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With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

• 5_minutes 9y ago
  Previously, if you bought a Plus, upgraded the storage you also hit the $1000 mark quite easily. Apple can't do much wrong: removed the audio jack did not hurt iPhone sales. The new mac book pro, ridiculously priced, a very 'particular' keyboard, was the fastest selling laptop ever. If you see the reactions on let's say, The Verge, on any post regarding new Apple products - it's insane. So I think Apple is still in a very comfortable position to keep on doing this artificial pricing for the time being, and for the foreseeable future as well - and get away with it. Their tandem of hard & software, though much flawed, still seems to be worth the premium price for many people. They have me because of OSX but I won't stand another crappy laptop of them anymore.
  • racl101 9y ago
    Yep, still doesn't get better than OSX.
    • nikofeyn 9y ago
      as a user of both windows and mac os x, what do you truly like about mac os x that you prefer it so heavily over windows?
      • ianai 9y ago
        For one, Mac OS does multiple displays and DPIs right. The trackpad is also solid. Plus the unix stuff that's always been there and isn't some subsystem only available with certain versions of windows. Also, the boot up and sign in process sucks in Windows vs Mac. Once I'm given a mouse cursor post-signon I'm ready to go in Mac OS. With Windows, I've got to wait for the AV to load up and do it's "routine". Then there's the probability of Windows Updates working the first time. And then there's the Windows telemetry stuff. Apple's actually talking about ways to incorporate identity anonymization (sp?) into its browser. They've stayed out of trying to reap side income off device usage in multiple ways.
        • naraniano 9y ago
          Windows since the Creators Update also does multiple displays and DPIs right. By the way, support for that is completely non-existant on Linux.
          • deleted 9y ago
            [deleted]
          • majewsky 9y ago
            "that" as in multi-monitor support? Multi-monitor works fine on my Plasma desktop since at least 2012. Can't comment on high-DPI, but from what I've heard it's in the "getting there" stage.
            • naraniano 9y ago
              Multi-monitor works fine. Single monitor, high DPI is very tricky, and barely works, never consistently (like, GNOME looks fine, but Firefox looks tiny). Multi-monitor, where every monitor has a different DPI value, has absolutely no support.
              • mschulze 9y ago
                I am using my Dell XPS 13 with a resolution of 1920x1080 (scaled from 3200x1800) for the internal display and an external display with native 1920x1080 and cannot confirm this. It works pretty well (GNOME3, Ubuntu 17.04). Firefox is not tiny. I did not change anything in my X config files.
                • majewsky 9y ago
                  You mean you changed the resolution of your internal screen with xrandr? Or does xrandr still report 3200x1800? If not, then this is not a HiDPI setup. HiDPI is (basically) when applications draw using internal coordinates that are not "1 screen pixel per logical pixel", but more than that.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • grantcox 9y ago
        I've recently started using Windows again on a gaming computer. Here are the problems I found, that felt "ugh, Windows": - I'm now used to the "inverse mouse scrolling". To enable this for my mouse (logitech something?) I needed to edit the registry. Every time I plug it into a new USB port it's now a new device with a new registry entry to hack. - I installed the various device drivers that came with my hardware. The Realtek on-motherboard network card had some driver, which actually stopped the hardware from working - Microsoft's own standard driver was better. But every time I rebooted, Windows would helpfully install the "updated" driver from it's local cache. I ended up fixing this by setting the permissions on some c:\windows\system32 file to such that the system itself could not update it I'm also not yet familiar with the changes to the Start menu and Windows Explorer, so those also feel confusing. But it's a gaming computer, I turn it on, play games, then turn it off. Presumably if it was a development workstation I'd have more opinions on the rest of it.
        • jmanderley 9y ago
          I'd say you're Windowsing wrong if you changed system file permissions to stop a driver from installing.
        • 5_minutes 9y ago
          Sounds like hell and Windows xp
          • intoverflow2 9y ago
            Yeah but if you actually want a powerful machine it's your only option these days. Apple don't sell anything remotely at the level of PC hardware, even if money is no object. I got forced into going Windows for GPU powered 3D rendering because Apple isn't interested in my business.
        • jeeva 9y ago
          If the mouse supports Logitech Setpoint, it might be worth installing it - I believe it has the reverse scrolling setting at a device level (though I've not tested those conditions exactly).
      • visarga 9y ago
        I don't think OSX is superior, just the touchpad. It seems that most touchpads are insensitive to high precision touches (small movements), while the Apple touchpad is in a class of its own.
      • chadcmulligan 9y ago
        The macbook trackpad it is so wonderful. I'm watching something on youtube, I'll just flick it over to the apple tv by pressing airplay - it's magical. My backups go to a time capsule - install time a couple of minutes, it just works, it sits there in the cupboard and I never have to think about backups. When my phone rings and its across the room, I can answer on my Mac. I seldom (never?) have to worry about reinstalling device drivers. Everything works, all the time, on my windows laptop somethings don't work and I have to do convoluted things to make them work - e.g. pdf's no longer open in adobe reader, I keep saying yes make adobe reader the default but it never works, I've never looked into it cause who cares. With my mac I seldom have to fiddle with something because it's not working - it is a lot smoother experience, with windows bits are broken everywhere and I just work around them. Edit: oh also the 2d graphics are so much nicer and crisper - core graphics makes gdi/gdi+/direct2D a joke (I spend a lot of time writing graphics code), cocoa is superior.
        • fauigerzigerk 9y ago
          I'm a Mac user as well, but I can't say I like macOS. Just like every OS it accumulates brokenness and it has lots of quirks. My reminder alerts are being triggered at arbitrary times. I followed every advice on the support forums. Nothing works. Now the recommendation is to reinstall macOS. I have replaced the magic mouse with a wired Logitech mouse because bluetooth keeps draining the mouse battery too quickly. I wanted to buy a wired Apple keyboard for the same reason, but they no longer sell one without a number pad (which makes the keyboard far too wide) After waking from sleep my Mac takes awfully long to become responsive. I just keep hitting those keys until they show up. Then I delete all the buffered keystrokes and start entering my password. Stupid, I know. Don't get me started on Apple Mail... Time capsule doesn't make much sense as a backup solution if its in the same physical place as the Mac itself. You're just one burglary or fire away from losing all your data. I use spideroak which works on any OS. I like Swift, but Xcode is by far the worst IDE I have ever used. It keeps crashing. The much-vaunted "playgrounds" are a useless, annoying toy. It is slower than you think possible, always indexing something. It can't rename Swift functions and classes (This "advanced" feature is coming this month I think). It doesn't even have a built-in shortcut (or a mappable command) to delete the current line. I haven't used Windows in many years and I have no idea if its any better. I guess I will try once my mac mini expires, because I'm certainly not going to hand over thousands to Apple for a MacBook or buy a "new" mini that has almost exactly the same specs as the one I bought 5 years ago. What I like about macOS is that it rarely has driver issues (I did have one wi-fi issue a while ago though). That's what keeps me away from Linux.
      • pseudonym 9y ago
        For me personally, 90% of it boils down to "unix baseline". I do most of my development work remotely on linux servers of varying flavors, but OSX + homebrew means that I can pretty easily use the tools I write for one machine on my local systems as well. Beyond that, I've just got a lot of random applications for streamlining my workflow and day-to-day usage that would take a long time to find equivalent tools for, and I'm long past the days when "spending a weekend fucking with settings" was something I want to do. OSX, I just back up my machines and if/when I need to replace them, it's just "plug the new one into the backup drive, restore from backup". Maybe someday the year of the linux desktop will actually happen, but I'm not holding my breath either.
      • raverbashing 9y ago
        Windows has a lot of minor issues that really get in the way Not to mention that since it's more popular every device manufacturer wants to "customize" your experience with some BS app, the amount of bad practices in app development is abundant (remember when Windows 2000/XP came out how long did it take developers to make their products run without being Administrator? And then with Vista?) MS helps developers, shames them sometimes (IIRC Vista had a "Windows is not shutting down because of this app ) and sometimes "virtualizes" things so developers can still not clean up after themselves, but it gets old.
