7 ms·

16GB Is a Bad User Experience

78 points by Hansi 11y ago

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
I ran into this recently. The 16 GB is an outright lie. First, a bunch is reserved for the OS and similar. The phone might only start out with 12 GB for the user. Second, a bunch just "disappears". Attach a phone to iTunes and it claims perhaps 2 GB free. But view the free space within the phone itself and it might only show 500 MB free. Huge discrepancies are inevitable, and it doesn't seem possible to find out how to resolve them. Third, a large chunk is often taken by Apple with pending iOS updates pushed to the phone. But then the phone refuses to actually do the update, claiming there's not enough free storage. It's a clusterfuck. And there's very little discussion or outrage about it. Apple should be embarrassed, but they don't give a shit.
- Alphasite_ 11y ago
  Honestly, that at least has improved significantly.
opk 11y ago
He bought an iphone 6s as a testing device that would spend most of its life in a desk drawer! I hope this was a company expense or something? One of those would be like a weeks wages for me. I can't understand why people pay so much for smart phones anyway. And if your idiotic phone runs out of memory at the top of some mountain, "the moment isn't missed forever", the moment gets missed because you're mucking about with a stupid phone instead of enjoying the moment with your family.
- yAnonymous 11y ago
  But when you didn't record it, did the moment really happen?
- icebraining 11y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/
  - sigma2015 11y ago
    good point - but experiencing goes beyond visual perception which is what constraining yourself to the perspective of your cam narrows it down to.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- mahouse 11y ago
  Weeks wages? More like months wages for me lol
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  "because you're mucking about with a stupid phone instead of enjoying the moment with your family." This, a thousand times over. Was at the beach last week, there was a seal sunbathing on a rock 50m from shore... Around me I could hear people complaining they couldn't see it properly - because all weren't looking at it, rather at the crappy digital zoom on their phones. I just looked at the fucking thing, these eye things work pretty well. I'd rather be present and use my meat-based memory than have a "memory" on my phone of an event I viewed through a glass, darkly. Also, 16gb 5s here, space I have to think about quarterly, if that.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I'd rather be present and use my meat-based memory than have a "memory" on my phone of an event I viewed through a glass, darkly. I'm going to blow your mind: you are actually allowed to do both.
    - shiven 11y ago
      ... you are actually allowed to do both. Allowed, yes. Capable, not likely. Multitasking is overrated and actually counterproductive when writing to the meat-store inside your skull.
      - kranner 11y ago
        There's a wide range of variation between being glued to a camera and using no camera. The last time I was at a scenic spot, I took four pictures in one minute and then put my phone away. The pictures do help with recalling the whole experience, such as the wind in my face (it was on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean).
      - randallsquared 11y ago
        This is why lifelogging is so important. I don't want to have to be distracted from my life making sure that I preserve memories in a higher-fidelity format than meat, but I do want to preserve those memories. Further, the ones that mean the most to me later are almost always spontaneous and unplanned, so a manually operated camera isn't especially useful for them, anyway. I want full recording of everything I see and hear at qualities high enough that I can go back and look at things I missed the first time. I thought Google Glass was the start of that, but it looks like it's going to be a few more years.
- cdubzzz 11y ago
  I couldn't even read any more of the arricle after that. I have a 16GB as well and something similar has happened to me on more than one occasion. When it does, I put the phone away for the rest of the trip and enjoy the hell out of the time with my family. None of those moments are missed.
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    I guess Apple can use that as a slogan: "Phones so unreliable you'd rather spend the time with your family!"
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  So what if someone has more money than you, and can spend a few hundred dollars on a testing device?
  - opk 11y ago
    It just seems rather wasteful. I don't care if the guy has more money than me though I am stunned that someone who appears to be a programmer (like myself) would regard quite a few hundred dollars as a trivial matter. As someone else mentions, I guess he must be very successful.
- kaolinite 11y ago
  David Smith is a very successful independent iOS developer - so yes, this would be a business expense.
fsiefken 11y ago
Just write a script that would move all the videos and photos off the device when docked each night or each week. 1G a day for photo's and 3 video's should be enough for everybody, you don't have the time to rewatch them anyway. Less is more. Or just get an Android device with a microsd port; 128G is cheap.
- colomon 11y ago
  I do have an Android device with 16G main memory and a 64G SD card. Despite having plenty of free space on the card, I pretty routinely run out of space on the 16G. That's because most apps can only install there, and many apps can't use the SD card for storing their data. Case in point, last week I discovered I had 2.3G of Audible files. I could find no obvious way of transferring them over to the free space on the SD card...
