78Bandit

Sample of one here, but I am planning on upgrading my iPhone 6 Plus to the 6.1" LCD model if the specs and price are right.

Apple has pretty much settled into 225 million iPhones sold per year which is right around 25% of the total iPhone user base.  Unless the LCD model has absolutely outstanding sales rivaling the supercycle of the iPhone 6, it would appear that 25% annual upgrades is going to be the norm with many of the older devices either getting sold or passed down to children/relatives.

As long as Apple pays royalties as agreed upon by the various parties I don't see what the issue is. It isn't Apple's place to go out and argue for higher royalties; in fact it is in their best interest to keep royalties as low as possible. The only other thing I can think of is Apple's dropping support for the LP digital download format. Did GnR have a number of LP albums that people will no longer be able to purchase and subsequently turn to individual song purchases or streaming?

I haven't bought an entire album in years. In fact, the last complete album I purchased was on a physical CD. Since downloads have been available I'll just listen to the song samples and buy the one or two songs I like. I have bought some compilation albums, but in those cases I knew I liked a number of songs and the album purchase price was less than the cost of the individual songs. The days of paying for filler material are long gone for me. No amount of digital extras is going to get me to pay $15 for just a couple of songs I will listen to more than once.

Apple's product lineup this past year was not interesting to me.  The iPhone X was priced too high, particularly with a measly 64GB of unexpandable memory at a $1,000 entry point as the base and a quadrupling to 256GB for an additional $150 (15% of the entire phone) as the only option.  The now four-generation old design of the 8 was uninspiring, if I'm going to pay $700+ for a new phone I expect it to look more modern.  I've already got a 6 Plus and other than raw processing power there just weren't any compelling new features on the 8 series to get me to upgrade.

We'll see what this year's product mix looks like.  Hopefully Ming's prediction of a $700 6.1" LCD device with the same overall design as the X is accurate.

muthuk_vanalingam said:

andrewj5790 said:

rogifan_new said:

wood1208 said:

One thing that seems different from past Galaxy is 3 internal storage 64GB/128GB/256GB choices. About Samsung's camera enhancements shouting loud, wait for reliability than few tricks here and there.

I noticed they’re offering the sweet spot rather than force the upsell. That’s what Apple should do but they never will. Why offer people the internal storage they want when you can get them to pay $100 for more than they need.

“But they never will” 

This should be archived for when Apple does it. 

Wait... could you expound on “sweet spot”? Do you mean the three configurations like apple had last year, or the 64GB minimum like they have this year? 

The criticism WAS valid when Apple had 32GB as base configuration until 2016-17. At least this is what I feel - 64GB is the sweet spot NOW (even may be until next year, beyond which 128GB should become the sweet spot) and that is what Apple is offering as base configuration. Criticism, if any, about base storage configuration does NOT look valid to me about the current lineup (iPhone 8/8+/X).

The criticism has been valid for multiple generations of iPhone now.  When I got my iPhone 6 the choice was 16, 64, or 128.  32 would have been the sweet spot to start, but it is obvious Apple gave a bare minimum in the hopes a lot of customers would find it limiting a pay an additional $100.

With the camera and video capabilities of the iPhone X as well as the swelling size of applications 128GB should have been the starting configuration of the $1,000 device.  Apple is at least two generations behind on the base amount of storage, particularly given the complete lack of support for removable media storage.

If Apple wasn't really trying to force the upsell then you would see a mid-range 128GB model for a $50 premium rather than forcing consumers into the $150 premium to go from 64 to 256.