I don't know that I completely agree. To some degree, sure — most folks probably don't notice the year-to-year updates in e.g. computing power.
But my 70yo mother, who is pretty far from being technologically savvy, uses continuity every day to copy one-time-use codes from her phone to her computer, even though she'd have no idea what the term "continuity" means in this context. She notices that it's easier to snap better pictures in more conditions than it was a few years back (and that pictures she receives are better looking on average, too). She uses 1Password with FaceID, which I set up for her, because it's so easy to just look at your phone to unlock that there's very little in the way of enabling and using that, and she doesn't need to write down passwords anymore.
I think some of the magic of the Apple ecosystem is that you don't have to know about these things in order to use them. Someone shows you how to do something (Apple could certainly improve on the organic discoverability of many of these features! Some are impossible to find without looking), and then it often just works. And these things do keep getting closer to that ideal over time, with each generation. When I first started using continuity — long before my mother did — it definitely did not work all the time, and I persisted because I'm a techie early adopter. Eventually, though, it reached a state where once folks learn about it, they can just use it.
I'm also not sure about the 3-4 year number, at least from personal experience, fwiw. We pass down phones in my family, and it easily takes 5-6 generations for them to reach the end of that chain and be in use for a year or two before they're switched out for the next model. Battery has never been the reason someone in that chain switched phones.
Nearly all of the things you describe there aside from the camera are software/services based and don’t require improved hardware year-on-year at all. This is a problem for a company that makes its money selling expensive hardware.
Even the camera quality could be improved with post-processing like upscaling and color correction, which have somewhat recently become much better.
Although my understanding is that the new cameras are incredible, so while you could get a "decent" photo on an old phone, unlike the other features it would be noticeably worse than the new phone.
It’s not the cameras that are bad. In fact, I sold my Canon with a 24-70mm f2.8 L because the iPhone photos were great!
The HUGE L by Apple is their shitty Photo App. It’s great if you have under 1Gb of photos, but over 100Gb - forget it - it is fucking. God. Aweful. PAINFUL!
And then they have the nerve of once in a while having a non-compatible Photo database format and so your WHOLE photo collection has to be converted… over 4 days wtf!
I specifically learned Rust so I could make a better Photo app. Sadly, time has shelved that project like many others, but man I would like be for someone to solve the iPhone -> Laptop photo management problem.
… and no, cloud backups? Not for > 400Gb thanks. All it takes is for Apple to kill your account and then ALL your family photos are gone. F that.
I use PhotoSync to sync all photos to MiniO s3 docker container on my desktop pc. The only issue is the initial upload that I slowly did over a week (only synced when charging etc). Works quite well as a iCloud replacement for photos. I use syncthings for anything else like my keepassxc files.
Yeah, I use PhotoSync to sync back to FileRun. FileRun places all files in a basic share, which I access by smb on-prem and via FileRun's webdav server elsewhere. When I'm at home, transferring over LAN direct to storage was the fastest option for offloading volleyball videos, which I can then promptly share with others without waiting for upload to a service like iCloud or OneDrive.
Why would Apple delete your photos, and why would your solution for storing them be more robust than Apple’s?
I rarely relate to issues people paint about Apple products. The Photos app is great, and moving stuff around between my MacBook and iPhone is seamless.
You’ve never heard of people getting locked out of their accounts? Or companies shutting down services? Apple is no different.
How many hundreds of gigs is your Apple Photo library? And have you used it long enough that you’ve had to bare the pain of an Apple Photo database upgrade?
> Even the camera quality could be improved with post-processing like upscaling and color correction, which have somewhat recently become much better.
Sorry, but this is the one feature I hate (not being able to turn off) on today's phones. All the wannabe HDR, noise reduction, upscaling, color corrections that make the pictures look plasticky and overly colorful and just plain kitsch when compared to the same scene taken with a 10-15yo pocket camera.