      • kalleboo 9y ago
        I only rarely have to use Windows but every time I'm just so annoyed at how terrible the file browser (Explorer) is. Why the heck are folders sorted on top of files? It makes no sense and means you can't just jump to filenames with the keyboard. No QuickLook (this is a huge one. browsing through files is made 10x faster with QuickLook). No column browser.
        • saiya-jin 9y ago
          if you get used to Total commander, you will never, ever go back to that joke of a tool named Explorer and its ridiculous workflow. Working with 2 panes was better since Norton commander during DOS times (actually many more with tabs these days). I can do anything on file system 10x faster than any colleague with Explorer, including file comparisons, altering files directly in archives, network accesses and so much more. There is no good enough equivalent in Linux/Mac world. I don't understand why more people in tech don't use it more. We can discuss many different tools and their + and -, but this one simply doesn't have an equal.
      • lagadu 9y ago
        Like another user mentioned: the trackpad. Particularly the software aspect of it. I have a personal 2012 macbook air and a lenovo thinkpad whatever from work. If I have to use the trackpad on windows I'm miserable. It's just so bad, the OS itself isn't made with it in mind: things like dragging and click-holding don't work anywhere near as well as it does on the macbook, the multi finger gestures are a miserable experience; I spend most of my time frustrated that I don't have a mouse. Compare it to the macbook: I do have a magic mouse somewhere but I haven't used in years; it offers me no better experience than that amazing trackpad support does. This isn't even related to trackpad hardware because the experience was equally bad when I ran windows on the macbook using bootcamp. The Windows trackpad experience is just years behind OSX. edit: as a related sidenote, I'm planning on dumping the macbook next year becase it's aging (4gb ram doesn't cut anymore). I'm planning on replacing it with a MS Surface; I found that touchscreen+pen are a suitable replacement for the macbook trackpad when you're on the go for my type of usage.
      • discordance 9y ago
        I'm also a user of both Windows 10 and Mac OS X. In no particular order, here's why I prefer OS X: No advertising built into OS X on a fresh install. No default collection of usage. Faster boot times, faster wake up from sleep and faster shut down (ever been stuck on shutdown?). Forced updates, with a count down to save my work before a forced reboot (seriously, what decade is this?!). Windows Trackpads suck compared to Mac (even with the Precision Touchpad enabled laptops... and so much more.
      • tagurit 9y ago
        UX on both platforms are pretty horrendous. But windows, especially the newer versions, is even worse imo. It's way too "in your face" and has extra nonsense that adds no purpose. Changing settings is unnecessarily complicated unless you have already done it in the past. Tiles in the start menu. Shortcuts are less efficient than macOS (switching tabs, closing apps, etc). And more. Ofc you can customize these, but I'd rather not. And it takes me a good amount of time to research if 3rd party apps are safe and secure especially on windows
      • racl101 9y ago
        Well, for starters: - That it has Unix and its tools underneath - That app guis look consistently good on it (although I will admit that Windows has caught up to Mac OS X in this regard) - That I don't have to worry about catching viruses as easily when browsing the Internet. Yes, I know there are viruses for Mac, but I've not come across them. Not the same with Windows. In fact, I made the switch after catching a nasty one using Windows Vista and losing more than half of my stuff. - A corollary is not having to use Antivirus on a Mac - That even though Macs have little in terms of specs, that the OS doesn't fucking lag something fierce. Last Windows I used, Windows 8, was still a memory hog for a machine having twice the RAM as my Mac. It was a work machine, not a personal machine. And Most importantly, that I don't have to worry about maintaining the machine for all the aforementioned reasons and that I just get stuff done.
  • DigitalJack 9y ago
    My wife has one of the new ones with the "particular" keyboard. I think it's okay (the keyboard), but it's pretty noisy.
    • Jack000 9y ago
      I hated it at first but started liking it after a few weeks. 9 months later I kind of hate it again. You get used to the short travel, and the clickiness is very pleasant. The problem I have now is that sometimes you can feel a click and it doesn't trigger - most commonly with the arrow keys. Also occasionally a few keys would "jam" and not fully click. Overall my typing speed and accuracy has definitely decreased.
      • visarga 9y ago
        Yeah, but it's 2 mm thinner. /s
    • eknkc 9y ago
      The "particular" keyboard is actually quite good to use. I like the way I type on this one. However it's not reliable. A single speck of dust under the keycap then you have misfires. Keys get mushy for no reason, get stuck etc. My b key does not work reliably now for example.
      • kalleboo 9y ago
        Yeah I really like the feel of it, but my "n" key has stopped working twice already (within a month of purchase!) - I've "massaged" it back to life both times with firm pressing. That reminds me I need to order compressed air from Amazon. Can I bill that to Apple I wonder
        • eknkc 9y ago
          I disassembled "n" a couple weeks ago, not just removing the keycap, but the entire butterfly mechanism. Cleaned up then reattached using glue. Works fine now. As far as I can tell, the mechanism is too fragile / shitty. There is a single metal dome below the key which acts like the spring and actuator. Butterfly thing is there to keep the keycap in place and distribute pressure so if you hit a corner it directs that to the dome thingy. That metal dome seems to have an issue with heat as most people report problems when the device heats up. Maybe it expands. If you look at the contacts below it looks like there is too little margin for error. I think this keyboard is gonna create a lot of issues in the long term.
• racl101 9y ago
  If those new Nokias start being sold in my neck of the woods (Western Canada) I think I will pretty much just stop bothering with smartphones and just go with that compromise. If I'm being honest with myself, I just need a damn phone and an ok camera. The rest are frivolities. I can just continue using my table for the rest.
  • expatinneed 9y ago
    Did you mean tablet or desktop when you wrote `table`. The way i'm understanding it, it could go either way.
  • a1371 9y ago
    Well, I read something that I take with a grain of salt and so should you, but here it is: Those new Nokias are only carrying the brand name under typical chinese design and manufacturing process. The incentive would be to revive the brand in markets where Nokia had stronghold with its cheaper models and the average phone has poor quality. If that's the case it'd be very disappointing for what you are expecting.
    • oblio 9y ago
      Based on reviews I've read online, the new Nokia phones are still build like tanks. So I wouldn't worry too much on that front.
  • pilsetnieks 9y ago
    If by those new Nokias that aren't smartphones you mean the new 3310s (because Nokia also makes Android phones now,) you should be weary - the camera isn't exactly ok, not by modern standards, and most importantly, they only work on GSM (2G) networks that are being phased out in a lot of places.
    • madeofpalk 9y ago
      > they only work on GSM (2G) networks Haha you're kidding me? They shut down the 2G networks in Australia this year!
• ihateneckbeards 9y ago
  Not excusing the price, but people these days spend multiple hours a day on their phones. Phones are as important as cars for example. How high prices can go ? Even higher imo People are ready to pay for expensive cars for a better experience and higher "social standing". Phones are not that different in this regard
  • Malician 9y ago
    Agree. People will spend $1000 (or more) for relatively minor features on their cars. A phone is with you 24/7 - it's less like a tool, or even a digital assistant, and more like a cybernetic implant. The amazing thing isn't that phones cost so much but that competition is such that you can get an excellent product with top-of-the-line CPU, radio, RAM, screen, everything for $1,000 instead of $100,000 or $1,000,000.
    • sho 9y ago
      > competition is such that you can get an excellent product [..] for $1,000 The really interesting part is that for ~$1000 you get the best product available at any price. That's the magic of economies of scale in consumer markets, especially technology. It's so incredibly expensive and largely fruitless to step out of the economy of scale, that practically speaking no-one does it. I don't have a yacht like Paul Allen, I bet my house isn't as nice as Bill Gates' and my bank account looks nothing like Zuckerberg's. But it's quite possible I have the same phone!
