding phones are. Until there's a breakthrough in materials science, there will NEVER be a folding phone worth having.
Apple will never do a foldable phone or iPad because its dumb. Apple is not stupid
Apple has delivered a lot of seriously stupid tech. Butterfly keyboards - 3 generations and 7 years of repairs, the expensive Touch Bar that never went beyond MBP, the also expensive 3D Touch, and a Mac Pro generation that was Trash by design. All of those are gone.
Ah, the perfect play-calling ability of the Monday morning quarterback! Gotta love it. "Seriously stupid" is a misjudgement. The butterfly keyboard was an innovation to help Apple in its quest for thinner devices--not "seriously stupid tech," but a perfectly reasonable idea in theory which, unfortunately, proved problematic once released into the wild and subjected to daily, real world use and abuse. I would also group Touch Bar and the iPhone's 3D Press screen (remember that one?) as potentially "good idea tech" that was ultimately never supported by third parties.. or even that much by Apple. (I'm feeling the same way about Dynamic Island.) The Touch Bar was dumb in the sense that it took something very useful to pros--that top row of keys--and gave them something less useful in its place. However, if the Touch Bar had outstanding pro application support at the outset, it might have fared better. Of course, we'll never know. I do have to admit that the Mac Pro "trash can" was a bizarre and expensive bridge to nowhere.
Whilst I agree with you, iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and probably 16 aren’t different enough.
iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and probably 16 aren’t different enough for… what? Annual upgrades? Bi-annual upgrades? Tri-annual upgrades? I kept my 7 plus for 4 years and it was on its last breath of battery and operation when I got my 12 Max Pro. I just got a 15 max Pro after 3.r]5 years of the 12 which was great but had poor battery life. The 15 is great and each update was great from the previous in screen and performance and cameras.
I don’t care about the shape or colors. That’s not why I have an iPhone.
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May be it will be a different story if the prices are driven down to $1000 for most of the big folding models, but that only means the non folding models can be driven down in price to $500.