Apple's 16GB IPhone 6S Is a Serious Strategic Mistake

HughPickens.com writes: Matthew Yglesias writes at Vox that Apple's recent announcement of an entry level iPhone 6S is a serious strategic mistake because it contains just 16GB of storage — an amount that was arguably too low even a couple of years back. According to Yglesias, the user experience of an under-equipped iPhone can be quite bad, and the iPhone 6S comes with features — like the ability to shoot ultra-HD video — that are going to fill up a 16GB phone in the blink of an eye. "It's not too hard to figure out what Apple is up to here," writes Yglesias. "Leaving the entry-level unit at 16GB of storage rather than 32GB drives higher profit margins in two ways. One, it reduces the cost of manufacturing the $649 phone, which increases profit margins on sales of the lowest-end model. Second, and arguably more important, it pushes a lot of people who might be happy with a 32GB phone to shell out $749 for the 64GB model."

But this raises the question of what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money anyhow. Apple pays out large (and growing) sums of cash to existing shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks, but its enormous cash stockpile keeps remorselessly marching up toward $200 billion. "Killing the 16GB phone and replacing it with a 32GB model at the low end would obtain things money can't buy — satisfied customers, positive press coverage, goodwill, a reputation for true commitment to excellence, and a demonstrated focus on the long term. A company in Apple's enviable position ought to be pushing the envelop forward on what's considered an acceptable baseline for outfitting a modern digital device, not squeezing extra pennies out of customers for no real reason."

Comments

Not the only factor?

[Pete (big-pete)]

Actually I see another reason to keep the base model at 16Gb. App development is crucial to the iPhone (and any other smartphone out there), and many developers don't like to do the extra work to keep their application sizes sane. However, as long as the base model is 16Gb, app developers need to keep this in mind when developing their apps.

If this encourages even only some developers to keep their applications down to a sensible size (knowing that anyone with a 16Gb device will either avoid their application, or delete it as soon as they run low on space) then I guess it's worth it.

I'm not saying the extra money in Apple's pocket isn't a factor, but I'm sure there are other factors at play here, this theory being just one of them.

-- Pete.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also keep in mind, many, many people own a smartphone, yet don't use the advanced features offered. Like my dad. He has about 3 apps he uses -- no interest in getting others, no interest in shooting video, maybe shoots photos every couple of months. I suspect there are a few million people like him. I would think and hope that the people buying the entry level know what they're getting into -- which, is that if you plan on using the phone much or the advanced features, it IS NOT for you. However, if you plan on just wanting a smart phone, but use none of the advanced features, then it most certainly is just fine.

I don't think it is that bad to keep it around.

Re:Not the only factor?

[SQL Error]

Wut?

If they simply put more storage in the damn thing, app sizes would stop being a problem.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Jane Q. Public]

If they simply put more storage in the damn thing, app sizes would stop being a problem.

That is exactly the attitude GP was referring to.

The easy availability of storage and memory today has made programmers extremely wasteful of resources. As a result, many programs today could literally run 10 times as fast and take up 1/10 as much space, if the developers really wanted to concentrate on that.

It's easy to be a programmer today. It's much harder to be a good programmer.

Re:Not the only factor?

[FlyHelicopters]

App development is crucial to the iPhone (and any other smartphone out there), and many developers don't like to do the extra work to keep their application sizes sane. However, as long as the base model is 16Gb, app developers need to keep this in mind when developing their apps.

That would be nice, if it worked like that... but already way too many apps are getting big.

Sure, Facebook isn't too big and others are reasonable, but how big can the Facebook app really get?

Try downloading Real Racing 3 or the Disney Infinity 2.0 app and tell me about app sizes. As I look at my kid's iPad, there are over 10 apps that are over 1GB in size each.

Ok, that is an iPad, not an iPhone, but same thing more or less.

Re:Not the only factor?

[FlyHelicopters]

Sure, that would be fine, if the jump from the 16GB version to the 64GB version wasn't $100 friggin dollars...

For FLASH storage that costs maybe $5 if they are being really nice about it...

Re:Not the only factor?

[FlyHelicopters]

Right back at you... Seriously, if you don't understand the point that was being made, perhaps you shouldn't post at all...

Critical thinking skills clearly are lacking, and you aren't the only poster in this topic to be so clueless...

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it won't. The size of apps will just increase to whatever is available.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people also never use their smartphone as anything other than a Phone, or sometimes just a text messaging device (my mother is one of those people)

While I agree in principle that the 16GB size is too small, people who are buying the 16GB size know exactly what they are getting into, regardless of the phone.

16GB is actually just fine if you take pictures from time to time, but aren't using it as a serious camera.

People who ARE serious about taking photos will buy a real DSLR. People who are serious about 4K video will buy a dedicated 4K camcorder or even a GoPro (which is only slightly worse than what the iPhone can do)

CMOS sensors in iPhones and sub-5000$ camcorders are actually rather inferior for grabbing moving images. Everything looks warped when taken with CMOS rolling shutters. And this is the very thing that goes into cameraphone/smartphones. So the "harry potter"-esque moving photos is a gimmick and probably not of much significant use short of some very very specific use cases (eg text books.) I actually wonder how these files will be stored. If they're stored as a JPG and a MP4/MOV then they can be played back in other equipment, but the experience will be kinda cringeworthy as you slideshow through images that have to "wait" every time because they're a video and turn on the video acceleration hardware. If they're another kind of JPEG file with a metadata blob that says to look at a second file for the moving image, that might work better. We will have to wait and see.

Everyone else: Flash Memory isn't quite as trivial. If you look at the sizes for the iPhone and the Apple TV, it becomes clear that it just doesn't make sense to offer "four sizes" for every device Apple makes (a problem that wouldn't exist if they had microSDXC cards) But because the speed of SD cards vary, it also makes sense for Apple to not allow them when the onboard NAND memory is PCIe SSD quality, not flash drive quality (which can vary quite a bit.) Some future card type might eventually make Apple reconsider, but I think the solution might simply be some kind of piggyback device that can be combined with a battery pack.

Re:Not the only factor?

[magusxxx]

Thank you Pete for mentioning this. A little history... (Now, my memory may be a little rusty on the details, but you'll get my point.) InDesign used to be called Pagemaker. When the V.3 came out it was five disks. This was crappy especially when you're a company and have to pay someone to upgrade all of your systems one at a time. Which was a heck-of-a-lot back then. When Aldus(?) announced all the new features for the next version people freaked. How many disks was this going to be?...seven?...TEN!??! Three. Two less than the previous version. Because they started from scratch and rewrote the whole damn thing. When's the last time you heard a major software maker doing something like this? I think you're right on point, Pete. Apple wants lean, mean apps. Not bloatware. It'll save disk space and memory allocation. And remember, we're now getting 2 gigs of memory after many years? I doubt they're going to up the memory again any time soon. And software designers need to realize this now rather than later.

Re:Not the only factor?

[diamondmagic]

Prices aren't just a function of supply, they're also function of demand (what the market can bear). Since a model with more storage is more desirable, the price will increase more than proportionally.

Or put it this way: A 0 GB iPhone would be throughly useless, so it wouldn't sell for $200, it would sell for near zero.

Another way: when combined with the rest of a phone that can actually make use of said storage, the additional storage becomes more valuable than it otherwise would.

There shouldn't be anything unusual about this. Profiting is literally the act of making something more valuable than the sum of its parts, including labor. And likewise, you're said to take a loss when you make something less than the sum of its parts (thereby destroying value).

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

> many developers don't like to do the extra work ...
Obviously not an iOS developer.

You do realize that you have to ship with non-retina and retina resources ?

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

some people think that how much an item costs someone to produce/mine should determine it's price

These people are called economists. According to their theory, if someone can ask much more than it costs to make a product, then a competitor will emerge and competition will drive down prices close to the marginal cost. So in any reasonably well working market, price and cost should be closely related.

Re:Not the only factor?

[CastrTroy]

I would question whether people with this usage pattern would just be better off with a cheaper Android or Windows phone. Why pay $700 for a phone if you just you it to send text messages and run few simple apps? If Apple wants to maintain their high end customer base, they should at least have their phones reasonably high end.

Re:Not the only factor?

[CastrTroy]

Games are big because of the high resolution of the iPad. It has a resolution of 2048Ã--1536. That's higher resolution than any game console does, and higher than the average home desktop monitor. When you have high resolution, you need more pixels in the textures and videos for your games, or they are going to look sub-par.

I think that not having expandable storage at this point hurts them more than it helps them. My wife got an iPad and there was only 12 GB of usable space out of the box. Download a couple movies, add a couple hundred pictures, a few modest sized apps, and the thing is already filled up.

Re:Not the only factor?

[wassomeyob]

"It's" is a contraction of "it is".

Re:Not the only factor?

[Maury Markowitz]

> Why pay $700 for a phone if you just you it to send text messages and run few simple apps?

Well for one, you're not paying $700, you're paying the delta between $700 and whatever other phone you buy. In a better-case scenario where you get something like the Moto X, that's more like $300.

So why pay $300? Well if all the people at the other end of the connection are on iPhones, it gets you iMessage, FaceTime, AirDrop and many other features. I know I find those compelling. $300 compelling.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people also never use their smartphone as anything other than a Phone, or sometimes just a text messaging device (my mother is one of those people)

Then you don't need an overpriced phone with minimal storage. You could buy an Android or Windows phone that has expandable storage for far less money, and it still works for just making calls/sending text messages.

Re:Not the only factor?

[JoeMerchant]

It's the cloud, man - streaming from the cloud. We're all 4G here, we can install apps from the cloud at will, and who keeps copies of media anymore? That's so 2005...

Soon as you shoot that HD video in the jungles of Timbuktu, stream it out 4G to the cloud - they've got 4G in Timbuktu, don't they?

Newsflash Cupertino: we don't even have decent 4G coverage in the American mid-west. Your 16G phone will be a POS for anybody who ever leaves a city, even just for vacation.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Austerity Empowers]

I agree, I couldn't care less about the camera or the ability to shoot video. It's a feature that has been in phones for years that I still can't figure out why I'd want. I have managed with 16GB and don't feel an urgent need to upgrade.

Re:Not the only factor?

[mevets]

Where well working market is a measure of the real world conforming to their theory. Slightly reminiscent of high school physics experiments where the uncertainty permitted nearly any explanation for observed phenomena.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Reibisch]

... What? You don't change programmer attitudes by restricting choices of the consumer.

