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Why the iPhone 6 Has the Same Base Memory As the iPhone 5
Lucas123 writes When the iPhone 5 was launched two years ago, the base $199 (with wireless plan) model came with 16GB of flash memory. Fast forward to this week when the iPhone 6 was launched with the same capacity. Now consider that the cost of 16GB of NAND flash has dropped by more than 13% over the past two years. So why would Apple increase capacity on its $299 model iPhone 6 to 64GB (eliminating the 32GB model), but but keep the 16GB in the $199 model? The answer may lie in the fact that the 16GB iPhone is, and has been, by far the best selling model. IHS analyst Fang Zhang believes Apple is using that to push users to its iCloud storage service. Others believe restricting storage capacity allows Apple to afford the new features, like NFC and biometrics.
Its only to drive people to use cloud services and buy the expensive model for more capacity. Apple would be stupid to satisfy its users.
it's all about the lockin. Apple has consistently manipulated people.
Derp Post!
The answer may lie in the fact that the 16GB iPhone is, and has been, by far the best selling model.
Therein lies the answer. It's always about the money. Period.
That doesn't sound right. Can anybody confirm?
So you've got a part that costs X, and after two years the cost is reduced by 13%, meaning that the part now costs .87 times X. You can continue to use this part, offering either a 13% reduction in the portion of your overall price that is contributed by this part, or you can maintain overall price and reap slightly more profit. You can also decide to use two of this part to increase device capacity, and now your cost is 1.74 times the original X. You can now reduce your profits by keeping your overall price despite increased cost, or you can increase your product price and hope that purchasers absorb the change
TL;DR? 13% is a trivial cost reduction compared to doubling the cost while doubling the memory.
Or maybe it's just that the electrical engineer doing the circuit layouts was wearing a green shirt that day. Analyst Foo Kin Ublivius believes green shirts cause electrical engineers to be afraid of increasing memory quantities. Others believe memory in smartphones are made from the ground-up brain matter of orphans and restricting storage capacity allows Apple to save their orphans for more important things like assembling iPads.
"Oh no... he found the
Which is why less chips the better. No need to add a couple more chips in the stack always drawing some current if you don't need it.
And for phones, power reduction is the most important goal.
Additionally, who uses more than a few apps anyways? Most people just stick with their core group of apps they regularly use.
And, it's only 64 GB - 64 GB isn't 100 TB. 100TB would be a completely different use model from 16GB or 64 GB.
For example, movies are always streamed now - you don't store your Netflix movies locally. So you don't need a huge data library.
It is obviously because Apple has engineered iOS so well that it only requires a fraction of the memory that Android does.
And, iOS8 has such wonderful memory technologies that Apple developed that even new apps only need a small fraction of the memory that they would need in Android and iOS7. So, there was absolutely no need to put extra memory that will never be used.
Usual strategy is to sell at high margins to a small percentage of your customers. In Apple's case they are doing it the opposite way. I think ive read nvidia and amd do the same with graphics cards as well where the performance models are the lower margin sku.
It turns out MOST people use very few apps.
The need for more then 16GB is a very small part of the market.
Why add more flash that won't be used?
http://Lenny.com
An expanded memory will be the new wonderful feature of the iPhone 7 that all the world was expecting.
Personally I have little use for a large amount of storage. My music collection is small, I don't care to watch videos on my phone and I prefer not to keep my entire picture library on it. As long as the OS doesn't take up a unreasonable amount of space 16gb works just fine for me.
If you were to make the bottom 32 gig and the next level up 64 gig, much less people would pay the extra money and buy the 64 gig which more than likely has a higher margin for Apple. This way people who don't care will still by the 16 gig but many people will take a much longer look at paying a bit extra for the 64 gig.
companies like Apple buy everything in bulk. They probably thought that buying up as many 16GB modules as possible would cover them over the production lifecycle of the 5, which it has, but now they've got crates of the 16GB chips they have to use somewhere: so how about the budget next generation phones? Once the 16GB models are gone, you won't see 16GB iphone 7s.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"What can we include to meet a specific price point?" In this case, $200.