- tdkl 11y ago
  And yet juggling two storage points despite being larger then one isn't what one would call "a good user experience".
stuaxo 11y ago
It's fine for my atypical usage ... but then I am on Linux and have never liked itunes so have no music on there, and don't take many pics as am with someone that doesn't like photos taken.
benevol 11y ago
Well, surprise. You're part of what those on the right side of the game call "planned obsolescence". Unfortunately, you're on the wrong side of the game. Now please stop asking questions and continue consuming.
andyfleming 11y ago
Yeah, it's no good. I have a 16 GB model. I've bought into the iCloud-powered photos syncing, but yet somehow there is never space on my phone. The whole point was to automatically move photos to the cloud, yet 9/10 times I open my camera, it says "Not enough space to take a photo".
- tigroferoce 11y ago
  This is interesting. I'm in the same situation and I'm about to make the same move. I've tried Carousel by Dropbox and it does an excellent job in keeping space low, while still giving me access to the pictures. I'm now considering iCloud Photo Library for a more integrated experience, but from my first attempts Carouse works way better.
- vellum 11y ago
  Check which apps are being space hogs. Go to Settings->General->Usage->Manage Storage. Some apps like Twitter don't delete their caches. So you have to delete the app and reinstall it to reclaim the space.
  - shdon 11y ago
    "delete the app and reinstall it to reclaim the space"? Now that seems like the real "bad user experience"
  - e28eta 11y ago
    For me, that's the real point. We need developers to care. Apple's come out with APIs for app thinning, and they've had the right and wrong way to cache files forever (etc). But, that dev work doesn't increase downloads of your app, and if no one is looking for compliance, you're better off delivering other features. Twitter might not even know they have a problem! iOS Dev team members are constantly installing new builds of the app.
derefr 11y ago
Apple buys their Flash chips, right? With all the advancements in Flash technology lately, I'm surprised their suppliers aren't offering to just swap out higher-capacity chips on their orders for the same price in order to keep a giant customer like Apple on a current, rather than legacy, chip fab.
- adventured 11y ago
  It's intentional on Apple's part. They're trying to hold margins artificially high by putting increasing pressure on users to spend more money on greater storage (and to rely on Apple's Internet services more). Except they've jumped the shark at this point and let the 16gb linger too long. A pretty classic mistake when you're making the poor business decision of trying to walk a dental floss width tight rope between margins and pissing off customers, all over $5 in cost.
ashitlerferad 11y ago
Can't you just add a SD cart to it?
jarcane 11y ago
This would all be trivially solved if Apple would just put a goddamn SD card slot in it. Storage size as sole model differentiation is sooo 2001. At this point it genuinely makes Apple look out of touch in a market where every other flagship quality model doesn't bother with it and includes an SD slot, partly I suspect because it's just saner from a production and inventory standpoint even besides the consumer benefits.
- adventured 11y ago
  It's worth noting that the Galaxy S6 / Edge / Active and the Note 5 have no SD slot. Apple definitely isn't alone in looking out of touch.
  - kijin 11y ago
    Without an SD card slot, users who need more storage must buy a more expensive model. That money goes to the manufacturer. With an SD card slot, users can just buy the baseline model and get an SD card from another vendor. That money does not go to the manufacturer. So manufacturers have an obvious incentive to produce phones without an SD card slot. Moreover, there is little incentive to produce phones with an SD card slot. A long-time iPhone user isn't going to switch to a non-iPhone just because of the lack of an SD card slot.
    - jarcane 11y ago
      Doing it the Apple way isn't free, either. Yes, Apple takes their traditional overly generous markup per memory increase, but there are liabilities in terms of inventory. In a model like the iPhone's it means your 16GB phones are mostly loss-leaders anyway, probably why no one seems to give a shit about issues like the one in the article: because no one actually buys those phones, the inventory is just dead weight to get people in the door. It's also an extra step in manufacturing of course.
  - jarcane 11y ago
    I stand corrected. I actually thought Samsung had ditched that "feature" a while ago.
jafingi 11y ago
I have no problems with 16GB iPhone which I've had since the 3G. Currently I have 72 apps installed. Syncing with 8 email addresses. I use Spotify for music, and have an offline playlist with about 2GB songs. Photos and movies are synced to the cloud, and files older than 1 month are deleted from the device. I have 3.2GB available. So while your points may be valid for some, I can manage fine with 16GB. And it's not like I'm thinking about it, and change my habits to have the 16GB phone.
- ricw 11y ago
  37% of 16gb iPhone 6 users are unable to deal with it. So good for you being able to deal with it. A large amount of users can not.
  - jafingi 11y ago
    No. 37% has less than 1GB available. It doesn't state anything about them not being able to deal with it. If I have all the apps and music I need, why should it be a problem with 800MB available. I can't believe so many infer that the majority have space issues just because they need 64GB for all their music stored offline and hours of video-recordings in 1080p themselves.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I have an 8GB android phone and have no problems with it. If you want to take a lot of video and photos with your phone, buy one with a lot of storage. If you aren't in the habit of photographing your lunch before you eat it, you can get by with a lot less.