That's like saying counter-top mixers stay should be under-powered so that the attitudes of recipe creators will conform.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

So why pay $300? Well if all the people at the other end of the connection are on iPhones, it gets you iMessage, FaceTime, AirDrop and many other features. I know I find those compelling. $300 compelling.

Wow. It's like you actually LIKE being vendor locked-in.
Even if I had an iPhone, I wouldn't use any of these services and would use cross-platforms alternatives instead, when possible.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

$100 isn't really that much. Amortize that over the life of your phone ... 2 year? That's an extra $4 a month. Ask yourself this. For $4 of savings a month, would you be willing to put up with less storage space? Or would you be happier with the extra 48G?

Honestly, these things stop mattering once you stop being poor. Or 16. Whichever.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why pay $700 for a phone if you just you it to send text messages and run few simple apps?

Well for one, you're not paying $700, you're paying the delta between $700 and whatever other phone you buy. In a better-case scenario where you get something like the Moto X, that's more like $300.

So why pay $300? Well if all the people at the other end of the connection are on iPhones, it gets you iMessage, FaceTime, AirDrop and many other features. I know I find those compelling. $300 compelling.

Well, I guess it takes a "$400 compelling" to get from Moto X to Iphone 6S, no?

Are you saying $700 is "$100 not compelling at all" then?

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like posted AC because you're a pussy.

Re:Not the only factor?

[rtb61]

Supply and demand will also mean those who want more for less will go elsewhere reducing demand resulting in a glut of supply and collapsing prices or substantially reduced sales. Apple has lost it cache, it was inevitable, nothing they could do to keep it except try to be bigger dicks than they were with B$ patents to keep the competition out. There isn't really all that far to go with smart phones now, extra battery life, replaceable batteries to keep up resale, waterproofing and durability, storage space and better voice control. Screen resolution and performance have no real scope for improvement and as such the only direction they can go with is cheaper prices. Do to phones purposeful short life, they can never earn the same sales cache as once held by other high end products watches, cameras etc (they lasted a life time and people bought based upon that idea and paid a premium for reputation).

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

iMessage is worth $300 to you?? Lol.

Re:Not the only factor?

[drinkypoo]

As a result, many programs today could literally run 10 times as fast and take up 1/10 as much space, if the developers really wanted to concentrate on that.

Ugh. Best example I can think of is Fallout shelter. Here's a game that is actually made WORSE by making it 3d, but they did that anyway, with the result that the game chokes and stutters on a Tegra3. This game is simple enough to have implemented the concept on an Amiga or ancient game console, if done with 2d graphics. And since the world of the game is 2d, there's no reason to use 3d except justifying stealing development funds.

But what's truly sad is that the game is still really simple, barely there even with the use of 3d, and it still chokes hard. There's more going on in a game of Simcity, which you can play on a SNES.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until you have kids (or grandkids). ;-)

Then it is really nice to have a phone that takes video or takes pictures wherever you are if something happens. I took a great one with a new (at the time) Nokia in 2003 of my then 4 year old. Wouldn't have that photo without the camera. Spontaneous shot.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

p.s. Since then I've had hundreds more great photos. But that shot made me a convert.

Re:Not the only factor?

[jeffmeden]

They are being really nice, up until the most recent generation the jump from 16 to 32 was $100 and the jump from 16 to 64 was $200! They are giving you half off! Jeez some people don't know how good they have it.

Re:Not the only factor?

[master_kaos]

That "game" (in quotes, because you pretty much don't even do anything in it) sucks so not like you losing out on much anyways

Re:Not the only factor?

[I'm New Around Here]

Having more powerful countertop mixers won't make Chef Emeril add rocks to his recipes.

Re:Not the only factor?

[I'm New Around Here]

Except that some people just like the iPhone. I know it's hard to believe, but some people have opinions that are different than yours. They feel it is worth a higher price to buy a more expensive car, or suit, or house, or smartphone. Not because it will be cost effective five years from now, but because that is what they prefer.

How many posts are we going to have to wade through that make the same, rather immature, response?

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, due to the 3D acceleration that comes even in base-line smartphones these days, making it 3D speeds it up. That's been the case for *years* on the desktop side of things. It's not the graphics layer that makes Fallout Shelter choke, it's the simulation happening underneath that does it.

Re:Not the only factor?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Your cross-platforms alternatives are useless if your contacts can't be bothered to install the extra applications required. So apart from email and iMessages which is compatible with a handful of protocols, your idea won't work.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

...has made programmers extremely wasteful of resources.

...has made graphic designers extremely wasteful of resources.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

With Facetime your contacts also need the application. The only difference is that with Facetime you can only communicate with people using the Apple ecosystem. Anyways there are more popular alternatives such as Skype, and even Google Hangout is a better choice as more people have it on their phone (and cross-platform).

Re:Not the only factor?

[__aaclcg7560]

Or put it this way: A 0 GB iPhone would be throughly useless, so it wouldn't sell for $200, it would sell for near zero.

Actually, that would be a voice-only phone and those are typically "FREE" with a two-year contract. Before I switched to an iPhone 5C last year, I got voice-only phones whenever my contract renewals. The iPhone is the first phone I ever paid for.

Re:Not the only factor?

[oh_my_080980980]

It's the upfront cost jackass. No one and I mean no one says, "Hey, what's the amortize cost over the life of the product." Instead, people look at the up front cost and see if they have the money to purchase the product.

Re:Not the only factor?

[FlyHelicopters]

While that is all true, the margin in the larger versions of Apple products is so large it is noticeable to your average consumer who is more aware than ever what flash costs.

While you're correct about making profits and supply and demand, the issue gets muddy when you become the size of a company like Apple.

Apple has risks and image concerns that small companies don't have. Everything they do makes the front page, any midsteps also make the front page.

A comparison would be the min wage protests against companies like McDonalds. You don't see those protests on the news against Jack in the Box, Wataburger, or Wendy's, now do you?

When you're the biggest fish in the sea, the rules just aren't the same.

The point of the article is that Apple would be well to remember this, that while profit is important, so is image, customer satisfaction, etc. Apple has so much money that doing something "right by people" once in awhile can pay large dividends.

It builds good will that can be cashed in later if needed.

Re:Not the only factor?

[FlyHelicopters]

The games aren't any smaller on the iPhone. I have Real Racing 3 on my phone, it is over 1GB in size.

I have my Amazon Music collection downloaded to my phone, that is nearly 10GB in size.

When we travel, we like to put movies on our devices, those take up a LOT of space in a big, big hurry.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Captain Splendid]

o one and I mean no one says, "Hey, what's the amortize cost over the life of the product.

No no, GP is right. Once you become an adult/start making real money, most of your big ticket purchases are often done with full consideration of the long term. I don't care about sticker price, I care about the price divided by how many years it's likely to work in. Which makes a new smartphone purchase with an average life expectancy of 2 years less pricey per month than what I spend on gas. A much easier decision to make than considering the sticker price only.

Re:Not the only factor?

[phantomfive]

This is not restricting the consumer, it's restricting the programmers
The consumer has choices. They can get better devices if they want.

Re:Not the only factor?

[tehcyder]

People who ARE serious about taking photos will buy a real DSLR. People who are serious about 4K video will buy a dedicated 4K camcorder

That is a pretty feeble argument. For most people, a modern smartphone camera/video is all they need for selfies, holiday snaps or whatever.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Austerity Empowers]

I have kids. It's just not in my DNA to think of taking a picture of them, or just about anything for that matter. I also very infrequently look at pictures of this nature, it's just not something I really have any interest in. My wife is the opposite, but she carries a very high end camera with her, because she wants the pictures to be perfect...

To each their own, but there's a sizable number of people who just don't care about pictures and we're probably not feeling the crunch of flash size as a result.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I am also one who owns at most 10 apps in my phone, and mainly system apps.

And more than the need, I think Apple may want to push users to use Cloud services. Wireless carrier would not mind the bandwidth usage, and some users may prefer on-demand services.

Re:Not the only factor?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Comments are meant to be read as a thread... What I said didn't apply to all situations, to everyone, everywhere in the freakin' Universe.

Maury Markowitz said "Well if all the people at the other end of the connection are on iPhones, it gets you iMessage, FaceTime, AirDrop and many other features."

So no, people don't "need the application", they already have it because they have iPhones.

Re:Not the only factor?

[kilfarsnar]

Honestly, these things stop mattering once you stop being poor. Or 16. Whichever.

LOL, what a dick! Lots of stuff stops mattering once you stop being poor, you insensitive clod.

Re: Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disagree, my dad uses only emails and Whatsapp, I have to clean his phone every 4-6 months coz Whatsapp group media messages fills up space. Really wish it was 32gb at least

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! I'll be looking for those close-to-marginal-cost phones that run ios applications.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not vendor lock-in, it's my religion. The corporation loves me.

Re:Not the only factor?

[ruir]

As other poster says. Once you have surplus money, you do really look at the long term. I do prefer to spend more money and have a product that lasts longer and gives me less headaches over time.

Re:Not the only factor?

[drinkypoo]

Actually, due to the 3D acceleration that comes even in base-line smartphones these days, making it 3D speeds it up.

Actually, what I said wasn't that you shouldn't have a fancy-pants GPU in the phone, and use its accelerated 2d capabilities to implement your game.

It's not the graphics layer that makes Fallout Shelter choke, it's the simulation happening underneath that does it.

No, it's the graphics layer, and it happens whether I force graphics to be accelerated or not. And it happens on both JB and LP. (Didn't bother with a KK ROM for my TF201.) The more rooms need collecting, for example, the worse it all gets. There's less simulation happening then! It's just got a bunch of throbber graphics playing.

This is a game idea which could safely be implemented on the computers of yesteryear, it shouldn't choke a Tegra 3. I know that a T3 is old and by no means fast by modern standards, but we're talking about a very very simple game. There's never more than what, two hundred plus maybe a couple dozen actors doing things? Plus however many rooms you can have, which isn't that many. The frame rate is abysmal, even when I manage to force off all the other things, and force full screen. And mind you, this is a device which runs moderately complicated games just fine. Real Racing 3 is quite smooth, for example. I'm using a DS3 Sixaxis with it, very nice once you unset some lame defaults in the sixaxis app.