If that means Feature A (total GB) has to suffer to include Feature B (NFC)....so be it.
To upgrade my phone to IOS 8 I had to free some space. This basically involved deleted some Apps that I never use that were taking a great deal of space. I don't buy apple movies because they can be only played on apple devices, so the majority of data is music, most of which is stored on the cloud, and photos. I know people have almost no music on their devices, but stream everything. To be honest, streaming has meant that many people do not have to deal with the hassle of local storage. Though we can get into a philosophical argument, the fact is that I do not store as much on my mobile devices as I once did. Even my laptop now has less stuff on it. As to why there is still a 16GB model, that is obvious. Apple needs an entry level device and is not willing to enter the cut rate phone market. Amazon has done this with a 99 cent 32GB model and at $99 64GB model. Obviously they are hoping customers buy the 64GB model even though what is essentially $100 for a 32GB upgrade is essentially highway robbery. Some will do it even though the pricing structure provides little value. Most cell phone companies do this. Apple, being a premium device, is just a little more aggressive.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Ignoring the usual America centric hire purchase model that makes the me too iphone acceptable in America with a market share there of 40% yet 10% everywhere else when you have to pay $800 vs $200.
The me too iPhone is underspecced in every way; Not just storage but ram, screen resolution, both camera resolutions (The front is a disgrace), and still on only two cores. It does not even compete with phones costing half the price a year ago. Yet it still lacks features such as IR Blaster, Waterproofing...or even a radio.
The fact that it still has no removable battery...or more importantly to this apologists topic the removable sdcard on a me too phone with tiny resolution is a disgrace.
64GB or 64KB - Bill Gates - 1980 something - ....
Parent, you're old like me. Anyway, when Matlock is available in its entirity on iTunes, I'll sit there on pudding night at the home and just veg.
I prefer not to keep my entire picture library on it.
With its tiny resolution cameras you don't need a lot of storage. It is only 8MP the selfie cam is an astonishingly small 1.2. I agree though mobile devices should advise space free not total amount. In this case iOS 8 takes up 5GB of that space so should advertise itself as a 11GB phone
Maybe it's just me, but when I hear a term like base memory, what comes to mind is how much ram the device actually has for runtime applications to use, not flash ram,which I would equate more to permanent or offline storage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple users are such whiners. If 16GB is not enough, just insert a TF card.
The iPhone 6 comes with 1 Gb of memory. And has options for 16, 64 and 128 Gb of storage.
Why does this even get published?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
don't need 16Megs. People on slashdot criticize apple for forcing you to buy features you don't need. Now you critize apple for making the base model something not geek worthy. they are offering what their customers need. Chances are the number of songs or photos you want to keep stored on your iphone at any time isn't geoing with time. and that's the majority of the space usage on most people's phones. With icloud and beats streaming that need is going to dramatically shrink as well. The only thing likely to really be a space hog is more tricked out games and things that use the greater pixels of the large phones. But as I said, at the moment it's photos and music that dominate the storage needs and those will be going down not up.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
An expanded memory will be the new wonderful feature of the iPhone 7 that all the world was expecting.
The iphone was few bragging points and one of them is its slimness is one of them. look at the ugly badly designed protruding camera on the me too iphone to protect the use of this stupid advantage(sic). It uis the same reason they don't have removable batteries.
People who run out of memory are more likely to upgrade when the next iPhone comes out.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
but why would a 13% price drop in memory result in a device with 100% more memory for the same price ?
That's about right. I just checked my iPhone (4s), and in over two years of use, never cleaning anything, I've barely passed 5GB. By far the biggest use of space is recorded videos, followed by photos, then several big apps.