  - eponeponepon 11y ago
    If you want to take a lot of videos and photos... use a camera. It baffles me that people want one tool for all jobs.
    - lttlrck 11y ago
      convenience is baffling?
ricw 11y ago
Very interesting as it entirely contradicts apples recent statements in interviews that 16gb is fine as a base model (Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and Jonny Ive stated this if I remember correctly). This is clearly not true if it means that 17% of their ENTIRE iPhone 6 users is low on memory, or 37% of their 16gb iPhone 6 users. It's factual evidence that Apple does indeed play games and tries to maximise profits and obsolescence of its devices, despite always claiming the opposite. All because they're unwilling to add a couple of dollars to their bill of materials. They should be ashamed.
unabst 11y ago
First there is Photo Stream which stores backups of your photos on the same phone -- even those you delete. Not even sure how it got turned on. Don't even have another iOS device. Then being "savvy", I was copying and deleting photos directly through explorer. Well, this leads to ghost space, which is resolved by setting the clock back to reveal deleted but unpurged photos in the recycle bin [0]. Wack. Then found Dropbox Carousel. Victory of the cloud, no more local storage needs. Except still kept running out of space. Turns out Carousel uses as much as it can as cache (in my case 4GB). WTF! So yes, I'd wholeheartedly agree that 16GB is a bad user experience. Users are basically in constant competition with Apple and other apps for space, and at 16GB the user is constantly losing. -- [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6560594?start=45&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6560594?start=45&tstart...
cdevs 11y ago
How do you feel about the Google 16 gig "laptops"?
qopp 11y ago
Of course 16Gb is an "uncomfortable" user experience. It's supposed to be. It's about market segmentation. It's not cost. 32gb memory units in bulk are like $1 maybe. Apple charges an extra $100 because they are using that easy-to-understand difference to segment the market and collect an extra $100 profit from those that can afford that price point.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  You're basically restating the conclusion of the piece. The author states that this (presumably) intentional choice undermines the Apple brand that includes quality and uncompromisingly excellent user experience.
  - xlm1717 11y ago
    This has been the state of things since Apple started offering different storage sizes on their iPhones. The bigger model has always been $100 more expensive. This is as much a part of the Apple brand as quality and uncompromisingly excellent user experience.
bakabaka9 11y ago
Bad user experience depends on the user. Personally I very much enjoy the somewhat lower price of less-beefy models of smartphones and tablets — as I'm not obsessed with taking pictures, don't play blockbuster video games on mobile, and prefer my books as text, instead of audio files. The title of the post is similar to saying e.g. "ARM CPU is bad UX", and complain that you can't mine Bitcoin effectively on ARM.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  The counterargument would be that your usage patterns are the niche ones. I suppose that's an empirical question. Does anyone have any numbers either way?
  - bakabaka9 11y ago
    Presently there is no additional cost to choosing a smartphone with the right amount of memory for one's specific usage pattern, so who's being "niche" makes no difference. Linux on desktop is arguably also niche, yet no one is hurt by the fact that PCs actually support it. If Apple were producing just the 16GB model, then usage numbers would probably be in order. As of now, things are just at their optimal state, where everyone can get what they want.
- bakabaka9 11y ago
  Let's hope that abject consumerism that makes you downvote this will also give you cancer.
cm2187 11y ago
One can't both consider that one's primary use of the iphone is to record pictures and videos and at the same time go for the model with the smallest possible disk size and then complain about the lack of space. The premium Apple charges for larger disk space is ridiculously uncorrelated with the cost of the components but the solution to this is better competition.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > the solution to this is better competition There is a lot of competition out there. A lot of great competition. The problem with this argument is that Apple specifically makes it hard for its customers to switch ecosystems. So it's still Apple causing the issue.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    I haven't seen any user stuck with iphone because they rely on something they wouldn't get on an android. The only reason I am myself willing to pay the apple premium is because I am extremely uncomfortable with google's invasion of android users privacy and google makes it hard to switch these features off (like "if you don't want google to upload your GPS locations then turn off the GPS!", etc).
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      I've seen many people stick with Apple because they've invested in media from iTunes that will never play on Android devices, even Chromecasts.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