Complexity for the sake of complexity is foolish. But I just don't think anyone gave a damn about the older devices. It was just, "eh, shields are cheap, ship it"

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument only makes sense when items are fungible (or if you prefer completely replaceable). If I want an iPhone, I can't really buy it from an unlimited supply of vendors at a variety of prices. I can pay the price set by Apple or not.

That's the problem when people use a theoretical model to describe specific real world behavior. Often in the real world, the model is insufficient to describe the phenomena (even if it is sufficient to understand a principle). For example, things thrown in the air follow a parabola, so some enterprising person will tell me all about the principle of gravity and the parabola model of travel and then tell me that my helium balloon will do the same.

Apple iPhones are not fungible devices sold in a free market where the purchaser is fully informed and there are an infinite number of vendors offering exactly the same product. In fact, nearly nothing fits the supply and demand model perfectly. Doesn't mean the model is useless, it just means that you can't use it to make very accurate predictions without considering all the things this model doesn't address.

Re:Not the only factor?

[peter_hagemeyer]

With the new App Thinning tools that Xcode provides, each newly developed app can be trimmed on needless garbage and graphics before it's downloaded. Have a iPhone 6, no need to download 2x and 3x icons/screens, and resources for an iPad Pro.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

Except that most people don't have iPhones. So unless you live under a rock, you still need other applications to communicate with them.
When you pay $300 more to have an iPhone, and use these services instead of cross-platform alternatives, you are a nuisance to your friends and family by putting pressure on them so that they also spend the extra $300.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

App size has little to do with the developer code and more to do with having all the assets (splash screens, icons, static images, etc.) to support all the resolutions for all supported devices for a given OS version. The problem is at the OS-level. Both Android and iOS do not support vector graphics as a supported image format for assets. Everything is a bitmap, preferably of the PNG or JPG variety. Both IDEs for Android and iOS have some tools and techniques for easing the burden of generating and managing these assets, but come build-time it's all one big pile of bitmap images included in the app package. It doesn't matter what your device is, it's going to get all the assets. There are some creative techniques using some combination of downloading and/or generating assets at runtime that's targeted to the device the app is running on, but that's more a workaround than a real solution. I don't get it. This is more or less a solved issue when it comes to displaying font glyphs and the bump in resolution has only improved the situation there instead of hinder it.

Re:Not the only factor?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Except most people around me do have iPhones or iPads, especially the non-technical people. I only know of two people with Android phones. The rest don't even have smartphones, just flip-type dumb phones. I even have a few contacts that only have landlines, some of them on magicJack, although one of them do have an iPad.

There's no pressure on anyone. Email works just fine between all platforms and if you don't want to write something, you just make a regular phone call.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

There is pressure. If I want to video-call you, I have to buy Apple's hardware because you won't install a cross-platform application.
Also, you must be living under a rock if you only know people who has a phone with only 16% market share worldwide, and less market share than Android in probably every country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Not the only factor?

[khellendros1984]

if your contacts can't be bothered to install the extra applications required.

If they can't be bothered, then it sounds like the communication wasn't that important anyhow (or at least the video streaming feature didn't provide enough of a reason to install the apps, rather than just using plain voice communication).

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. I think it's awesome that they still offer a 16 GB model. I'm buying both the 6S and 6S Plus for development but not for actual use, so it would be a complete waste of my money to go for the larger option. I don't even need anywhere near 16 GB to test my apps on these devices; 8 GB would even have been fine.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. Many people in fact do you ask this question. In fact, it's the only responsible question to ask.

Re:Not the only factor?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I'm in Canada, I don't care about Android marketshare in other countries. If you want to video-call me, though luck. You can still contact me by email or voice, which used to be fine for everyone before the iPhone.

Re:Not the only factor?

[andymadigan]

In the U.S. Apple has a program to amortize the cost over the life of the phone. You pay in monthly installments (0% interest). They just introduced it here, I'm sure it will expand internationally.

And yes, the cost difference is roughly $4/mo. The total cost (over 2 years) is identical to buying the phone with AppleCare (which is also included).

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh no. I can install Skype or whatever on my iPhone because, hey, it supports both. It's only vendor lock-in if you can't *also* use other solutions... which you can.

So for the people I know with an iPhone, hey, we have an automatic solution. For everyone else, I'm no worse off than an android phone.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Teckla]

Actually I see another reason to keep the base model at 16Gb. App development is crucial to the iPhone (and any other smartphone out there), and many developers don't like to do the extra work to keep their application sizes sane. However, as long as the base model is 16Gb, app developers need to keep this in mind when developing their apps.

Thank God this logic has not applied for the last 30 years, or I'd still be using my Commodore 64 with 64k of RAM.

If this encourages even only some developers to keep their applications down to a sensible size (knowing that anyone with a 16Gb device will either avoid their application, or delete it as soon as they run low on space) then I guess it's worth it.

I would like to suggest that iDevices have actually regressed in terms of storage: Retina caused many apps to get much larger, and iOS has grown in size. This means 16 GB doesn't go as far as it used to.

Apple are just being cheap and greedy bastards, because they know they can get away with it and still make obscene profits.

Re:Not the only factor?

[Razed By TV]

The 16GB model could also be aimed at cloud storage users.

Re:Not the only factor?

[EXrider]

Even if I had an iPhone, I wouldn't use any of these services and would use cross-platforms alternatives instead, when possible.

Good luck getting family, friends and co-workers to use cross-platform alternatives when they're technically inept or apathetic. Then, the moment they F something up on their own device they start blaming you for installing Hangouts on their iPhone, as if that's the cause.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

The iPhone doesn't have a majority market share in Canada. Android does. You must definitely be living under a rock.
http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/03...

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

You don't need them to install it. You just need to not use proprietary, single-platform communication apps on your side. Even if they are pre-installed bloatware you can't remove from your phone.

Anyways, as I were saying to another slashdotter, if you friends, family and coworker want to use services such video chat and don't want to install a third party application such as Skype or Hangout, they must be living under a rock or they won't have that many people to video chat with.

Re:Not the only factor?

[EXrider]

I'm talking more about iMessage, everyone that has iOS and/or a Mac uses iMessage and the built-in messaging app for SMS as well, 3rd party messaging apps don't integrate as well because its iOS of course.

I use Hangouts on iOS for VoIP calls and SMS on my Google Voice number, but I know exactly one other person out of hundreds of acquaintances that even does that.

Re:Not the only factor?

[patniemeyer]

Exactly. And guess who knows exactly how many of those people there are out there? Apple.
I find it weird that people complain about the existence of a low end device, even if they think it's not good enough. It's just a weird thing to complain about. It makes me think it's stoked by flash manufacturers or something :)

Re:Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it probably wont expand internationally, since it's specifically introduced because US telcos are abandoning the subsidies that made $200 iPhones possible.

They want to avoid the "why is it $650, I only paid $200 for my last iPhone. F@ck those greedy buggers" reaction.

In short a US solution to a US problem.

Re:Not the only factor?

[mjwx]

Also keep in mind, many, many people own a smartphone, yet don't use the advanced features offered. Like my dad. He has about 3 apps he uses -- no interest in getting others, no interest in shooting video, maybe shoots photos every couple of months.

Its not just people who dont use smartphones.

I have a 16 GB Nexus 5 and its plenty. I'm a heavy user and I've got 100 applications which take up all of 2.1 GB of my storage. I've got 9.3 GB free and dont see myself using that up any time soon. I dont keep music or videos (or much of any content) on there. I've got a 32 GB OTG drive that I keep videos on for flights and other times when I'm going to be disconnected but I mainly use my tablet for media (OK, this wont help iUsers very much).

I'd bet there are a lot of smartphone users who simply use their device as a phone and internet device, and not for media. When you add in the people who use streaming services exclusively (Netflix, Spotify) then you're approaching a significant percentage of users.

Add to this corporate users that just want the cheapest model and dont care if it hasn't got the room to store 100,000 Miley Cyrus albums then it becomes stupid _not_ to have a small, cheaper base model. With Android being so competitive on features and price, they'd literally be giving customers to their competition without it. The summary sounds like it was written by an Apple puritan with no idea about reality.

Re:Not the only factor?

[RespekMyAthorati]

"FREE" with a two-year contract

"FREE" and "FREE with a two-year contract" have nothing to do with each other.
"FREE with a two-year contract" just means you are buying the phone on an instalment plan.

Re:Not the only factor?

[ttucker]

Actually, what I said wasn't that you shouldn't have a fancy-pants GPU in the phone, and use its accelerated 2d capabilities to implement your game.

Keep telling us what new things are stupid, while the world passes you by.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

everyone that has iOS and/or a Mac uses iMessage

That's not true. And even if it was, that's still a minority of the population.

Re:Not the only factor?

[drinkypoo]

Keep telling us what new things are stupid, while the world passes you by.

If you would just keep passing by, I'd really appreciate it.

Re:Not the only factor?

[EXrider]

Whether you like Apple or not, Its absurd to say that the great majority of iOS users don't use the default messaging application, it's the IE of instant messaging on iOS. Maybe you don't realize that the default messaging system on iOS communicates via either iMessage or SMS automatically??

Re: Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, iOS 9 introduces new functionality giving developers the ability to deliver smaller application bundles and later delievering content "on demand" only to customers who require specific content. This can drastically reduce default application bundles sizes.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

I didn't say anything about the majority. You said "everyone", and that's false. Especially on Mac OS X. I would even say that most OS X users probably don't use iMessage at all.

Re:Not the only factor?

[lsatenstein]

Also keep in mind, many, many people own a smartphone, yet don't use the advanced features offered. Like my dad. He has about 3 apps he uses -- no interest in getting others, no interest in shooting video, maybe shoots photos every couple of months. I suspect there are a few million people like him. I would think and hope that the people buying the entry level know what they're getting into -- which, is that if you plan on using the phone much or the advanced features, it IS NOT for you. However, if you plan on just wanting a smart phone, but use none of the advanced features, then it most certainly is just fine.

I don't think it is that bad to keep it around.

I'm like your dad. I use the browser, an email client and Free-Cell. On rare occasion, Maps, sms, (hangouts) and phone.

Thats it, thats all.

