charlesn

michelb76 said:

Hampered by Apple anticompetitive stuff so it will suck using this with iOS. https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones
It will probably integrate fantastically with Android, so pick your poison.

From the link: "Apple claims their restrictions on competitors are only about security, privacy, crafting a better experience etc etc. At least that’s what they tell you as they tuck you into bed. I personally don’t agree - they’re clearly using their market power to lock consumers into their walled ecosystem."

It's really hard not to laugh out loud. Apple has ALWAYS been about a walled garden. Not a bug, but a feature. And for years and years (and years) it was roasted for this approach while Apple buyers were ridiculed as stupid sheeple being led to certain slaughter because Apple and its walled garden were doomed in the face of Windows and Android freedom! Funny thing: consumers voted with their wallets for the walled garden and made Apple the most successful consumer electronics company in history. Another funny thing: the competitors stopped predicting doom for the walled garden and are now wailing--with apologies to Pink Floyd--to tear down the wall! Now the walled garden, because it has become so successful thanks to consumers choosing it, is "anti-competitive." Oh, give me a break and tough luck! If you like the freedom of an open system, you have plenty of other choices which, collectively, outsell Apple by a lot. Have at it! Just leave me and my choice to buy into the walled garden alone. 

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

Anti-competition... The iPhone market is still less than the android market. Does Germany even try and make and sell mobile devices? I believe they do but the market simply doesn't want them in any quantity. Germany suing Apple doesn't help Germany make their own devices, it simply makes them money off the back of other companies. The EU cartel is the same thing. If you can't make something people want you sue the company that people like. This isn't an antitrust lawsuit, it's simply a money grab because Germany no longer makes products people want to buy and use. --Look at what's happening with its automobile market, it's tanking. Will Germany sue other car companies because they no longer can keep up with technology and the desires of consumers? 

The Germans aren't making the laws up as they go. 

Actually, they ARE making them up as they go! From the report above: "The lawsuit was instigated by the Bundeskartellamt in April 2023, with the regulator believing that Apple was subject to a 2021 amendment to the German Competition Act." Convenient law-making, don't you think? If you want to go after a company but have no law to do so, just make up a new one and then prosecute. This will never happen, but I really, really wish Apple would tell the EU to shove it and just pull up stakes and let the EU legislate itself into nothing but crappy EU-made phones, and then they can legislate those back to two cans and a string. 

9secondkox2 said:

iPhones are already too expensive in the pro lineup (which is what the iPhone used to only be). 

Too expensive for who? You would know best if they're too expensive for you. The rest of the world disagrees. According to Counterpoint Research, here's how global sales of the Pro Max ranked among all smartphones in 2024: Q1 #1, Q2 #2, Q3 #2, Q4 #1. Not bad for a phone that's too expensive. As for the regular Pro, in case you're wondering: 
Q1 #3, Q2 #3, Q3 #3, Q4 #2. It was only beaten out in the rankings by either the Pro Max or regular iPhone. 

As for the "predicted" price of the Fold: nobody knows, these predictions are just stupid, no one can tell you what the price of eggs will be in 2027, but yeah, we definitely know how much a non-existent Apple phone is gong to cost when it launches that year. smh. 

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.