charlesn

Honestly, I keep thinking the rumor mill must be missing some killer feature(s) of the iPhone Slim because what has been reported seems so preposterous. To recap: if the rumor mill is right, the iPhone Plus is getting pulled from the lineup because it didn't sell--regular iPhone buyers weren't interested in paying $100 more to get the 6.7" screen and significantly increased battery life--according Apple's figures, about 25% longer for video playback, 33% longer for video streaming and 25% longer for audio playback. THAT, with the bigger screen, wasn't worth paying an extra $100. Okay, got it.

SO.. the replacement for the Plus is a phone with essentially the same size screen, but it now has a stripped out feature set: only one camera lens, no fast mmWave 5G (which now blankets big cities), almost certainly reduced battery life vs. the Plus AND... the icing on the cake... it will be more expensive than the Plus! And what is the big selling point that will justify to buyers this reduced feature set with shorter battery life at more expensive prices than a phone that Apple buyers have allegedly already rejected? It might be up  to 2mm thinner... that's maybe a 20% slimmer phone. Spare me the comparisons to the Macbook Air introduction -- there is no magical "pulling a laptop from a manila envelope" moment that's going to happen. This will be, "Hey, if you look at the phone from the side you can see that the Slim is a little thinner than the Plus." If you doubt that this difference is as unimpressive as I'm saying, go look at Samsung's photos for its upcoming Galaxy Edge, which is practically a dupe for the rumored dimensions for the Slim, but will beat the Slim to market by several months. Is the side profile slimmer than the regular Galaxy S25? No doubt. Impressively so? Meh. You'll also note that the Edge will have two camera lenses, not one like the Slim.

Once Apple gets past the initial wave of buyers who simply like owning the latest, especially when its form factor identifies it as such, who is the iPhone Slim for? Certainly not Pro buyers since the main differentiator for Pro and Pro Max phones is their camera system. Does Apple think buyers who rejected the $100 upcharge for the iPhone Plus are going to embrace a phone with fewer features and a worse battery life for even more money because it's thinner? Good luck with that! This is a phone for nobody or, to be fair, it's for a niche that's going to be far smaller than the niches that existed for the iPhone Mini and Plus, a niche that's willing to pay more for *maybe* 2 millimeters of added thinness at the cost of features and battery life. So what is the point of this exercise in thinness to pursue a market that's smaller than the one for the phone you're replacing? That said, I really do hope that Apple will surprise us in some great way with the iPhone Slim that they've managed to keep secret from the rumor mill. Apple and the iPhone lineup, in particular, could really use a moment like that. 

nubus said:

The current market share for iPhone matches the one from 2012 - the last year of products we know Jobs were involved in. The Mac market share stopped growing 5 years ago in March 2020 (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201204-202502).

Oh, my! He posted a link so it must be true, right? Did you bother to look at the methodology used to arrive at these so-called "statisitcs?" Of course not! It's on the internet so it must be true! So here, let me help you with that, as explained by Global Stats:

"In other words we calculate our Global Stats on the basis of more than 5 billion page views per month, by people from all over the world onto our 1.5 million+ member sites."

Oh, this sounds like a very reliable way of calculating market share! Page views to "member sites" with zero knowledge of how/why they were chosen or how representative they are or not of the overall PC/mobile phone market. Excellent source! Maybe pull stats out of a hat next time and post those--I'm sure they'd be equally reliable. 

chasm said:

I doubt it. Apple Intelligence is a feature in development, not a selling point. 

Lots of parallels between Apple Intelligence and Tesla's Full Self-Driving Mode. Both are actually features in development that are nonetheless heavily marketed as selling points. I guess the one big difference is that Apple Intelligence doesn't kill you when it fails to work. 

DAalseth said:

Yes he has done great things at Apple. But that’s in the past. the last few years are filled with Apple Intelligence, Apple Car, Declining quality, and missed deadlines. Even Michael Jordan knew when it was time to hang it up. If Cook stays in the top seat he risks being the Willy Mayes falling down in the outfield. 

Cook was the perfect person to replace Jobs, but that was a long time ago. 

Love the way the Cook naysayers love to have it both ways. The EV business has been an absolute proven bloodbath for virtually every carmaker who's in it except the Chinese--and I'll bet Tesla will join the club once the latest U.S. and China sales figures are reported--but it's a "failure" that Cook made the smart business decision to cut his losses and not move forward. According to the naysayers, if's a "failure" that he didn't forge ahead and maybe joined Rivian (which is at least still in business unlike Fiskar) in losing nearly $40,000 on every vehicle sold for the most recently reported quarter, up from about a $30,000 loss YOY. Or maybe Ford, which was losing $130,000 for every EV sold. As the song lyrics go, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away." And Apple is FAR better off for Cook walking away. 

Without Cook's vision for what Services could become, Apple would be in a world of hurt right now. We're not just past "peak iPhone,' it's past "peak smartphone," period, and there's no going back. The big doubt about Apple for years was, "What is it going to do when iPhone sales, inevitably, stall?" Cook developed and provided the answer: Services will eclipse iPhone profits over the next several years, not because iPhone profits are falling that quickly, but because Services revenue is growing much faster at margins near 80%. Apple is now the strongest it has ever been financially because it rests on the supports of Services, iPhone, Mac/iPad and Wearables. 

Cook has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's own M processors, introduced without a hiccup and giving Apple a price/performance advantage it has never before enjoyed over competitors. And now he has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's first-ever modem--again without a hiccup--which will save countless billions in licensing fees and give Apple the ability to exploit the advantages of its own chip going forward. 

But yeah, Cook has done nothing recently. Please give specific data about "declining quality" -- I'll wait. As for "missed deadlines" apart from Apple Intelligence... examples? The next version of Apple CarPlay requires individual negotiations with each car manufacturer, and I have no doubt that the apparent success of GM in abandoning support of both CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of a profitable system of its own has car makers considering whether they should follow GM's path. 

Interesting, well-written article that I think misses one crucial point: there's a vast difference between perceptions of tech site content creators and commenters and those of the mass market public to whom Apple is primarily selling. I seriously doubt that "out there," there's any perception of Apple being "behind" in the A.I race, or of there being an A.I. race among consumer tech product companies, period. For the mass market, Apple has done an especially brilliant job of branding A.I. to mean Apple Intelligence and to market its version of A.I. as protecting your privacy. I would agree that the marketing outpaces the capabilities, but I don't think that matters nearly as much to mass market buyers as it does inside the technosphere echo chamber. That opinion comes from thirty years of listening to how Apple is so far "behind" on features compared to the competition on virtually everything it has ever sold, how you get more for less with Windows, Android, blah, blah, blah... and here we are, with Apple at the top of the heap, the most successful and valuable company in the history of consumer electronics.