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This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of

This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing. We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable, and it’s not even something like the charging cable is crazy awesome and charges your phone instantly, it’s that it’s now just the generic port that everything from moms vibrator to your laptop to every other god damn phone on the planet uses. And this absurdly mundane and completely valueless “update” has moved you to take a perfectly good $1000 plus phone and junk it to buy a brand new $1000+ phone, just so it can share a charging cord with a used vibrator?!?! And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, which generated profits that make the rockefellers and gettys look poor, can do. No wonder everyone’s so in love with chat GPT, we are awed by our absolutely stunning mediocrity.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Imagine how the timeline feels where Apple wasn't forced to change the port.
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  Exactly like this, just with a lightning port.. weee
komali2 3y ago
Makes me think of the Foundation series, and the late stage of the Galactic Empire, when science and culture both were stagnated. Cool new iphone feature: USBC! Cool new movie: It has Ironman and Spiderman in it!
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Makes me think of entitled people who expect magical R&D to materialize out of thin air and land in their lap per an arbitrary unit of time of 1 calendar year.
  - komali2 3y ago
    Perhaps apple should not have developed a proprietary standard for the purpose of forcing people to stay in a walled garden and proprietary ecosystem. Also, trillion dollar company lol, arguably the most powerful R&D force on earth and in history. Also... they did pull it off so...
Keirmot 3y ago
I fail to understand your point. What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old? Do you think the and thing when you buy a new dishwasher, a couch, a chair? That it’s mediocre? Smartphones are not the future anymore, there’s people starting university soon that always had one, and never lived in a world without the iPhone. Also, besides arguably the first few iPhones, Apple never distinguished itself from the competition with the technology it uses, but by the quality of its offering, which is why bending phones or poorly designed antennas are more important for them than having the newest tech available half a second after being commercially viable - that’s what Android OEMs do to differentiate. I know that for me, personally, having a new iPhone with USB-C is a must have feature, which is why I have my iPhone 11 still chumming along.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  > What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old? The ability for it to replace a macbook air if you add a keyboard/mouse/screen for one. How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro? There's still so much they can do. Even the previous iPhone had lots of great actual new features. Always-on OLED display. Action Camera mode. Auto focus capable front-facing camera. Dynamic island. 2000 nit brightness capable screen. Satellite SoS. Car crash detection.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    This isn’t a change in pace though is it? The iPhone has had a tick tock cadence forever.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    > How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870546/iphone-15-pro-max-film-spatial-video-vision-pro https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870546/iphone-15-pro-ma...
    - andy_ppp 3y ago
      How can this not be rubbish? Your eyes are on average 6.3cm apart and these cameras on your phone appear to be about 1.5cm… I don’t believe software can bridge that gap so I suspect it’ll look very strange when viewed in 3D…
chris222 3y ago
The new system on a chip is an insane innovation but it’s “under the hood”.
- eklitzke 3y ago
  10% faster P cores, E cores are the same speed. Some updates to the neural core thing that no one cares about. How is that insane?
  - liprais 3y ago
    how about ray tracing and playing RE 4 on your phone ?
    - geon 3y ago
      Resident Evil 4, from 2005?
      - ubercow13 3y ago
        No, Resident Evil 4 from 2023.
    - trompetenaccoun 3y ago
      How large is the overlap between people who care a lot about playing games on their phones and those who can afford buying the latest $1000 smartphone every once in a while? Because I'd think the former are mostly teenagers.
      - liprais 3y ago
        I guess by games you mean console games,mobile games are huge now. I have a steam deck and bought all nintendo and sony portables in the past,would be great if I can play some on my iPhone,which is always available to me.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Probably best to reserve judgement until independent benchmarks come out, but the new GPU cores _may_ be quite a big deal. The GPU core used in the last few gens of iPhone chip (and the M1/M2) is now quite old, and was actually supposed to be replaced last year. This one should be expected to be a significant leap forward (though, again, don't believe Apple on this, wait for independent tests).
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
You're working overtime to figure out reasons to be aggravated by literally nothing. You want "innovation"? Then be wowed by Vision Pro's lenticular display, sensor fusion, low latency and high resolution and what not. We care about phone charging cables because smartphones are no longer the toys we got wowed by 15 years ago. They're now an indispensable and highly functional tools we use every day to do actual work. And guess what? We charge them every day. If you want to experience child-like wonder and be wowed by big movements, move into a field that's developing. Smartphones are a developed field, and there's nothing wrong with that. Also, iPhone & iPhone Pro are offering some really decent upgrades. 48MP camera (that actually works, and not just says "48MP" like many others) prism optical zoom-in 5x and so on. Lightweight titanium is also a good improvement in day to day usability and comfort. And this "charging cable" for iPhone Pro also offers 10x faster data transfer which matters to many of us.
