mpantone

Wesley Hilliard said:

red oak said:

I would be surprised if the “e” product was updated every year.  Could still be on 3 year update cycle 

That's the problem with this name. It would be weird to continue selling the "16" when the 19 is out. The name is inherently on the clock. As soon as iPhone 17 launches, iPhone 16e will be the "old" iPhone.

And no one is paying $600 for the "old" iPhone in 3 years, let alone one year.

But Apple has historically continued to sell the previous two base iPhone models (the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15). They only stop selling the Pro models when the new generation is released. Or am I missing something?

The iPhone 16e isn't priced as the "cheap iPhone" like the SE 3 was. It's really another member of the iPhone 16 family with some features dropped at a discounted price. Whether or not it'll hang out for multiple years is undetermined, we will just have to wait and see what Apple does this autumn.

That said, it might be strange to have a better, more capable iPhone 17e that's better than the base iPhone 16 side by side in the store a year from now.

One thing we can pretty much count on: this will not be the last time Apple tweaks their iPhone strategy. We have seen this many times before and it will happen again.

It's hard to tell these days with all the kooks on the greater Internet. You never know if someone is just joking or is tragically detached from reality. The latter has been gaining ground in the past ten years.

That's why there are smilies and emoticons. But a lot of people who know what they are don't use them anymore. Just like search engines.

  

red oak said:

I would be surprised if the “e” product was updated every year.  Could still be on 3 year update cycle 

My guess is that software will be a strong determining factor on the update cycle. If Apple Intelligence memory requirements continue to grow, Apple will need to shove more RAM and more NAND into their phones more frequently to have an entry level iPhone model that will capably run the latest software features.

Also Apple is clearly using binned silicon in the iPhone 16e. It has one less GPU core than the regular iPhone 16; using binned parts helps with wafer yields and thus costs. It'll be interesting to see if tests show other differences (like maybe lower clock frequencies for the CPU and GPU cores).

entropys said:

I wonder how long it will be before the 12&13 minis are no longer supported?

Probably in a few years, might be excluded from iOS 20. The rumor mill says that any phone that can run iOS 18 will also run iOS 19. We'll know with more certainty after WWDC 2025 in June.

It's important to note that Apple offers security updates for the prior two versions of iOS and macOS, so an iPhone 12 mini should still receive support through 2028. That would be eight years after the October 2020 hardware launch which is a pretty typical timeframe for Apple product support.

I have refrained from upgrading my iPhone 12 mini to iOS 18. It is still on iOS 17.7.2. If I deliberately stay behind I will lose support sooner. I don't have to make up my mind until September of this year whether or not I want to move to iOS 18.

It's worth pointing out that the iPhone XS (2018 product, A12 SoC) is capable of running iOS 18.

entropys said:

Offices are so much more interesting that that strange soccer thing where people fall over in fake pain all the time.

LOL, the exact opposite is the case.

You have to *pay* people to go into offices. People *pay* to watch football.

No one goes into offices for fun. In fact, there was a big insurrection after COVID restrictions were lifted and companies started scaling back or completely eliminating "work from home" initiatives.

But these are television shows -- entertainment -- not the real world. I know it's difficult for some people to understand the nuanced difference.

The fact that Apple has produced both shows that they realize that different types of entertainment will appeal to different audiences. It's worth nothing that Apple has a major stake in MLS now with their MLS Season Pass. That will go on for many years beyond 'Severance' and 'Ted Lasso'.

It's worth pointing out that all of the top 20 TV programs annually in the US are sports events; only US presidential debates even show up in that list. Worldwide football television coverage dwarfs everything else.