My work phones are typically on a 4-5 year cycle. I’m currently carrying a 12 or 13 pro. I would have upgraded early for USB-C with that phone, but MagSafe is good enough.
I compare this to when I had an 3G and the 4 came out. The gap between the two was so huge that I upgraded quickly. Reminded me of how quickly PCs evolved in the 90s.
With 4G, you could actually do something quickly.
I miss the SE but the 13 mini is really nice too. It's a shame because the SE is still perfectly capable of running most software I use on a phone, but that software has just gotten more inefficient over time.
In that sense they are very bad customers because they won't upgrade for social status reason or just novelty. They actually need to come up with something that is worthwhile, which is pretty hard. That being said, I'm pretty sure many of those users would upgrade if they could keep the small format and make it more reasonably affordable by removing most of "useless" stuff. It seems like they tried that with the air (no multiple cameras, no multiple speakers) but they made it too big and went with thinness for feeling points. They could have just kept it reasonably sized (under 6") and designed the internals in the same way while keeping it flat but not too thick.
I think Apple is a bit lost because their design focus too much on looks/feelings and social status points. They lack the focus that Apple products used to have, this is what made them interesting: deceptively simple in presentation but actually providing everything that you need without going crazy on the gimmicks.
As it is, one wonders why he should go with an iPhone. They are just chasing specs sheet points, trying to maximise the amounts of stuff they can put on the phone in order to create the appearance of "value". At this game they get destroyed by competitors like Samsung and even more the Chinese. Before, one could argue for an iPhone because of the CPU lead or the software but nowadays none of those things really matters or can even be considered an advantage.
Apple will keep selling lot's of iPhone because they are still somewhat the "hip" brand and people really don't like to change habits. But they are going to need to provide more value in the long term. Since the high-end doesn't meaningfully evolve anymore, brands have started a price war and Apple will definitely need to adapt if it doesn't want to have its crown stollen. In the US they have some time, but I think they are already losing ground in the EU and China has clearly stopped caring about their devices.
I'm kind of the opposite, I would never want to go back to Touch ID. It's so nice that you can set your notifications to be private by default, but the contents will be revealed when you glance at the phone.
The new phone is FaceId ioty is much less reliable than touch id. With touch it just fails if I have wet hands or in cold weather with gloves, faceId fails in many places.
Much better than having to pull it out, hold in in a way that it can see my face, then swipe up, then wait for the stupid animation at the top of the screen to finish and the actual unlock to occur and then finally be able to use the device.
So I didn't go 11 years on two models, more like 7 years or so. But I'm definitely not on the two-years-and-upgrade plan.
I’ve also had it in a case the whole time, if I opened a box and found this thing I don’t think I’d be unhappy. Other than the inevitable gunk that gets in the speakers and the charging hole, it could be new…
I guess it is a race between battery health (80%) and update incompatibility, to see what will kill the thing.
Not an Apple product user, but my wife and kids are, and... install the OS upgrade? That pretty much bricked 2 of our phones and a friend's as well.
Recently I dropped my phone (while in a case) and now there's a black spot on the screen.
Stuff like this. I live a life between a lot of DIY work and software dev, so I'm physically probably rougher on it than most, but also a heavy user of the technology too.