devjab 3y ago
I’m not GP but I would personally love for the smart watch to replace the smartphone so that I don’t have to carry one around. I know that’s sort of possible in some places, but it isn’t where I live as many of the Apps necessary to interact with society require a smartphone. I’n sure the blame for this belongs more on the app makers than the device manufacturers, but I think it’s still an answer to what your asking.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  I don't think there is a blame to put on app-makers. The Apple Watch is a companion-product by design. Apple's target-group for the Watch is every iPhone user, they know that with patience they can sell an Apple Watch to every iPhone user out there. So there's little incentive for Apple to create a Watch that doesn't require an iPhone, and little reason for app-developers to assume you own a Watch but NO iPhone...
  - gvurrdon 3y ago
    I agree. The Apple Watch is very useful, but I'm not happy about having to buy an iPhone to go with it. With luck the Pixel watches might become good enough to replace it.
- chipsa 3y ago
  The problem is: how well can you interact with a phone the size of a watch? I mean, for some things, yeah, it works fine. But other things? There's a reason why phones have been getting larger (no iPhone Minis anymore). Even Android side, expect Google to always assume there's a companion phone available, because the interface for adding in info will continue to be terrible, simply due to form factor constraints.
  - matwood 3y ago
    Watch projects a screen and gestures.
    - 3y ago
pflenker 3y ago
Your recollection of the past might be skewed. Approximately 10 years ago we also celebrated cables - the switch from the 30 pin cable to lightning. Stuff like that has always been there and celebrated, but it fades in memory over time.
- matwood 3y ago
  And even then, people complained and said it was a money grab from Apple to force people to buy new cables.
  - TheKarateKid 3y ago
    Well don't forget that was Apple's original intention with Lightning, including getting a commission on every cable sold. Remember when iOS would give a warning about "unsupported accessories" every time you plugged the phone into a non-Apple/MFi cable or charger? The backlash from the public as well as pushback from accessory manufacturers had Apple quietly remove the warning and drop their plans.
- TheKarateKid 3y ago
  Well at the time, there was something to celebrate for a new cable. Existing cables had huge connectors (30 pin) and in the case of USB micro had a life of maybe 1-2 years max from the pins and/or teeth wearing out. The problem is that USB-C has nothing useful to offer over Lightning. Apple could've updated Lightning to support faster data if they wanted, and even then most people rarely use their cables for data anymore because of iCloud and AirDrop. So this time around, it really is nothing to get excited over. I will even say it's a downgrade, because I have yet to experience a USB-C port that feels as strong and satisfying to plug in/out as Lightning.
enumjorge 3y ago
The funny thing is the reason Apple is switching to usb c is that they were forced to by EU regulators.
achow 3y ago
To add fuel to your fire: This USB C does not even support fast charge, it is same as last year's 20W, whereas now some phones (if not vibrators) claim to support 100W fast charging over USB-C.
- pbronez 3y ago
  This is what I’m interested to see. Lightning was limited to USB2 (?) speeds, USB-C offers a much bigger menu of capabilities. How many of them does the iPhone 15 utilize? I suspect not much… this generation seems like “fine, EU, we’ll swap the connector.” It’ll take another product design cycle to take advantage of the new possibilities it offers (beyond continuing to sell iPhones in the EU)
jve 3y ago
They had to comply with EU regulations, thus forced to make USB-C: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/07/all-smartphones-to-use-usb-c-charging-ports-from-autumn-2024-says-eu https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/07/all-smart...
- KingMob 3y ago
  It's a little ironic they tout how they're moving to the USB-C standard when they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to it.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    by evil, inefficient and corrupt beurocrats, no less! oh the humanity!
  - pbronez 3y ago
    Haha yeah. Their language was hilarious “we’ve been doing this for years guys! Now you can charge your iPhone with the same cable as your Mac and iPad!” I guess they have to spin it. Good on the EU pushing the issue.
  - matwood 3y ago
    The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along? They've included a usb-c to lightning cable in the box for awhile. Apple remembers the 30 pin transition and the customer complaints so they have tried to make this move a bit more staged. Even then, I've already seen tons of complaints from non-tech users about having to buy new cables.
    - KingMob 3y ago
      > The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along? Definitely not in phones, because Apple is the laggard in this case. Many Android phones were already USB. Also, there was that whole thing where the EU wanted to cut own on e-waste and mandate USB-C as a common charging standard, and Apple fought it tooth and nail.
kakadu 3y ago
> This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. You must live in quite an interesting world then. The fact that people are running to a megacorp's aid because a bad EU forced them to quit being anti-consumer is staggering. So staggering in fact, that these commentators might not even comment in good faith and in fact be PR pawns. I'd really want to believe the latter because someone that gets so intimate with their phone brings out a sadness in me.
- boringg 3y ago
  Woah your comment is out there. Most people on this thread are honestly commenting on a highly visible product that people interact with heavily every day - lots of opinions as a result. It isn't some higher level conspiracy.
  - generic92034 3y ago