Agree. But the company also pays a large chunk of its services R&D and operations by bundling it with the hardware and have people pay upfront for it.
New hardware would not be needed for most of it, but then Apple would have to make every iOS user a fixed yearly fee for a generic package of "some services at our disclosure". And that's quite impossible to achieve and stay competitive...
Here’s the rub though: convincing customers to pay for something they used to think they got as part of the hardware package isn’t going to be easy.
People love the seamless integration of hardware, software, and services that Apple provides, but introducing a mandatory yearly fee would erode that goodwill pretty much instantly.
I think you hovered over something significant: yes, most of the "new features" of the new phones are software features … but the line between "what is software and what is hardware" may not be crystal clear to a lot of the population.
Imagine the effect of a TV spot touting a new OS feature on the new iPhone. Do I need the new phone to get that feature? As soon as you've asked the question, you're at the doorstep of "I wasn't thinking about it, but I will need to replace the battery soon ($$) and it's been getting slower …"
You may learn the feature is available in an OS update, but it's inconsequential: you've already rolled the idea of a new phone around and remember how nice it is to start fresh. This one may not get you, but next year's definitely will.
Some confusion around hardware -vs- software is key to draw people in.
> Imagine the effect of a TV spot touting a new OS feature on the new iPhone. Do I need the new phone to get that feature? As soon as you've asked the question, you're at the doorstep of "I wasn't thinking about it, but I will need to replace the battery soon ($$) and it's been getting slower …"
I’d say this works exactly once - Apple will get a one time hit out of customers upgrading to an AI enabled phone, which will have a SOC capable of running AI (customers don’t need to know what a SOC is).
For anything beyond that, the media will likely pick up that it’s not strictly necessary and you’ll already have pocketed a lot of the benefit from having your first AI integrated phone.
I've nursed my wife's SE along until this past week when we bought a used 13 Mini. She has small hands ( not exceptionally small, just small ) and the larger sizes just weren't appealing to her. I've replaced screens, even have a battery for it ready, but the lightning connector finally wearing out and impending End of Support made her upgrade.
You will get held back by software updates in ios then apps long before the device is useless. I have a few perfectly good iphones in a drawer like this. Can’t use any apps anymore.
Yep, Apple has made a lot of marketing around the concept of updates and all that jazz but the reality is that the primary beneficiary are them.
Even when you are potentially interested by features update there is always a weighting to be made about slowdowns or things that change that you wish didn't.
In the end I don't think updates should be much of a thing, apart from security updates. You should buy a device with a set of capabilities and it should stay mostly the same all its life.
And then we should make laws about the minimum amount of time a device has to be supported with its original software.
The problem with computer technology is that we always go with updates, just because we could even though we need to ask if we should. In some ways it's a problem the internet created, the expectation of always being connected to bring in new stuff.
I had no idea this was possible, but yeah, going to “battery health” in my Settings shows battery health is degraded, and provides a link to schedule a replacement.
Battery replacements are priced <100 CAD for for all supported Apple phones. In my opinion, it's a pretty good option given the support period these devices enjoy now.
I had two apple US$49 battery replacements both of my iPhone 8 phones before my wife and I jumped to a 14 pro max.
I preferred touchid over faceid. Sure, there was always the SE option, but if I was buying a newer phone then it was going to be new one, damn it.
What pushed the needle in the upgrade vs repair decision for me was wear concerns on the nand flash. I've encountered plenty of stories of flash failures after the 4th, 3rd or even 2nd battery replacement. I never found a way to get a meaningful health check for iphone flash lifetime but I really didn't want to find out the hard way.
That was in addition to 5G vs LTE. LTE in our area is a quagmire.
I went 8 -> 13 mini recently and I strongly preferred Touch ID also. It doesn’t require light, the right angle, or a button press to confirm the intentionality of actions like a purchase.
But yeah overall it’s bonkers how similar the two devices are for purportedly between four generations apart.