And it is not a good comparison. Photos and Videos take up more space on a phone because the cameras now are higher resolution, even though they are still tiny compared to the opposition, and Apps are growing exponentially I have several Apps that are GBs. I know Apple does not have as many Apps as Android, but I would find it astonishing if it were not the same.
The iPhone 6 comes with 1 Gb of memory. And has options for 16, 64 and 128 Gb of storage.
Why does this even get published?
Because 16GB it is considered useless with todays ever growing Application, Photo and Video sizes...and ironically OS Sizes. Even. National newspapers are discussing it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
I'm waiting for the Slashdot story about how obviously no one will ever need more than 640k of memory ever.
I do want to rant out about iPhone 6 memory though. 1GB is ridiculously low. They claim it was a choice to reduce battery use.
Using the gopro with 240 fps on the gopro app on a Galaxy S4 is a nightmare and I envision that it will be the same on the iPhone. Not quite sure how they plan on getting good performance even for in-phone features.
1) A lot of people are happy enough with 16Gb of storage on their phone. If you think that's stingy look at some of the lesser Android phones which have as little as 2Gb on-board storage, and don't have a microSD card slot. You'll be surprised that plenty of phone users don't download or install a multitude of crap on their phones - and that includes Android and Windows phone users.
2) A push to use iCloud if the user is so inclined to store large files.
3) Pay a little more and get the 64Gb model, 48Gb more than the 16Gb model. 64Gb model caters to the 'don't mind paying a little more' folks.
4) And the 128Gb model appeals to the select few Apple zealots and those who hoard stuff on their phone. They have high disposable income and are willing to splash the cash.
The Apple iPhone is still the most coherent experience around when it comes to hardware and software, and that alone justifies Apple charging a premium. Brand loyalty comes as a consequence of that, not being loyal just for the sake of it. The software and hardware engineering is all done in-house, it's a tight knit ship.
As for Android, you'll have to make sure that Qualcomm plays nice with your hardware setup and the various Android skins don't mess up the experience.
I can't tell which you are referring to...... memory being the amount of RAM or actual data storage. It sounds like you are talking about storage, but you call it memory.... big difference...
The 16GB model exists solely to make the 64GB model look like a better value. This is a marketing decision, nothing more.
Best Buy sells the iPhone 5s 64GB Cell Phone for Verizon Wireless for $299. Go figure.
The explaination is quite simple: more beer!
If you buy the 16GB instead of the 64GB you have and extra $100 left over to spend on beer!
"allows Apple to afford the new features THAT NOBODY WANTS, like NFC and biometrics."
For as far as I know, in some countries (especially inside the EU) there is a TAX on all devices more than X-gb.
The bottom line isn't about what is cheaper and what can be put in - it's the users.
When I ordered my wife's new phone, I asked how much memory she wanted. She didn't know - said her current one is 64, so at least 64. I said hold on, wait:
Went home, checked her phone, said, "You realize with all the apps, photos, videos, etc..you've only breached 5gigs on your phone, right?"
Many users simply *do not need the capacity*. Just because many of us are geeks, install a ton of stuff, and store a lot of media, doesn't mean most people do. Many people use their phones _as phones_ and enjoy the simple features of photo/videos on demand on occasion, reasonable security, being able to video chat, etc...and have a good UI to work with. They don't *need* huge storage. A reason why 16 gig models are often the best selling isn't because everyone utilizes cloud storage - but because they simply DO NOT NEED that much storage, and just want the built in features.
Think: Customer centric. It'd do many of the previous posters some good -- calling yourself an IT genius does nothing if your technology doesn't serve real people.
maybe 16Gb is enough for the real current use cases for the average iphone user?
Apple has been pretty good in identifying the users needs and limiting what they put in the phones.
Which was the case for the iphone 1, where everybody wondered about UMTS. As a matter of fact, iphones are not meant to be "general puprose computers", and they suck ehen used as such. They are perfectly balanced media players.
https://www.samsung.com/global...
