midwestapplefan

 I would ask a different question. Do you need an iPad to be April, and are you willing to pay that price? For me I need an iPad to do a limited number of things, and for that I am willing to pay only so much. At this price point. I’d rather buy a laptop which can fundamental do so much more. For the form factor of an iPad and for what I needed to do give me something in the $500 range with a keyboard. Or wait,  I already have them. I bought an iPad Pro 9.7 inch lashed year 128 GB.  For less then $550.  Or a simple answer, by the products that fits the need for as little as you can. Spend the rest on your loved ones. 

airnerd said:

Inflation is a thing.  You know gas, bread, milk, etc all cost more each year as well.

If gas was $6 a gallon, bread was $4 a loaf, and milk cost $6 a gallon right now, you would have a valid comparison.  Unlike those commodity goods, consumer electronics typically go down in price over time.  Cameras, televisions, hard disks, even drones just get getting cheaper and cheaper.  Only Apple seems to be able to buck this trend.  It will probably work for a few more years.  But with higher prices you get more intense competition.  It will be interesting to see where Apple is in 4-8 years when iPhone are more like the commodity goods you listed.

Value?  Bahhhhhh!  That's a good one!

ATMOS is a marketing scheme. It is not superior to a 5.1 system. 

Since Dobly failed to gain ground with ATMOS in movie theaters (you nearly never  hear it mentioned anymore in your neighborhood cinema.  Dobly has been gunning hard for it in the home theater segment where  average consumers are not as sophisticated and don’t know better.   

 As an example, quality of a loudspeaker is much more important than quantity place throughout the room.  Universally, anyone would be better spending their budget on five speakers that were really good, then the eight or 10 speakers required for a true Atmos implementation. 

And it is beyond silly to expect you’re going to get an ATMOS experience from a sound bar.  It is just a marketing ploy to slap a brand name on something that can’t do the job.

Just like a pair of stereo speakers can place instruments in front closer to the left or to the right by how the sound is balanced between the two speakers, this is also done with a 5.1 system where the amount of sound placed in the rear or the front speakers will make the sound appear closer to the back or closer to the front,  or halfway in between.   You don’t need 10 speakers to achieve this effect.  Anyone who has heard of quadraphonic version of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side  of the Moon understands this.   With just four speakers you can have the sound swirl around the entire room as the sound gets balanced from one speaker to the next.  That was done with technology over 20 years ago.   It has nothing to do with ATMOS. 

 Why the  writer of  this story feels Atmos is so good can only make me speculate. But I can say unequivocally  that high quality speaker can reproduce the subtleties of sound, the large dynamic range, and very low and very high frequencies in a way that will get lost in an Atmos setups in most cases.  This is definitely a case of less, given a certain budget,  being more. 

I was in an Apple store a few days ago and held up my iPhone 7 next to the iPhone X and the difference in the quality of the screen was hard to see.  Yes, the edge goes to the iPhone X but it is not night and day like it was before and after the iPhone 4 came out. 

Also, let's be real.  It is a less than 5 inch screen that is quickly covered in figure prints and smears.  This is not a 70 inch TV to watch 4K movies.  This is a pocket device to read texts and Facebook with.  For those that need the best of the best or like being early adopters and enjoy a bit of status, good for you.  But for working stiffs who support a family of four with teenagers, I'll get four iPhone 7s and keep $1,400 in my pocket, and get that 4K TV instead where all the resolution matters.