The strap and bracelet are both really nice though, do recommend if you aren’t very price sensitive.

Yeah, no one you know has that problem. For the people for whom it's a problem, it's a problem! You can dismiss them and say well they shouldn't be like that, or that they're being crazy, but at the end of the day, even after you've called them crazy and don't care about them, they're still them, and they still have to deal with a mouse that doesn't work for them. They still have to deal with the problem. Severe untreated ADHD means poor time management, low executive function, and zero impulse control. This means waiting until right when the project is due to start working on it, this means emotionally the user is panicking, so having to sit still and let it charge is physically painful.

Yes, neurotypicals don't have this issue. Good for them! Apple isn't the problem user's therapist, that user can't access healthcare anyway, and it's their problem, not yours.

The charging point on the bottom of the mouse is fine.

I don't own one, so I genuinely don't know, but when are you supposed to charge it then? I turn my laptop on when I start working, and I turn it off and slip it in my bag when I stop. My coworkers all seem to do the same. There is no time where the computer is on but I don't want to use the mouse. I have never charged my Logitech trackball while not also using it.

This is more like an ancient and near universal practice being applied to a modern tool, rather than a totally new thing in itself.

Maybe he's amortizing them.

He says they've lasted ten years, so that's $50/year.

If they last another ten, that's $25/year.

Oh, great. Now I've invented Pants-as-a-Service.

But also, quality has diminishing returns in basically every category. At the low end, it's extremely efficient to improve the quality of your product and charge a bit more. At the high end, you can't make any more inexpensive moves to set yourself apart, so you use higher end materials, fabrication methods, and workers.

- A button that just "clicks". Most pants I usually owned had a traditional pants button. Those more expensive ones had buttons that just "clicked". Away goes the worry about a button falling off while you are on the go. - Pockets with hidden zippers: My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.

There are more "features" but those are the important ones. The most important feature is just the material that is used. I barely feel it. Also the company that makes those pants makes other things as well. I ordered a lot of cloths by now and the amazing thing is that everything they make fits me perfectly. I don't know how they do it… When I usually buy pants I have to try on like 10 pants to find one that fits. Even if I pick the "correct" size.

I don't think Steve Jobs went shopping for pants. Nor do many of the people who buy this sort of garment. They either have an assistant who buys things for them, whose goal is to keep them happy and not blow a predetermined budget, or they go to a store and sit in a nice suite where a personal shopper suggests things to them. In either scenario the price of individual items probably don't even get a mention.

It depends on how much you earn. I don’t mind spending tens of thousands on Loro Piana cashmere because it’s really nice, but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial.

Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.

A few years ago I too would’ve considered $500 for pants to be absurd, at this point I just go to a tailor and pay slightly more than that but save tons of time in the long term and always have perfect fitting pants. The time savings alone are tremendous, after getting a pair fitted properly I can just order new ones whenever I need without having to spend hours going through shops looking for the right pair of pants.

Someone outside IT might say, why pay for a Macbook when you can buy a $100 Chromebook? Why use Vim or Emacs when you can use Notepad/TextEdit (though those all cost the same!).

That said, our current degree of inequality and the particular way it is distributed seems to be unusual and remarkable. But pointing to someone having a hard time is, IMO, not a critique of that.

I'm sure expensive pants have their benefits but no matter how much money I have, I will always baby expensive things, and it's very inconvenient to baby clothes (e.g. must be dry cleaned, can't use a washer or dryer, can't risk getting stains on it). There are good reasons why dads gets their clothes from Costco.

(This teminds me of a show I once saw where various design students were given the task to design things. Philippe Starck was the judge. One of the students made a iPhone cover and Starck almost blew a gasket. I don't remember exactly what he said when he saw it. But he pointed out that the iPhone itself was a beautiful design so defacing it with an ugly piece of plastic was just a horrific waste of resources.

He also said something about objects having to deserve to exist -- though that was probably in a talk he gave at some point. Where he pointed out that his famous Alessi sitrus press was a good example of a pointless object that shouldn't exist. At least it looked good, but it was a pretty poor sitrus press).