SD card for storage up to 128 GB, 4K video, etc.
When you buy an iPhone 6 you're reaching backwards.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why do we still call it a phone? It's a biometric tracking device with GPS, audio and video capabilities.
Cow goes mooooooooooooooo
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
iPhone users don't care about facts. If you confront them with any notion of the device being inferior to anything else including older versions of itself[especially older versions of itself] they will become defensive and even more irrational about it.
It will cost Apple 5 dollars or less on a phone that will cost over 500 dollars (without a contract) in the store to upgrade it to 32G. It's not a matter of physical space in the phone because they have 64G and 128G models as well. This is purely so they will sell more 64G phones to people that think 16G isn't enough.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think it might be the case of 'normal user' vs 'power user' in deciding to only offer 16GB and 64GB phones. You have 'most' people who are like Sarten-X and 16GB is 'plenty'.
Then there's power users like you who will use more than the base amount. Now considering this population of people who want more local storage, how many are going to be satisfied with a 32GB model if a 64GB version is being offered for 'only' $50* more? After all, you already 'know' that you're going to bust 16GB, which means your phone will be half full.
It's entirely possible that Apple noticed a 'hockey stick' effect in it's sales - lots and lots and lots of 16GB models, lots of 64GB models, but the 32GB model was selling the least. So why have it? Odds are the 32GB users will grumble a bit and buy the 64GB model anyways.
*It seems like it'd be pretty standard: $199 for 16GB, $249 for 32GB, $299@64.
I don't read AC A human right
All of my Android phones include the ability to add a MicroSD card.
Great! Sounds like you are a satisfied customer of Android phones.
I don't care how much memory is on the phone, my data (pictures etc) doesn't reside there
Fair enough. I don't personally care to store my photos etc on an SD card but to each their own. I'd rather sync my stuff wirelessly to a remote drive and not worry about storing my stuff on a modern day floppy disk. If you want to go old school that's fine but don't presume the rest of us want to follow your lead.
Apple's continued refusal to add a MicroSD slot is just more of their way of ripping off their customers.
So because Apple provides an extremely popular product but doesn't provide the exact product you want they are "ripping people off"? Curious and rather condescending logic. I'm pretty confident that most people could not care less about the presence or absence of a MicroSD card slot. It adds to the cost, adds to the bulk, adds to the complexity, is one more layer of unnecessary complexity and in most cases wouldn't get used much if at all. Personally I'd rather the space be taken up with additional battery if anything because that is FAR more useful to me.
Then add a microSD slot with support for 64GB memory slot.
You seem to think that a microSD card is an unambiguously positive feature. It is not. You seem to understand the upside but let me lay out the downsides:
1) It adds bulk to the phone for a feature that most customers do not care about and will not use
2) It adds to the cost of the product for design, manufacturing, warranty, and support (again for a feature few will actually use)
3) It reduces the reliability of the device by a small but statistically significant amount. When you are selling these in the millions that adds up to substantial expense.
4) Adding the microSD card comes at the expense of other features that could occupy that space such as additional battery capacity.
5) It is a vector for dust and debris to enter the phone (see point 3 above)
6) It requires supporting third party hardware that may have compatibility issues
7) SD cards come in a variety of speeds and people will inevitably buy SD cards that are not fast, incompatible or have other performance issues
8) It complicates the software on the device and almost certainly will result in bugs.
9) The functionality can be replicated in other ways that may (and in fact are) preferable to other people such as wirelessly syncing data to other devices.
10) SD cards basically are modern day floppy disks. Do we *really* need to go back to those?
I can keep going. If you want a microSD card on your phone because that is critical to you then there are plenty of excellent options available to you, particularly among Android phones. Pick one and stop trying to tell everyone that they are stupid because they don't care to do things just like you would.
Because 16GB it is considered useless with todays ever growing Application, Photo and Video sizes...and ironically OS Sizes.