Main issue for me in bed is failure to identify face smooshed into pillow. Raise head and unlock fine, even in full dark. Still requires neck muscle actuation that wasn't required with touch id.
Depending on where you sit on the conscience/security sliding scale you might want to considering turning off “Require attention”. That solves 90% of glasses/sunglasses related issues.
I do it all the time, fwiw, but my girlfriend cannot get it to work reliably. So your mileage might vary, but in my experience ambient light does not matter.
No, but for me it often fails when outside in bright sunlight, especially if the sun is low in the sky, as it often is in my latitude. Perhaps it might work better if I try training it on my squinting face.
Sort of the same experience in some specific lighting conditions.
What I found out though is that it's because in such lighting conditions I don't blink, compounded by the fact that if it doesn't unlock I unconsciously keep on not blinking to... see it hopefully unlock! So when this happens I consciously blink and it unlocks immediately, which is kind of cognitively dissonant.
Unknown if that would apply to your situation, YMMV but I thought I'd throw this one out.
There's also a kind of annoying recurring situation where I want to look at stuff on the lock screen but don't want to actually unlock...
I do wish they'd have reintroduced Touch ID in the camera control button sensor (or just in the power button, as for the iPad Air) but I guess cases would cause a problem.
To me the best iPhone was the iPhone 7, with TouchID but no physical button. If I wanted, there was a completely silent mode that didn't have that "clunk" when you press that button.
I preferred the physical button. I hate the feel of "fake" clicks.
I used to think I wanted FaceID over TouchID, because TouchID would regularly fail to recognise my thumb if I'd recently washed my hands, or was a little dehydrated. Anything that affected my skin tension.
In practice, FaceID fails way more often, and also "resets" (the phone decides it wants a passcode before it'll trust my face again) multiple times a day. TouchID almost never did that.
You can disable "Require Attention for Face ID" under Settings > Face ID & Passcode. That makes Face ID far more reliable and consistent in my experience (assuming you're okay with the reduced security tradeoff).
If you have an Apple Watch, you can also configure it to unlock your phone automatically when an obstruction prevents Face ID from recognizing your face.
I'd never go back to Touch ID. Face ID works in the dark, at pretty much any angle, and requires zero interaction.
> You can disable "Require Attention for Face ID" under Settings > Face ID & Passcode. That makes Face ID far more reliable and consistent in my experience (assuming you're okay with the reduced security tradeoff).
I have had it in this mode for years. It's still very fragile and/or skittish regarding making me use my passcode. Intuitively, it feels like about 10-15% of logins require the code rather than my face.
> If you have an Apple Watch, you can also configure it to unlock your phone automatically when an obstruction prevents Face ID from recognizing your face.
That's a very expensive solution.
> Face ID works in the dark, at pretty much any angle, and requires zero interaction.
Yeah, my experience is very similar. Unlike the other replier I don't think there was much gained with FaceID in the end, especially with that stupid notch would made their remove useful information. Also considering the added cost and the even worse repairability than TouchID it's not a very good deal for the consumer.
Especially since it makes many operations a 2-step process when it was much smoother before; like for example Apple Pay where you find yourself looking at your phone like an idiot instead of doing it all in a single movement.
When my girlfriend saw the new camera button, she thought Touch ID had been added to the new iPhone, just like on her iPad mini. She got super excited for a moment, and I felt bad having to tell her that the new button doesn’t have Touch ID.
I feel the same way. If there’s one feature I miss, it’s toichid.
On the other hand, my parents, who are older, find Face ID to be a lifesaver since their fingerprints have mostly worn out.
I switched to Samsung partly because of the lack of Touch ID. Face ID was annoying, it didn't work well with masks (even with the special option turned on), it didn't work well in the morning when I'm lying in bed, it didn't work well when I was carrying my son in a carrier because the angle was wrong.
My memories of Android phones are bad enough that I can’t imagine actually switching back over this feature — there’s just way too much else I appreciate about the Apple ecosystem. But respect to you!