      • jkaptur 9y ago
        Andy Warhol: "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
• csours 9y ago
  For $1,000 can it be durable as well as good looking? How about a serious IP (Ingress Protection - dust and water) rating?
  • millstone 9y ago
    Honest question, what does the rating actually mean? The Galaxy S7 was IP68 certified but did not survive immersion https://www.consumerreports.org/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s7-active-fails-consumer-reports-water-resistance-test/ https://www.consumerreports.org/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s... This might be a case of under-promise, over-deliver.
    • Veratyr 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code is a decent summary. IP68 means absolutely no dust whatsoever and: "The equipment is suitable for continuous immersion in water under conditions which shall be specified by the manufacturer. However, with certain types of equipment, it can mean that water can enter but only in such a manner that it produces no harmful effects. The test depth and/or duration is expected to be greater than the requirements for IPx7, and other environmental effects may be added, such as temperature cycling before immersion." In the S8's case, the manufacturer specified conditions were "submersion in up to 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes", from http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-s8/performance/ http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-s8/performance/.
    • csours 9y ago
      I guess I mean IP capability, not rating.
  • noncoml 9y ago
    Good looking? iPhones stopped being good looking since they added the camera that sticks out like a sore thumb.
    • bitdeveloper 9y ago
      Even the slimmest of cases makes that invisible.
• featherverse 9y ago
  It isn't crossing a threshold. The old iphones and their "affordable" price tags was crossing a threshhold. Apple was dipping their toes in the middle-america Market in order to grab market share. And now they're returning to what they've always sold, overpriced gadgets aimed at a specific niche demo.
  • millstone 9y ago
    Can't it be both? Apple sells upmarket but also mid-market phones, like the iPhone SE. Features are introduced on the high-end models and then migrate down. Of course Apple will continue to compete in the mid-market range.
    • girvo 9y ago
      > iPhone SE Which is the best phone I've ever owned -- Nokia N9 aside, anyway. Excellent size, great performance, latest updates and I got it second hand (but BNIB, was her insurance replacement for a lost phone) for $350AUD. I get to use iOS with a reasonably modern day chipset, an excellent camera, but for the cost of a midrange android phone. Excellent, really.
• dannysu 9y ago
  Nobody looks at a top of the line PC with the best graphics card(s) and say it's crossing a threshold. Everybody understands it's for a certain demographic. According to rumors, they're still going to have various models and price points. Also, iPhones are extremely economical because no other phones receive OS updates for as long. My iPhone 6, which cost $749 at the time, is coming up to 3 years old. It's still flawless, no speed issues or any issues. The only thing bad is that the battery isn't as good as before, but I still get through the day just fine. I might upgrade this year just because "new & shiny", but I'll probably pass the iPhone 6 to family. And because it's still very good and receive updates, that means if I get 4 years of life out of it, its cost is actually only $375 when compared to other phones that stop getting updates 2 years in. That's really good!
  • morgante 9y ago
    Seriously, I actually consider iPhones to be some of the most cost-effective purchases I make. My mom is still happily using my old iPhone 5, and my iPhone 4 functions as a pretty nice media controller.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • Yetanfou 9y ago
    I see your 3 year young iPhone and raise my 6 year old Motorola Defy. I bought it new in 2011 for about 1/4 of what the then-current iPhone would have cost. It still works flawlessly, the battery is fine as well (~5 days of normal use on a single charge or ~7 hours of screen time). If the battery were to fail I could just replace it, no tools required. Oh, the thing is waterproof and 'shock-proof' (although the latter is to be taken with a grain of salt, my wife managed to break the glass on hers after about three years). In other words, it does not take an expensive iPhone to last longer than a contract period. Well-built phones can last a long time, much longer than the 2 years which most people seem to consider as normal.
    • thingerr 9y ago
      I'd be with you, except for Android's planned obsolescence. The reliance on third-parties to provide at most ~2/3 year security update paired with a dated and forked version of the Linux kernel gives me pause.
• sidchilling 9y ago
  Aren't phones supposed to get cheaper every year?
  • pravda 9y ago
    An iPhone is a Veblen good [1]. The purpose of buying an iPhone is to advertise your economic resources. Like a Gucci handbag or a Rolex watch. With a smaller markup. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
    • bthrn 9y ago
      That the purpose of it is to advertise economic resources is not true. My wife has an iPhone because it's the most competent tool she can use to get the job done. Having used several Android phones prior to this, I don't blame her. Relatively speaking there are fewer security issues, compatibility quirks, and reliability issues with iPhones which makes them worth the price to her. After the 2 year mark our Android phones are literally in the junk drawer, and her iPhone 6s is still functioning as fast as the day it was purchased.
      • terminalcommand 9y ago
        I'm still rocking an iPhone 5. I use it mainly for browsing, news apps and spotify. It has the latest OS, all new apps are usable (except games of course). Recently the battery got swollen, I took it to an apple shop and got a replacement (a refurbished iPhone 5) for 100 dollars.
        • tmikaeld 9y ago
          iOS 11 won't support iPhone 5 unfortunately, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_5 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_5
      • Aeolun 9y ago
        Did you buy android phones at the same price point as the iPhones? I've had nothing but bad experiences with iPhones in the first 4 years they existed, and have switched back to android for the past 6.
• chadcmulligan 9y ago
  Does the actual price matter? I thought about buying one outright when I bought mine, but it worked out more expensive than buying one on a plan, I can't think of anyone who bought their's outright
  • Tsiklon 9y ago
    Personally for me and my usage in the UK, a mobile phone plan is more expensive over the course of 2 years. Yes the initial outlay is more painful, but i find £25 a month much more palatable than £74 (for the same plan with the phone) back of the napkin maths says the following; iPhone 7+ 128G (my current phone) - £819 phone plan (unlimited data - 600mins - unlimited texts) - £25/month Over 2 years - 819+600 - £1419 phone + plan (unlimited data - unlimited minutes - unlimited texts, closest to what i currently have) - £74/month Over 2 years - £1850
    • chadcmulligan 9y ago
      Yes I'm in australia and the maths has probably changed - plans are a lot cheaper now. Still I stand by my comment, a large percentage of iphone buyers don't look at the price, they look at the monthly rate - if the difference is $10 a month then it probably won't change things much imho.
• kid0m4n 9y ago
  Funny thing. We in India pay regularly close to $1000 (oh the irony there) for a regular iPhone 7 - and they sell a lot here.
  • King-Aaron 9y ago
    Yep, Australia too. iPhone 7 32 GB Australian price: AU$1,079 ... US Price: $649
    • kid0m4n 9y ago
      No offence :P but we are paying > US$1000
      • King-Aaron 9y ago
        No offence taken! That's pretty outrageous, do you know if they have a justification for that price in your country?
        • mlnj 9y ago
          It's mostly due to custom duty on electronics and gadgets, which can be upwards of 25%
      • robryan 9y ago
        256 gig iPhone7 in Australia is over $1000 USD
  • isolli 9y ago
    Turkey has long been one of the most expensive countries to buy an iPhone. The current model costs $1,200 there [0], and I remember that it was already the most expensive country 4 or 5 years ago. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2017/05/04/cheapest-country-to-buy-an-iphone/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/05/04/cheapest-country-to-buy-an-ip...
• noncoml 9y ago
  From the so far leaked rumors I don’t see anything to justify the price. If anything there is a regression with the absence of TouchID. But I guess we will have to wait and see in two days.
  • bluthru 9y ago
    >If anything there is a regression with the absence of TouchID. FaceID fulfills that role.
    • mtgx 9y ago
      All face authentication schemes are a joke and can be broken soon after release. Fingerprint auth can be broken, too, but it's orders of magnitude more difficult to "clone" someone's fingerprint than it is to copy one of their pictures from the internet, or from a CCTV camera, etc. Even if the system uses infrared or 3D images or whatever, it's just a matter of developing an advanced enough algorithm to deal with that, which shouldn't take that long if the target market is there (hundreds of millions of iphones with such an auth system).