Re: Not the only factor?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem for apple...they all run android. You can get iPhone clones for under 1 bill if you know where to look (plus shipping and running kitkzt). This model is retarded as it undermines the just works marketing bs....either make luxury items or make cheap...doing both just kills your brand

Re:Not the only factor?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

This counts the free, bottom-of-the-barrel, barely-able-to-run-apps Android phones. Which means they're not even used as smartphones. So in real life, marketshare doesn't count and I really do only have two contacts with Android phones.

Re:Not the only factor?

[danbob999]

Last time I checked even the cheapest Android phone could send SMS and even video chat (they now all have a front camera).
The most popular Android phones in Canada are the high end ones, and that's the one we see the most. You will have to find better excuses. Enjoy your life under that rock.

People will buy them..

[brantondaveperson]

..and Apple will make money.

I wish I could make Apple's mistakes.

Of course, 16GB is too small - unless you want a smartphone for email, web, messages, maps, etc etc, and don't plan on shooting any HD video. I have an 8GB iPod, and for what I use it for, it's perfectly fine. I have a 160GB iPod classic for music, and a camera for photos. Separate devices are better. All I need is that bag of holding to keep them all in...

I am fine with 16gb.

[CraigCruden]

I am still using an iPhone 4s and have never had a problem with storage since I don't fill it up with millions of games and I don't take lots of photos...

Just because it is not good for you or some people, doesn't mean that the cheaper option should not be available for those that really don't need the space.

I primarily use it for a "modem" link and for getting messages and checking messages and keeping connected....

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[AmiMoJo]

You represent a very small proportion of users. Most want to use the phone's other basic features - the camera and music playback. Once you start snapping away that storage space quickly fills up, with your MP3 collecting filling the rest. Apple even owns a music store and encourages users to buy from it. Not just music but video as well.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Whiternoise]

I don't play games and it's still a problem, the Office suite takes up about half a gig per app on my iPad. Compared to Android, iOS app sizes are obscene.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[FlyHelicopters]

The median usage of data on an iphone is 7GB.

That makes sense, considering that most iPhones are 16GB in size...

So the people complaining about it, really know nothing.

So, you really know nothing, since it would be impossible for the usage on a 16GB iPhone to be much more than about 12GB (due to not all 16GB being usable).

This is obvious, shame you don't get that.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Dog-Cow]

There is no particular reason to assume that those with 16GB iPhones purposefully keep a lot of space free (your estimate of 12GB usable is very close) just because. Given that 16GB is the low-end of modern iPhones (going back to at least the 6), it seems odd that the median would be 7GB if people felt 16GB was a constraint. Of course, I don't know the source for that number, so if it includes 8GB models, it would make more sense.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Dog-Cow]

They also encourage usage of iCloud for all those media, and they added a streaming service. Clearly Apple understands that 16GB is not always enough, but for many users 64GB might be overkill, and they don't want to spend the money.

At the end of the day, Apple offers a product. Take it or leave it; that's the Apple Way. It makes a lot of money for Apple, so it really doesn't make any sense to claim they are objectively wrong in some way. There's no requirement for them to cater to some tiny percentage of people who claim Apple is leaving money on the table. They don't need it.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[monkeyxpress]

The trouble is that this option is not there because Apple has stripped out the bill of material costs so they can altruistically deliver people like you a cheaper phone. It is unequivocally a marketing strategy to try to raise average sale prices. Remember, prices have been falling now with inflation for over 8 years, which is not ideal. This is one of the problems with having a single product strategy - it is very hard to raise average prices without people noticing. An alternative is what you see in the TV market, where the new tech comes in very expensive, and eventually falls down the price stack. This allows you to keep pushing average prices up each year as it is harder for people to compare an equivalent product between years.

I do agree with what is being said in this article though. In my view Apple have stretched it too far this time. However, I'm not the average buyer (tech savvy) and most buyers (such as my parents) wouldn't have a clue whether 16GB is 'enough'. I think what is sad is that you can see the beginnings of MBA creep occurring at Apple. Of course that is inevitable giving their oracle is dead, but it does mean they are likely to become about as exciting as Microsoft. I do miss the original Jobs product launches. Sure he was a bully and stole lots of people's ideas, but he certainly wasn't boring.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[AmiMoJo]

It seems kinda miserly. Flash memory is very, very cheap, even the low power high performance type used in phones. When you consider what other manufacturers charge for going 16->64GB it's clear that cost is not the issue, considering the huge margin Apple already has.

It seems like a simple oversight. The new generation phones are pretty "meh", nothing really new and they are no longer the thinnest or lightest or best camera etc. No major screw-ups either, they fixed the bending issue and didn't add any other serious problems. The media has just picked up on flash memory size as something to complain about this generation.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: iTunes Match

Re: I am fine with 16gb.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hey, the phone I bought just last month is a 16GB model and it's just fine.

Oh, but I put a 64GB SD card in the slot ...

and put a 7.5 Ah battery on it.

Perhaps mine is a bad example.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably a phone user and not a 'Smart Phone' user.. You could probably do without an iPhone all together.

People that buy smart phones expect to do other things with their pricey devices.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[I'm New Around Here]

People that buy smart phones expect to do other things with their pricey devices.

Except for the dozens of people and the hundreds of their family members, who are being represented in many posts on this exact topic that do not expect to do other things.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[CraigCruden]

We were talking about the iPhone. I don't use Office on the iPhone.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[CraigCruden]

I have had a non-smart phone before and no.... a simple phone would not work - I would not even buy it.

If I were a little more narcissistic and took more selfies then I might need the space, but there are many people that don't need to load up their phone with their complete life and show it to strangers. There are people that don't take a picture of every little thing - thinking they have to show their friends that they were somewhere. And there are some of us that actually bother to pay attention to people around us rather than hunch over our iPhone and play games while we are with other people. We use it for specific applications, sometimes we even write them ourselves. In fact I don't even use the phone feature that much - if someone wants to call then they know to send me a message first - otherwise don't bother calling.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Anonymous Coward]

You represent a very small proportion of users. Most want to use the phone's other basic features - the camera and music playback. Once you start snapping away that storage space quickly fills up, with your MP3 collecting filling the rest. Apple even owns a music store and encourages users to buy from it. Not just music but video as well.

The thing is, the lifecycle for a phone is short.

People who already have a music collection and are regularly snapping photos will have an idea how much storage they need and buy accordingly. Pushing them towards a larger storage amount also makes it easier for Apple to tempt them with additional media sales (they have the room now). And hoefully their usage will expand and next time they'll "have" to get the 64 as 32 isn't enough anymore.

People who don't already do those things make a good target for tempting them with the cheap phone, which in turn makes them more tempted to use streaming and cloud storage services, or to upgrade early once they "get a taste for" the more memory hungry features and run into the limits of their phone's storage.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[HideyoshiJP]

Two words: iTunes Match

Two more words: Japanese Music. Good luck finding Number Girl, GO!GO!7188 (beyond a single collection album), Kuroki Nagisa, Silent Siren, J Soul Brothers, Good Morning America, or Chay (Not the wierd looking person going by Chay on iTunes).

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Dixie_Flatline]

I can't find a link to substantiate my claim, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure that I read that Apple's best selling model is still the 16GB version.

We're probably a bit guilty of power-user bias here on /. I won't ever buy another 16GB device, but my Mom is getting by just fine on the smallest storage size iDevices. And when you look at the general population, more people are like her than like us.

It used to be that you could only get their lowest tier model as an 8GB phone. Now the 5s at the bottom of the scale comes with 16 or 32GB. I'm not sure what their motivation is, but I don't think it's a matter of lifting the average selling price--they make a profit at all tiers, and it's not like Apple is shy about prices. If they wanted to charge more, they would.

Or if it's about price, it's only about price in the sense that people buying 64GB phones would have bought them even if they had a 32GB version, but the perceived value in their own heads wouldn't be as great. That is, it may be a sort of ego-stroking for people that pony up an extra $100.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, if 16GB get filled in a blink of an eye, 32GB will get filled in two blinks of an eye. So unless the upgrade is to the order of TB, it's not really a significant improvement isn't it?

Corollary: the smallness of 16GB is probably quite overstated.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[countach]

An iphone 4S user is not your typical 6S buyer. In your case it would make more sense to upgrade to a 6.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[RespekMyAthorati]

The camera: take a day's worth of pictures and upload to the cloud at the end of the day.
Music:Spotify.
Total usage:about 2Gig.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[antdude]

Ditto. I just got a 4S for free, and it was decent. The newer smartphones are too big to fit in my pockets and kid sized hands. :(

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[AmiMoJo]

Most people like to look at their photos on their phone. They want them stored locally, with the cloud as a backup, not the other way around.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[AK Marc]

That makes sense, considering that most iPhones are 16GB in size...

What is the size of most iPhones being sold today? I still have an 8GB iPhone running around, though unused. And I've not seen numbers for sizes sold, to see what the most common size is, and what total percentage of phone sales it is.

Re:I am fine with 16gb.

[AK Marc]

My wife has smaller hands than you, and she likes my 6s sized android phone better than her 6 sized iPhone 6. She browses and watches, but when she does text, she holds the phone in close with both hands. The pre-6 was easy to type with one thumb holding the phone it one hand. That's less possible with the larger phones. So the rare times of wanting to text while holding something in the other hand will be much harder, but that doesn't come up so often for some people.

It always amazes me how most people say "I wouldn't do that, so nobody else should value that". Different people use it differently. Small hands is irrelevant to the 8" phones. Small hands can use a tablet with ease. It's when someone (of any hand size) finds themselves using a device with on hand regularly, where they want a 4" or smaller screen. But it's not our job to tell others how to use it. As consumers, our only role is to tell Apple how we'd use it, and let them decide whether or not to make something that fits, so we decide whether or not to buy it.

A 6" phone fits easily in my pants, front or back pocket. Though, it is generally more comfortable to take it out when I sit, but I did that with my 4" phone. I even tried for a week with a 7" tablet, and it fit in my back pocket, though stuck out quite far, so it was more cumbersome.

Apple and the market

[coastwalker]

They can always drop the price of the phones, after all the BOM must be down below $100, after all it is a free market and the Apple bubble can only last for so long. There is no other industry where a single player can keep a global monopoly.

