If phones had gotten a Magnuson Moss style intervention 10 years ago, the platform dynamics would be totally different today.
They are lagging behind the Asian companies on the actual equipment: Chinese phones have far better battery capacity, camera sensors and screens are both sourced from competitors, Mediatek has caught up to them on the SoC side of thing. People here are musing the Air might be a foldable prototype, something Asian brands have been releasing and improving for, what, five years now.
On top of that, they have been struggling on the software side of things for quite some time. Stability is so-so. AI features don't really work. Plus, they pretty much stopped delivering new features in the EU.
To me it looks like the only thing Apple has going for it is their brand image in the USA and their locked down ecosystem. Might be fine to keep revenue steady but doesn't bod well for growth.
I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable. I doubt I will be the only one making the switch.
I think Apple users are in denial regarding the current state of the market. Your comment is the second one apparently unaware of where Mediatek and Qualcomm currently stand compared to Apple.
"I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable." - perhaps you're letting your situation affect your bias...
The Dimensity 9500 scores above the A19 Pro in AnTuTu 10 and Multicore GeekBench 6. A19 Pro has better Single Core Geekbench 6 results but that only around 10%. The Dimensity 9500 GPU scores are also better but that was already the case for the previous generation.
Apple used to have a significant lead on the SoC side of things. That's over. Both Mediatek and Qualcomm are competitive nowadays.
And before people come back explaining to me that it hardly matters because the A19 Pro is more power efficient, my current Chinese phone battery is 1.5 times larger than the one in the Iphone 19 Pro Max and I have more than two full days of use between charges, which are obviously significantly faster than on the iPhone.
[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/mediatek-dimensity-950...
Stability is fine, iOS dev is pleasant which is important, AI stuff is meh (notification summaries are great though) and Siri is getting Gemini. And the thing about the EU isn’t remotely true. Opposite if anything, since EU brought us usb-c and alternative app stores.
And the lock-in thing isn’t to be discounted. Emotional and practical as well. Once your files are on iCloud, photos as well, universal clipboard built in, AirPods automatic transfers, instant MFA fill, some apps lack android versions, the devices just geling… switching would for me mean dropping my watch as well, and losing out on a bunch of Mac side features. Androids can’t merely be “as good” or even slightly better, they would need to utterly kick iPhone's ass for years and years to even get me contemplating a switch.
To be fair, a nicer, more expensive, more reliable windows laptop would also have been an option.
Though I guess if they did like Google and updated a lot of OS components through the App Store (which I agree they should) then you could have security updates for most stuff without major UI updates that slow you down, that would be cool.
They'll (try to) charge the most they can to maximise the profit
Anyway you can't exactly pull a longer lasting battery out of thin air
I don’t know if intentional but I enjoyed the pun about the iPhone Air, here.
Everything must end after all; but I get wildly different answers when I ask that question to people around me. Some think it’ll happen in <10 years as other platforms like glasses take over, others will say it’s gotta be many decades away given how much the iPhone is a cash cow for Apple and they’ll milk it as long as they can.
FWIW, the first year without a new iPod introduced was 2011, and the product line was discontinued altogether in 2022.
As long as Samsung, pixels, and potentially global attempts by Xiaomi in the near future are able to compete, they’ll need to stay current.
Will never happen while Tim Cook is CEO.
Steve Jobs:
- iPod
- Phone
- internet communicatorIn the same way that Macbooks are not going away for the time being (I mean, unless they get a CEO that's even more of a bean counter – but I digress)
I suspect the iPhone will be more like the Mac than the iPod.
Looking back, other than the insane media coverage, when was the last spectacle really? To me the iPhone sort settled down with the iPhone 5, providing only minimal improvements in terms of actual usage since then.
My desktop audio interface plugs right in an iPhone (USB-C to C), no hub or dongle needed, and provides audio in/out, 5-pins midi in/out, microphone preamp, etc.
If it comes to the flexibility of improvising a jam session with inexpensive gear, we are in a much better place today than 10 years ago when phones had headphone jacks. And I say that as someone who uses wired headphones extensively and carries a 3.5mm dongle everywhere.
Then again, you have to realize that your use-case is almost a rounding error. There just can’t be that people, as a percentage, that have that need and it makes sense (to me) to optimize for the largest pie slice and let dongles/accessories cover the gaps for everyone else.
>With the old devices a lightning to usb converter was needed
So it wasn't for free. You still had to get dongles.
Personally, I just need an audio interface to plug in a guitar, a headphones and speakers into my iPad. I need to buy something, but nothing that I wouldn't have had to buy with a PC either.
With the capabilities they showed they have for slimming parts down I’d be much much more interested in more battery capacity and a smaller iphone, a new mini.
Also look at the thinness, weight of iphone 6s and compare it to air. You will be suprised.
The main paint points about foldable is a — duh — folding screen and a hinge. And neither are in air.
The idea is that the folding phone would be essentially 2 Air’s* with a hinge between them.
* possibly/probably thinner, but the Air serves as a “how thin can we make this since we need to improve our ability to make thin phones/components to accomplish a folding phone”. A sort of “you have to walk before you can run”-type thing. At least that’s how I see it.
Air is thicker than ipad
mgh2•2mo ago