      • yladiz 9y ago
        If someone is going to 3D print your face, they're determined enough to get into your phone regardless.
        • supermdguy 9y ago
          Even the FBI had trouble getting into an iPhone. 3D printing a face might be a real solution in situations like that. Of course, for the average person, face id is probably just as secure as touch.
          • yladiz 9y ago
            It will still have the same constraints as normal TouchID, so it will lock after 48 (72?) hrs and will only unlock with passcode. It might be marginally easier for FBI but I imagine 3D printing an acceptable face will be tough, especially if it uses IR on top of 3D cameras.
• 1ba9115454 9y ago
  This is a very good strategy in my opinion. The iPhone will be the Rolex of the smartphone market and purchased as a fashion item and a status symbol.
  • mynewtb 9y ago
    Finally! /s
  • mtgx 9y ago
    How many rolexes are sold worldwide again? Apple becoming a "fashion" company is such a horrible strategic mistake that I don't think Steve Jobs would've made. Apple will proportionally become less of a "tech" company as a it becomes a fashion company. In other words, the technology it uses in its devices will feel less and less advanced (especially for the price) as time moves on. You can already see that with other companies developing (real) gold phones with crystals on them and such, while using specs from 2-3 years before, but charging many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for the phone.
• grecy 9y ago
  The first iPhone was announced at $599 in mid-2007. That's $704 2017 dollars, and look how much more of a device you will be getting. Seems perfectly find to me. If people want to spend it, of course a company will make it.
  • jononor 9y ago
    Competition is a hell of a lot better these days. A phone at 1/5 the cost will cover the same needs.
    • visarga 9y ago
      I voted with my wallet since iPhone 4. I was an early enthusiast with iPhone and owned the first model, as soon as it came out, and the next 3 models after that. But at some point it started becoming so expensive I was put off. I can afford it but I was just disgusted. I have gone through 3 Android phones since and now use a Nexus 6P, which is a very nice phone.
      • nebabyte 9y ago
        "vote with your wallet". I'll never stop being amazed at how readily americans buy into the "democracy = consumerism" equation. Or the number of things they happily apply that formula to. I suppose that 'we're here to change the world' soda commercial isn't nearly as absurd when you consider the audience.
      • dom0 9y ago
        Going through eight phones in ten years is an interesting choice for someone being disgusted by Appleconomics...?
• jaxondu 9y ago
  Apple's 1k pricing will be doing just fine as Samsung is also pricing Note 8 around the same.
  • Gaelan 9y ago
    I believe the Note is equivalent to Apple's Plus models.
    • danielrmay 9y ago
      Is it? I think the S8 Plus is the equivalent - unless the new iPhone comes with a stylus.
      • Gaelan 9y ago
        Ah, wasn't aware of the S Plus models. You're probably right.
• zaroth 9y ago
  I like paying $1,000 for a device like this because I want Apple (and competitors) to know I would absolutely spend $1,000 - BUT it had better hold up, perform beautifully, bring me something technologically compelling, and do some damn cool stuff. At $1,000 sets a very high bar. Excited to see if they meet it!
• devwastaken 9y ago
  After recently doing a bit of research into a new smartphone, I begun to understand why people buy Iphones, even if they're really really expensive. Firstly, you can explain it away financially with monthly payments, like any phone through a provider, but the biggest pain point I had is proven reliability. Take any popular Android phone, and you'll see a history of unsolved hardware problems from the manufacturer, such as boot loops. I can't afford to have my phone just 'break' itself and have to deal with my provider or some such nonesense. It was a real problem looking through dozens and dozens of different phones and knowing that each one of them tried to re-invent the wheel in some way that will probably break. In the end, I settled for a Moto Z Play, at the recommendation of a programming blog, and that it had excellent reviews on the outlets I could find it. But, even with that, I accidentally bought an international version from Amazon unknowingly until I tried to purchase accident protection from Motorola, and they had to direct me to Indian support, which their phoneline was offline for all the times I tried to call. After ordering the proper U.S. version through motorolas site, though, everything has been fine. But thats a lot of technical stuff and throwing direct money (no monthly payments) at a single item. I can understand why people would just go to their providers site, and order an Iphone after trying, or not trying, to do research into smartphones. For reference, I was able to return the international version even though I had used it for a week or so, and once refunded bought the U.S. one. Motorola tries to provide a monthly payment mechanism through 'Affirm', but Affirm was... Firm in that I didn't have a checking account in my bank, because my bank gives it a different name (though still is a checking.). The main saving grace of motorola is that AFAIK, their accident protection can send me a new phone before I have to send a broken one back in the future if(when) it does break. And after all of this, still no 4G on it, because AT&T doesn't do that unless you have an 'AT&T' phone IMEI supposedly.
  • izacus 9y ago
    So basically your own telecom operator is preventing you from using yourn own phone? How do you people tolerate that? My SO actually has the Moto Z Play and that phone has one feature that even none of the Apple iPhones had - the battery will easily live for three days, pretty much eliminating battery anxiety when traveling or staying somewhere for extended periods of time. It really feels wierd again to not have to worry about dragging cables, chargers and battery packs around on every minor event.
• eksemplar 9y ago
  I'd pay $1000 if I could throw it in to a wall without breaking it. Until then I'll stick to buying previous generation hardware for 70% the price.
  • StavrosK 9y ago
    I hear you, I can't find a car I can drive through the bottom of a lake either.
    • eksemplar 9y ago
      I don't crash my car once a week.
      • SentientNo4 9y ago
        But you throw your phone at the wall once a week? I think your problem requires a different solution.
        • scrollaway 9y ago
          How often do you remove your pants every week? Or pull your phone out of a loose pocket?
          • mlnj 9y ago
            I've never had this problem. Perhaps I am more careful with my phone in general.
        • dom0 9y ago
          It's far easier to make a phone surviving regular toilet dives than teaching people appreciation of things, or mindfulness. Ain't nobody got time for that.
      • madeofpalk 9y ago
        idk, maybe try not dropping your phone once a week?
• StreamBright 9y ago
  1000 USD phone, still no audiophile option to listen to music. I am extremely disapointed with the direction Apple is going with all of this "we remove X because you do not need it anymore" approach.
  • dagw 9y ago
    1000 USD phone, still no audiophile option to listen to music Can't it send music via USB to an external DAC anymore?
    • StreamBright 9y ago
      You absolutely can: - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7932507?start=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7932507?start=0 - https://www.whathifi.com/news/apple-ios-update-prevents-dacs-working-your-iphone https://www.whathifi.com/news/apple-ios-update-prevents-dacs... - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/iphone-7-severe-issue-with-mfi-dacs.821070/page-2 https://www.head-fi.org/threads/iphone-7-severe-issue-with-m... Now I just really dont understand in what world it makes sense to have extra things lingering around your headphone/phone when Apple is motly about ergonomics and UX. You think that I buy a 1000 USD phone and than a DAC as well because they removed it from the phone? It does not make too much sense to me.
  • Tsiklon 9y ago
    I always thought the Audiophile option was an external DAC? Though the DAC that iOS devices have shipped with was traditionally quite strong. I have an Oppo HA-2 and it works great with my iOS devices (though i use it as a portable amp for my work computer). There's also the likes of Audeze who are shipping Headphones and Earphones with a Lightning cable DAC in addition to the usual 3.5mm TRS jack.
    • StreamBright 9y ago
      Depends. I am not a crazy audiophile so I am happy with the DAC in the iPhone 6s. http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6s-plus-audio-quality.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6s-plus-audio-qualit...
