My take is that it's like a fashion accessory. People buy Gucci for the brand, not the material or comfort.
Rich people ask for the latest most expensive iPhone even if they're only going to use WhatsApp and Instagram on it. It's not because of privacy or functionality, it's simply to show off to everyone they can purchase it. Also to not stand out within their peers as the only one without it.
As another content said: it's not an argument, it's a fact here.
I have an iPhone so I guess I qualify as a rich person by your definition. I am also a software engineer. I cannot state enough how bogus that statement is. I've used both iPhone and Android, and recent flagships. iPhone is by far the easiest one to use. Speaking in more objective terms, iPhones have a coherent UI which maintains its consistency both throughout the OS and over the years. They're the most dumbed down phones and easiest to understand. I recommend iPhone to all my friends and relatives.
There's obviously tons of people who see iPhone as a status item. They're right, because iPhone is expensive and only the rich can buy them. This doesn't mean iPhone is not the best option out there for a person who doesn't want to extensively customize his phone and just use it.
Yes, by pure statistics you are probably rich compared to everyone else. The average software developer salary is way bigger than the average salary for the entirety of the US. Let's not even mention compared to the rest of the world.
Sure, some people pick up the iPhone because they like the specs, or the apps, or whatever else. That's why I said the majority picks it up for status, not all. But keep in mind nobody's judging the iPhone's specs or capabilities here. We're talking about why people buy it.
Ask any teenager why they want an iPhone. I'd be very surprised if even one said it's because of privacy. It's because of the stupid blue bubble, which is a proxy for status.
I'm pretty sure if Apple released the same phone again with a new name and design, people would still buy it. For the majority, it's not because of features, ease of use, specs, etc: it's status.
> iPhone and Android, and recent flagships. iPhone is by far the easiest one to use. Speaking in more objective terms, iPhones have a coherent UI
It’s not about if you’ve used android, it’s about if you’ve beeen poor-ish or stingy
To some people those are luxuries- the most expensive phone they buy is a mid-range Motorola for $300 with snapdragon 750g or whatever. They run all the same apps after all, they take photos.
Its not an argument, just ask why people lust after the latest iPhones in poor countries. They do it because they see rich people owning them. Unless you experience that, you won't really understand it.
The cheapest point of entry is absolutely not comparable. The cheapest new iPhone on apple.com is $429. The cheapest new Samsung on samsung.com is $199 (They do have a phone listed for $159, but it's button says "Notify Me").
Granted, you may have been leaning very heavily on the dictionary definition of "comparable", in that the two numbers are able to be compared. However, when the conclusion of that comparison is "More than twice the price", I think you should lead with that.
Keep in mind, the iPhone SE is using a 3 year old processor, the Samsung A15 was released 5 months ago with a brand new processor.
According to various sites, the Mediatek Dimensity 6100+ is a 6nm update to a core that was released 3 years ago (Dimensity 700 on a 7nm). It's 5-10% faster, likely due to the update from 7 to 6nm, as the cores are the same and run at the same speed. It contains an updated bluetooth chipset (from 5.1 to 5.2) and supports a larger max camera. The camera on the A15 is well below the max size of the previous chipset, however, the increased camera bandwidth should ensure that the camera feels snappier (a common complaint on low-end phones). The process improvement should increase efficiency as well, however, there are not benchmarks that are able to test this.
It's fashion and the kids are hip. But there is an endless void of Apple haters here who want to see it burn. They have nothing in common with 99.9% of the customer base.
I was thinking about this for a while, the problem is not about apple, it’s the fact that the rest of the industry is gutless, and has zero vision or leadership. Whatever Apple does, the rest of the industry will follow or oppose - but will be defined by it.
It’s like how people who don’t like US and want nothing to do with US still discuss US politics, because it has so much effect everywhere.
(Ironically no enough people discuss China in any coherent level of understanding)
You're absolutely right, I'm so glad that Apple was the first company to release a phone with a touch screen, or a phone with an app store, or a smart watch or a VR headset.
Apple doesn't release new products, they wait until the actual brave and innovating companies have done the exploration and then capitalize on all of their learnings. Because they are never the first movers and they have mountains of cash, they're able to enter the market without the baggage of early adopters. They don't have to worry about maintaining their early prototypes.