Maybe among the slashdot crowd but that's not even remotely true among the General Public. I'm pretty sure Apple and other device makers have a pretty accurate idea how much space actually gets used on most devices. Furthermore they have options available for those who actually do need more storage space.
National newspapers are discussing it
They also spend a lot of time discussing vital matters such as the latest escapades of the Kardashian family. Do you have a point?
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Please keep the base model at a low memory amount. While there may be some people that max out their RAM, I myself use just about nothing. I use mostly the standard apps and a few extra's but even with the base model I have gigs of memory to spare.
There just isn't any content that I wish to store locally. So please, keep the base model modest. I care much more about saving a few dollars than getting more memory that won't be used anyway.
In an age where 16 GB is available as RAM on many desktops and laptops, it's stupid to sell/buy a computer with only 16 GB persistent storage.
If that is all people actually need then why it it stupid? I'm pretty sure Apple and other smartphone makers have a much more accurate idea of how much storage actually gets used than you do.
The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer with touch interface instead of keyboard/mouse of a laptop.
I dispute your framing of this issue. iPhones and other smartphones are hardly "underpowered". In fact they are incredibly powerful especially given the engineering challenges in play including battery life, heat, size and budget limitations. If you think these issues are trivial then by all means dazzle us with your brilliance and make a better product.
Is the portability premium so high, or the case so shiny, that we have to pay 2 times the cost of a powerful laptop while getting computing power/memory of a 5 year old laptop?
Short answer? Yes. Long answer? You are comparing apples to oranges. The heat, power, size and performance requirements of those two devices are wildly different. Do you really want a cooling fan in your cell phone? Because heat is a HUGE problem and speed = heat. Given the size of battery that is in a cell phone you simply don't have the power budget to crank up the performance to that of a current laptop.
The iPhone 6 isn't close to what you had on a 5 year laptop.
Could you stick that 5 year old laptop in a shirt pocket? I didn't think so. Why do you insist on comparing devices with wildly different heat, power and size budgets as if they are somehow the same thing?
Using 16 GB chips means they could have ordered a massive amount of those chips back then (assuming these are the same chips as before), thereby possibly being able to get significant discounts with the manufacturers considering the order volume.
Additionally, if and when prices drop, the profit margin increases.
Last but not least, more consumers will be willing to get an entry-level iPhone because it has enough space for basic use and is cheap enough for them to afford it while still allowing Apple to reap enough profit from the cheapest model.
There are probably many more reasons 16 GB is perfect for Apple, and most will revolve around money, I guess.
The cost for designing and main an iPhone is allegedly around $250. Their profit margin is over 50%. They could afford to fit in slightly larger flash modules and still be ungodly profitable. Hell, there are Android phones with more RAM, storage, and screen space for a similar price. Keeping the base model with limited storage may be an inducement to buy next year's model.
All companies want high profit margins. At least no one is forced to buy Apple phones. (Consumers are usually forced to buy overly expensive cell or internet access instead. Though MVNOs help with cell prices. )
I admit, the distinction is blurred with solid-state storage, but one of this article's keywords is "RAM" - which is not related to the article's contents at all. That's confusing because my main complaint with the new iPhone is that it only has 1GB RAM, the same as the iPhone 5. The article title made me think it was going to address *that*.
O yes, I forgot it's Apple. They can charge $100 for each 16gb of additional storage. Silly Andriod users like myself just go buy a 64GB mirco sd card for $39.
Instead of claiming the iPhone 6 has two flavors costing $199 or $299, I wish authors of articles would publish the Real(tm) prices. Mainly these lock you in to a carrier for 2 years (minimum $10/month subsidy to phone cost) and commit you to having a data plan and other extras that could add on $30/month or more. By contrast a few years back I bought a cheap Android phone for $120 and I pay $35/month for cell service total. With all the required extras these two iPhones almost certainly cost a minimum of $700 and quite possibly as much as $1300 (not including basic cell service).