• erikb 9y ago
  You may think this price is ridiculous, but iPhones are slowly dying for two to four generaltions already. The only people still on iPhone are the ones who consider it too hard to switch to Android (low IT skills), or the ones who feel some fan-like loyalty. The price matches that perfectly, exploiting the weak and stupid. PS: Why do I call fans stupid? The company isn't 1% as loyal to you as you are to them. If you still continue to be loyal, it can't be a smart decision.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    > iPhones are slowly dying for two to four generaltions already I know it might be nice to believe that if you're a die-hard Android fan, but this is frankly nonsense. iOS is as popular as it ever was.
    • erikb 9y ago
      Really good argument. Thanks for not totally dropping the idea of a reasonable discussion, just because someone said "God is dead", ehm, I mean "iPhone is bad". Actually I believe there will be another popularity spike and Apple will be a profitable company for another 20 years. But that doesn't mean iPhone's not dying. If you are that big, you can have both together. Personal theory of mine, based on watching th tech market for 10 years (no claim to being an expert): You are growing if you are funded and have great ideas that you can validate to be the top of the game. This is what the first iPhone and iPod did. You are the constant leader when you provide top notch quality for a high but affordable price. That's what the Macbook does. Without an iPod like great idea you won't be able to beat that market leadership. They shouldn't expect growth with that product line, but they are really save. And then there are losers. They may be anywhere in the market, based on previous successes and failures, but they are objectively worse than the competition and more expensive for about the same quality. This is where the iPhone stands. It lacks engineering wise so badly, it's not possible to overcome the hurdles without a complete rewrite. But the market is satisfied already. A complete rewrite is a high risk to stay on top in a stagnating market. Not worth it. The better strategy is to drain engineering costs and instead focus on marketing completely. That's what you can see with the iPhone happening. Each generation is worse than the previous, and mostly the hype and ownership-prestige is what keeps people coming back again and again. Putting money from engineering into marketing/sales will actually boost your profits for some time. But marketing alone can't keep you on top forever. At some point the difference between fantasy and actual product will be so big that most people can't avoid the truth anymore. Then you will become the next Nokia. Btw. I think Apple as a company still has a lot of opportunities. But the iPhone branch is dying. Hope I could explain why and why I believe that we will even see popularity rise in the next few years. Still engineering savy people have already switched away from iPhone. 100% sure about that part. For business reasons I needed to buy an ipHone 6s, and for powerusers it's a pain in the A, with no technical chance to make up the difference.
• TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  Is the new iPhone really going to be $999? I wonder if Apple are seeding rumours like this to make a smaller price increase seem more reasonable.
  • pvg 9y ago
    This is the OLED, face recognition, fully tricked out model. There will be several tiers and they're not all going to be a grand. Have you ever heard a too-high price rumour of an Apple anything, throughout the decades of them selling endless piles of expensive stuff? Seeding rumours, heh.
  • Simon_says 9y ago
    Or they seed rumors to test the waters of what people will accept. Based on this thread, it looks like $999 is acceptable.
    • c0nducktr 9y ago
      Most people on this site are well paid tech folks.
  • naraniano 9y ago
    It's the iPhone X, which is supposed to be the end of the line. The iPhone 8 will be priced as it has always been.
• on_and_off 9y ago
  In the country I live in (France), most smartphone sales are packaged with a subscription and the price of the phone is hidden. Is that an exception ? Because I see why Apple wants to sell the idea of the iPhone as a luxury product, but subsidization runs opposite to luxury.
  • bdcravens 9y ago
    Most (all?) carriers in the US have shifted from subsidization to a leasing model (with ability to trade in your leased phone typically at 12 months). However, it's still smaller monthly payments; few I suspect buy the device up-front.
• alkonaut 9y ago
  A lot of people just get the best iphone every 24 months (e.g. rich people, or people who have a generous smartphone policy at work). Having a model that gets another couple of hundred bucks from those people is pretty clever I think. This is basically the S-class phone (To make a car analogy, because that's what we do). The S-class Mercedes costs twice as much as the "Normal" E-class, and each time they launch a new model, it contains the most exotic and expensive new gadgets. It's sold to the very price insensitive. This offloads a lot of the R&D costs of these technical gadgets to the S-class customers. The following year, their E-class (Which is upscale but not a super luxury car) sees most of those S-class features at a much lower price point. I'm suspecting this is what will happen with a new, expensive iPhone. It will be a testing ground for new features, and if the features work they will be introduced at much lower risk and cost to 10x the number of customers next year. This year it's oled screens, facial recognition etc.
  • stephengillie 9y ago
    This makes the S-class sound like the Nightly branch of a repo, and the E-class sound like the Stable branch of the same repo.
    • alkonaut 9y ago
      In a way it is (there are new features). But the difference is that nightly is for people who accept that something might be broken. In our car analogy MB had to spend one gazillion dollars making sure the features on nightly (S-class) are as stable as you'd expect from the battle tested version. Apple will have to do the same thing. Even though the oled screens and facial recognition is new tech, their $1k-paying customers aren't happy if it doesn't just work perfectly anyway.
    • bruwozniak 9y ago
      Not an exact analogy as an s-class car will be held to even higher standards and "bugs" will not be tolerated or excused as price for cutting edge features. Both are stable releases
  • Kluny 9y ago
• zalq 9y ago
  The OnePlus 5 grows ever more attractive, eh?
• tareqak 9y ago
  I wonder if the iPhone upgrade program will have these: https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program . (I'm not affiliated with Apple. However, I do think that it's kind of neat that Apple has way for people to get the latest iPhone each year without having to buy it outright, or be locked to a specific carrier).
• ForFreedom 9y ago
  As the Apple increases the price of the iphone, people purchasing it is becoming far less. Since the number of people purchasing the iphone decreases, increasing the prices keeps Apples profits up. Apple is not an innovative company anymore, but trying to be a Bentley in the phone market.
• ksec 9y ago
  If we take a look from a Global Perspective, US has the cheapest iPhone ( All prices excluding sales Tax ), and everywhere else had it more expensive. i.e The $1K Prices may be making a big waves in US, but elsewhere in the world they have been paying that much for an iPhone already. And in terms of iPhones / Population / Apple Store, the US has it most. While in Japan 60% of the Smartphone are iPhone ( i.e Higher the US usage ) they have less then 10 Apple Stores. And it is the same everywhere else, which means any mark up in a certain countries has nothing to do with its Operation with in, and more to do with a Sales Tax, Global Pricing structure. For Example, HongKong used to have the cheapest iPhone around the world, it was priced the same as US and because there are no Sales tax, it was 10-15% cheaper. Making HK the trading ground for all of SEA region or mainly China. ( Hence Tim Cook continue to blame HK market is more of a delusion rather then fact. ) Around iPhone 5 Apple started to put up additional $100 USD to ALL iPhone price in HK, as a way to combat the black market trading, and if everyone else where making money of it, why not keep the profits itself? What has all these got to do with $1K iPhone. Well Apple already knew certain people are buying at those prices, again why not make a product that fit those segment? And to re balance the prices across the Globe? And we have known for long there is no way to make the cutting edge devices every 12 months and ship 200M+ of it. They will need a product that only 10-20% of those 200M will buy, and have the best technology in it. And mind you, shipping cutting edge technology to 20-40M user a year isn't any easier then the 200M+ iPhone.
  • wutwutwutwut 9y ago
    Yep the base price for a Iphone 7 Plus in Sweden is 1100$. Not sure it makes sense comparing prices like this though. In Sweden the cost of an iphone does not compete with your ability to get access to health care or education for example.
    • quickben 9y ago
      It's also the userbase or the marketing there (unsure which one). I was in Sweden few years ago, gislaved / hestra, and overall nothing else was being sold besides iPhone. It came as a shock to me. Only one of the tech toys stores that we visited had Samsung at the time.
• chemmail 9y ago
  I'm surprised its taken apple this long to realize a phone is more of a fashion statement than any clothes/jewelry/car. Esp to the poor. They should of had multiple teirs to begin with.
• Jean-Philipe 9y ago
  AFAIR, when the iPhone hit the markets, they were coupled with pricy contracts, totalling easily north of 2k EUR in fixed costs.