Apple doesn't innovate or show leadership, they wait until the innovators have proven that the market is big enough to handle Apple, then they swoop in with a product that combines the visions of the companies that were competing.
Apple is great at what they do, don't get me wrong. And swooping in when the market is right is just good business. Just don't mistake that for innovation or leadership.
This is a prejudiced take. Running AI tasks locally on the device definitely is a giant improvement for the user experience.
But not only that, Apple CPUs are objectively leagues ahead of their competition in the mobile space. I am still using a IPhone released in 2020 with absolutely no appreciable slow down or losses in perceived performance. Because even a 4 years old IPhone still has specs that don't lag behind by much the equivalent Android phones, I still receive the latest OS updates, and because frankly, Android OS is mess.
If I cared about status, I would have changed my phone already for a new one.
> I am still using a IPhone released in 2020 with absolutely no appreciable slow down or losses in perceived performance.
My Pixel 4a here is also going strong, only the battery is slowly getting worse. I mean, it's 2024, do phones really still get slow? The 4a is now past android updates, but that was promised after 3 years. But at 350 bucks, it was like 40% less than the cheapest iPhone mini at that time.
Apple says it made these changes for other reasons, honestly, truly. And if it happened to have the same effect, then that was unfortunate, and unintended.
Only Apple really knows. But there was a slew of changes and reversals following the drama. "Oh, we'll implement notifications now", "Oh, we'll change the peak performance behavior", and "we will change and add additional diagnostics to make sure issues are battery related" certainly has a feel for a bunch of ex post facto rationalization of several things that seem, to me, that if it was truly a battery thing all along, would have been functional requirements.
>Apple CPUs are objectively leagues ahead of their competition in the mobile space
This is a lie. The latest Android SoCs are just as powerful as the A series.
>Because even a 4 years old IPhone still has specs that don't lag behind by much the equivalent Android phones, I still receive the latest OS updates, and because frankly, Android OS is mess.
Samsung and Google offer 7 years of OS and security updates. I believe that beats the Apple policy.
The last iPads to stop getting OS updates (including security, to be consistent with what Samsung and Google are pledging) got 7 and 9 years of updates each (5th gen iPad and 1st gen iPad Pro). The last iPhones to lose support got about 7 years each (iPhone 8 and X). 6S, SE (1st), and 7 got 9 and 8 years of OS support with security updates. The 5S (released in 2013) last got a security update in early 2023, so also about 9 years, the 6 (2014) ended at the same time so let's call it 8 years. The 4S, 2011, got 8 years of OS support. 5 and 5C got 7 and 6 years of support (5C was 5 in a new case, so was always going to get a year less in support).
Apple has not, that I've seen at least, ever established a long term support policy on iPhones and iPads, but the numbers show they're doing at least as well as what Samsung and Google are promising to do, but have not yet done. And they've been doing this for more than a decade now.
EDIT:
Reworked the iOS numbers a bit, down to the month (I was looking at years above and rounding, so this is more accurate). iOS support time by device for devices that cannot use the current iOS 17 (so the XS and above are not counted here) in months:
The average is 72.5 months, just over 6 years. If we knock out the first 2 phones (both have somewhat justifiable short support periods, massive hardware changes between each and their successor) the average jumps to just shy of 79 months, or about 6.5 years.
The 8 and X look like regressions, but their last updates were just 2 months ago (March 21, 2024) so still a good chance their support period will increase and exceed the 7 year mark like every model since the 5S. We'll have to see if they get any more updates in November 2024 or later to see if they can hit the 7 year mark.
>The last iPads to stop getting OS updates (including security, to be consistent with what Samsung and Google are pledging) got 7 and 9 years of updates each (5th gen iPad and 1st gen iPad Pro). The last iPhones to lose support got about 7 years each (iPhone 8 and X). 6S, SE (1st), and 7 got 9 and 8 years of OS support with security updates. The 5S (released in 2013) last got a security update in early 2023, so also about 9 years, the 6 (2014) ended at the same time so let's call it 8 years. The 4S, 2011, got 8 years of OS support. 5 and 5C got 7 and 6 years of support (5C was 5 in a new case, so was always going to get a year less in support).
These are very disingenuous numbers that don't tell the complete story. An iPhone 7 getting a single critical security patch does not take into account the hundreds of security patches it did not receive when it stopped receiving support. It received that special update because Apple likely was told or discovered it was being exploited in the wild.