I'd say it's significantly better... I did a brief stint with android a long time ago but didn't like it, but now I've been using it for 3 yearsish and I actually get annoyed when I use my wife's iphone. There's a lot to like from F-Droid, the fact that the quick settings menu is better (just a recent example, you long press on the hotspot button you get sent to the settings showing you the hotspot password),...
Yeah, I think the hardware has improved so much that now the more complexe software can now be much more useful.
This is what Apple has missed in my opinion; the iPhone is no longer a no-nonsense, simple as it gets, with a strict selection of features (both hardware and software) to meet a palatable price point, device that it once was.
But then in comparaison to modern Android it feels like at the same time it is too complicated but also missing a lot of options/features/freedom.
Apple is working hard to add all kinds of "missing" features and complexity all over the place, all while raising the price of the device as much as possible. But in the end, what kind of client will be satisfied with this approach but noy with an Android?
Not a whole lot I believe.
I’m not saying you’re making the wrong move, but if you’re willing to go with a carrier like ATT, you can get $1000 trade-in value for that iPhone 13 Pro towards a new iPhone 16 Pro. You can even just buy an unlocked iPhone 12 off of eBay (for about $250) and get the same $1000 trade-in credit for you son. There are some caveats. For example, the credits are paid out evenly over 24 months, but if you plan to keep it for 2 years, you basically get a $250 iPhone 16 Pro.
Again, it might not be the right decision for you, but I thought you might like to be aware of the option.
I've tended to buy iPhones that are 2 or 3 generations old from eBay and Swappa for my family and use Mint or Tello for cheap cellular service. Our costs might be $350 for a phone and $100 - $150 per year for service.
We do get them a nice new phone when they graduate high school.
I consider that state of the art and brand new. I just inherited an iPhone XS and the battery is at 91%. I figure I can go at least another 3 years. For reference I was using a Oneplus 3T which is still going strong.
I have that same phone and have been using it now for six years, and according to the battery health in the settings, the battery is still in good shape, there’s no notice of it being degraded.
I used the same OnePlus 3T that I bought used, until it was stolen. Would have probably considered a new OnePlus but all their models were too big and expensive at the time, so went Pixel 7 near the end of the cycle. Even though I've been a mac user for about 12 years, iPhones have never made it into the realm of consideration.
It is indeed the most comfortable of the phones in the last decade perhaps. I am still rocking it. Recently my battery died and they replaced it but that battery too wouldn’t charge for hours and then would charge by a trickle. They said they’d just replace my phone so now I have a brand new XS max ready for another 5 years.
I do at least one battery replacement on all my iphones. It extends the life by years IMO. I'm currently coming up on 5 years with my current phone and it's still on the first battery. Seems iPhone battery tech has gotten better.
Same same, 12 mini here (with small battery), still going strong, but I have to say, I have chargers everywhere and when traveling I grab one of my Makita batteries with the USB cap which can charge it 6-7 times (5 Ah). So honestly I wouldn't know how long the battery actually lasts, I suspect less than a full day, or just about a day.
Battery is at 78%, as Apple says: Degraded considerably...
I hope to get it a new bat when I goes to my son in a few years. Really hope the new SE models are the mini form factor...
It has, they don't intentionally ruin your battery when you plug it in at night now at least.
It's pretty common knowledge that most (not all) batteries shouldn't be charged past 80%. Which isn't really true either, but it has to do with voltage going up when the battery gets hot, meaning overvolting your battery and causing bad things to happen.
I'm disappointed in my Fairphone 4 not having an option to limit charge to 80%, though the battery is very replaceable.
I pay very little attention to features on phones, especially things like improved cameras, but I finally upgraded my iPhone X to an iPhone 15 (one of my kids needed a phone). I've noticed that I've been able to take some stunning pictures out of planes when flying, as well as low-light photos.
