New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

i'm sort of sorry for this spit-take analogy but w/e. they're like the greeks ca. 450 bc. they had a few moments, but now they're full of themselves, extracting more $ than ever with no more wars to fight. queue shifting alliances, inevitable mistakes and slow decay while a million things change around them.

cue

no, hence some well-funded entity doing R&D to make something actually different and good (computers are never good) might have a shot at challenging Apple's profit share in mobile computing before we reach some post-multitouch world (lol VR) but there's a big firewall made of Apple's cash making it hard to compete on the supply chain side

it feels a bit like sony's walkman juggernaut days v now, in that sony is still huge now but in other areas and for less unique things

Apple may be making bad choices on what they bring to market and their industrial design team looks like it's just churning out ideas to differentiate each model year and keep average selling price up and software orgs are never ever functional but they are doing stuff in chip design and fab that the Android OEMs aren't and never will, because Apple is probably booking every Samsung and TSMC fab a decade out

and if apple loses its market stranglehold, what happens to those decades-out bookings? does apple then begin to compete on price, or does it just wind back its factory order projections?

idk what's going on internally obv but outwardly it looks like apple has disappeared up its own arse and deeply believes it will always win.

Why is the camera on iPhone 7 so advanced? It has an improved Apple‑designed image signal processor built into the A10 Fusion chip.

This is puffery of course but all these coprocessors (the ISP, the GPU cores, the motion processor, the secure enclave, whatever's in the AirPods) are where a lot of Apple's investment has been and what whatever their next consumer product that actually wows people (if indeed there ever is one; it's not clear to me that there has to be for the company to keep being profitable indefinitely) will depend on to be even possible to build. (This is already true of the watch but nobody wants or understands the watch.)

Like here's what I believe: Apple's still on the annual refresh for the iPhone because it believes its investors will throw a shit-fit if it stops and average selling price will go down. Whatever the company is spending money and and the top tier of engineer and designer and executive leadership time on is years away from market and still highly compartmentalized to avoid leaks. (Obviously the car thing is a winky open secret, but it's far from obvious what "the car" would be as a product.) In the meantime, stock buybacks.

Or I could be wrong and there's nobody in Apple working on anything particularly cool and it's all mediocre phones and slow refresh cycles on everything other than the phone from here until San Francisco is underwater.

we're at the point now where cameras in most phones are fine. not lytros with funky focal points, not low-light superstars, just fine. fine is enough for most people.

the difference between two-year iphone iterations (3g to 4, 4 to 5) once felt significant. 5 to 6 felt less so, but at least it had a bigger screen. 6 to 7 just feels like an annoyance. google's about to launch daydream vr, and some new ip7 owners will start to wonder why they dropped a grand on same-again with 3d touch (yay?) and a camera that's a bit better than what they had. nothing at all compels me to trade my 6 for a 7.

Or I could be wrong and there's nobody in Apple working on anything particularly cool and it's all mediocre phones and slow refresh cycles on everything other than the phone from here until San Francisco is underwater.

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Thursday, September 8, 2016 4:15 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

personally i'm hoping for at least ten more pet projects with massive hubris but what i'm really crossing my fingers for, and this is undoubtedly a long shot, is some sinister google-style government cuddling up with, say, china.

they have so much more drama left in them.

their phone sales are down in china, and i can't see this iphone swinging them back

Wait are you saying Apple is looking to acquire Hong Kong from China?

xp in the US iPhone sales are always "down" in this part of the product cycle, like within 6 months of a new number of phone coming out, you sure it's not just that?

could be. https://www.techinasia.com/apple-surpassed-xiaomi-huawei-china-iphone-market-share-falls indicates a 10% year-on-year drop with huawei & oppo strengthening. i saw more specific reports but can't find them now.

imagine taking a usb-lightning cable and plugging both ends into a mac with a usb and lightning ports

pure filth

had to go into an apple store today. i got talking to someone there about the new phone and the lack of headphone port. he said lightning sound is better anyway and that the headphone jack is old technology (he used the actual phrases "more than 100 years old" and "dinosaur"). really i'm just impressed by how quickly apple gets the official talking points out to the people in the shops.

I do remember audio geeks praising in the past the better sound they got from lightning port

that's the tiny slivers of gold in the lightning connector and because the cable is white it offers a straighter path for the data. It's subtle, but it gives you a broader soundstage, with slightly more attack. Firing up something like Yellow from Coldplay shows the bite you can get from the digital experience

:D

courageous

http://appleplugs.com/

This thread is hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA&feature

Who am I kidding I'm going to pre-order one. Fuckers.

probably the 128GB 7 in jet black

that's the tiny slivers of gold in the lightning connector and because the cable is white it offers a straighter path for the data. It's subtle, but it gives you a broader soundstage, with slightly more attack. Firing up something like Yellow from Coldplay shows the bite you can get from the digital experience

― stet, Thursday, September 8, 2016 5:40 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao A+

Guys this is 10% about Jonny Ive jerking off to "simple" design, 10% about saving a teeny bit more space for other shit, and 80% about selling proprietary headphones.