Re:Apple and the market

[Zocalo]

There's no monopoly for Apple to keep, and never has been. Apple has less than 20% of the market for smartphones which is dominated by the various Android manufacturers and isn't even the largest single player overall by many accounts (that would be Samsung), with several other major players and very long tail of also rans. I'd say the smartphone handset market is actually pretty healthy and competetive at present, the smartphone OS market not so much, but there's still a reasonable choice with nice hardware on several platforms. It's a similar situation for tablets, and in pretty much every other market they are currently in Apple is essentially an also-ran in terms of market share - definitely no monopolies.

What Apple does have though is a disproportionate amount of media coverage (both paid for advertising and articles), so perhaps that's skewing peoples perspectives?

Re: Apple and the market

[Karlt1]

Yep - the "Apple Bubble" where Apple can charge more than competitors will finally bust any day now after 40 years.

Re:Apple and the market

[Anonymous Coward]

What Apple does have though is a disproportionate amount of media coverage (both paid for advertising and articles), so perhaps that's skewing peoples perspectives?

You hit the nail on the head. They have a propaganda campaign that would make Goebbels proud. That, and people who follow them with a religious fervor that rivals any cult in history.

Re:Apple and the market

[nine-times]

What Apple does have though is a disproportionate amount of media coverage (both paid for advertising and articles), so perhaps that's skewing peoples perspectives?

Well Apple is also making a disproportionate amount of the profits. Essentially the iPhone is not very dominant in terms of market share, but it's still the market leader.

Re:Apple and the market

[Nidi62]

They have a propaganda campaign that would make Goebbels proud. That, and people who follow them with a religious fervor that rivals any cult in history.

Which would also make Goebbels pretty proud, since he was trying to do the same thing around him.

Re:Apple and the market

[Anonymous Coward]

You've almost got that right.

There is, indeed, no monopoly in this instance, and there hasn't been since *before* the original iPhone was released (though Blackberry was pretty close back then). However, Apple has a market share roughly commensurate with their largest competitors. The mistake you made is that the chart/article you linked to compares OS market share, and you've conflated that with brand market share. Apple has pretty close to the same market share as Samsung (the largest Android phone seller). This is especially true, when you compare markets in which they *both* sell their respective products.

Re:Apple and the market

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call Apple and also-ran but they're laughing all the way to the bank. They've carved out that 20-ish percent of the most lucrative customers and left the scraps to everyone else. (Yes, you as a power user are a scrap. Profit wise you're beneath the noise floor so don't be surprised if apple doesn't cater to your aspergers-driven fetish for feature lists)

Everyone sells personal computing devices. Apple makes money selling personal computing devices. That's a subtle, but important lesson surprisingly few understand.

RIM (Blackberry) did not, and look at where they are now. Neither did Nokia. Palm. Danger.

Microsoft didn't either. Yeah, Microsoft continues to throw money at their mobile products but they can afford to. Did you know that Microsoft created and used to completely own the device market we now called smartphone? I had a windows mobile phone and it was fantastic. Data, webrowser, apps, bluetooth, camera before that was a thing most people cared about. (Of course I dropped it literally 10 minutes after I picked up the first iPhone I ever saw. Usability trumps features. Mobile safari was a touch browser that worked on regular websites while pocket IE was stylus driven and was little more than a novelty that struggled to render even simple web pages, let alone dynamic ones.)

Re:Apple and the market

[countach]

They have a monopoly on industry profits though.

16GB is enough for me

[Aethedor]

I don't agree. 16 GB is more than enough for. It was enough on my iPhone 4 and it surely is on my iPhone 6. For me the iPhone is what it is: a phone. Talking to people, texting, chatting, reading e-mail and surfing the web. That's about it. For all the other computer stuff, I have a laptop.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is all well and good for you, except for the vast majority of people in the first world these days, it's not just a phone, it's a pocket computer. Sometimes the primary method by which they access the internet.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[cfalcon]

> For me the iPhone is what it is: a phone. Talking to people, texting, chatting, reading e-mail and surfing the web.

>a phone
>reading e-mail and surfing the web

No, you're using it as a smartphone. You just are happy with a feature set. It's not some fundamental or elemental set- it's still doing stuff a phone couldn't do. You're taking a subset of the native apps and saying, "ok, verily, this is blessed".

This thing is also an mp3 player, a camera, a video camera- and all that stuff is built in, not some hack job.

I think the overall article point is a very good one. Apple knows full well that a 32 GB model is absolutely the best selling one, because it fits a good combination of music collection, media you created, apps you may have, podcasts, etc, without having to feel too compressed. But the article isn't really about that fact, which isn't up for debate- it's about why they select sizes explicitly to make a more aggressive sale, when that just feels absolutely superflous. Did you know that the black leather band on the apple watch is no longer something you can get WITH the watch? That's a pretty popular thing, but if you want it now you have to buy a version without it, and add it on. This is similar- they are using their market studies to really push customers around- customers who generally are willing to be blind to price and deliver a ludicrous profit are also pushed to *feel dumb*.

And that's a real problem, and one that creeps up on your userbase. If you have users who are ok paying almost whatever, you don't also need to be like "... and you should be willing to pay almost whatever for not even the thing you want!". "Oh customers want 32? We'll offer 16, 64, 128. Anything but deliver that 32!"

I think it's a good point.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Aethedor]

But that doesn't make the 16GB version a strategic mistake. The absence of a 32GB version is.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Dog-Cow]

So they can buy a phone that meets their needs. It's not as if even Apple doesn't offer other options, and then there's Android, which is all over the map on options. This whole non-story is just another "I want Apple to cater to my niche because I don't want to spend more money" whine.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Using an iPhone as your primary method by which one accesses the internet takes no room on the iPhone and confirms Apple's evaluation that 16 Go is enough for many people.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[mythix]

If those are you requirements, why on earth would you buy a 600+ dollar phone?

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Aethedor]

I do a lot more on my iPhone, but nothing that requires more than 16GB. And my iPhone 6 didn't cost me 600+ dollar. :)

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Drethon]

I'm still trying to figure out how my 16 GB Samsung S5 is almost full when I have 3.27 GB in applications and 1.04 GB in Cached data. Miscellaneous Files has 5.5 GB but when I look at individual files there, nothing is larger than 26 MB. I think my 16 GB is half full of Verizon crap or something.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[thegarbz]

You do all the other stuff on a laptop? That's cute.

Does your laptop have a 4K video camera?

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Hamsterdan]

Most people just use their phones for Facebook, Youtube, Email, Internet and Angry birds. And yes, as a phone. 16GB is more than enough for that.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[leonbev]

For many people, their cell phone is their primary digital camera. With a 12 MP camera sensor that can also record 4K video, you're going to burn through 12 GB (The OS uses 4) of storage quickly.

Even if Apple wanted to make a 16 GB "cheapskate" model, they should really make 32 GB the standard for their flagship phones.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Aethedor]

No, I simply don't take video's.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[tehcyder]

Which is all well and good for you, except for the vast majority of people in the first world these days, it's not just a phone, it's a pocket computer. Sometimes the primary method by which they access the internet.

I don't know anyone who uses a phone as their primary method to access the internet. Even teenagers would rather use a tablet or laptop for anything other than simple text only messaging.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep... 'Very quickly.'

12GB = ~4,800 12MP photos (JPEG)
12GB = ~666 12MP photos (RAW12)
12GB = ~34 minutes of compressed 4K video

So, yes. If you're planning on shooting a lot of 4K video, you should probably buy at least the next size up.
Of course, if you're planning on shooting a lot of 4K video, you probably also know enough to get a camera built for that purpose, since 4K video on a sensor and lens system that fits into a cell phone is going to be sub par in the first place.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it did (unless someone bought it for you). You just didn't think it did, because part of the cost was factored into your cell-phone service charges.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is you don't agree with the premise but your use case is different from 99.9% of the customers out there?

Re:16GB is enough for me

[Aethedor]

That's not what I'm saying. And my use case is definitely not different from 99.9% of all smartphone users.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[leonbev]

I'm guessing that you haven't used a newer iPhone. If you did, you would know that it it has a lot of photo modes like panorama pictures, time lapse pictures, "Live" pictures with video, and slow motion videos that take up a bunch more storage space than a standard photo.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[RockDoctor]

At most 99.8% of other people out there. I've never taken a video on my phone either. Why the fuck would I?

I suspect that low-end usage of mobiles is a lot more common than you think. My dad never uses anything other than voice and SMS (and precious little of the latter) ; Mum doesn't even use the land line, let alone a mobile.

Re:16GB is enough for me

[AK Marc]

The iPhone was also touted as a video-iPod. Two movies is all you can fit on a 16GB phone. For people that use it, 16GB is insufficient. That you don't use it doesn't make it a bad thing.

why

[Anonymous Coward]

would they put more in it while people are buying them like crazy as they are now?

People always buy the middle one

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people will buy the next from cheapest one, its a common tactic to offer crap stuff as the cheapest to make the next one look good.

The problem here is the middle one is only 32GB.

In this day and age, top of the range should be 256GB, middle 128Gb and cheap 32GB, and I wouldn't buy something with only 32Gb on it, because offline maps for "Here Maps" alone are 24GB! That's before you've even put some movies and music on it. 100 albums? 24GB, 20 movies? 20-40GB.

So the lowest usable phone is going to be 64GB and would be hitting problems already.

I have to say Apple really has been coasting since Jobs died, they don't seem to be able to pick winners instead doing sequels of Jobs stuff.

Re:People always buy the middle one

[tw2k]

The problem here is the middle one is only 32GB.

Except of course, that it isn't 32GB, there isn't a 32GB iPhone 6s at all. There wasn't a 32GB iPhone 6 either.

Re:People always buy the middle one

[bn-7bc]

Yes it is a 30GB iPhone,the flash storrage is 30GB, Apple vever said 30GB of storrage avalable to the user iirc

So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[wonkey_monkey]

"Leaving the entry-level unit at 16GB of storage rather than 32GB drives higher profit margins in two ways. One, it reduces the cost of manufacturing the $649 phone, which increases profit margins on sales of the lowest-end model. Second, and arguably more important, it pushes a lot of people who might be happy with a 32GB phone to shell out $749 for the 64GB model."

First you say it's a serious strategic mistake, then you give two perfectly (corporately) good strategic reasons for doing it. Make up your mind!

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[N1AK]

It's actually worse than that, he attacks apple for doing something that will increase profits because they don't need the profits; and then suggests that not doing what they are doing would make their customers happier and more dedicated long term... which one would assume would be useful because it drives long term profit (but wait a second... I thought he just said profit was a pointless motivation for them).