I can add to the anecdata that 16GB has not been an issue for me. Isn't there another obvious spin on the data? It seems obvious that at least 70% of users with 16GB phones are doing fine with that amount of storage. Wouldn't it be a poor decision—certainly from a business point of view—to mandate larger storage for them, when they clearly aren't even using 16GB?
- DasIch 11y ago
  70% of all users might not have a problem but the real question is how it impacts the users that matter, the users that voice their opinion and are listened to. I would expect that quite a few of them do notice or would, if they were using 16GB phones.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    That makes no sense – those users are free to buy a bigger phone in exchange for the additional fee. Since a large majority of users do not appear to be using the full 16GB available, it seems it would be a poor use of resources to add additional storage for them.
    - DasIch 11y ago
      What they are free to do or not is irrelevant, as long as users complain about the 16GB phones causing negative publicity.
_ph_ 11y ago
An interesting article which raises a good point: the problem with Apple products isn't the price, there is a place for good high priced products, but that some of them are really bad products because of memory limitations. At 16gb you can not use all of its advertised features, unless you rely on streaming/cloud storage only. And it is not only the iPhone hit by this. I have a 64g iPad, the biggest configuration they offered at that time. For years now, its usage has been limited by the storage filling up. For this reason alone, I will not be buying this release of the iPad pro. A machine which is supposed to partially replace a laptop needs 256g at minimum, possibly 512g. Even if such configurations were more expensive than the currently offered ones, they would still be more interesting as those which just have no way of getting the desired storage sizes.
rasz_pl 11y ago
just plug bigged SD card like normal people do ..oh wait
- _ph_ 11y ago
  There are points to be made why a SD card in a phone would be a bad idea - some of them are low quality and cause data issues (just search camera forums for card issues), storage management gets more complex etc. This should be a mood point considering that it does not cost phone manufacturers much to put a decent amount of memory into their devices. But that they offer neither a card slot nor decent amounts of memory, is the issue.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
meesterdude 11y ago
I've been bitten by this too. It's not that I need a lot of space for apps, but taking pictures or video can fill up the space quite quickly as is; I can't imagine what it would be like with 4K. My iPod had 80GB of space. My nikon has a 128GB card in it. These are roles the iPhone is supposed to play, but it's an imitation at best because the storage is so hindered. That and battery life are the two biggest pains I have with my iPhone, but apple seems to think everything is great as-is in those departments.
rocky1138 11y ago
This would be solved if there was a slot for a micro SD card.
segmondy 11y ago
As someone who has a 16gb nexus 5 and is writing this post from a 16gb chromebook that also has a linux installation. Give me a break. 16gb is storage, has nothing to do with a user experience. Your iphone is not a camcorder. If recording video is of utmost importance to you, then buy a phone with massive storage or one that can accept an SD card.
gkanapathy 11y ago
Apple doesn't keep the base model small to save costs. They do it to increase revenue (and margins). The cost to go from 16GB to 32GB is inconsequential. (They upped the step-up from 32GB to 64GB with no increase in price.) In fact, the cost to them from 16GB to 64GB is probably inconsequential. It's certainly nothing near the $100 in price. The reason they keep it at 16GB is to make more people upgrade to 64GB. If the base model was 32GB, far fewer people would upgrade to 64GB, precisely because you would no longer have an unacceptably bad user experience.
- rwmj 11y ago
  In other words, it's about hating your poorer/cheaper users? Wouldn't it be a better strategy to do the right thing for the customers, which I guess in this case would mean having only one model, with a useful amount of storage?
  - nkurz 11y ago
    In other words, it's about hating your poorer/cheaper users? It's not about hate, it's that Apple is a for-profit company whose goal is to maximize their profit. They've decided that many of those poorer users will choose to sacrifice something else in their life and give the difference to Apple. Wouldn't it be a better strategy to do the right thing for the customers Are you suggesting that an approach that better met the needs of their less well-off users would have increased their profitability? No, almost definitely not. I don't like Apple, but their current strategy definitely works for them. Measured by the metric of profit, Apple is inarguably one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. If so, can you point to any companies who gotten better results from the "put customers first" strategy than Apple has has with theirs? Most likely what you mean is that the world as a whole would be a better place if Apple pursued some other strategy than profit-maximization. I'd personally agree with this, but it's also difficult to come up with solid examples.
karmakaze 11y ago
I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned that folks will take more Live Photos than extended videos with these phones. How much storage do you need before the next auto wifi sync? Let it auto-delete old sync'd stuff. The problem is s/w not h/w.
hokkos 11y ago
The iPhone is supposed to be a high end device with great user satisfaction, Apple you are ruining it with this policy. User will have a bad taste and never buy an iPhone again, you are playing a dangerous game here.

