petri

I get the motherboard, it’s a real and genuinely rare piece of history you can actually look at that and possibly even use.

Paying a premium for a sealed box makes no sense to me at all.  Until you open it, it’s just a cardboard box which might not even contain anything.  After you open it, you’ve lost almost all the value, and you’re just left holding one of the millions of other old iPhones there are out there… the worst version of it at that.

Fidonet127 said:

DAalseth said:

There are some nice games there. I’ve tried it several times. I just haven’t seen anything worth subscribing to though and have dropped the service each time. 

Each their own. We have it as part of a bundle. Low cost, no in app purchases and no ads. Makes it nice. For us, it is quite a few good games. 

Exactly how it works for us and many others I’m sure.  As a stand-alone subscription I’m not sure anything like this ever makes sense (and if you’re that devoted to gaming to disagree you probably subscribe to some other service already anyway) but as part of Apple One it makes a nice addition, no complaints here at all.

auxio said:

docwallaby said:

Correct me if my memory is wrong, but wasn’t the S7 a negligible update over the S6? And wasn’t the S5 almost the same as the S4? Apple hasn’t exactly made all that much progress with the S-series System-in-Packages for the Apple Watch in quite a while. Not faulting them, as I am almost totally ignorant of this stuff, but … yeah, it’s not a big surprise that the S8 isn’t going to be much of an improvement, but it also is a little disappointing.

The Apple Watch is far more about the sensors than the specs of the processor or memory.  The S6 (model I own) gained a single-lead ECG and a blood oxygen sensor.  The S7 wasn't much of an upgrade at all though.

Actually the S4 (that I have) introduced the ECG function.  Progress is slow with the Apple Watch, it doesn’t make big jumps each year, but I think that’s ok.  For new buyers it’s easily the best out there, and most existing customers don’t expect or want to think about replacing a watch that often.  My S4 still performs well and does all that I want of it, I’ll wear it till it breaks or the battery dies, and by then the S12 or whatever I end up upgrading to will be a revolution I'm sure.

When the cost of parts Apple are selling for “self repair” are greater than the cost of getting Apple to do the repair for you, then something is obviously wrong.  I’m perfectly capable of replacing an iphone screen, I’ve replaced several, but since I’m doing the work myself I really ought to be making a considerable saving even when using an apple quality part.  That’s not the case under the scheme they’ve launched.

This article is really far too kind, it was high time for the Series 3 to be retired at least a couple of years ago.  Certainly when it became impossible to perform a software update without going through all the pain of unpairing etc, the user experience fell off a cliff - it should have been taken off the shelf well before that.

I get the theory that it exists to make the SE look good, but the thing is the SE *is* good and excellent value, I have the near identical series 4 and can’t really see the need for anything more.  Keeping the S3 around just clutters the lineup and will be misleading a few into making a small “saving” in return for a much poorer experience that will probably put them off the Apple Watch altogether.

I’ve no doubt the iPhone SE and other models sell well even without Apple still offering the iPhone 6, so not sure why the strategy is so different here.