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Leaving the entry-level unit at 16GB of storage rather than 32GB drives higher profit margins in two ways. One, it reduces the cost of manufacturing the $649 phone, which increases profit margins on sales of the lowest-end model. Second, and arguably more important, it pushes a lot of people who might be happy with a 32GB phone to shell out $749 for the 64GB model."

First you say it's a serious strategic mistake, then you give two perfectly (corporately) good strategic reasons for doing it. Make up your mind!

For over a decade now we've had bloggers and internet commentators claiming apple is making huge strategic mistakes and will fail. Yet they are still the largest company on Earth in terms of market capitalization and profit. Year after year they have been wrong, going all the way back to Slashdot calling the original ipod release "lame": http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[nine-times]

"It's a strategic mistake. Sure, it'll make more money for Apple and won't actually tarnish their public reputation, but it will cause me to go sit in the corner and pout for a little while. I wouldn't buy an iPhone anyway because I hate Apple, but I'm frustrated because I can't figure out why, if the iPhone only has 16GB, people still aren't buying the Android device that I like?! It has more storage, and is therefore entirely superior."

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[martas]

But this raises the question of what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money anyhow. Apple pays out large (and growing) sums of cash to existing shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks, but its enormous cash stockpile keeps remorselessly marching up toward $200 billion. "Killing the 16GB phone and replacing it with a 32GB model at the low end would obtain things money can't buy — satisfied customers, positive press coverage, goodwill, a reputation for true commitment to excellence, and a demonstrated focus on the long term. A company in Apple's enviable position ought to be pushing the envelop forward on what's considered an acceptable baseline for outfitting a modern digital device, not squeezing extra pennies out of customers for no real reason."

I know we don't read articles around here, but to not even read the summary... That's going a bit far.

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[wonkey_monkey]

None of that is evidence that Apple has made any kind of mistake. They just haven't how behaved how this guy wants them to.

Re:So it's NOT a mistake, then?

[martas]

None of that is evidence that Apple has made any kind of mistake. They just haven't how behaved how this guy wants them to.

What do you mean by "evidence"? You want scientific proof? A full expression in Lambda calculus? He's saying that it seems to him Apple would better serve themselves by not offering a 16GB model, and he explains why. Whether he's right or not is one question, but his claim is clear and his reasoning is simple. Your implication that there is any kind of contradiction here is asinine.

It is a historical thing

[realkiwi]

Apple has always sold devices with not enough memory since the very first Macintosh.

Re:It is a historical thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's Apple. Other comanies would never say that 640K should be enough for everybody.

Profit

[pr0nbot]

"But this raises the question of what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money anyhow."

Fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

Re:Profit

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's a common viewpoint held by a rather large portion of the world's population, especially among elites. They find it distasteful and wish we would stop doing it.

"I do think at a certain point you've made enough money, but you know, part of the American way is, you can just keep on making it if you're providing a good product."
-- Barack Obama

Re:Profit

[rkumar.kumar092]

As we know that Apple had taken out lot of smartphone in the mobile market industry. But this time gone a really kidding with us.Nowadays everyone knows that smartphone takes lot a memory for applications, games and many more thing to save in the mobile. And Apple forgot that this time. Apple not able to make profit this time with smartphone. I like to get more memory in my smartphone. Everyone looking for best lock in market So, go with us. http://www.locksmithsinscottsd...

Re:Profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward Lol.... Anonymous is the safest thing to secure your e-mail inbox from newsletters of any website................

Re:Profit

[madona.silvious]

I have a smartphone of Apple and its really awesome bcos it has lot of apps in the mobile. But if any smartphone had not enough space to save this apps. So will disappoint you know.

Re:Profit

[tapspace]

"But this raises the question of what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money anyhow."

Fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

I'm afraid the misunderstanding is yours. The point is that there is very little strategic purpose for Apple to amass more cash, especially at the expense of its (arguably more valuable) reputation.

Low quality article

[marovada]

I personally don't think 16GB is enough, but the article is just an unsupported click-bait rant with no supporting evidence. "struck sour for even some of the company's biggest fans" - not just any fans, "biggest" fans. "But it suffers from some skepticism about its long-term prospects." - from the author no doubt. Having a 16GB phone is "... just a vague hedge against eventual future bankruptcy." WTF? How can you hedge against an "eventual" bankruptcy? "That's a somewhat understandable impulse for an incredibly successful company that actually experienced a near-bankruptcy back in the late 1990s." Yep, they're acting on "impulse". Can't even be specific about the date - sometime back in the... 1990s? A thoroughly researched article with a well reasoned and persuasive argument.

Re:Low quality article

[eWarz]

Ad revenue through and through. The slashdot editors bought it after all. The authors of the original article likely scored several thousand dollars from this slashdot post. Anyone that thinks that apple will 'eventually' file bankruptcy has a _VERY_ long wait ahead of them. Apple's biggest fans aren't even flinching at the 16 gb model...they already bought the higher end models. Only reviewers pay attention to the 16 gb models.

Who cares?

[gweihir]

Seriously, who does? People using their phones as toys instead of phones is all good and fine, but it is not news. Whether this phone then has over-sized memory or grossly over-sized memory is even less news.

I don't see what's important about internal storag

[h33t l4x0r]

You just stick whatever size sd card you need in there and now you have portable storage. My sd cards stick with me longer than my phones do these days anyway.

64GB or nothing? Useless!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Only 64Gb is the only usable size, and even then not really....

Well I can always slap in one of those 200Gb Sandisk MicroSD cards, or those 128GB everyone sells are not that expensive, you could always slap one of those in a 16GB iPhone 6s and it would still be way cheaper than the Apple "top of the range" model, while offering more than twice the storage. And it would actually be good enough still to install Here Offline Maps + Music collection + enough Movies for a long stay away. ... what do you mean they don't let you put a flash card in???

FFS, as I said, Apple are cruising along, Jobs is dead, the new boss doesn't really have his finger on the pulse of the market.... but hey record profits! Just like Ballmer said in his defense as Microsoft had miss after miss, and simply milked its locked in customers.

64Gb is crap, yet this is their top model???

Re:64GB or nothing? Useless!

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... No. The models are 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB, for the same prices as last years models at 16GB, 32GB and 64GB.

What that says is that the marginal costs for 32GB haven't *quite* dropped below the point where they can keep the price point, and boost the storage. (Expect it for the iPhone 7.)

But feel free to continue on with your ignorance-sourced rant.

Streaming music changes demand for storage

[perpenso]

Streaming music changes things with reference to your MP3 player point. I don't need my entire collection downloaded to the phone. I only need a "large enough" selection downloaded for when I am away from wifi. If on wifi I can just stream.

Re:Streaming music changes demand for storage

[Anonymous Coward]

For that to work, you'd have to plan in advance to put your "large enough" selection on the phone.

Its kinda sad that Apple's top of the range phone is everyone elses mid range phone. They should be leading not trailing behind.

Re:Streaming music changes demand for storage

[Dog-Cow]

Apple makes more profit per unit sold than another phone manufacturer on the planet. To claim they are somehow "wrong" is nothing more than a whine. If you need those additional 16GB, buy a different phone. Apple doesn't care; why should you?

Re:Streaming music changes demand for storage

[Anonymous Coward]

As Ballmer put it "Microsoft is more profitable now than ever"..... hubris 101.

All flop CEOs ride the momentum of their company till their negative momentum cancels it out. It usually starts by milking more money from the faithful, as you put it "more profit per unit sold".

You can see their market share peaked in 2012 Q1, they haven't really had a "wow" factor since Jobs died.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/216459/global-market-share-of-apple-iphone/

The new iPhone is a middle range phone spec, and that needs to be fixed. If flop CEO can't see that, then he should be replaced before he destroys Apples momentum.

Re:Streaming music changes demand for storage

[cyberchondriac]

I don't think profit is the *only* thing to consider in a business, there's also the investment (yes, it's an investment) of "good will" towards customers (and employees), but more and more corporations have forgotten that, now it's all about the shareholders and the board.
To have such a price difference between 16GB and 32GB when the iPhone5 came out was one thing, it was still a little steep but tolerable (I bought a 5 w/ 16GB); but to continue that difference today when 32GB of flash memory is so much cheaper is just brazen, and it will likely hurt them in the long run, driving more people to Android. Profits will fall, and then they will be "wrong".

Re:Streaming music changes demand for storage

[perpenso]

For that to work, you'd have to plan in advance to put your "large enough" selection on the phone.

It takes no more planning than getting an entire collection on the phone. The user gets to pick the entire collection, a playlist or a random selection that gets synced from computer to phone. Or if one is a user of Apple Music and is browsing and/or streaming with just a phone while on wifi there is an option to make a song or album available when offline (i.e. downloads the music for when not on wifi).

Somehow I doubt it

[rakslice]

Don't get me wrong... I think Apple's closed platform and ridiculous incremental prices for storage continue to alienate many power users, and that is the gift that keeps on giving for their competition (both in terms of market share and developer support). But when it comes to their business it is not 'a strategic mistake' but rather the opposite -- they've spent the last 8 years doing essentially the same thing on this front, and they can cry all the way to the bank if they want to, but it's hard to change the formula when they have tens billions of dollars every year riding on it.

Re: Somehow I doubt it

[Karlt1]

Yep you are absolutely right. Because of Apple's "mistakes" all of the Android vendors are more profitable than ever and app developers are supporting Android first and IOS is getting crummy ports later...oh wait...never mind.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the limited cases where massive offline storage is even required and the utility/value rapidly drops. Whether this audience admits it or not the geeky super-user is a narrow subset of the population, even for iPhone users. Convenience samples don't prove anything, and statistically valid studies show a majority of Apple's customers use it as a communications link - literally a "smart" phone with social media and phone functions dominating others. Rare are the people who are amateur photographers for whom iCloud does not satisfy their storage requirements regardless of the physical storage available.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[xlsior]

... Except the iPhone doesn't have any SD card slot (or any storage expansion for that matter) which makes it more important not to underspec the storage in the first place.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[FlyHelicopters]

You just stick whatever size sd card you need in there and now you have portable storage.

How do you install a SD card in a iPhone?

Money can't buy...