78 points by Hansi 11y ago

I ran into this recently. The 16 GB is an outright lie. First, a bunch is reserved for the OS and similar. The phone might only start out with 12 GB for the user. Second, a bunch just "disappears". Attach a phone to iTunes and it claims perhaps 2 GB free. But view the free space within the phone itself and it might only show 500 MB free. Huge discrepancies are inevitable, and it doesn't seem possible to find out how to resolve them. Third, a large chunk is often taken by Apple with pending iOS updates pushed to the phone. But then the phone refuses to actually do the update, claiming there's not enough free storage. It's a clusterfuck. And there's very little discussion or outrage about it. Apple should be embarrassed, but they don't give a shit.

Alphasite_ 11y ago
Honestly, that at least has improved significantly.

opk 11y ago

He bought an iphone 6s as a testing device that would spend most of its life in a desk drawer! I hope this was a company expense or something? One of those would be like a weeks wages for me. I can't understand why people pay so much for smart phones anyway. And if your idiotic phone runs out of memory at the top of some mountain, "the moment isn't missed forever", the moment gets missed because you're mucking about with a stupid phone instead of enjoying the moment with your family.

yAnonymous 11y ago
But when you didn't record it, did the moment really happen?
icebraining 11y ago
https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/
- sigma2015 11y ago
  good point - but experiencing goes beyond visual perception which is what constraining yourself to the perspective of your cam narrows it down to.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mahouse 11y ago
Weeks wages? More like months wages for me lol
madaxe_again 11y ago
"because you're mucking about with a stupid phone instead of enjoying the moment with your family." This, a thousand times over. Was at the beach last week, there was a seal sunbathing on a rock 50m from shore... Around me I could hear people complaining they couldn't see it properly - because all weren't looking at it, rather at the crappy digital zoom on their phones. I just looked at the fucking thing, these eye things work pretty well. I'd rather be present and use my meat-based memory than have a "memory" on my phone of an event I viewed through a glass, darkly. Also, 16gb 5s here, space I have to think about quarterly, if that.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I'd rather be present and use my meat-based memory than have a "memory" on my phone of an event I viewed through a glass, darkly. I'm going to blow your mind: you are actually allowed to do both.
  - shiven 11y ago
    ... you are actually allowed to do both. Allowed, yes. Capable, not likely. Multitasking is overrated and actually counterproductive when writing to the meat-store inside your skull.
    - kranner 11y ago
      There's a wide range of variation between being glued to a camera and using no camera. The last time I was at a scenic spot, I took four pictures in one minute and then put my phone away. The pictures do help with recalling the whole experience, such as the wind in my face (it was on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean).
    - randallsquared 11y ago
      This is why lifelogging is so important. I don't want to have to be distracted from my life making sure that I preserve memories in a higher-fidelity format than meat, but I do want to preserve those memories. Further, the ones that mean the most to me later are almost always spontaneous and unplanned, so a manually operated camera isn't especially useful for them, anyway. I want full recording of everything I see and hear at qualities high enough that I can go back and look at things I missed the first time. I thought Google Glass was the start of that, but it looks like it's going to be a few more years.
cdubzzz 11y ago
I couldn't even read any more of the arricle after that. I have a 16GB as well and something similar has happened to me on more than one occasion. When it does, I put the phone away for the rest of the trip and enjoy the hell out of the time with my family. None of those moments are missed.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  I guess Apple can use that as a slogan: "Phones so unreliable you'd rather spend the time with your family!"
wodenokoto 11y ago
So what if someone has more money than you, and can spend a few hundred dollars on a testing device?
- opk 11y ago
  It just seems rather wasteful. I don't care if the guy has more money than me though I am stunned that someone who appears to be a programmer (like myself) would regard quite a few hundred dollars as a trivial matter. As someone else mentions, I guess he must be very successful.
kaolinite 11y ago
David Smith is a very successful independent iOS developer - so yes, this would be a business expense.

fsiefken 11y ago

Just write a script that would move all the videos and photos off the device when docked each night or each week. 1G a day for photo's and 3 video's should be enough for everybody, you don't have the time to rewatch them anyway. Less is more. Or just get an Android device with a microsd port; 128G is cheap.

colomon 11y ago
I do have an Android device with 16G main memory and a 64G SD card. Despite having plenty of free space on the card, I pretty routinely run out of space on the 16G. That's because most apps can only install there, and many apps can't use the SD card for storing their data. Case in point, last week I discovered I had 2.3G of Audible files. I could find no obvious way of transferring them over to the free space on the SD card...
tdkl 11y ago
And yet juggling two storage points despite being larger then one isn't what one would call "a good user experience".

