Yeah, that’s true. But it’s still quite common to find the jack on lower end models, so not quite luck needed at the moment. Give it a few years, though…
That’s not really a reasonable analogy. The Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 9 are both flagship phones with headphone jacks. The fact that the Samsung flagships have a headphone jack does actually seem to have become a bit of a selling point for them as well tbh. I have heard several people mention that the headphone jack was one of the deciding factors in going for a Samsung.
I agree - Although doesn’t this back up the theory that headphone jacks are a disappearing species?
Yep, I should have said “new phones” rather than just any old luck with any old phone.
This is the internet - I thought reasonable analogies weren’t allowed? 
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I think it’s a combination of things
- The competition is better, Android Phones are more attractive than ever.
- iPhone’s last a long time, people are still happily rocking the iPhone 6S and 6
- iOS 12 was designed around performance and that’s further improved the experience for people on older devices.
- Phones just aren’t very revolutionary anymore. It’s not just the iPhone XS that doesn’t feel like a leap forwards, nothing does. This year I said I’d buy either the iPhone or the Google Pixel, but neither had any stand out features to justify the upgrade
- The prices are too high, for all phones. Pixel 3 is too expensive, the Note 9 is too expensive, the iPhone XR, XS, XS Max are too expensive. It’s all gotten too expensive.
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Sigh, I remember the days when I could buy a flagship phone for £300 - £400!
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Same. Each year I basically sit and say do I want to switch back to Android, get a Pixel or do I want a new iPhone. Each year the new iPhone doesn’t warrant an upgrade and the Pixel isn’t good enough to warrant switching.
Plus the effort to switching is HUGE.
Contacts in iCloud, Calendar in iCloud (shared calendars with girlfriend) Photo’s in iCloud, shares notes in iCloud, shares reminders in iCloud, it’s endless.
Guess this is part of it too and I’m assuming the same for Android users…
Either way… apple making $5bn less than expected doesn’t mean the duck is dead yet.
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Google services work great on iOS. Switching back and forth is trivially easy.
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What google service does shared notes and shared reminders?
They’re doomed (again)
Google Keep.
I can see that it could replace notes but not reminders. It doesn’t do location or time based reminders.
Sorry is that for an entire note or an item in a list?
For example I have a list of household tasks I need to do and on each item I might put a time or a place against it to get this done
Yep the hot takes are rediculous, they’re not doomed.
Take a look one key metric: margin - this has stayed consistent for nearly 10 years (circa 35%) this suggests that even though hardware product prices have been rising over time - their margin remained the same. Why? The proportion of their income has been slowly switching to services (higher margin as opposed to hardware), this means that margin on hardware has actually been decreasing over time even though product prices are going up. Inflation, rising component costs and cost of manufacturing in China is the problem.
I’m of the mind that if Donald Trump wasn’t engaged in a trade war with China, Apple would never have a problem as significant as this. The proof will be when Apple issue their full Q1 results and you can see YoY changes for each region.
With regards to product prices, Apple needed to find the ceiling for an iPhone and it appears $1500 is the peak.
My hot take: their reliance on China for growth, revenue and manufacturing was their downfall in this quarter/last years, not rising product prices.
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Prior to Xmas the iPhone XR was discounted in Japan by $100.
In the US, you’d get up to $300 trading in your old iPhone (iPhone 7 plus to get full amount). In the UK, XRs were given away free on contracts.
The iPhone XR was the phone they predicted would sale in the bucket loads. It appears from news reports, they haven’t. The discounts also show they haven’t.
Given the discounts, it shows these phones are too expensive.
I think it’s a combination of a few things:
- the trade war between the US and China is definitely a factor - and which may become more or less significant depending on what happens this year
- smartphones have, I think, peaked in their current form. I have a OnePlus 5 and I usually upgrade on a two year cycle, which would mean an upgrade this year. But there’s little that’s compelling me to upgrade. The handset is still blindingly fast, fingerprint unlock is on the front of the handset (where I want it) and is the fastest I’ve ever experienced, the back is pleasingly metallic and it has great battery life and a headphone socket. An upgrade would force me to compromise on some of these things. More generically, I’m not sure that anything new in the current smartphone paradigm will break out of this - which is why I’m interested in things like folding phones.
- I think Apple might have become too reliant on the iPhone and is yet to find the next killer segment. We’ve had computers, laptops, music players and phones - what’s the next market for Apple?
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Self driving cars if you believe the rumours…
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That’s been off and on for years though, right? With the team expanded then laid off, and the model changing from an Apple car to Apple software to…?
(I might be wrong about all that, but certainly seems like it hasn’t found its feet 
)
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It’s a similar state of affairs with the iPad. I’m writing this on an iPad Air 2, that’s just over 4 years old and going strong (I just checked google’s product reviews and it scores 4.8/5 from over 11,000 reviews).
None of this makes Apple a weak company. The boom days might be over, but the company remains fundamentally strong.
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