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/10/1116769827/the-story-of-steve...

iPhone 3GS

Galaxy S3

Sony XZ1 Compact

iPhone SE 2016

iPhone SE 2020

iPhone SE 2022

Unihertz Atom

The problem is that everyone believed Tim Cook when he claimed that this is a failure.

It's all relative.

If Google sold five million iPhones Mini it would be considered a smash hit. But because it's Apple it's considered a flop because of the ridiculous sales numbers of their other models.

My prediction is that the age of AI and LLM assistance will make tiny devices the norm. Like those AI pins. Like Siri inside AirPods. Like Meta's AR glasses. But it seems that Apple is losing the race here. They lost their edge when it comes to developing new user interface paradigms.

EDIT: [1] Bloomberg claims 10-15% return rate, which would be massive: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-18/apple-... (for comparison, Galaxus reports 2% as normal for Smartphones and <5% for Meta's Quest)

With this phrasing, does it feel like iPhone owns its user?

Ooops ?

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/03/iphone-16e-sales-lag-be...

Looks like the market did like the SE size.

Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.

Some people clear still want those small phones, just not enough for Apple's profit margins.

No - call it what it is. They are catering to the largest market segments and ignoring the smaller segments who desire smaller phones.

Reasoning as to why is another thing, but it doesn't negate the existence of the segment who does want one.

Of course everyone has a different version of what they consider crappy but bad battery life has got to be at the top of most people's crap-o-meter

The biggest issue is that it was introduced in 2020 when many people were in lockdowns. A phone's portability was not as important, and people mainly using their phone at home on the couch likely preferred large screens more than usual.

The second issue is that the screens used slow pulse width modulation for dimming and could appear flickery for some users.

Finally, battery life was uncompetitive. Sony Xperia Compact models introduced years earlier had larger batteries. My guess is accepting a tiny bit more thickness would solve this problem.

Are they, though?

In my experience the smaller phones are almost always substantially worse products: they have several gigabytes less RAM, usually half the storage of the alternatives, often lack features like wireless charging, have a slower CPU, have a worse camera, and in general are made using cheaper materials.

We don't know what the market wants, because the market was never able to make a fair choice. It wasn't "big phone vs small phone", it was "big full-featured phone vs shitty watered-down small phone" - no wonder people "chose" for the big phones.

They’re purses you can wear that also tend to make you look better.

They’re friggin’ great, and even the largest smart phones easily fit their hip pockets.

No more keys poking you through jeans pockets. No more sitting on your wallet. Even room for a smallish paperback book.

We never should have moved away from them. They’re a utility garment.

I would love a smaller phone that doesn't kill my pants...

New pro max fits perfectly fine in all my dressier trousers, it is rather big for some joggers though. Especially with Cuccinelli joggers it’s hard to get the phone to reliably stay in the pocket because they’re just not deep enough, so the top of the phone sticks through the opening.

The very easy solution to this has been to just buy joggers with reasonably sized pockets, Lululemon does not have this problem for example.

(I'm not associated with Fjallraven, I just enjoy this bag and think it makes the functionality of the Apple Pocket look even more ludicrous in comparison.)

But I have kids, and am less willing to compromise on camera quality than I am size.

I’d pay the same price for a smaller phone if the camera specs (and ideally battery life—go ahead and make it a little thicker, they’re too thin anyway) were the same as the larger phones, but they’re not.

I bet those kinds of differences are what do it for a lot of folks. They’re like me and would prefer smaller, all else being equal—but all else is typically not equal, even compared to standard iPhones and not the ultra-high-end ones.

    > it costs $229

Surely it's satire! looks around in amazement

Which still feels outrageous for what is basically a knitted scarf.

When the iPhone Air was just another huge phone...but thinner...smh. Apple should put up some page to check interest level in a smaller phone, and with enough interest, go manufacture it. If it is more expensive because economies of scale don't work out, but they create one that is small yet powerful, that's what I would buy at premium, because apparently compactness is a luxury.

In the tech world, this is a laughable proposition to most people even at $22.90 (though an order of magnitude more palatable at that price).

