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As an AAPL investor, I want Apple to raise prices for their top-of—the-line phones, otherwise the cheaper phones (like the one I purchased) will lower the avera

As an AAPL investor, I want Apple to raise prices for their top-of—the-line phones, otherwise the cheaper phones (like the one I purchased) will lower the average selling price. Of course people are not going to pay higher prices without getting something substantial in return. This is where Apple is lacking at the moment. The pace of innovation in both hardware and software has slowed down. There is plenty of room for improvement. EDIT Take a look at this video from Microsoft where they show how hover and squeeze gestures can dramatically improve the phone experience: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595564/microsoft-3d-touch-kinect-gestures-windows-phones https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595564/microsoft-3d-touc... This shows there is plenty of room for innovation, Apple just isn't innovating fast enough.

vatys 8y ago
Hover input on touch screens is cool tech but I’ve yet to see an implementation of it where it really added usability. More hidden UI just seems like more difficulty for average users. More hidden UI in a car seems like the absolute worst place to use such a hardware feature. Drivers should have their eyes on the road, not staring at the screen while they try to get their finger just the right distance to make some UI element pop up. Edit: the linked Microsoft demo is pretty cool, and could improve mobile devices, but is exactly what I was thinking should not be in a car control surface.
- joppy 8y ago
  Hover is not necessarily more hidden UI, but could actually go to making bits of phone UI that currently exists more discoverable. A personal gripe of mine is that press-and-hold on a button is a terrible way of discovering something new, you’re never sure if the button is just going to perform its default action (which is something you may not want to do, and without a readily-available “undo” key is kinda dangerous). Hover could go a long way to improving this.
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  I have no written source to back this up, but based on a conversation I had with an Apple engineer, the first version of the iPhone way back in 2007 could’ve supported hover. Steve Jobs personally nixed the idea as he felt it wasn’t intuitive and thus we are where we are today.
pdimitar 8y ago
There is a maximum amount of money people are ready to part with for status / stronger hardware / bigger screen / better screen / more storage / integrated experience / ecosystem / something else. And I believe Apple did hit that maximum back in November 2017. I spent 1400 EUR for my X as an early adopter so as not to wait 1-2 more months for sufficient stock in my country -- and gave the exact sum for my wife's X at the same day, so make those 2800 EUR in total -- about 13 months ago and it really tested my patience even though I am quite ready to invest solid money in good and reliable long-term tech (which mostly describes Apple's; I am also heavily eyeing the maxed out iMac Pro which sits at 14_000 EUR). I agree Apple -- and everybody else -- does little to no innovation in the smartphone sector but I don't feel that's the only factor. At certain point prices are so high that people refuse to buy and then do post-hoc rationalization. My wife's brother loves the idea of a bezel-less phone but he is not in a situation to spend the ~1000 EUR on an iPhone X or ~1500 EUR on an XS Max so he just said "screw that, it's not worth it". It seems that many others are doing the same. I don't necessarily disagree with you -- just adding that IMO there's a maximum price you should not test your loyal buyers with no matter how much can you sweeten the deal otherwise.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  €1400 is way beyond what I would even consider spending on a phone. It’s so utterly insane that I just cannot imagine how people justify buying one to themselves.
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    I spend many hours a day using my phone. More than I use my personal laptop, really (which was a lot more than EUR1400). Not quite as much as I use my work laptop, I suppose (c'est la vie because I like to eat and that requires money.) Consider it like buying an expensive bed and mattress because you use them an awful lot (20-30% of your life, pretty much, for most people.)
    - rb666 8y ago
      Eh it's not about how often you use something, it's about the added value of a 1400 Euro phone over e.g. an iPhone 8. You can still use an 8 often. I think it's more of a status symbol thing for most people (though they would not admit this).
Arn_Thor 8y ago
"isn't innovating fast enough".. How many people are going to go "well, I wasn't planning to upgrade just yet, but look at that gesture! I've got to have one now". The smartphone as a product has peaked for the moment. Apple's growth will eventually stop as it's tapped out all its markets. It has nothing to do with innovation.
- tanilama 8y ago
  It is coupled. The innovation is dwindling while Apple raises prices. So people will be more reluctant to switch, because 1000 dollars or north is a huge amount of money in any country, not something you could spend in a blink of eyes. Apple has a lot of opportunities to innovate outside of smartphones though. They can be a luxury version of Nintendo, innovating on the front of HCI, not repeating 'Thinner, Faster and Pricier' recipe every year.
  - Arn_Thor 8y ago
    People are already switching slower, and it is not because of the price (at least not in isolation.. the end of subsidized phones with phone plans did create a sticker shock across the board). Phones are now so powerful, especially iphones, that people have been holding onto them longer and longer for many years now. It is in response to that drop in sales that Apple had to raise revenue per sale or face a drop in overall revenues. Of course, they're postponing the inevitable, but in the meantime over the past few years Apple stockholders have benefited, and customers kept paying up. Apple has a smash-hit already in the Watch, which is an amazing technological achievement and a sales success. But nothing they can do measures up against the explosive growth of smartphones, so all their innovation will be overlooked in any case. If the complaint is that smart watches are too small of a product for Apple (not what I'm saying, but a lot of eggheads out there) then "a luxury version of nintendo" won't sell nearly well enough to matter at all.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Agreed. Even if there are innovations to be made they are either (a) held out deliberately to inflate future prices or (b) are not feasible, materially or financially right now or (c) just don't exist. But it doesn't help that Apple is trying to compensate for slower sales with higher prices. They are digging themselves deeper that way.
gehsty 8y ago
More ways to interact with the phone does not make for an improved user experience. One success of the iPhone is that regardless of what is happening a user can alway simply press the home button and be back at the home screen. I think one of issues with the new X phones is that the lose this. My mum / gran can use an iPhone because of this - they never feel intimidated or confused by it. Start to throw in new, undiscoverable interaction gestures and you start to lose this simplicity.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Quite interesting -- that was exactly the reason why I was wondering if I should gift my X to my mother when I decide to buy my next iPhone. And like you I feel it might be confusing. I miss more physical buttons. The first semi-smartphone devices were perfect. They had 6-10 physical buttons and still plenty of screen. Nowadays everything is gestures. :( With emerging tech like radar-like detectiong of gestures above the screen I feel this trend will become even worse.
Bahamut 8y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you consider innovation in software? There's numerous quotes out there across the spectrum about how what Apple is currently doing in software and hardware is unprecedented, even from Microsoft execs. I suspect people like to throw a lot of airy claims about terms like innovation without understanding what exactly does that even mean vs. what do they actually mean, although we'd need less hand-waviness and more well-stated gripes to be sure.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Innovation would be to finally integrate a high-quality OCR right into your builtin apps. It would be to allow scheduled clearing of 4G traffic numbers at your mobile bill rollout (now I have to manually do it every time I receive an SMS that my megabytes have been reset for the next month). Innovation would be to have your WebView apps and the native Safari browser share the session cookies of the relevant domain -- I am tired of Amazon links not opening in the app but in an embedded WebView (and every app I receive links to products has their own instance). ...Hell, these are not innovations. They are baseline expectations, IMO anyway. Let's not even mention AppStore which is an awful experience overall. I literally type the exact name of an app and AppStore cannot find it! Discoverability is a joke. I like Apple's ecosystem better for reasons I won't list so as not to make this comment huge. But it's IMO undeniable that Apple has been coasting for a while now. They should take a few hints from Android, the now dead Windows Mobile, and Sailfish OS. I don't demand Iron Man level of UI and usability with holographics and intuitive blend of real world and VR interaction. I demand a more modern and smooth experience though. And even on a very strong device like the iPad Pro 10.5" and an iPhone X, many Apple apps still manage to lag and take several seconds to respond. This is inexcusable.