• imaginenore 9y ago
  I have no idea what people do with $800+ phones. I'm on Nexus 5X (<$180), and it's perfectly fine, the camera is great, apps run just fine. I doubt most of these people are doing phone based VR and play high end phone games.
• dagw 9y ago
  Outside the US the latest top of the line iPhones have been over $1k for a while now. I guess Apple figured if other people are willing to pay that much then why wouldn't people in the US?
• exodust 9y ago
  Planned obsolescence is my biggest gripe with Apple and other brands that do this. My 2012 iOS device is now stuck on iOS9. I wouldn't mind except they bundle web browser updates with the OS. This is wrong. The web browser on iOS9 does not support javascript ES6 features such as the "Let" statement. Any web sites that use let statements will fail on iOS 9. I discovered this recently when browsing on my iPad3, 2012 model. Apple doesn't care, they just want people throwing their old hardware in the trash and buying latest product. I understand why I can't have iOS10 on an iPad3, but the web browser should be given updates separately.
  • idonotknowwhy 9y ago
    Apple have a lot to answer for, and there are a lot of flaws with iOS devices, but this isn't one of them. 5 years of updates for a smartphone is pretty good. From Android, I think only certain Sony phones even come close to that. By now, the battery cells will be damaged, the CPU/RAM too slow or limited, the flash memory wearing out. Time for a new phone :)
    • problems 9y ago
      If you run custom ROMs on Android that situation is currently better than anything - you can still get updates for a Galaxy Nexus from 2011. Xiaomi is also currently providing official updates for 4+ years on some devices. The official situation should change too - with the release of Android 8 there is now a more defined layer separating the HAL from the rest of the OS, allowing updates to be pushed out universally.
      • dep_b 9y ago
        Yeah I'll totally bet the farm on the hope that in five years shady_dude_1998 will upload a nice ROM for me on some kind of site that forces me to watch an add for 15 seconds first. I'm not against the idea of customizing your phone with a custom ROM but let's not pretend that it's a genuine option for regular consumers.
        • 9y ago
• Tepix 9y ago
  Another way to look at it: $1000 for two years. After two years, sell the phone for $300-$400. That's $25-$29 per month. Around $1 per day.
  • bfred_it 9y ago
    You can make that excuse for everything. I don't want to pay "Just $1 per day" on overpriced items. I'd rather pay $0.7 per day on a ok-priced item. I hope all of this hostility from Apple will result in lower marketshare and a slow fade into oblivion. I use Apple products because they're the best, but if I have to spend $1.4k for a phone and $3.5k for a computer I'll hope MS and GOOG have somewhat caught up to the quality because it's getting tiring.
    • Tepix 9y ago
      I wasn't making an excuse. I think $1 per day is quite a lot, especially when comparing it to a $200 phone. They are almost identical.
• mstolpm 9y ago
  First of all, Apple don't need to sell many of these models: We're all doing an incredible job for Apple discussing the price tag of an unannounced phone. That alone is worth millions and millions for Apple PR. Nonetheless I believe they will sell lots and lots of these models: It will be a status item. Moreover, in a lot of countries, most people don't but smartphones fully upfront to own them, but pay monthly with their phone bill. So, its not $1k or $1.5k, but perhaps $50 more upfront compared to other high end smartphones and another $15 monthly surcharge on the phone bill. Doesn't seem sooo incredible that way, isn't it?
• TekMol 9y ago
  I don't get what it is about the iPhone that people are willing to pay a premium for. Is it all just in the marketing? I would not mind paying $1000 for a phone if it offered any additional value over my $200 Android phone. But I cannot see anything better in the form factor of the iPhone line. And for the software - I have an iPad and I hate the software. It is so restricted. You cannot even do basic tasks like download an mp3/pdf/whatever in your browser and then open it in the app of your choice.
  • fsloth 9y ago
    "You cannot even do basic tasks like download an mp3/pdf/whatever in your browser and then open it the app of your choice." While I agree with your general sentiment I can save and open PDF:s from safari to third party applications just fine on my IPad.
    • TekMol 9y ago
      How do you save it? I don't get any option to do that. Only options to directly open it in applications that are registered to open PDF files. That seems to save a copy to the directory of that application. Which is terrible messy and clunky way to deal with files imho. For MP3s I don't get any option other then to open them in Safari.
      • fsloth 9y ago
        "That seems to save a copy to the directory of that application" But that's different from being unable to save :) This is what I meant. I have not found a magic button to bypass the ios sandboxing. Google drive works almost as well for me since I use it anyway.
  • kk_cz 9y ago
    So, why did you pay a premium for iPad when Android tablet at roughly half the price would give you the same functionality? (btw I don't get it either. But I don't see anything special about iPad, hence my question)
• pdimitar 9y ago
  ...So? I knew plenty of people who buy a new Android, priced anywhere from $400 to $700, every year, more often than not it was once every 9 months even. So I might spend $1100 or so on the iPhone Pro / X / whatever the moniker is. But I'll use it at least 3 years. Annual cost of owning an iPhone makes it cheaper than almost any Android. Not everything is about upfront cost. iPhones get updated for 5 years and they don't start lagging in 8-12 months like almost all Androids do. If you don't bust it, you might sell it for 75-90% of its original cost even 3 years down the line. Mostly philosophical article without much economical substance.
  • stevoo 9y ago
    I disagree with this. Although the iPhones might get updated for 5 years that does not make them fast. Each update makes the older device slower which at a point it becomes unusable. A 3 year old device just cant compare with the increase in features, how a newer device can. But for Android, it all comes down to the provider. This has always been the issue. I have a Nexus 6 running 7.1 and working just fine. I could use it for another year if i wanted but it does show signals of getting old. People used to change iphone every year as they did with Android. I believe that this is coming to an end and people will keep there phones longer as they become much more expensive (X:1100+, note8:1050, etc) and the increase in hardware is not that massive any more.
    • pdimitar 9y ago
      We both have anecdotal evidence so we can disagree all week without each of us being right globally. I am yet to ever see a slow iPhone in my life though, anecdotal evidence or not. Maybe you were looking at iPhone 5 or 5S. From 6 and on, they are quite long-lasting and many people hold on to them for a long time without complaints. Nexus is not a good example from your side. It's more the exception than the rule. Have you looked at the wild landscape of most of Android land? Phones get abandoned in less than a year. That's the norm in Android. Nexii and Pixels are the outliers. EDIT #1: Nexus 6 should theoretically now be abandoned by Google in terms of new Android versions, same as 5X and 6P. Last two should have one more year of security updates though. EDIT #2: "increase in features" in smartphones hasn't been happening in a while. It's been mostly rebranding of a little bit more battery-efficient SoCs, at least in Android. Apple is showing gradual increase in single-core performance, and I can't deny that my Mi 6 (using Snapdragon 835) is snappy as hell. So IMO you're half-right: people will hold on to devices for longer since they're very expensive now, but there's another half: many people, me included, feel the smartphone hype is over and that the OEMs have nothing to show except flashier displays, maybe faster SoCs, and prettier outer shells. Thus I want to buy a longer-lasting device. And that ain't any device in Android, sadly. I am not a huge fan of Apple but the durability and high performance retention (the point you're questioning) seem to be an accepted fact, so I'll go with them.
• Havoc 9y ago
  Price - yeah fine whatever. My issue is I can't see the benefit I'm getting extra. My 7+ seems to be about the same really. Lifestyle wise this latest black rectangle is going to change literally nothing as far as I can tell.
• acjohnson55 9y ago
  $1k? Wow, they must have figured out a way to add the audio jack back! It'll be interesting to see how this works out. I'm in the minority amongst my social group as an Android user, but I can't imagine many of the iPhone users I know shelling out $1k. But I'm sure there's a mid-range model. Right?
  • moonbug22 9y ago
    It says something about your social group that you even know that fact.