    Since when a conspiracy is needed for companies covering social media? If they did not, they would be led by incompetents.
thih9 3y ago
> And this absurdly mundane and completely valueless “update” (…) What’s valueless to one can be valuable to another. > And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, (…) can do. Looks like yes. Note that when they launched iphone, they kept upgrading ipod. Plus, they’ve already announced a new and innovative product; are you saying they should stop upgrading older ones?
barrkel 3y ago
I've never seen a camera in a phone better than a $500 camera, never mind $1000. They are way more useful (portable, always present) and do lots of cool processing to get usable images in low light etc., but image quality is not competitive with a good lens on even an ancient DSLR. Shallow depth of field in particular - phones generally do it with software, and it's always jarring how fake it looks.
coldtea 3y ago
>Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing. I also remember when the WWDC crowd and the buying public got excited for mundane evolutionary shit, like incremental iPod updates, like the introduction of an rudimentary color screen...
kranke155 3y ago
The idea that computerised phone upgrades are a metric for the progress of our society (instead of hmm reducing hunger and suffering in the world) is revealing What else do you really want from this technology ?
bluescrn 3y ago
At this point it's the degradation of the non-user-replaceable battery that's driving upgrades. Having to get a phone to an Apple store, let alone mail it in for a 'battery service' and have no phone for a few days, is a surprisingly big obstacle to just replacing the battery and keeping an older phone running for another few years.
- m4rtink 3y ago
  Not to mention lack of software updates for many otherwise perfectly fine Android phones + lack of drivers/specs/image signing/locked bootloaders making it hard for community to take over.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Yeah, my last Android experience was a Pixel C tablet, not a bad bit of hardware, but abandoned by Google with broken GPU drivers (https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71522801?pli=1 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71522801?pli=1) (Not a hardware problem, older OS versions had been OK, and I eventually got it working with LineageOS for a while)
SergeAx 3y ago
But there's actually nothing to improve in a modern smartphone. Not even better CPU and more RAM and storage, because we don't need them. The only nice to have thing would be a better battery life, but faster CPU and more RAM will only make battery life shorter.
- coffeeling 3y ago
  The new folding types are actually a meaningful improvement.
  - SergeAx 3y ago
    I am not sure. They are bulky and the crease is quite visible.
tim333 3y ago
>Tech is such an shitty abyss right now I'd say tech is on a roll just now, but the action is in AI not in smartphones. I mean phones are good but I was checking out the iphones 12, 13 and 14 the other day and it's a job telling which is which - they are all good.
matwood 3y ago
Most people don't update every year, and when you start looking at replacing a 2+ year phone the camera updates alone are usually well worth it. The Pro is adding 3d video capture for the upcoming vision pro. With that said, the smart phone of today is a solved problem. The industry has converged on a slab of glass form factor, and while it plays at the edges with foldable or flip phone styles they really aren't that popular. Most technology advances are evolutionary, to expect something else is unrealistic. IMO, the most interesting thing from Apples presentation was the focus on gestures for the watch. When will the Vision Pro get small enough or the watch gain capability to project a screen is the question, because then we will have moved beyond the phone form factor.
- Cymrukicks 3y ago
  You're exactly right, I think the watch form factor is where I see it going aswell. I can't understand why companies are throwing millions into developing a light weight Pipboy as the next big think. A phone is mostly a content consumer at this point. Sell me screen freedom with voice as the primary interface for the OS.
wsatb 3y ago
This argument has been made for at least 10 years now and I don’t get it. No one is awed by a USB-C port, it’s just convenient. Maybe it’s the fact that Apple has these giant events every year, that people think they’re going to get something revolutionary every year. Or maybe we were just spoiled that we lived through the 90s and 00s, but this is crazy talk. If revolutionary tech was released every year, what makes it revolutionary?
justin66 3y ago
> This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. > We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable Your comment is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this generation of Apple, its fanboys, and tech fanboys more generally. People are not wrong to want what they want. People are not wrong to appreciate features they find useful because these features simplify their lives. The charging cable matters. It's a fucking phone. The convenience surrounding use of the charging cable will matter more to people than some fiddly little improvement to the camera or bandwidth or some thing that's not central to being a phone.
spicymaki 3y ago
> Tech is such an shitty abyss right now... You sound spoiled. How often would you like a technical revolution? I could honestly use a break. We just got off of the crypto train(supposed finance revolution) and are now jumping on to the AI train with LLMs threatening the future of work (correctness be damned). You actually do not need to upgrade the iPhone today. Usually you have about 7 or so years of software support.
Octabrain 3y ago
I must say: I don't agree with the tone of your comment, but I fully agree with your overall argument.
fnord77 3y ago
> like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras there's never been a phone camera better than a DSLR/ILC today's phone cameras are not better than 10 year old DSLRs 7.5 x 5.7mm sensor vs 24mm x 36mm
dang 3y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485328.
zomg 3y ago
@fieldcny -- i <3 this comment. wish i could upvote it a million times! ;D