stuaxo 11y ago

It's fine for my atypical usage ... but then I am on Linux and have never liked itunes so have no music on there, and don't take many pics as am with someone that doesn't like photos taken.

benevol 11y ago

Well, surprise. You're part of what those on the right side of the game call "planned obsolescence". Unfortunately, you're on the wrong side of the game. Now please stop asking questions and continue consuming.

andyfleming 11y ago

Yeah, it's no good. I have a 16 GB model. I've bought into the iCloud-powered photos syncing, but yet somehow there is never space on my phone. The whole point was to automatically move photos to the cloud, yet 9/10 times I open my camera, it says "Not enough space to take a photo".

tigroferoce 11y ago
This is interesting. I'm in the same situation and I'm about to make the same move. I've tried Carousel by Dropbox and it does an excellent job in keeping space low, while still giving me access to the pictures. I'm now considering iCloud Photo Library for a more integrated experience, but from my first attempts Carouse works way better.
vellum 11y ago
Check which apps are being space hogs. Go to Settings->General->Usage->Manage Storage. Some apps like Twitter don't delete their caches. So you have to delete the app and reinstall it to reclaim the space.
- shdon 11y ago
  "delete the app and reinstall it to reclaim the space"? Now that seems like the real "bad user experience"
- e28eta 11y ago
  For me, that's the real point. We need developers to care. Apple's come out with APIs for app thinning, and they've had the right and wrong way to cache files forever (etc). But, that dev work doesn't increase downloads of your app, and if no one is looking for compliance, you're better off delivering other features. Twitter might not even know they have a problem! iOS Dev team members are constantly installing new builds of the app.

derefr 11y ago

Apple buys their Flash chips, right? With all the advancements in Flash technology lately, I'm surprised their suppliers aren't offering to just swap out higher-capacity chips on their orders for the same price in order to keep a giant customer like Apple on a current, rather than legacy, chip fab.

adventured 11y ago
It's intentional on Apple's part. They're trying to hold margins artificially high by putting increasing pressure on users to spend more money on greater storage (and to rely on Apple's Internet services more). Except they've jumped the shark at this point and let the 16gb linger too long. A pretty classic mistake when you're making the poor business decision of trying to walk a dental floss width tight rope between margins and pissing off customers, all over $5 in cost.

ashitlerferad 11y ago

Can't you just add a SD cart to it?

jarcane 11y ago

This would all be trivially solved if Apple would just put a goddamn SD card slot in it. Storage size as sole model differentiation is sooo 2001. At this point it genuinely makes Apple look out of touch in a market where every other flagship quality model doesn't bother with it and includes an SD slot, partly I suspect because it's just saner from a production and inventory standpoint even besides the consumer benefits.

adventured 11y ago
It's worth noting that the Galaxy S6 / Edge / Active and the Note 5 have no SD slot. Apple definitely isn't alone in looking out of touch.
- kijin 11y ago
  Without an SD card slot, users who need more storage must buy a more expensive model. That money goes to the manufacturer. With an SD card slot, users can just buy the baseline model and get an SD card from another vendor. That money does not go to the manufacturer. So manufacturers have an obvious incentive to produce phones without an SD card slot. Moreover, there is little incentive to produce phones with an SD card slot. A long-time iPhone user isn't going to switch to a non-iPhone just because of the lack of an SD card slot.
  - jarcane 11y ago
    Doing it the Apple way isn't free, either. Yes, Apple takes their traditional overly generous markup per memory increase, but there are liabilities in terms of inventory. In a model like the iPhone's it means your 16GB phones are mostly loss-leaders anyway, probably why no one seems to give a shit about issues like the one in the article: because no one actually buys those phones, the inventory is just dead weight to get people in the door. It's also an extra step in manufacturing of course.
- jarcane 11y ago
  I stand corrected. I actually thought Samsung had ditched that "feature" a while ago.

jafingi 11y ago

I have no problems with 16GB iPhone which I've had since the 3G. Currently I have 72 apps installed. Syncing with 8 email addresses. I use Spotify for music, and have an offline playlist with about 2GB songs. Photos and movies are synced to the cloud, and files older than 1 month are deleted from the device. I have 3.2GB available. So while your points may be valid for some, I can manage fine with 16GB. And it's not like I'm thinking about it, and change my habits to have the 16GB phone.