vatys 8y ago

Hover input on touch screens is cool tech but I’ve yet to see an implementation of it where it really added usability. More hidden UI just seems like more difficulty for average users. More hidden UI in a car seems like the absolute worst place to use such a hardware feature. Drivers should have their eyes on the road, not staring at the screen while they try to get their finger just the right distance to make some UI element pop up. Edit: the linked Microsoft demo is pretty cool, and could improve mobile devices, but is exactly what I was thinking should not be in a car control surface.

joppy 8y ago
Hover is not necessarily more hidden UI, but could actually go to making bits of phone UI that currently exists more discoverable. A personal gripe of mine is that press-and-hold on a button is a terrible way of discovering something new, you’re never sure if the button is just going to perform its default action (which is something you may not want to do, and without a readily-available “undo” key is kinda dangerous). Hover could go a long way to improving this.
jsjohnst 8y ago
I have no written source to back this up, but based on a conversation I had with an Apple engineer, the first version of the iPhone way back in 2007 could’ve supported hover. Steve Jobs personally nixed the idea as he felt it wasn’t intuitive and thus we are where we are today.

pdimitar 8y ago

There is a maximum amount of money people are ready to part with for status / stronger hardware / bigger screen / better screen / more storage / integrated experience / ecosystem / something else. And I believe Apple did hit that maximum back in November 2017. I spent 1400 EUR for my X as an early adopter so as not to wait 1-2 more months for sufficient stock in my country -- and gave the exact sum for my wife's X at the same day, so make those 2800 EUR in total -- about 13 months ago and it really tested my patience even though I am quite ready to invest solid money in good and reliable long-term tech (which mostly describes Apple's; I am also heavily eyeing the maxed out iMac Pro which sits at 14_000 EUR). I agree Apple -- and everybody else -- does little to no innovation in the smartphone sector but I don't feel that's the only factor. At certain point prices are so high that people refuse to buy and then do post-hoc rationalization. My wife's brother loves the idea of a bezel-less phone but he is not in a situation to spend the ~1000 EUR on an iPhone X or ~1500 EUR on an XS Max so he just said "screw that, it's not worth it". It seems that many others are doing the same. I don't necessarily disagree with you -- just adding that IMO there's a maximum price you should not test your loyal buyers with no matter how much can you sweeten the deal otherwise.