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Imagine how the timeline feels where Apple wasn't forced to change the port.

worthless-trash 3y ago
Exactly like this, just with a lightning port.. weee

komali2 3y ago

Makes me think of the Foundation series, and the late stage of the Galactic Empire, when science and culture both were stagnated. Cool new iphone feature: USBC! Cool new movie: It has Ironman and Spiderman in it!

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Makes me think of entitled people who expect magical R&D to materialize out of thin air and land in their lap per an arbitrary unit of time of 1 calendar year.
- komali2 3y ago
  Perhaps apple should not have developed a proprietary standard for the purpose of forcing people to stay in a walled garden and proprietary ecosystem. Also, trillion dollar company lol, arguably the most powerful R&D force on earth and in history. Also... they did pull it off so...

Keirmot 3y ago

I fail to understand your point. What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old? Do you think the and thing when you buy a new dishwasher, a couch, a chair? That it’s mediocre? Smartphones are not the future anymore, there’s people starting university soon that always had one, and never lived in a world without the iPhone. Also, besides arguably the first few iPhones, Apple never distinguished itself from the competition with the technology it uses, but by the quality of its offering, which is why bending phones or poorly designed antennas are more important for them than having the newest tech available half a second after being commercially viable - that’s what Android OEMs do to differentiate. I know that for me, personally, having a new iPhone with USB-C is a must have feature, which is why I have my iPhone 11 still chumming along.