ricw 11y ago
37% of 16gb iPhone 6 users are unable to deal with it. So good for you being able to deal with it. A large amount of users can not.
- jafingi 11y ago
  No. 37% has less than 1GB available. It doesn't state anything about them not being able to deal with it. If I have all the apps and music I need, why should it be a problem with 800MB available. I can't believe so many infer that the majority have space issues just because they need 64GB for all their music stored offline and hours of video-recordings in 1080p themselves.
ams6110 11y ago
I have an 8GB android phone and have no problems with it. If you want to take a lot of video and photos with your phone, buy one with a lot of storage. If you aren't in the habit of photographing your lunch before you eat it, you can get by with a lot less.
- eponeponepon 11y ago
  If you want to take a lot of videos and photos... use a camera. It baffles me that people want one tool for all jobs.
  - lttlrck 11y ago
    convenience is baffling?

ricw 11y ago

Very interesting as it entirely contradicts apples recent statements in interviews that 16gb is fine as a base model (Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and Jonny Ive stated this if I remember correctly). This is clearly not true if it means that 17% of their ENTIRE iPhone 6 users is low on memory, or 37% of their 16gb iPhone 6 users. It's factual evidence that Apple does indeed play games and tries to maximise profits and obsolescence of its devices, despite always claiming the opposite. All because they're unwilling to add a couple of dollars to their bill of materials. They should be ashamed.

unabst 11y ago

First there is Photo Stream which stores backups of your photos on the same phone -- even those you delete. Not even sure how it got turned on. Don't even have another iOS device. Then being "savvy", I was copying and deleting photos directly through explorer. Well, this leads to ghost space, which is resolved by setting the clock back to reveal deleted but unpurged photos in the recycle bin [0]. Wack. Then found Dropbox Carousel. Victory of the cloud, no more local storage needs. Except still kept running out of space. Turns out Carousel uses as much as it can as cache (in my case 4GB). WTF! So yes, I'd wholeheartedly agree that 16GB is a bad user experience. Users are basically in constant competition with Apple and other apps for space, and at 16GB the user is constantly losing. -- [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6560594?start=45&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6560594?start=45&tstart...

cdevs 11y ago

How do you feel about the Google 16 gig "laptops"?

qopp 11y ago

Of course 16Gb is an "uncomfortable" user experience. It's supposed to be. It's about market segmentation. It's not cost. 32gb memory units in bulk are like $1 maybe. Apple charges an extra $100 because they are using that easy-to-understand difference to segment the market and collect an extra $100 profit from those that can afford that price point.

humanrebar 11y ago
You're basically restating the conclusion of the piece. The author states that this (presumably) intentional choice undermines the Apple brand that includes quality and uncompromisingly excellent user experience.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  This has been the state of things since Apple started offering different storage sizes on their iPhones. The bigger model has always been $100 more expensive. This is as much a part of the Apple brand as quality and uncompromisingly excellent user experience.

bakabaka9 11y ago

Bad user experience depends on the user. Personally I very much enjoy the somewhat lower price of less-beefy models of smartphones and tablets — as I'm not obsessed with taking pictures, don't play blockbuster video games on mobile, and prefer my books as text, instead of audio files. The title of the post is similar to saying e.g. "ARM CPU is bad UX", and complain that you can't mine Bitcoin effectively on ARM.

humanrebar 11y ago
The counterargument would be that your usage patterns are the niche ones. I suppose that's an empirical question. Does anyone have any numbers either way?
- bakabaka9 11y ago
  Presently there is no additional cost to choosing a smartphone with the right amount of memory for one's specific usage pattern, so who's being "niche" makes no difference. Linux on desktop is arguably also niche, yet no one is hurt by the fact that PCs actually support it. If Apple were producing just the 16GB model, then usage numbers would probably be in order. As of now, things are just at their optimal state, where everyone can get what they want.
bakabaka9 11y ago
Let's hope that abject consumerism that makes you downvote this will also give you cancer.

cm2187 11y ago

One can't both consider that one's primary use of the iphone is to record pictures and videos and at the same time go for the model with the smallest possible disk size and then complain about the lack of space. The premium Apple charges for larger disk space is ridiculously uncorrelated with the cost of the components but the solution to this is better competition.

humanrebar 11y ago
> the solution to this is better competition There is a lot of competition out there. A lot of great competition. The problem with this argument is that Apple specifically makes it hard for its customers to switch ecosystems. So it's still Apple causing the issue.
- cm2187 11y ago
  I haven't seen any user stuck with iphone because they rely on something they wouldn't get on an android. The only reason I am myself willing to pay the apple premium is because I am extremely uncomfortable with google's invasion of android users privacy and google makes it hard to switch these features off (like "if you don't want google to upload your GPS locations then turn off the GPS!", etc).
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    I've seen many people stick with Apple because they've invested in media from iTunes that will never play on Android devices, even Chromecasts.

matthewmacleod 11y ago

I can add to the anecdata that 16GB has not been an issue for me. Isn't there another obvious spin on the data? It seems obvious that at least 70% of users with 16GB phones are doing fine with that amount of storage. Wouldn't it be a poor decision—certainly from a business point of view—to mandate larger storage for them, when they clearly aren't even using 16GB?