Aeolun 8y ago
€1400 is way beyond what I would even consider spending on a phone. It’s so utterly insane that I just cannot imagine how people justify buying one to themselves.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  I spend many hours a day using my phone. More than I use my personal laptop, really (which was a lot more than EUR1400). Not quite as much as I use my work laptop, I suppose (c'est la vie because I like to eat and that requires money.) Consider it like buying an expensive bed and mattress because you use them an awful lot (20-30% of your life, pretty much, for most people.)
  - rb666 8y ago
    Eh it's not about how often you use something, it's about the added value of a 1400 Euro phone over e.g. an iPhone 8. You can still use an 8 often. I think it's more of a status symbol thing for most people (though they would not admit this).

Arn_Thor 8y ago

"isn't innovating fast enough".. How many people are going to go "well, I wasn't planning to upgrade just yet, but look at that gesture! I've got to have one now". The smartphone as a product has peaked for the moment. Apple's growth will eventually stop as it's tapped out all its markets. It has nothing to do with innovation.

tanilama 8y ago
It is coupled. The innovation is dwindling while Apple raises prices. So people will be more reluctant to switch, because 1000 dollars or north is a huge amount of money in any country, not something you could spend in a blink of eyes. Apple has a lot of opportunities to innovate outside of smartphones though. They can be a luxury version of Nintendo, innovating on the front of HCI, not repeating 'Thinner, Faster and Pricier' recipe every year.
- Arn_Thor 8y ago
  People are already switching slower, and it is not because of the price (at least not in isolation.. the end of subsidized phones with phone plans did create a sticker shock across the board). Phones are now so powerful, especially iphones, that people have been holding onto them longer and longer for many years now. It is in response to that drop in sales that Apple had to raise revenue per sale or face a drop in overall revenues. Of course, they're postponing the inevitable, but in the meantime over the past few years Apple stockholders have benefited, and customers kept paying up. Apple has a smash-hit already in the Watch, which is an amazing technological achievement and a sales success. But nothing they can do measures up against the explosive growth of smartphones, so all their innovation will be overlooked in any case. If the complaint is that smart watches are too small of a product for Apple (not what I'm saying, but a lot of eggheads out there) then "a luxury version of nintendo" won't sell nearly well enough to matter at all.
pdimitar 8y ago
Agreed. Even if there are innovations to be made they are either (a) held out deliberately to inflate future prices or (b) are not feasible, materially or financially right now or (c) just don't exist. But it doesn't help that Apple is trying to compensate for slower sales with higher prices. They are digging themselves deeper that way.

gehsty 8y ago

More ways to interact with the phone does not make for an improved user experience. One success of the iPhone is that regardless of what is happening a user can alway simply press the home button and be back at the home screen. I think one of issues with the new X phones is that the lose this. My mum / gran can use an iPhone because of this - they never feel intimidated or confused by it. Start to throw in new, undiscoverable interaction gestures and you start to lose this simplicity.

pdimitar 8y ago
Quite interesting -- that was exactly the reason why I was wondering if I should gift my X to my mother when I decide to buy my next iPhone. And like you I feel it might be confusing. I miss more physical buttons. The first semi-smartphone devices were perfect. They had 6-10 physical buttons and still plenty of screen. Nowadays everything is gestures. :( With emerging tech like radar-like detectiong of gestures above the screen I feel this trend will become even worse.

Bahamut 8y ago

Out of curiosity, what do you consider innovation in software? There's numerous quotes out there across the spectrum about how what Apple is currently doing in software and hardware is unprecedented, even from Microsoft execs. I suspect people like to throw a lot of airy claims about terms like innovation without understanding what exactly does that even mean vs. what do they actually mean, although we'd need less hand-waviness and more well-stated gripes to be sure.

pdimitar 8y ago
Innovation would be to finally integrate a high-quality OCR right into your builtin apps. It would be to allow scheduled clearing of 4G traffic numbers at your mobile bill rollout (now I have to manually do it every time I receive an SMS that my megabytes have been reset for the next month). Innovation would be to have your WebView apps and the native Safari browser share the session cookies of the relevant domain -- I am tired of Amazon links not opening in the app but in an embedded WebView (and every app I receive links to products has their own instance). ...Hell, these are not innovations. They are baseline expectations, IMO anyway. Let's not even mention AppStore which is an awful experience overall. I literally type the exact name of an app and AppStore cannot find it! Discoverability is a joke. I like Apple's ecosystem better for reasons I won't list so as not to make this comment huge. But it's IMO undeniable that Apple has been coasting for a while now. They should take a few hints from Android, the now dead Windows Mobile, and Sailfish OS. I don't demand Iron Man level of UI and usability with holographics and intuitive blend of real world and VR interaction. I demand a more modern and smooth experience though. And even on a very strong device like the iPad Pro 10.5" and an iPhone X, many Apple apps still manage to lag and take several seconds to respond. This is inexcusable.