• Friedduck 9y ago
  The $1k price might be easier to stomach if iPhone managed content as well as it used to. I've stopped using the apple ecosystem for photo + music management, and now find it isn't managing contacts well across devices any longer. For all the truly amazing capabilities the basics are lacking.
  • yladiz 9y ago
    I'm not sure about music, but what's wrong with the default Photos or Contacts apps? Contacts works fine for me, and Photos works very well considering I have nearly 9000 photos. Syncing over iCloud is also fine, between my phone and my laptop.
• hoorayimhelping 9y ago
  The thousand dollar iPhone is the BMW 7 series of iPhones. Apple at this point is constrained by their supply chain. They have the capacity to introduce new tech, but the tech isn't capable of being produced at the scale to put in a couple hundred million iPhones, so they put it into a more expensive phone and sell fewer of them. Then they put the tech that works into the regular iPhones a couple of generations later when the supply chain matures. Seems like a good long term strategy.
  • tosser350 9y ago
    I've always thought they should do a 10k+ iPhone. Plenty of elites would buy it as a status symbol even if the hardware really wasn't any different.
    • supermdguy 9y ago
      I've seen premium gold-covered "styled" iPhones being sold for thousands by third parties.
    • tonkworks 9y ago
      like a gold iwatch?
• christophilus 9y ago
  I highly recommend all web developers buy a crappy old phone like mine and use it often on their own sites. That would improve the mobile web tremendously, I think. (I'm still running a 4-year old, super under-powered Android phone. I shelled out $150 for it when it was brand-spanking new. That was unsubsidized.)
• AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  I'm wondering if Apple is going to come out with the equivalent of the Samsung DeX (1). I mean the new phone apparently has insane 6core SoC processing and wireless charging, which hints at a new kind of dock. If I can replace a MacBook with an iPhone X + Apple screen then I'm definitely going to do that. Price point is higher compared to a single phone, but lower compared to phone + laptop. Solves almost all of the portability issues and makes app dev easier - which is where they want to push people anyway. If they are going hard towards AR glasses, they need people to get used to having a single device for desktop and mobile. The glasses just become a peripheral at that point for early adopters. 1.http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/mobile-accessories/phones/dex-station---black-ee-mg950tbegus/ http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/mobile-accessories/phones/d...
• throw2016 9y ago
  There has to be some technology to justify the price or we revert to the old Nokia model of adding some RAM, upping the megapixels and releasing a new model and we know how that ended for Nokia. Brand can only take you so far. Nobody thought a company as entrenched as Nokia could suddenly disappear, and they did. The bigger issue is at the moment its just taking productive income from the economy that could drive real economic activity and job growth and dumping it in Apple's already inflated bank balance which they don't know what to do with.
• FussyZeus 9y ago
  > From the iPhone’s introduction a decade ago, Apple has always priced it as a premium product — a more refined and polished alternative to the legions of cheaper smartphones available in the market. And not only is it priced that way, thats actually what it is which is why in all likelihood I'm buying one tomorrow. Every Android I've ever used has felt like cheap shit in my hands, and works like crap after 10 months or so. My current iPhone is knocking on 3 years old and works as well as the day I took it out of the box.
• jondubois 9y ago
  What's wrong with people that they would pay $1000+ for a phone that is maybe only 5% better than a $200 one?
• skywhopper 9y ago
  The author of this article has soaked up the conventional wisdom about Apple's pricing. Yes, they don't sell cheap phones, and sure they make a healthy profit, but it doesn't then follow that the product is overpriced. The iPhone has always been an extremely high-quality product and has always been competitively priced versus comparable models from other phone makers. So why do they have the reputation of premium pricing? This $1000 iPhone X may be nearly as expensive as a Macbook Air, but that's entirely reasonable: it's a far more powerful and sophisticated computer in a much smaller package. Why would you expect it to cost less?
  • Yizahi 9y ago
    Not extremely. Merely high quality. Numerous cases with broken buttons even on brand new devices, wi-fi failure issues, gps failure issues. Yes, it is anecdotal cases but so are all others for different brands.
  • joezydeco 9y ago
    I'm not quite sure the $1K price for the X is Apple playing the Veblen game here. Gruber seems to hint that the OLED display is still single-sourced by Samsung and incredibly expensive to boot: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/09/06/samsung-oled-monopoly https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/09/06/samsung-oled-mo... The price may just be what it is until the price of the display comes down. Apple could also be trying to modulate demand because of the low display availability, but in the case of iPhone it will probably backfire and cause demand to increase.
• gigatexal 9y ago
  Is anyone planning on getting the phone at 1k?
  • YCode 9y ago
    Millions of people, most likely.
    • gigatexal 9y ago
      Any of us in HN though?
• rb808 9y ago
  The real expensive part in the US is the cell plan. Excluding the phone, the mainstream plans are $60+/mo with taxes. If you're paying $720 a year for cell service a $1k phone really isn't that much. (I would never pay $60/mo but lots of people do)
  • notsrg 9y ago
    Don't look at the prices Canadians pay (for less), you might choke on something.
  • furyg3 9y ago
    Wow, I forgot how bad it was. I have unlimited data, unlimited calling/sms, and (as of recently) free roaming in all EU countries for €30/month ($36), with T-Mobile in NL. So that's $432/year. A $1k iPhone on it's own would cost ~ $40/mo if you spread it out over 24 months.
• osteele 9y ago
  This reminds me of the arguments about whether popular bands should raise ticket prices on the one hand, or create the conditions for ticket scalpers on the other. Let's say Apple wants to be as innovative in hardware as a company like Essential – and therefore use components or manufacturing processes that aren't available at the scale of tens of millions per quarter. What should Apple do? * Not innovate. Leave this for smaller companies; wait for the price to come down. Risk: lose market, engineers, and ability to build competence, to other companies. * Release in limited supply at a low price; leave the surplus to rent seekers (scalpers). Risk: Leaves money on the table; insert middleman in relationship between Apple and (ultimate) customers. * Release in limited supply at a low price; attempt to control scalping by limiting sales per customer and locking phones to the original purchaser. Risk: Complicated mechanism that people will hate. * Charge a higher price, in order to set demand to supply. Risk: Bad image; magnifies effects of wealth inequality.
  • hyperpallium 9y ago
    An interesting analysis in general; though just for this specific case, this phone is more a different niche, than purely better. It's larger and heavier. There are technologies, like process nodes, that improve on several dimensions, and while I'm sure the military has access to "future" process nodea, the yields are just so dramatically low (and also therefore dramatically more expensive), that it's not really feasible for a mainstream product. The adgances it will have will be much less profound: more CPU cores, more GPU cores, maybe higher clocking, and a heavier battery to power it all. So, it's simply an attempt to broaden the product line, like the "plus" and (unsuccessful) "C" models. Also, given that Apple sold a $10,000+ watch, they probably don't mind charging more. Though, it'll be priced to sell (which that watch didn't). However, given that phones have overshot most people's needs (e.g. 5s iPhones are still selling well), Apple will soon need a killer app that requires all that power... like AR. Unfortunately, there's no indication that AR is a killer app. Who knows, maybe Apple will change that.
  • Alterlife 9y ago
    * Sell previous years iPhones at competitive prices In India, the SE was recently on sale for Rs. 18500 after discounts and cashbacks are accounted for... with budget alternatives.
• circa 9y ago
  I don't know why this is such a shock to everyone. The iPhone 7 Plus 256GB was not much cheaper than $1,000. I guess because most people don't go for that model? Even so I'm not surprised at all.
• scurvy 9y ago
  Why couldn't they build iPhones in Brazil? What happened there?
  • swah 9y ago
    I didn't even recalled they wanted to make iPhones here, but this article [1] basically says that "its more expensive than building them in China" and that some tax incentive laws were being disputed by the World Trade Orgnization. [1] https://www.tecmundo.com.br/iphone/118381-decisao-foxconn-iphone-deixar-fabricado-brasil.htm https://www.tecmundo.com.br/iphone/118381-decisao-foxconn-ip...