Yep this was pointed out when the beats purchase was made. Maybe somewhere way upthread.

This move is two fingers bllx but they will get away with it because the new product uptake is so embedded.

I'm def annoyed by it but overall I like iphones and I want to get the most powerful and up-to-date one available atm once I'm making a new purchase. I'm also still on a grandfathered two-year contract upgrade plan and happen to have a cracked screen right now, so it makes financial sense for me to upgrade as soon as one is available. If not for these facts I might just wait it out. I can keep a dongle on my gym headphones and maybe buy an extra one for my home headphones, not the biggest deal. I also just feel like none of the competitor phones are either enticingly better or cheaper enough for me to switch.

I'm going to see how the new iOS runs on mine before making any decision; as it stands the one I have, two years old now, has been handling everything I really need just fine, and if the rumors about next year's design being a really radical upgrade hold true, in combination with how these new changes play out, might as well hold my fire. Meantime since I had money set aside to start with it can sit there if I absolutely need it for a new phone now that the two year service plan is up.

nothing at all compels me to trade my 6 for a 7.

I'm due an upgrade on my 5s. Is a 6/6s appreciably better?

yea i get an upgrade on my 5s in march 2017, honestly i think i'll go with the SE, i've never liked the curved edges of the 6

the 7 claims to have 4x faster LTE. I have to admit that was enticing.

idk at some point things just seem "good enough." LTE on my 5s is pretty fast

I have fast internet access at home, at least by north american standards (sigh) but I'm fine with my cricket wireless plan that maxes out at 8 down/4 up. I guess wider LTE range would make it so I could max that out more reliably, but it's not going to buy me anything most of the time.

This is lame as fuck, but it's mostly appealing for subway browsing, where you only get intermittent signal and therefore need to load shit super fast.

I'll need to upgrade from my 5 in the next year or two because my mobile provider is going to reduce speeds on their 3G connection each year, and my 5 doesn't work with the 4G network here.

The SE is amazing. I found the 6 really difficult to hold with one hand (which is important for me, because my left hand has nerve damage)

the 7 claims to have 4x faster LTE. I have to admit that was enticing.

this sounds v dubious or at least v network-specific

lmao @ Apple's shitty earbuds and (formerly, still possibly?) shitty iTunes Store compression and all of the bullshit auto-transcoding and then having the audacity to talk abt how lightning sounds "better"

something that ppl will nod along to and be like "oh wow, better is great! we want better, yeah" but truly truly would never give a shit about irl

can't find it now but the one (lukewarmly) positive review I've read of the airpods so far was getting clowned a lot for saying the airpods sounded "loud."

iTunes Store is 256kbps AAC, which is very good imo

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/08/att-and-tmobile-iphone-7-models-lack-cdma/

frankly the iPhone 6S looking better and better

good luck usa

la-hollll

I'm going to see how the new iOS runs on mine before making any decision; as it stands the one I have, two years old now, has been handling everything I really need just fine

traditionally where apple shines: the perfect timing of delicious new iphone hardware and a new os suddenly slowing down your two year old phone.

i'm hoping those of us with a 6 get a solid third year, but having 1 gb ram (the 6s has 2 gb) it feels like apple gave itself a golden opportunity to make them just laggy enough to be annoying. then again i've not heard about any performance issues from the ios 10 betas.

OK, is there any reason for a U.S. AT&T or T-Mobile customer not to get the "Verizon/Sprint" iPhone 7 (models A1660/A1661) given that they support every band and frequency the intended AT&T/T-Mobile handset does *except* the CDMA ones? Without CDMA support, you won't be able to roam on Verizon or Sprint networks (or occasional non-US CDMA carriers) except where voice over LTE is available. It will also make it worth less at trade-in time since one-half of potential American buyers won't want the non-CDMA phone. Since all the carriers have disbanded their former subsidized phone plans (get phone for cheap or free, but must agree to 2 year service contract), seems thing to do is buy the phone separately if you're on AT&T or T-Mobile. No word yet on whether the unlocked iPhone 7 you buy directly from Apple will or won't be the CDMA-capable version.

Always buy the phone separately if you can afford the upfront cost. And no, no reason to get AT&T model.