Floppies allowed transferring and backup of files. They were great!
First off floppies were NOT "great". They were necessary but were obsolete at least 15 years before we finally were rid of them. The floppy is dead and we are better off for it. Second, there are lots of ways to transfer and backup files, not the least of which is through a wireless network. These are available any user of iDevices so I'm puzzled why anyone would really want to deal with the headache and extra expense of a postage stamp sized ersatz floppy disk.
I think the no external storage policy is to protect iTunes and prevent piracy.
A nonsensical argument because you can transfer the files off the iDevice in a variety of ways.
Ironically, I think the reliance on iTunes hinders Apple's concept of the "post- PC era".
This we agree on. iTunes is important strategically to Apple but it's been stretched WAY beyond what it ever should have been asked to do. Fortunately I don't have to deal with it directly very often these days.
The title says Memory, but they're talking about Storage.
The answer is that a lot of people use less than 16GB of storage. The more interesting question is why the 32GB doesn't exist.
I think it's because people either don't use much storage at all, like my mom or girlfriend who just use the iPhone for email, Safari, Twitter, Words with Friends, Facebook, and streaming music. For them, 16GB is more than enough.
Once you start collecting music, photos, videos and such, 32GB is not nearly enough, so 64GB kicks in. While 32GB would be enough for those in between casual users and media collectors... say those that just take a lot of pictures, but nothing else, the numbers of these people are too small to support a 32GB offering in the line up and Apple is better off bumping these people up to 64GB.
I think the TF card reader for Lightning devices can only be used to download photos, not anything else. And it appears to be only for iPad; iPhone compatibility is unconfirmed.
BTW, please stop calling flash as "Memory" (in the title) because memory is often confused with RAM.
Flash memory is a form of EEPROM, or electrically erasable programmable read-only memory.
Isnt this obvius? They have to have something to add to the updated Iphone 6 model, when they upgrade it in 12 months time.
The new and much improved Iphone will boast 32 GB of storage and, a new software feature, like hand gesture steering of apps (its revolutionary...)
For some time Apple and other companies have restricted storage amount, and year after year lowered production costs while keeping the price of the device the same. 128GB of flash actually costs $50 dollars today, 64GB costs $25, and 32GB $12, and 16GB $6 dollars.
The first iPhone from 2007/2008 had 8GB by itself. Over the years they kept the base model at 8GB, and then slowly moved to 16GB. Till last year these companies were still pushing 8GB to 16GB as the base amount, despite the price dropping several times over the years.
There is a game of price fixing going on with these devices. They are profitable to sell at $199, no different from an iPod Touch with the same specs, but they are claiming to sell them for $600-$899.. The cost of manufacuring is less than $200..
It is possible because competition is restricted by the ways cellphone companies sell the devices with a cell service plan in the United States , effectively preventing most companies from entering the market with off brand and knock off devices , keeping the cost of premium devices very high in favor of profits. It requires an agreement between Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HTC, etc, to keep the msrp at $600+.. No company will go against it because the price fixing is profitable, allowing $200 devices to be sold 3-6x market value.
They are in effect charging people $200 dollars alone for an upgrade from 16GB flash which costs $6, to 128GB that costs $42 dollars.. They charge $100 for the $19 upgrade to 64GB .
I am glad they at least moved to 64GB and 128GB because before they were charging this same arm and a leg for 32GB and 64GB.. I myself bought a 128GB SSD for $60 bucks in 2012! I bought a 256GB for $140! This was 2012, prices are even lower today..
Basically they were charging $200 dollars for a $30 upgrade back in 2012. That is pure profit..
Thanks for the opportunity to line your investors pockets, Apple!
BTW iPhone 6 is not even an upgrade from iPhone 5s. Its like a 2011 Samsung or HTC being rebranded Apple in 2014.. Same size screen, same amount of cores, and all that. Yet selling at a high price like its high end shit, when it clearly isn't anymore. Lmfao..
obamasweapon.com
Nothing more nothing less...apple wanted a higher priced entry level model at 249...carriers wanted 199.. The only place available to trim was memory.. This is the result
And buy the cheapest/base model that gets them into the ballpark ...