squeaky-clean 3y ago
> What kind of feature do you to be excited to see in a product that is 16 years old? The ability for it to replace a macbook air if you add a keyboard/mouse/screen for one. How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro? There's still so much they can do. Even the previous iPhone had lots of great actual new features. Always-on OLED display. Action Camera mode. Auto focus capable front-facing camera. Dynamic island. 2000 nit brightness capable screen. Satellite SoS. Car crash detection.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  This isn’t a change in pace though is it? The iPhone has had a tick tock cadence forever.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  > How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870546/iphone-15-pro-max-film-spatial-video-vision-pro https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870546/iphone-15-pro-ma...
  - andy_ppp 3y ago
    How can this not be rubbish? Your eyes are on average 6.3cm apart and these cameras on your phone appear to be about 1.5cm… I don’t believe software can bridge that gap so I suspect it’ll look very strange when viewed in 3D…

chris222 3y ago

The new system on a chip is an insane innovation but it’s “under the hood”.

eklitzke 3y ago
10% faster P cores, E cores are the same speed. Some updates to the neural core thing that no one cares about. How is that insane?
- liprais 3y ago
  how about ray tracing and playing RE 4 on your phone ?
  - geon 3y ago
    Resident Evil 4, from 2005?
    - ubercow13 3y ago
      No, Resident Evil 4 from 2023.
  - trompetenaccoun 3y ago
    How large is the overlap between people who care a lot about playing games on their phones and those who can afford buying the latest $1000 smartphone every once in a while? Because I'd think the former are mostly teenagers.
    - liprais 3y ago
      I guess by games you mean console games,mobile games are huge now. I have a steam deck and bought all nintendo and sony portables in the past,would be great if I can play some on my iPhone,which is always available to me.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Probably best to reserve judgement until independent benchmarks come out, but the new GPU cores _may_ be quite a big deal. The GPU core used in the last few gens of iPhone chip (and the M1/M2) is now quite old, and was actually supposed to be replaced last year. This one should be expected to be a significant leap forward (though, again, don't believe Apple on this, wait for independent tests).

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

You're working overtime to figure out reasons to be aggravated by literally nothing. You want "innovation"? Then be wowed by Vision Pro's lenticular display, sensor fusion, low latency and high resolution and what not. We care about phone charging cables because smartphones are no longer the toys we got wowed by 15 years ago. They're now an indispensable and highly functional tools we use every day to do actual work. And guess what? We charge them every day. If you want to experience child-like wonder and be wowed by big movements, move into a field that's developing. Smartphones are a developed field, and there's nothing wrong with that. Also, iPhone & iPhone Pro are offering some really decent upgrades. 48MP camera (that actually works, and not just says "48MP" like many others) prism optical zoom-in 5x and so on. Lightweight titanium is also a good improvement in day to day usability and comfort. And this "charging cable" for iPhone Pro also offers 10x faster data transfer which matters to many of us.

devjab 3y ago

I’m not GP but I would personally love for the smart watch to replace the smartphone so that I don’t have to carry one around. I know that’s sort of possible in some places, but it isn’t where I live as many of the Apps necessary to interact with society require a smartphone. I’n sure the blame for this belongs more on the app makers than the device manufacturers, but I think it’s still an answer to what your asking.

rickdeckard 3y ago
I don't think there is a blame to put on app-makers. The Apple Watch is a companion-product by design. Apple's target-group for the Watch is every iPhone user, they know that with patience they can sell an Apple Watch to every iPhone user out there. So there's little incentive for Apple to create a Watch that doesn't require an iPhone, and little reason for app-developers to assume you own a Watch but NO iPhone...
- gvurrdon 3y ago
  I agree. The Apple Watch is very useful, but I'm not happy about having to buy an iPhone to go with it. With luck the Pixel watches might become good enough to replace it.
chipsa 3y ago
The problem is: how well can you interact with a phone the size of a watch? I mean, for some things, yeah, it works fine. But other things? There's a reason why phones have been getting larger (no iPhone Minis anymore). Even Android side, expect Google to always assume there's a companion phone available, because the interface for adding in info will continue to be terrible, simply due to form factor constraints.
- matwood 3y ago
  Watch projects a screen and gestures.
  - 3y ago

pflenker 3y ago

Your recollection of the past might be skewed. Approximately 10 years ago we also celebrated cables - the switch from the 30 pin cable to lightning. Stuff like that has always been there and celebrated, but it fades in memory over time.