• davidf18 9y ago
  They wrote an entire article about iPhone users having to spend an extra 25 cents per day -- the approx $200 increase divided by 2 years. By far the biggest cost of using the iPhone is the cell phone service. I am on the Verizon (in NYC Verizon is the best provider with the most LTE spectrum) yearly upgrade program (Apple has their standard yearly upgrade as well) and I am currently paying about $1.35 per day for use of the phone. After 12 payments, I am allowed to upgrade to the next phone. It is not a "free" upgrade exactly, as I have to pay NYS sales tax, a $20 new phone fee, and a new $50 case or $80+20+50 or about $150 for the upgrade which makes the approx $1000 phone into a $1,150 phone or < $1.60 per day. For this, I am covered by the 1 year standard Apple iPhone warranty and the battery does not lose much charge in the one year of ownership. In my case, in NYC I need the better signal quality when in skyscrapers, better voice sound on phones (esp. the noise cancellation in very loud NYC), and better cameras for video and taking pictures of slides at conferences. My cell phone service including taxes (but without the handset) is about $3.50 per day.
• xutopia 9y ago
  No one has mentioned the possibility of using UCB-C as a docking station. Phones are already powerful enough for the kind of work an executive does (email, word processing, spreadsheet). Now if their computer is in their pocket and they can plug into any screen at all they don't need a computer at all. The progression of the smartphone is evidently to replace the personal computer and the iPhone X should be a step in that direction.
  • hammock 9y ago
    Google pixel has USB C for docking and is only $650...
  • TCM 9y ago
    I think the iPad pro is more targeted for the kind of work that an executive does. Docking stations / plugging into any screens don't seem like something that has been well thought out and I don't think that Apple's strategy right now is to market to that kind of audience.
    • SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
      It's sad that Windows totally had the opportunity to own and drive that kind of market but it never worked out for them.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    > The progression of the smartphone is evidently to replace the personal computer and the iPhone X should be a step in that direction. Yeah, I kept hearing the same thing about tablets till sales dropped off. I'll believe it when I see it.
• basseq 9y ago
  Two immediate thoughts: This is going to be for the hitherto-unavailable third tier of new iPhone: we'll have iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X. I expect this is referring to the X. Which may well only be offered in a 256GB configuration. A jet black iPhone 7 Plus in 256 GB is $969 today. So this might not be a huge increase for the X. I fully expect 8 and 8 Plus models to mirror current pricing. And second, we've seen this "high price" reporting with other releases, notably the Apple Watch IIRC. Reputable outlets were floating high prices, and Apple announced "normal" pricing at the event. Other comments here have talked about anchoring: this may be more of the same Apple marketing FUD.
• dep_b 9y ago
  I think Apple hit a point where producing an exclusive phone with top features in every department wasn't really possible anymore at their scale. We've seen them stuck at 16GB for a really long time simply because upgrading all phones to 32GB would consume another whopping 15% of the SSD market. OLED screens in that quality and format aren't produced in enough quantities to put on every iPhone - yet. But people expect an iPhone to be the best of the best given the price. So there's a new X line that will have all the best of the best and the regularly numbered ones below it will have more mainstream features / design and will be produced in greater numbers.
  • trimbo 9y ago
    > OLED screens in that quality and format aren't produced in enough quantities to put on every iPhone Apple's scale is amazing but I don't really get this observation. Is this is because Samsung has been shipping OLED at Apple-level volumes for years, so they've already sucked up most of the supply?
    • dep_b 9y ago
      Not every Samsung with an OLED screen gets the same OLED as the Note 8 and Edge 8 are getting of course. There are plenty of phones that have a much simpler construction similar to what Apple was doing with their LCD technology. And basically Samsung is not going to cut their own production to sell to Apple. Samsung is Samsung's preferred customer I imagine, unless the phone department seriously lowballs their offer.
    • ascagnel_ 9y ago
      It's that Samsung/LG don't have the production capacity to make OLED screens at the volumes Apple will need to put it on a mass-market phone. To give you an idea of the discrepancy: Samsung's two flagship phones (S8/S8 Edge) sold roughly 12MM in their first quarter of availability (April-June 2017), while the current iPhone models sold 40+ million units in their third quarter of availability (same time frame).
• tagurit 9y ago
  It's interesting how in this forum people are concerned more about functionalities that don't justify its price point. But not so much on the aesthetics which is what the regular consumer really cares about. For the average Apple customer, the bezel change is HUGE. It's enough to justify the 1k even though it's not an innovation or some crazy performance boost. People are definitely still going to buy it.
• eagletusk 9y ago
  The should just call it by it's price tag. iPhone $1k iPhone $1.2k iPhone $2k ...
• jasonmp85 9y ago
  This headline makes no sense. Apple has no $1k phone.
  • ovrdrv3 9y ago
    Keynote is tomorrow where it is rumored to be announced.
• iFelon 9y ago
  No mention of a cell phone pushing over the bar of what constitutes a felony in terms of dollar amount. I'm in no way for raising this limit further, but I also don't think stealing a cellphone should be a felony. Older articles, but they cover what I'm talking about: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/09/why-stealing-iphone-felony/qgTlkhQ8AnMS7OO7xtsWmI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/09/why-stealing-ip... http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/02/the-effects-of-changing-state-theft-penalties http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-brie...
• lisper 9y ago
  "The imaging system can then stitch the patterns into a detailed 3-D image of your face to determine if you are indeed the owner of your smartphone before unlocking it." So I pay an extra $300 to save me the trouble of putting my finger on the touchID sensor? That doesn't sound like a compelling value proposition to me.
• csomar 9y ago
  I already paid $1,000 for my iPhone 7+ though it would cost $869 if I was living in the US (I don't know though if the prices in the Apple site are pre-VAT). Apple next challenge is not making people pay $1,000 for an iPhone. People already do that. Apple next challenge is bringing globalization, breaking the VAT, and putting profits in safe havens away from the fiscal preys. People already pay thousands, dozens and hundreds of them for luxury. Apple upping its price might have the reverse effect: People line up to buy the highest price iPhone because it is not "accessible for everyone". Apple always got your back with a cheaper version but you really want the expensive one otherwise you are out of line. We are getting close everyday to the confrontation between IT giga-multi-nationals and the traditional countries/governments of the world. We are probably still too far from the real battle but everyday is showing more why these two are not friends.
• norea-armozel 9y ago
  I can't see myself buying another phone after buying an iPhone 6 in 2015. I just don't see a reason to replace it until the battery can't charge anymore. By then I don't have plans on getting an equivalent phone. Maybe something cheaper but I think purchasing phones every two years or the like is bad from an economical standpoint. I'd rather spend my money I'm better food than a fancier phone but I'm weird.
• lafar6502 9y ago
  iPhone has lost its glamour
• omnimus 9y ago
  From europe > many people have iphone. The iphone 7 plus costs around 1000usd here already. Amazingly many poeple have it including people i know that are making around 1000usd month. It is amazing, they dont even use apps, just for calling and facebook. I dont get it its like somebody in US buying it for 5000 usd. But it is changing. With companies like xiaomi putting up phones for 100usd that do the same for those people and look nice... I believe apple is going to be going down if they increase prices even more. These people dont want second class iphone. They want THE iphone. If they cant afford THE iphone they wont buy the shitty 500usd one. They might aswell buy the 100usd xaomi then. I think aple is not going right way with this.
• scarface74 9y ago
  I fully expect that the high end phone will start at $1000 but why is NYTimes publishing this story as if it news? Apple hasn't published the prices of the phone and for now, the whole article is based on speculation.
• acty1 9y ago
  Isn't this more of a statement of the USD purchasing power than anything else? I mean, when the first iPhone was released a decade ago, the USD had double the purchasing power. But thanks to printing money, we get crazy inflation. The latest iPhone only costs about $600 USD in 2007 dollars.