I agree that even when they aren't explicitly highlighted, they do make a substantial difference, especially when comparing models over a span of a few years.
your grandma is certainly a small minority. I am a software developer and i barely know or care about most features on my ios phone. If my apps are not slow and require me to update and my battery is good, i have no reason to get a new iphone. Apple knows it since they require their apps to be updated every year so that it won't be supported on older devices.
By design, 1Password always makes you re-authenticate every time you lose focus on the app. But Face ID (or Touch ID) makes reauthenticating a lot less painful.
Setting FaceId is the first step, but you can also decide how often you have to reenter your password for reauthentication, or just so you don’t forget it. Directly beneath the face-id option.
Not exactly - you can lose focus without a problem
Recently 1Password has change on IOS (and I assume Android) to ask every two weeks for the password even if you use FaceId/TouchId - it says so on the app. This is probably what the poster was complaining about - I agree it is a nuisance.
For macOs and Windows it asks for the password every time the screen saver or sleep happens.
My grandma is 80-ish old and she watches youtube, tiktok, reads “google”, does banking, e-shopping (a lot), messengers, puzzles. All that on a serious level.
When she visits friends and tells stories, they always lament that they refused to learn “these computers”. She’s around 6 years into her tablet which I brought her spontaneously. She collected questions (we write everything down as a rule) and I had to find the way to manage the learning complexity at each visit.
Don’t look at age, just go and buy it for them. With a little help they’ll figure it out just fine.
That's so cool! I had no idea about universal copy/paste and I struggle a lot with one time codes across devices since I don't have universal iMessage set up for privacy reasons. I usually just send them to myself via telegram for simplicity.
Significantly less secure at that. I imagine GP has iMessage disabled on their computer because other people use their computer, and they don't want iMessages/SMS going anywhere other than their phone.
Well, Telegram is by definition not as a secure as iMessage. Telegram messages are by default not encrypted on the server. Even when it is encrypted on the server, telegram has the keys and can decrypt it.
Telegram isn't as private as iMessage, but that doesn't mean it's not as secure. Security-wise, exploiting iMessage is easier than exploiting telegram, since iMessages has some special privileged access. Security doesn't mean privacy.
This is true (one is talking about zero-click zero days, the other is talking about “privacy,” not sure if they mean privacy against Facebook or privacy against other users of their device).
But the comment that kicked off the thread was the one about privacy.
I think they mostly targeted font/image/url parsing which are used across the OS. iMessage was somewhat privileged at some point in the back but was compartmentalized later and media processing was the only escape, but that’s out of process now too I believe.
This kind of proves the point? Presumably your mother didn't buy the latest phone for "continuity" or camera improvements. The features and additional hardware improvements might be noticeable after being used, but are they driving sales to people who aren't tech enthusiasts?
But my 70yo mother, who is pretty far from being technologically savvy, uses continuity every day to copy one-time-use codes from her phone to her computer, even though she'd have no idea what the term "continuity" means in this context. She notices that it's easier to snap better pictures in more conditions than it was a few years back (and that pictures she receives are better looking on average, too). She uses 1Password with FaceID, which I set up for her, because it's so easy to just look at your phone to unlock that there's very little in the way of enabling and using that, and she doesn't need to write down passwords anymore.
I think some of the magic of the Apple ecosystem is that you don't have to know about these things in order to use them. Someone shows you how to do something (Apple could certainly improve on the organic discoverability of many of these features! Some are impossible to find without looking), and then it often just works. And these things do keep getting closer to that ideal over time, with each generation. When I first started using continuity — long before my mother did — it definitely did not work all the time, and I persisted because I'm a techie early adopter. Eventually, though, it reached a state where once folks learn about it, they can just use it.
I'm also not sure about the 3-4 year number, at least from personal experience, fwiw. We pass down phones in my family, and it easily takes 5-6 generations for them to reach the end of that chain and be in use for a year or two before they're switched out for the next model. Battery has never been the reason someone in that chain switched phones.