matwood 3y ago
And even then, people complained and said it was a money grab from Apple to force people to buy new cables.
- TheKarateKid 3y ago
  Well don't forget that was Apple's original intention with Lightning, including getting a commission on every cable sold. Remember when iOS would give a warning about "unsupported accessories" every time you plugged the phone into a non-Apple/MFi cable or charger? The backlash from the public as well as pushback from accessory manufacturers had Apple quietly remove the warning and drop their plans.
TheKarateKid 3y ago
Well at the time, there was something to celebrate for a new cable. Existing cables had huge connectors (30 pin) and in the case of USB micro had a life of maybe 1-2 years max from the pins and/or teeth wearing out. The problem is that USB-C has nothing useful to offer over Lightning. Apple could've updated Lightning to support faster data if they wanted, and even then most people rarely use their cables for data anymore because of iCloud and AirDrop. So this time around, it really is nothing to get excited over. I will even say it's a downgrade, because I have yet to experience a USB-C port that feels as strong and satisfying to plug in/out as Lightning.

enumjorge 3y ago

The funny thing is the reason Apple is switching to usb c is that they were forced to by EU regulators.

achow 3y ago

To add fuel to your fire: This USB C does not even support fast charge, it is same as last year's 20W, whereas now some phones (if not vibrators) claim to support 100W fast charging over USB-C.

pbronez 3y ago
This is what I’m interested to see. Lightning was limited to USB2 (?) speeds, USB-C offers a much bigger menu of capabilities. How many of them does the iPhone 15 utilize? I suspect not much… this generation seems like “fine, EU, we’ll swap the connector.” It’ll take another product design cycle to take advantage of the new possibilities it offers (beyond continuing to sell iPhones in the EU)

jve 3y ago

They had to comply with EU regulations, thus forced to make USB-C: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/07/all-smartphones-to-use-usb-c-charging-ports-from-autumn-2024-says-eu https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/07/all-smart...

KingMob 3y ago
It's a little ironic they tout how they're moving to the USB-C standard when they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to it.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  by evil, inefficient and corrupt beurocrats, no less! oh the humanity!
- pbronez 3y ago
  Haha yeah. Their language was hilarious “we’ve been doing this for years guys! Now you can charge your iPhone with the same cable as your Mac and iPad!” I guess they have to spin it. Good on the EU pushing the issue.
- matwood 3y ago
  The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along? They've included a usb-c to lightning cable in the box for awhile. Apple remembers the 30 pin transition and the customer complaints so they have tried to make this move a bit more staged. Even then, I've already seen tons of complaints from non-tech users about having to buy new cables.
  - KingMob 3y ago
    > The company that released a computer with only a single usb-c port wasn't moving towards usb-c all along? Definitely not in phones, because Apple is the laggard in this case. Many Android phones were already USB. Also, there was that whole thing where the EU wanted to cut own on e-waste and mandate USB-C as a common charging standard, and Apple fought it tooth and nail.

kakadu 3y ago

> This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. You must live in quite an interesting world then. The fact that people are running to a megacorp's aid because a bad EU forced them to quit being anti-consumer is staggering. So staggering in fact, that these commentators might not even comment in good faith and in fact be PR pawns. I'd really want to believe the latter because someone that gets so intimate with their phone brings out a sadness in me.

boringg 3y ago
Woah your comment is out there. Most people on this thread are honestly commenting on a highly visible product that people interact with heavily every day - lots of opinions as a result. It isn't some higher level conspiracy.
- generic92034 3y ago
  Since when a conspiracy is needed for companies covering social media? If they did not, they would be led by incompetents.

thih9 3y ago

> And this absurdly mundane and completely valueless “update” (…) What’s valueless to one can be valuable to another. > And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, (…) can do. Looks like yes. Note that when they launched iphone, they kept upgrading ipod. Plus, they’ve already announced a new and innovative product; are you saying they should stop upgrading older ones?

barrkel 3y ago

I've never seen a camera in a phone better than a $500 camera, never mind $1000. They are way more useful (portable, always present) and do lots of cool processing to get usable images in low light etc., but image quality is not competitive with a good lens on even an ancient DSLR. Shallow depth of field in particular - phones generally do it with software, and it's always jarring how fake it looks.

coldtea 3y ago

>Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing. I also remember when the WWDC crowd and the buying public got excited for mundane evolutionary shit, like incremental iPod updates, like the introduction of an rudimentary color screen...