DasIch 11y ago
70% of all users might not have a problem but the real question is how it impacts the users that matter, the users that voice their opinion and are listened to. I would expect that quite a few of them do notice or would, if they were using 16GB phones.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  That makes no sense – those users are free to buy a bigger phone in exchange for the additional fee. Since a large majority of users do not appear to be using the full 16GB available, it seems it would be a poor use of resources to add additional storage for them.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    What they are free to do or not is irrelevant, as long as users complain about the 16GB phones causing negative publicity.

_ph_ 11y ago

An interesting article which raises a good point: the problem with Apple products isn't the price, there is a place for good high priced products, but that some of them are really bad products because of memory limitations. At 16gb you can not use all of its advertised features, unless you rely on streaming/cloud storage only. And it is not only the iPhone hit by this. I have a 64g iPad, the biggest configuration they offered at that time. For years now, its usage has been limited by the storage filling up. For this reason alone, I will not be buying this release of the iPad pro. A machine which is supposed to partially replace a laptop needs 256g at minimum, possibly 512g. Even if such configurations were more expensive than the currently offered ones, they would still be more interesting as those which just have no way of getting the desired storage sizes.

rasz_pl 11y ago

just plug bigged SD card like normal people do ..oh wait

_ph_ 11y ago
There are points to be made why a SD card in a phone would be a bad idea - some of them are low quality and cause data issues (just search camera forums for card issues), storage management gets more complex etc. This should be a mood point considering that it does not cost phone manufacturers much to put a decent amount of memory into their devices. But that they offer neither a card slot nor decent amounts of memory, is the issue.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

meesterdude 11y ago

I've been bitten by this too. It's not that I need a lot of space for apps, but taking pictures or video can fill up the space quite quickly as is; I can't imagine what it would be like with 4K. My iPod had 80GB of space. My nikon has a 128GB card in it. These are roles the iPhone is supposed to play, but it's an imitation at best because the storage is so hindered. That and battery life are the two biggest pains I have with my iPhone, but apple seems to think everything is great as-is in those departments.

rocky1138 11y ago

This would be solved if there was a slot for a micro SD card.

segmondy 11y ago

As someone who has a 16gb nexus 5 and is writing this post from a 16gb chromebook that also has a linux installation. Give me a break. 16gb is storage, has nothing to do with a user experience. Your iphone is not a camcorder. If recording video is of utmost importance to you, then buy a phone with massive storage or one that can accept an SD card.

gkanapathy 11y ago

Apple doesn't keep the base model small to save costs. They do it to increase revenue (and margins). The cost to go from 16GB to 32GB is inconsequential. (They upped the step-up from 32GB to 64GB with no increase in price.) In fact, the cost to them from 16GB to 64GB is probably inconsequential. It's certainly nothing near the $100 in price. The reason they keep it at 16GB is to make more people upgrade to 64GB. If the base model was 32GB, far fewer people would upgrade to 64GB, precisely because you would no longer have an unacceptably bad user experience.

rwmj 11y ago
In other words, it's about hating your poorer/cheaper users? Wouldn't it be a better strategy to do the right thing for the customers, which I guess in this case would mean having only one model, with a useful amount of storage?
- nkurz 11y ago
  In other words, it's about hating your poorer/cheaper users? It's not about hate, it's that Apple is a for-profit company whose goal is to maximize their profit. They've decided that many of those poorer users will choose to sacrifice something else in their life and give the difference to Apple. Wouldn't it be a better strategy to do the right thing for the customers Are you suggesting that an approach that better met the needs of their less well-off users would have increased their profitability? No, almost definitely not. I don't like Apple, but their current strategy definitely works for them. Measured by the metric of profit, Apple is inarguably one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. If so, can you point to any companies who gotten better results from the "put customers first" strategy than Apple has has with theirs? Most likely what you mean is that the world as a whole would be a better place if Apple pursued some other strategy than profit-maximization. I'd personally agree with this, but it's also difficult to come up with solid examples.

karmakaze 11y ago

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned that folks will take more Live Photos than extended videos with these phones. How much storage do you need before the next auto wifi sync? Let it auto-delete old sync'd stuff. The problem is s/w not h/w.

hokkos 11y ago

The iPhone is supposed to be a high end device with great user satisfaction, Apple you are ruining it with this policy. User will have a bad taste and never buy an iPhone again, you are playing a dangerous game here.