charlesn

robin huber said:

Smart move. Actions have consequences. Though I suspect the Britons will not rise up in outrage. They tolerate a much lower bar for privacy than Americans—camera tracking in the public space in the UK is second only to China. British cop shows often feature sequences where folks are tracked continuously on monitors using a combination of CCTV and cell phone signals. 

If you don't think American cities are awash in camera-tracking, you haven't been paying attention. This is exactly how Luigi Mangione was caught--photos were posted that had been taken by various security cameras. Between tracking by cameras, cellphones and automated tolling systems, we are well on our way to Big Brother. I fully expect Trump, in his unending quest for dictatorship power, to order the end of encryption here in the U.S.. sooner than later. 

"If you're confused about who the iPhone 16e is for, you're not alone —"

No confusion for me, and here's why: if you look at the world mobile phone sales charts in recent years, you'll find four iPhones in the top ten: the regular iPhone is usually the world's #1. And it's followed in the rankings, at various numbers, by the Pro Max, the Pro and finally the iPhone Plus. Nowhere on the list has the SE appeared--it's the perennial last place phone for Apple. But if there's one thing you should expect of an aggressively low-priced phone that's presumably less profitable, it would be volume sales. The SE did not deliver that. You may have loved the SE for all kinds of reasons, which are still perfectly valid, and even though it made business sense in theory, it didn't work out that way in actual sales.

People seem to forget that Apple is a for-profit business and if it cancels a product, it's not to piss you off personally, and it's not because Apple is stupid, it's only because that product didn't sell. You think Apple is happy to EOL a product like the iPhone Mini after just two years? It probably never even amortized its development and tooling costs for that phone. But when a product tanks in sales as badly as the Mini, it has no choice. If you're going to be mad about it, be made at all the iPhone buyers who had two years to support the Mini and chose other models instead. 

It seems to me that Apple's thinking with the 16e replacing the SE is pretty straight forward: it's a phone that's a whole lot closer than the SE to the world's best-selling regular iPhone, but sells for $200 less. That's it. What distinguishes the 16e most from any cheaper phone that Apple has ever sold as new is that it contains the most current processor. For this reason, I think the "e" phone will be upgraded annually, like the rest of the iPhone lineup. Of course, compromises had to be made in creating an iPhone 16 that could be sold for $200 less. You could argue that this or that compromise makes it a deal breaker for you and, as always, you're never wrong about what's a deal breaker for you. Obviously, Apple has made a data-driven decision that the feature set for the 16e will be right for most prospective buyers than not. Did Apple get it right? No one can say yet. But I think we'll have a more informed answer after a few months of sales. 

jvm156 said:

lack of UWB is an even more glaring omission to me. it's not like they saved much money doing that and it makes AirTags worthless.

Pretty sure it wasn't a cost-saving issue. I think it's that Apple's modem tech is not quite there yet. That's why we'll be seeing another round of Qualcomm modems in the iPhone 17 models come September. I also doubt that cost-saving drove the decision to not include MagSafe--my guess is that it was done to help maintain feature distance from the standard iPhone. If you hope to upsell people to a regular iPhone that's $200 (or 33%) more expensive, MagSafe would be near the top of the "VERY Nice to Have" list of features. 

Just... wow. I'm kind of stunned. The phone, itself, is pretty much as expected. But that price point... YIKES. So the cheapest iPhone is now 40% more expensive than it was yesterday. Although, in an apples to apples comparison -- price of SE 3 128 vs 16E base model 128 -- it's a 25% hike. I'm not saying the 16E isn't worth it, fhe list of improvements over the SE is huge, but raising the price of entry into the iPhone ecosystem by 40% is a giant cojones pricing move. I'm certainly not going to question the decision, since I'm sure it was made with a ton of data supporting that this would work out okay, but I never saw this coming. 

hammeroftruth said:

charlesn said:

I am shocked... SHOCKED, I say! Who woulda thunk that after 15 years of Siri idiocy under Apple, Apple wasn't going to be able to fix it in 10 months? The WWDC announcement last year always seemed suspect--it was like we were being told that Siri, essentially held back in about third grade for the past decade and a half, was suddenly going to have a PhD by next April. Sounds like maybe not. 

You would be even more shocked that Apple has been working on this for at least 3 years and not 10 months. 

It's truly mind-boggling. Apple had a huge, years-long jump on the rest of the industry when it acquired Siri, Inc. in 2010. Alexa didn't debut until four years later, and its speed and capabilities left Siri in the dust, where Siri has remained ever since. Google Assistant wasn't until 2016, but it, too, has surpassed Siri. I'm all in on Apple everything except when it comes to a voice assistant, where I still rely on Echo Dots throughout my home. Alexa works with just about everything that can be voice-controlled while Siri works with a WHOLE lot less. Very hard to understand how or why Apple allowed this to happen.