In the fast fashion world, this is pretty typical pricing for a seasonal trendy item with a "premium" brand/designer attached. Of course, that's predicated on the trend actually taking off, which isn't guaranteed. But all this social media activity around it in the tech circles is certainly boosting it's visibility to people in the fast fashion world that have iphones, which - going out on a limb here - wouldn't surprise me if it were a not-insignificant number.

Besides, at this price point vs what it is and what it costs to manufacture, even if it "flops" it's unlikely to be a big expense to write off.

Whether or not this tarnishes the Apple brand by shear ridiculousness of it remains to be seen, but Apple's general strategy in the post-Jobs era seems to be "Enshittify, just not as much/fast as everyone else and people wont want to leave even if they complain because we're still not as bas as everyone else"

i would hate to be you.

EDIT: or perhaps your phone "helpfully" autocorrected something wrong, as mine did.

I'm not sure there's a sure crossover of big numbers.

'If someone doesn't spend money irrationally like I spend money irrationally its bad'

There is indeed a blind spot.

see also apple watch hermes $500 watch straps (https://www.apple.com/shop/watch/bands/apple-watch-herm%C3%A...)

or (non-apple) LV purses, $5000+ https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/women/handbags/all-handba...

or LV phone strap, "Contact Us" https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/products/monogram-phone-s...

Mysteries abound.

>thing >:(

>thing, Japan :O

Those apps have always been illegal in China. Of course, one could say Apple should not operate in China (and this is perhaps true), but they cannot both operate there and break the law.

It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.

> In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff.[85] On October 30, Cook publicly came out as gay in an editorial for Bloomberg Business, saying, "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."[86] While it had been reported in early 2011 that Cook was gay,[87][88] at the time, Cook tried to keep his personal life private

I feel like Tim Cook should be a man of his words and try to actually help the community he is proud to be in but I am sure that investors might not be happy but that just goes on to show that maybe even some CEO's could be puppets of shareholders and can be forced to do things solely for profit where their heart might not lie.

I think that another point is that shareholders can also be puppets of CEO's in the case of Elon musk 1 Trillion $ deal shows that imo

I feel like we live in the times where morality can be side-lined for profit and be celebrated. The whole idea why even people can be puppets of each other could be because they get profits and power and influence because of it (basically money most of the times)

But what power do those CEO's have if they can't stand for what they think is right or educate themselves on these matters.

Food for thought.

> virtue was not convenient at the time

Maybe we live just in such times.

The iPhone is a Chinese product. China ultimately controls whether or not the iPhone exists. No place else on earth can manufacture 20,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7/365.

Making two hundred million devices of the iPhone’s complexity and quality is not a trivial matter, and takes tens of thousands of skilled (and experienced) workers. Almost all of those people are Chinese, in China, subject to Chinese law. Apple cannot meaningfully fight Chinese law.

“sit comfortably” is a big stretch here. I imagine it must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.

His community are elites and money.

Has it been used in an Apple product announcement before? My search is imperfect, but I actually can't find an example (on their /newsroom subdomain).

As recently as two months ago, with the Airphone announcement, they weren't doing this:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/introducing-iphone-ai... ("Introducing iPhone Air, a powerful new iPhone with a breakthrough design")

> "The 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max will be available in Canada, China mainland, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the U.S."

Start with "do the right thing" and progress from there.

Apple CEO meets with the US president.

No, this is Apple being confident that the USA will drop Taiwan and that this and that siding with China is the "responsible" thing to do.

China does not have that power over Apple. China can threaten Apple but they have already diversified their manufacturing to other countries so China does not have a strangle hold on the supply line.

My man, the US and China are more or less the exact same here with the exception of forever wars.

Climate? China pollutes like crazy, and so does the US. Colonialism? Maybe not in the same vein but China does engage in actions to other nations, such as Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that could be classified as colonialism. Fascism? Well yeah both countries are pretty much openly fascist right now. Support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide of over a hundred thousand people? Yeah the US and China are both complicit there. In fact, in China, you're speaking about the regime itself, with context to the ongoing genocide of Uyghur people.

Personally, I feel like america still has (had) hope with zohran mamdani but after the recent american shutdown, I would consider democratic party to be an extension of republican party or not doing anything radical except bernie,aoc, zohran and some other people.