kranke155 3y ago

The idea that computerised phone upgrades are a metric for the progress of our society (instead of hmm reducing hunger and suffering in the world) is revealing What else do you really want from this technology ?

bluescrn 3y ago

At this point it's the degradation of the non-user-replaceable battery that's driving upgrades. Having to get a phone to an Apple store, let alone mail it in for a 'battery service' and have no phone for a few days, is a surprisingly big obstacle to just replacing the battery and keeping an older phone running for another few years.

m4rtink 3y ago
Not to mention lack of software updates for many otherwise perfectly fine Android phones + lack of drivers/specs/image signing/locked bootloaders making it hard for community to take over.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Yeah, my last Android experience was a Pixel C tablet, not a bad bit of hardware, but abandoned by Google with broken GPU drivers (https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71522801?pli=1 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/71522801?pli=1) (Not a hardware problem, older OS versions had been OK, and I eventually got it working with LineageOS for a while)

SergeAx 3y ago

But there's actually nothing to improve in a modern smartphone. Not even better CPU and more RAM and storage, because we don't need them. The only nice to have thing would be a better battery life, but faster CPU and more RAM will only make battery life shorter.

coffeeling 3y ago
The new folding types are actually a meaningful improvement.
- SergeAx 3y ago
  I am not sure. They are bulky and the crease is quite visible.

tim333 3y ago

>Tech is such an shitty abyss right now I'd say tech is on a roll just now, but the action is in AI not in smartphones. I mean phones are good but I was checking out the iphones 12, 13 and 14 the other day and it's a job telling which is which - they are all good.

matwood 3y ago

Most people don't update every year, and when you start looking at replacing a 2+ year phone the camera updates alone are usually well worth it. The Pro is adding 3d video capture for the upcoming vision pro. With that said, the smart phone of today is a solved problem. The industry has converged on a slab of glass form factor, and while it plays at the edges with foldable or flip phone styles they really aren't that popular. Most technology advances are evolutionary, to expect something else is unrealistic. IMO, the most interesting thing from Apples presentation was the focus on gestures for the watch. When will the Vision Pro get small enough or the watch gain capability to project a screen is the question, because then we will have moved beyond the phone form factor.

Cymrukicks 3y ago
You're exactly right, I think the watch form factor is where I see it going aswell. I can't understand why companies are throwing millions into developing a light weight Pipboy as the next big think. A phone is mostly a content consumer at this point. Sell me screen freedom with voice as the primary interface for the OS.

wsatb 3y ago

This argument has been made for at least 10 years now and I don’t get it. No one is awed by a USB-C port, it’s just convenient. Maybe it’s the fact that Apple has these giant events every year, that people think they’re going to get something revolutionary every year. Or maybe we were just spoiled that we lived through the 90s and 00s, but this is crazy talk. If revolutionary tech was released every year, what makes it revolutionary?

justin66 3y ago

> This is honestly the saddest thing I’ve read in years, maybe even decades. > We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable Your comment is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this generation of Apple, its fanboys, and tech fanboys more generally. People are not wrong to want what they want. People are not wrong to appreciate features they find useful because these features simplify their lives. The charging cable matters. It's a fucking phone. The convenience surrounding use of the charging cable will matter more to people than some fiddly little improvement to the camera or bandwidth or some thing that's not central to being a phone.

spicymaki 3y ago

> Tech is such an shitty abyss right now... You sound spoiled. How often would you like a technical revolution? I could honestly use a break. We just got off of the crypto train(supposed finance revolution) and are now jumping on to the AI train with LLMs threatening the future of work (correctness be damned). You actually do not need to upgrade the iPhone today. Usually you have about 7 or so years of software support.

Octabrain 3y ago

I must say: I don't agree with the tone of your comment, but I fully agree with your overall argument.

fnord77 3y ago

> like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras there's never been a phone camera better than a DSLR/ILC today's phone cameras are not better than 10 year old DSLRs 7.5 x 5.7mm sensor vs 24mm x 36mm

dang 3y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485328.

zomg 3y ago

@fieldcny -- i <3 this comment. wish i could upvote it a million times! ;D