Google and Samsung now offer 7 years of OS upgrades and 84 months of full security patches. Selectively patching a phone that is out of the support window with a single security patch does not automatically increase its EOL support date.
I look forward to these vendors delivering on their promises, and I look forward to Apple perhaps formalizing a promise with less variability for future products.
Neither of these hopes retroactively invalidates the fact that Apple has had a much better track record of supporting old phone models up to this point. Even if you do split hairs about the level of patching some models got in their later years, they still got full iOS updates for years longer than most Android phones got any patches at all, regardless of severity.
This is not an argument that somehow puts Android on top, at best it adds nuance to just how much better iOS support has been up to this point.
Let's also not forget that if Apple wasn't putting this kind of pressure on Google, they wouldn't have even made the promise to begin with, because it's clear how long they actually care to support products with no outside pressure.
I agree. This is the type of competition I like to see between these two companies. In the end the consumer wins regardless of which one you buy. Google has also promised 10 years of Chromebook support, so they've clearly got the message on the importance of supporting hardware much longer than a lot of people would use them for.
They made that pledge for the Pixel 8 (2023). Let's revisit this in 2030 and see what the nature of their support is at that point and how it compares to Apple's support for iPhone devices. We can't make a real comparison since they haven't done anything yet, only made promises.
What we can do today is note that Apple never made a promise, but did provide very long security support for their devices despite that. They've already met or come close to the Samsung/Google pledge (for one device) on almost half their devices, and those are all the recent ones (so it's not a downward trend of good support then bad support, but rather mediocre/bad support to improving and increasingly good support).
Another fun one:
iPhone XS was released in September 2018, it is on the current iOS 17 release. In the absolute worst case of it losing iOS 18 support in September, it will have received 6 full years of support in both security and OS updates. It'll still hit 7 years (comfortably) of security updates. If it does get iOS 18 support in September, then Apple will hit the Samsung/Google pledge 5 years before Samsung/Google can even demonstrate their ability to follow through (Samsung has a chance, but Google has no history of commitment).
I have time to kill before training for a century ride:
Let's ignore everything before iPhone 4S, they had short support periods that's just a fact and hardly worth investigating. This is an analysis of devices released in 2011 and later, when the phones had, mostly, matured as a device so we should be expecting longer support periods. These are the support periods when the phones were able to run the still-current iOS versions, not counting later security updates or minor updates but after the major iOS version had been deprecated. As an example, for the iPhone 4S it had support from 2011-2016. In 2016 its OS, iOS 9, was replaced by iOS 10. Here are the numbers:
4S - 5 years
5 - 5 years
5C - 4 years (decreased, 5 hardware but released a year later in a different case)
5S - 6 years
6 - 5 years (decreased, not sure why)
6S - 7 years (hey, Apple did it! 2015 release, lost iOS upgrades in 2022)
SE(1st) - 5 years (like 5C, 6S hardware but released later)
7 - 6 years (decreased over 6S, not sure why)
8 - 6 years
X - 6 years
The 6S is a bit of an outlier, hitting 7 years of full support running the current iOS. 5C and SE(1st) both got less total support, but their internals were the same as prior phones and they lost support at the same time as them (this is reasonable, if annoying, and does drag down the average). So Apple has clearly trended towards 6 years of full support, the XS (as noted above) will get at least 6 years of support as of this coming September. We'll have to see if they can get it past the 7 year mark, I know they haven't promised anything but the trend suggests they can.
Sure. They also pledged to support Chromebooks for 10 years. My point being is that I don't think they'll be clawing back their new hardware support windows anytime soon. Their data indicates that these devices were used well beyond their initial support window metrics so it was in their, and their users, best interest to keep them updated as long as they possibly could. 3 years of OS updates and 4 years of security updates was always the weak link in their commitment to security. And this applies to all of their devices including the A series - something I don't see other Android OEM's even matching.
BTW, my daily driver is an iPhone 13 and I was coming from an iPhone X. So I'm well aware of the incredible support Apple provides its phones. Although, I would still like to see an 8+ year promise from them.
The vast majority of people don’t. They buy because the ecosystem works. Not sure how I get status from a phone that nobody knows I have. I don’t wear it on a chain.
Seems even more unlikely for non technical users.
It's just their latest market campaign, as far as I can tell. The vast majority of people buy iPhones because of the status it gives.