[Anonymous Coward]

So the bottom line is that Apple should spend a bit more money on the low-end iPhone and, in return, will "obtain things that money can't buy". Wait, what?

It's like the Lottery.

[Chas]

It's a tax on stupidity. That's all Apple's offerings have ever been.

And nobody ever accused Apple of being a charity organization...

Re:It's like the Lottery.

[Anonymous Coward]

just wait until apple takes a cue from game developers and launch-day 'downloadable content' (that should have been part of the base game); or intel's "upgradeable" cpu experiment, the pentium g6951 ($50 extra to enable hyperthreading and additional on-die cache)... ... and ship the next base model with 64gb storage on-board (or even 128gb) but only 16gb 'unlocked' at sale. the rest will cost $200 (to 64gb, $400 to 128gb.. i.e. double what the extra storage would have cost at initial hardware purchase) direct to apple to unlock, instead of sharing profits with carriers...

iPhones and Louis Vuitton bags

[Anonymous Coward]

People pay outrageous prices for iPhones and iMacs and Macbooks for the same reason women are willing to pay thousands of dollars for Yves Saint Laurent purses - because everyone knows how much they cost and they enjoy the compliments and the validation they get from friends and strangers alike. There is no way that a YSL bag is a thousand or two thousand dollars more functional or better looking than any other purses, just the same as you're a sucker if you're buying a phone that's on it's six generation and still won't allow you to expand your storage with a microSD card.

Re: iPhones and Louis Vuitton bags

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is still far off from Hermes handbags

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[h33t l4x0r]

Hmm, I didn't know that. This should be the outrage in that case. Switch to Samsung, people.

iCloud marketing team seems to be involved.

[tnnn]

Can't you just push all your photos, movies, etc to the iCloud? Buying the 16GB version will force people to use it. Seems like a well thought out strategy to me...

Re:iCloud marketing team seems to be involved.

[slfnflctd]

Yep, a dollar a month for 50 gb, or so I've heard. I can't imagine another contender for their #1 reason to do this.

It's also still a terrible idea, imho.

Having grown up at a time when buy & own was the norm (aside from subscriptions to printed media), I avoid recurring billing like the plague. The world has reminded me of the wisdom in this on a regular basis.

Ditto with anything requiring an internet connection that doesn't *really* need it.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[_merlin]

Samsung's latest Galaxy S and Note models have no SD card slots and rely on built-in storage, too. They've even dropped the removable battery in their quest to be more Apple-like.

... there will always be zombies ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are over 7 billion human beings on this planet, except for a very small percentage of them who can think, the vast majority are zombies for whom life ceases to have any meaning if they do not belong to a group, or follow a trend
 
Most of them zombies do the same thing over, and over, and over again, without realizing the emptiness of their action
 
Those who follow trends will keep on following trend -
 
When pink hair is trendy, they dye their hair pink...
 
When becoming a transgender is trendy, they become transgender...
 
When Apple is trendy, they will buy the overpriced Apple...
 

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[mevets]

When slagging apple is trendy, they will slag apple.

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[I'm New Around Here]

I am deeply disappointed.

I was sure we were going to get a "Zombies are for cows. Mooo, moooooooooo zombie cows." line in there somewhere.

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[cyberchondriac]

Aaaand now I'm waiting for the obligatory AC .. "You are all zombies. Zombies say grrnngh. GRNNGH! Grnngh zombies, GRNGGH. You Zombies!" or whatever.

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[__aaclcg7560]

Most of them zombies do the same thing over, and over, and over again, without realizing the emptiness of their action

We're discussing Apple iPhones, not last night's Republican presidential debate.

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are over 7 billion human beings on this planet, except for a very small percentage of them who can think, the vast majority are zombies for whom life ceases to have any meaning if they do not belong to a group, or follow a trend Most of them zombies do the same thing over, and over, and over again, without realizing the emptiness of their action

You are all zombies. Zombies say "Brraainz!" "Brraainz...BRRAAINZ!" say the zombies. YOU BRAINLESS ZOMBIES!

Re:... there will always be zombies ...

[CronoCloud]

When becoming a transgender is trendy, they become transgender...

That's not how the real world works. People aren't "becoming" transgendered, there were always transgendered people. It's just that it's now safer and easier to come out.

[quote]When Apple is trendy, they will buy the overpriced Apple...[/quote]

Apple is trendy because they make attractive consumer electronics for the non-technical masses. And then they actually spend money showing what you can do with them.

Apple Ad: Dancing silhouettes, itunes, people using them to make music, taking pictures, apps for everything, excercising with the iWatch on.

When people see an Apple ad, they want to BE like the people in the ad.

Typical android ad: tech specs, black shell, screen size. No "emotion" or aspirational appeal.

Wrong strategy? Not really

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

Just like anybody else (I think) I am often amazed at how much money people are spending (again and again) on apple devices and particularly iPhones. And just like anybody else I often wonder how long this can go on.
So, I'm convinced that somewhere in the future apple will either make some huge mistake or, alternatively, find their formula working less and less well for them because (like any market leader is bound to do) they keep on hammering on the same nail, not realizing the world has changed meanwhile.

That being said: I don't think this is the big stragegic mistake, nor do I think it is the start of their downfall...

Except they don't do anything with it

[Sycraft-fu]

Normally if a company makes lots of profit, it gets used in some way. If there isn't a business need for it, it goes out to investors. That is part of the idea of investing: You can get a share of the profits (it isn't the only reason, but one of them). That doesn't happen with Apple. They just hoard all their profits... to what end?

I personally am not sure why their big investors let them get away with it. I would want my cut if I had money in Apple. However for whatever reason investors are fine with them just amassing a big pile of cash that they don't use for anything, and don't pay out.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[trout007]

if Apple holds onto the cash it just gets reflected in share price.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[swb]

I think for a while at least they were using their money to more or less invest in suppliers, building the factory the supplier needed to crank out some new kind of part in exchange for getting all of the output from the factory for a year or something, basically allowing them to monopolize the supply of some new feature.

The funny thing is, management of that much cash becomes a headache and I think banks were starting to charge negative interest rates in some cases.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[pr0nbot]

I think Apple understands that one day it will be Microsoft, or IBM -- behind the curve in some new area that seems all-important, and needing a big warchest to sustain the years of decline and mis-steps while they figure out what to do.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[DigiShaman]

Or it's to compete with the other 800 lb gorilla, Google! If they wanted too, they could Crush Apple. Google certainly has the funds to do it, it just lacks leadership and vision. Case in point, the Android platform; it's a mess and needs a genuine philosophical overhaul of the union between the OS and keeping a more unified hardware base. The technical stuff is easy in comparison.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another person stating things on the Internet as if they're facts without really knowing what they're talking about. Sigh.

Apple is doing [at least] two things to provide value to shareholders:
1) paying quarterly dividends (about $32B in the last ~3 years)
2) repurchasing stock (about $90B in the last ~3 years)

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[Anubis IV]

If there isn't a business need for it, it goes out to investors. [...] That doesn't happen with Apple.

You have no clue what you're talking about.

Apple has been paying out quarterly dividends since 2012 and began a $10 billion share repurchase program at the same time that they restarted paying dividends. They later bumped up the repurchase program to $60 billion (making it the largest in recorded history), then bumped it up further to $90 billion, and then increased it even further to $140 billion. With both the dividends and repurchases, Apple will have directly returned $200 billion to investors in the five years from 2012 to 2017. And investors clearly recognize and appreciate that fact, since Apple's P/E ratio is half that of Google's and about a tenth that of Amazon's, meaning that investors expect to spend about twice as much with Google and 10x as much with Amazon before they get back a $1 return on their investment.

Apple is currently in the process of returning more money to investors than any other company in recorded history, so your statement that they aren't paying out is patently false. Despite that, they money is still piling up in their accounts, just because they're making so much. If only we all had that problem!

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[Anubis IV]

Apple's revenues and profits are roughly 3x those of Alphabet's/Google's. Google's market cap sits at around $440B. They have very little cash on hand. Apple, in contrast, has about $230B in cash on hand.

Google is big, no doubt, and getting bigger too, but Apple is still the Goliath by a wide margin in this David vs. Goliath battle.

Re:Except they don't do anything with it

[mjwx]

Or it's to compete with the other 800 lb gorilla, Google! If they wanted too, they could Crush Apple. Google certainly has the funds to do it, it just lacks leadership and vision.

Or perhaps its that Google has the leadership and vision needed to compete fairly and openly... Because that seems more plausible than "to timid to crush the opposition using lawsuits and intimidation" given their success with Android.

Case in point, the Android platform; it's a mess and needs a genuine philosophical overhaul of the union between the OS and keeping a more unified hardware base.

You could have just said "I know nothing of Android", it would have been faster.

Android was designed to be as hardware agnostic as possible deliberately to ensure that it could run across different hardware platforms and it has achieved this goal fantastically. I can use a LG or Samsung or Huawei phone and get the same results in software across disparate hardware platforms.

Just imagine how expensive computers would be if the OS was tied to the hardware the vendor chose. Love them or hate them (and I tend to lean towards the "hate them" category), we have Microsoft to thank for the affordability of computers today. Google is trying to do the same thing with phones and achieving a lot of success.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, good one.

Apple is a greedy parasite

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of their strategies are just as bad as making a black-and-white TV-set in 2015, and then selling a color addon for a handsome price. Stop buying their products, and realize that you don't need them.

Without Steve Jobs ...

[Taco Cowboy]

Let's look at products from Apple Inc., during its time with, and then without Steve Jobs ...
 
With Steve Jobs -

1. Apple I
2. Apple ][
3. Apple III
4. Lisa
5. McIntosh
6. iPod
7. iPad
8. iPhone

Without Steve Jobs -

01. Newton
02, iPad
03. iPhone
04. iPad
05. iPhone
06. iPad
07. iPhone
08. iPhone
09. iPhone
10. iPhone
11. iWatch
12. iPhone
13. iPad
14. iPhone
15. iPhone
16. Apple TV
17. iPhone
18. iPad
19. iPhone
20. iPad
21. iPhone
22. iPad
23. iPhone
24. iPhone
25. iPhone
26. iPhone ....
... ad nauseum ...

Re:Without Steve Jobs ...

[greenfruitsalad]

i think the next product should be iSland. with that much cash, they can just build or buy an artificial island, declare it a new iCountry, base themselves on that iSland and pay taxes only to themselves. I'm sure amazon, google and microsoft would gladly incorporate themselves in iCountry for some token tax.

