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iPhone 6 Sales Crush Means Late-Night Waits For Some Early Adopters
Even after the months of hype and speculation, the behind-the-scenes development and manufacture, and then the announcement Tuesday, it seems Apple's servers weren't quite ready for the workout they got from would-be early adopters of its newest iPhone. Preorders through Verizon Wireless and AT&T largely started without a hitch at midnight, though some customers on Twitter have since complained about issues. Those problems were nothing compared to the issues experienced by Sprint and T-Mobile customers. The Sprint and T-Mobile sites were still down for many users nearly two hours after presales were slated to start. Access to Sprint's site faded in and out, while the T-Mobile site continued to display a form to register for a reminder for when the preorders began. Some people joked on Twitter that they "might as well wait for the iPhone 6S now." Apple's store itself was down for a few hours, too.
...that Samsung wishes they had.
I've got a Nexus-5 so I'm going to skip the Nexus-6... I'm holding out for the Nexus-7!
I've met many 40's and up Android users who say they wanted an iPhone but bought an Android because they couldn't read on the iPhone screen because it was too small. So the larger screen size is a feature that many people will cite when the buy the iPhone 6.
It's also got between 10% and 100%+ battery life improvement. They didn't focus on that but it's pretty important to many.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I love how the ihaters around here croon the iphone's demise as each new device is launched.. And they each go on to smashing, record sales that beat the last one.
The 5s was particularly funny. People bitched and moaned about nothing innovative. (Despite being the first mobile device with a 64bit arm cpu, and stands to be still for probably another good 8 months. That's almost 2 full years of apple leading an innovation that nobody else even had plans for at that point) - Oh, and that fingerprint scanner that turned out to be everyone's favorite feature. One button press secure unlock anyone?
Yet, the 5s went to smash sales records even beyond apple's most optimistic expectations. Record breaking device sales in it's category.
The 6 launch is looking to be even better.
Do you know why I stick with the iphone line? It's easy. It's simple. It works. I don't have to fuck around with my phone. It's always there. Each time I get a new phone, all of my shit migrates over seamlessly. I still have songs, apps, notes, pictures from my original iphone.
I build my own PCs. I love linux. I stick with the iphone because it's nice having something you don't have to fuck with to get it to work properly every once in a while.
It won't, actually. Apple's prices don't drop in the middle of a cycle. It'll cost exactly the same in July of next year. In August, you may see carriers cut the prices to entice people to clear their existing stock.
It's worse than that. The original iphone was 320 x 480. They went retina by doubling it - 640 x 960. No problem, you provide 2x images, everything works great. Then the elongated it to 640 x 1136. still pretty straightforward, though, 2x images with a bit more height. You may need to adjust your layout a bit but no major problems. But now the iphone 6 is 750 x 1334 and 1080 x 1920.
It's like they somehow decided android's fragmentation was a competitive advantage! Oh, and now you provide 3x images and they get downsampled. It will not look as good. Full stop.
Listen Apple, you didn't build a phone that people wanted, you built a phone that the press wanted. Not because they wanted it as a phone, but because they need to write stories about something. These are the same idiots that spent 20 years calling you beleaguered and taking bets on when you would go bankrupt. A larger phone won't do shit except change the narrative from "they need to release a larger phone" to "out of ideas and copying samsung"
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Apple is doomed.
The only real feature of note was Apple Pay, which might finally make NFC payments take off in the US. It's been a technology that should have hit it big a couple of years ago, but has never seen much consumer buy-in for some reason.
It's pretty straightforward, to my mind. With the exception of all but the most staggering technological advancements, widespread adoption of new technology typically requires:
Geeks, for a variety of reasons, tend to respect the first, grok the second, and abhor the third. I personally believe it's what drives our perpetual cycle of incredulity on this subject--because we so detest the last part of this equation, we refuse to see its importance in getting all those squishy, distracted, emotional bags of water to adopt cool new stuff.
NFC has never had the effective marketing campaign in the US, and only kinda had the support infrastructure. The iPhone has incredible inertia on the marketing front, and Apple have clearly done the legwork on building a good starting lineup of financial institutions and retailers for Apple Pay. It remains to be seen whether this'll be sufficient to make NFC catch on, but it's easily the closest we've come to covering all three of the bases above.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The rear metal-rimmed camera is not flush with the case, so ironically it's not the iPhone screen getting scratched, it's every surface you lay your new iPhone down on.
So, make sure you buy a stand so you don't accidentally set it on your gold-pressed latinum desk. Problem solved.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm one. I switched from my iphone4 to a nexus5 for two reasons:
- my eyes have aged substantially in the last 6 or 7 years, most dramatically in the last 3.
- $829 (CAD) for an iphone5 vs. $349 for a Nexus5...
Additional perks:
- wireless charging
Because no one unified around it. You have credit cards and phones and all that, and the phones were all fragmented into using Google Wallet or other custom thing so it was impossible to actually use.
Effectively, Google thought "If you build it, they will come" and everyone basically gave a collective "meh" and promptly did their own thing.
What Apple did was try to be a de-facto standard. Apple made deals with Visa, MasterCard and American Express (which probably covers the vast majority of credit card charges out there). Apple made deals with big retailers people used. So in the end, Apple has, upon launch, the support of the vast majority of credit card payment companies, and big companies that most people shop at.
Plus, Apple has money on their side - the people who buy Apple products tend to be ones who have money, and are the kind of people who do spend it. Android users tend to be more tight-asses (given the vast majority of them are free phones that their carrier gave away), so are in generaly seen as a "lesser valued" market.
So you have companies agreeing to Apple because they know Apple customers generally have money. As a side effect, it means the technology being promoted gets widely distributed so everyone else benefits as well.
Oh please. I've seen that graphic, and it's obviously misleading. Yes, there are features that the Nexus 4 had years ago.
One of them is a feature I don't even want, but I'm forced to get--a 4.7" screen. I really rather prefer a 3.5" or 4" screen.
You can't ACTUALLY make payments with Nexus 4 because the tech is there but the infrastructure isn't. Ironically, Apple doing NFC payments may make it possible for someone to use that feature.
And then (as per the article) there's Touch ID. And the 64-bit A8 (the A7 is still beating new phones on single-core benchmarks, sunspider, etc. even though it's a year old). I get a permissions system that isn't ridiculous and if I have a problem with the phone, I can take it into a store and have someone look at it. I don't have to send it back for service, or talk to the carrier.
Oh, and the Nexus 4 has famously bad battery life. I borrowed one for a while from a friend to try it out, and I could lose 60% of the battery in two hours while it was sitting in a locker while I was swimming. My venerable iPhone 4 would lose 0-2% in the same time frame.
These graphics are just elaborate trolling--you and I both know that the Nexus 4 wasn't actually any more usable than the iPhone 5 at the time, and it's obviously not even on the same page right now. The devices are getting closer and closer to parity, but that's not actually surprising to anyone except the most bitter partisans.