I feel like America could have a hope to swing whereas china doesn't imo.

although, I feel like what is happening is that people made (short term?) decisions earlier generations earlier which lead us to where we are today where any country over-all needs a radical change as both europe and america and a lot of other countries need to radicalize what they are doing to give hope to the youngsters

Personally I feel like we shouldn't care much about US or chinese products but rather the ideologies of the product creators if we are worried about things and I think this is one of the reasons I love open source so much.

Xinjiang. They put people in camps and take extensive efforts to prevent births, to eliminate the Uighur population over time.

I guess it's OK — I'm European too, for example — but it does seem like you're doing it to imply that your views are somehow (at least relatively more) popular among, or representative of, well, Europeans. But now that we're making such massive generalisations, I'd claim that well-educated English-speaking Europeans are often likelier to be more familiar with the views and internal debates among Americans than those of many of their fellow Europeans, and that you're probably no exception.

As for your comment, had you not addressed it to 'you Americans', I'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a pretty standard-issue American Left (or 'Progressive') rant, perhaps somewhere from the younger and more identitarian part of that crowd, for example (despite some of the quasi-tankie undertones). While I'll admit that scoffing at things like pro-life policies and/or American poverty is certainly easier and more common throughout the political spectra in (Western) Europe, I'd say your cringe-inducing bothsidesism with USA and China falls closer to the crackpot left camp in Europe as well.

Europe contains multitudes, and undoubtedly for some but not all, up until now at least, it has been a bit too easy to comfortably observe and judge things for so long as a world-political bystander from under the US nuclear umbrella, typically further from the Russian border too — whether you were an insular French with casual contempt for all things 'Yankee', a German atomic-phobic pacifist (or worse, a far-right, Pro-Putin knuckle dragger) from that 'European powerhouse' heated with Russian non-renewables, or even a Swede from the world's leading moral superpower, or something like that, anyway... ;)

Greater Israel, Greater Italy, Greater Germanic Reich oh wait I lost the point, I guess any connections to irredentism are purely coincidental.

Push back, as in this thread, can change which hierarchies are accepted and which aren't.

In particular, the use of "Greater China" normalizes corporate acquiescence to Beijing's explicitly revisionist policy preferences.

Taiwan is an independent nation. It isn't lost. And all free nations should intervene whenever the right to self-determination of another is threatened.

Say hi to the chairman for me.

Is it off-topic to talk about the adversarial role of tech companies in a potential war, one that would be devastating to many of us? About the entanglements of their supply chains? Have I truly, in your judgement, derailed this thread away from curious discussion? Because, this subthread looks to me comparatively thoughtful (if mildly heated), while the more narrowly-construed topic of discussion is a polyester fashion accessory.

To paraphrase Anakin Skywalker: "from my point of view, it's the iPhone Pocket that's generic and uncurious".

Not to mention, "number of lights" or "ability to communicate through the air" has no real bearing on its value, clearly.

That's why the Romans could never make huge advances, they didn't understand the fundamentals. They knew using coal to make swords gave them better, harder edges, but they found it by raw accident, not knowing that the iron and carbon were combining atomically.

With this you don’t even get the designer in the name.

Plus, I can see spending money for things that are nicer or specially designed. There is a huge quality difference between a Loungefly bag made out of synthetic material and a Coach bag of leather (or even Louis Vuitton, although that is a big step up in price). But this iPhone bag isn’t that- 3D knitting isn’t even that special, you could just as easily put a cheap Android phone in this bag, and I don’t think it’s going to be any more durable than a moderately priced crossbody or small purse.

On the other hand, if I did make one for myself (which I won't - one purse is enough) it would probably have a 2-color brioche stitch or something like that for more visual interest.

It's a crappy handbag, and it's just for a phone.

It looks like they had to use models to advertise it because they couldn't use "everyday people" in "everyday situations" to advertise because it looks like it would be garbage in that scenario.

Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?

Like, if you were doing this as an April Fools joke post, what would you even change?

I remember the iPod socks. Now make them bigger. Now stretch them out a bunch. Now make it look a little more like Borat’s speedo.

Now charge like 7x-10x what the iPod socks cost.

If the first place I had seen this was not a direct link to apple.com I too would’ve thought this was a complete joke.