Am I the only one who at first red "base memory" as RAM and would prefer the term storage to memory when it is used to described persistent storage?
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Just think iTunes, apple tie in, .. and then get some open source non tie-in android
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Sounds,like those trading up to the i6 are being sucker punched.
I really don't understand apple"s conservative features.. Why not to make the device open for memory, connection etc.. It would be more easier for users.
16 GB is sufficient memory for iPhone. Adding more memory will cost more. mobile application development
Does anyone other than me get irritated by the description of the 16GB version being described as a $199 phone?
That is like saying your SUV is a $300 vehicle, because that was the down payment.
You missed one crucial one. Processing speed. I would dismiss most, other than possibly #1, not everyone uses all features, but then again you could say the exact same thing about a host of other features that most people do not use either.
From my experience, I have a Galaxy S3. When I was trying to decide from going from my Apple 3S, to either the new Apple 5 or the Galaxy S3, the SD card was one of the deciding features. I got a 64GB SD card off Amazon for about 50$. I dumped about 40GB of music on it.
One of the things I have noticed, is that once you have it on there, it is difficult to use. The file system is slow. Now that could be that the software that runs the file system wasn't built for that kind of volume, or it could be that the processor just doesn't have the guts to really parse that much information very well. Then again as you say in #7 it could be the card with performance issues. However it being a SanDisk of decent quality, that it would probably have to be inherent, should that be the case.
Anyway with the Galaxy, it is actually inside the phone, so if you don't use it you may not even know about it, no dust, etc. and likely negligible cost considering what goes into making and marketing these things. Anyway I like having the choice, and it is obvious that Apple has been playing the no media game for some time to force you to use their services and/or upgrade to more expensive devices, which is one of the things that also made me move away from Apple.
Anyway mine works, I am happy with it, and I think it is insulting at this point to not give consumers choice. Then again, consumers do have a choice to go with something else, which I exercised.
As you say however, it is probably a truism that on any device, most users don't use half the features anyway, so the lowest common denominator is what you design for. However that is a good way to stagnate and not innovate over time. Which is probably why you see all those TV commercials from Windows and Samsung making fun of the Apple 6 and how behind the times it is. Apple can probably afford to cost on its brand name for awhile, however a lack of innovation may be their eventual downfall.
You may think that allowing 3rd party apps is positive feature, It is not.You seem to understand the upside but let me lay out the downsides:
1) It adds bulk to the phone for a feature that most customers do not care about and will not use
2) It adds to the cost of the product for design, manufacturing, warranty, and support (again for a feature few will actually use)
3) It reduces the reliability of the device by a small but statistically significant amount. When you are selling these in the millions that adds up to substantial expense.
4) Adding the 3rd party apps features comes at the expense of other features that could occupy that space such as additional battery capacity.
5) It is a vector for Viruses and Malware to enter the phone (see point 3 above)
6) It requires supporting third party software that may have compatibility issues
7) 3rd party softwarecomes in a variety of speeds and people will inevitably buy software that are not fast, incompatible or have other performance issues
8) It complicates the software on the device and almost certainly will result in bugs.
Most of your disadvantages are amazingly tenuous at best, and easily miss-applied to all sorts of other features.
In the end Apple profits by people wanting to upgrade their phones as soon as possible - expansion capability reduces that.
9) The functionality can be replicated in other ways that may (and in fact are) preferable to other people such as wirelessly syncing data to other devices.
10) SD cards basically are modern day floppy disks. Do we *really* need to go back to those?
I bought the 128gb iphone but actually there is only 114gb available!!!! Where is the missing 14gb? My thought is that from that 14gb missing, Apple makes the 16 gb iPhone lol !!! I am pissed !!