Re:Without Steve Jobs ...

[Maury Markowitz]

I hear iRan is pretty much up for sale.

Re:Without Steve Jobs ...

[Nukenbar]

Don't forget the iPencil.

But see there's a third option

[Sycraft-fu]

That being people decide to leave Apple and get something else. Apple's position on the smartphone market is tenuous at best. While there are still enough fans who have to have the latest greatest iGadget, that number has been dropping. Worldwide Android is the big player.

So every time Apple screws people over, it is the kind of thing that'll make more people look to other brands.

Re: But see there's a third option

[Karlt1]

And why should Apple be worried about a bunch of people who can't or won't spend more than $100 on a phone? How is selling a bunch of low end no profit margin devices working out for companies selling Android phones?

Re: But see there's a third option

[avandesande]

It just looks bad when the 100$ phone has the same specs.

Re: But see there's a third option

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm coming up on the market for a new phone. Can you point out which "100$ phone has the same specs" as the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus?

Re:But see there's a third option

[david_thornley]

Apple is still a major player in the smartphone market, and is still selling them in very large quantities. The first sales figures I found on Google tell me that Apple keeps selling more and more iPhones. Apple can't just be selling to Apple fans, or their sales numbers would be going down.

It's enough.

[nospam007]

You might not believe it, but there are millions of people who never shoot any videos with their iPhone, not even low res.
There are also people who do not install 7 GB Navigation apps or 3GB games.

I even deleted the music from mine, which were also several Gigabytes, I now stream them from my home computer if I need them.
Ditto for the photos, Google photos does the job for me, after they have been uploaded, I delete them on the phone.

16 GB is enough for lots of people.

shunned

[Anonymous Coward]

... what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money ...

Anyone asking this should be stripped of US citizenship. The USA is the land of opportunity: The opportunity to buy the laws one wants, to deny the rights of working-class citizens, and most of all, the opportunity to blame the ills of their inequitable wealth on traitors, the government and communism.

Its still valid base model

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of people who barely can afford a smart phone and see a base model a good option. Besides that those people will most likely not buy a ton of apps or fill their phone up to the max. I have a 16GB phone and currently with IOS9 I have over 9GB still available. I use cloud storage, keep all my music but a few albums in the cloud and do not have a ton of worthless apps that I never use on my phone. Now my Wife is just the opposite she has a lot of pictures, text, email and apps and she never organizes any of it to the cloud or deletes unwanted pics. She could easily fill up a 64 GB phone. But she buys cloud storage for a lot of it and frankly I see that as a cheaper solution then buying more internal storage. Why? Because most places I have seen do not pay you more for bigger capacity phones on trade. Yes a couple pay a few bucks more. But in generally that Apple tax hits you hard on more memory always has with Apple.

To me, it looks like abuse.

[Futurepower(R)]

I notice that Slashdot commenters often find ways to justify abuse.

One problem is not Apple offering a 16GB iPhone, it is that those who want more must pay 20 times Apple's cost.

Although Tim Cook tries to imitate Steve Jobs, he clearly does not understand how to do that. Steve Jobs did everything necessary to positioning Apple products at the top. Offering a new model of iPhone with only 16GB is a sure way to get negative comments, and it did.

Steve Jobs was extremely abusive, biographical books say, but he was aware of the effect of every aspect of advertising and how even minor items might be received in people's minds.

Books: The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer published in 1984, gives the early history.

See page 84 of this book: iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. Quote: "Steve was not only very rich but pulling a quarter of a million dollars a year out of the company in salary, yet he refused to let any of his engineers receive more than $30,000 a year, the lowest salaries of any engineers at Apple. He considered anyone working less than 80 hours a week to be wimping out."

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Note 4 (Note 5 has too little Flash and no flash card slot, so Note 4 + 128GB flash card was the solution).

Samsung are lucky enough to cover all bases and see what sells, but I'd prefer to have bought a Note 5 with 128GB flash or more, but its only available in 32Gb here.

16gb is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

For a development mobile.

But for anything else, well, either use iCloud / Dropbox / OneBox / Google Drive or any other provider, or you will be in deep trouble.

[ easier to buy a model with bigger memory ]

16GB Can Actually Be Enough

[syntap]

Just the other day I was considering what storage level of Nexus 5x to plan on getting. I usually default to getting the max-storage model and paying whatever the extra is. But on my last couple of phones I realized I mostly stream my music, and automatically cloud-save photos/videos and later cloud-view them. The phone I'm using now (a OnePlus One running Cyanogenmod) has 64GB storage but I'm only using 6GB, and that's with a small subset of my music locally-stored in case I'm offline.

This is in the Android world and I don't know if the old days of having to synchronize your entire library to an i-device are gone, but I think a side-story is maybe you don't need huge amounts of local storage anymore.

Large Phone Capacity Encourages Waste

[TomGreenhaw]

When you have a lot of space you are more likely to waste it which is a problem when you want to keep it backed up to the cloud. This is especially true for rural users with poor internet connections.

Other things to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

You also have to remember that the shareholders really only care about the bottom line. I am unsure where I heard this from, but there is a different between the 16gb memory chip vs the 32+gb chips, multi layer vs 2 layer. There is a larger cost when moving to a multi-layer chip. So If apple switched to a 32gb chip for the base model, it would increase the price of the iPhone. Yes apple could eat that difference and still make a profit, but the share holders would see the decrease of profit and start to freak out..

People need to get the idea of that the base model is the right phone for everyone.. It's a price point, that will work for some, but not for most. Standard rules apply, even to apple, the cheaper option, is not always the right option.

Mistake or...

[Anonymous Coward]

It might actually be a mistake, as it looks like the Android flagships do all start at 32GB these days. But maybe they just want to push the paupers to Android, and punish those who insist on being Apple customers despite of their financial situation.

Re:Mistake or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the Galaxy S6 (ass sex) starts at 32GB

Meh

[Cafe Alpha]

There's no way on the planet that microsd and replaceable batteries aren't worth the cost to the customer. When is Apple gonna wake up from the reality distortion field and make a product that makes technical sense.

For all we know they've just soldered a $1 (bulk wholesale) microsd card in the stupid phone to get the 16gb version and a $4 microsd card in to get the $64 gig version. Not a significant cost.

Seriously I see a 16 gig class 10 card on alibaba for $1 in bulk

Re:Meh

[Overzeetop]

Removable storage on an iPhone would be the death of it.

iPhones are easy.

uSD cards are hard. They have to be unmounted, there has to be a mechanism for partitioning the storage so that certain things which mush remain on the phone can stay on the phone, and things which can be removed or swapped can be removed or swapped. That means the asking the user where they want to store things, either once (and risk things being put in the wrong place if the user changes his or her mind) or every.single.time. And then there's the question of how you get things on and off a uSD card for an iPhone. There is no official mechanism for direct storage or retreival in iOS - it's all managed by the OS and blocked from the user. Are you really going to do checking every single time a card is inserted? How many people are going to screw that up (answer: most of them)? Do you have any idea how long it takes to load a large uSD card and then parse it in a phone (answer: a LONG time when counted in phone seconds)?

No - a uSD slot is not for the casual user *unless* it's a (nearly) single purpose item - like camera storage. And even then it makes for an unsightly gash in the pristine envelope of a device which is, admittedly, bought for it's looks.

FWIW, I switched from iOS to Android and have a phone with replaceable battery and SD card. I would probably never recommend my parents get a phone that has a SD slot, or if they had it I'd recommend they not use it.

Re:Meh

[Kardos]

> Seriously I see a 16 gig class 10 card on alibaba for $1 in bulk

Those are actually borderline useless 128MB microsd cards with the filesystem tweaked [1] to show up as 16 or 64GB

[1] http://www.ebay.com/gds/All-Ab...

Re:Meh

[Maury Markowitz]

> When is Apple gonna wake up from the reality distortion field and make a product that makes technical sense.

When they stop being the largest and most profitable company in all of recorded history, with the number 1, 2 and 7 best selling phones on the planet?

Duh.

Re:Meh

[fluffernutter]

That's interesting, considering my 10 year old daughter is fine with it in her tablet.

Re:Meh

[david_thornley]

Technical sense? I think Apple would rather make something that sells better.

Your claim that microsd slots and replacement batteries are worth the cost seems to miss the point that iPhones sell in very large quantities, and as far as I can tell phones with removable batteries and microsd slots don't tend to sell as well. It's for reasons you apparently can't understand, but that doesn't mean the reasons are invalid.

I think that is their goal...

[junkgoof]

I agree this is the Apple thought process. Doesn't work for me, I use the subway, but if you are going all cloud all the time 16 GB might work.

Re:I think that is their goal...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree this is the Apple thought process. Doesn't work for me, I use the subway, but if you are going all cloud all the time 16 GB might work.

Forgive an ignorant hick from flyover land, but: There's no Wi-Fi on the subway?

Re:I think that is their goal...

[andymadigan]

Nope, getting WiFi to work at 70 MPH underground isn't an easy problem. It doesn't have the same range or tower handoff as cell networks.

On BART, they used to have (bad) WiFi but it's gone now, and LTE can be really slow during commute hours. There are towers in the tunnels, but crush load on a 10 car BART train is 2000 people, and 23 trains per hour go through the highest traffic area. That's a lot of people streaming music and reading the news on a network with seemingly limited capacity.

Muni's underground areas have neither WiFi nor LTE, though I am sometimes able to get a weak connection.

Caltrain studied adding WiFi, but found building such a network would be too expensive (even though it's above ground).

I seem to remember London's Tube didn't have WiFi, are LTE was spotty as well. Not sure it how it is on other subways but I'd be impressed to see one with working WiFi.

Carrier: T-Mo, EE in the UK

same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[raymorris]

Same here. I just bought a 16 GB ipad mini. They are available with more memory; I don't have any need for more. Sure we COULD fill the storage if we wanted to shoot a bunch of pointless video with it, but that's not what we want to do with it.

We use it for abcmouse.com and a few apps which my toddler's preschool uses. My toddler won't be shooting feature films with it, she'll be using abcmouse and the PBS Kids app. We'll probably use all of 64 MEGAbytes.

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute...there's no slot for an SD card? That's crazy!

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

My toddler won't be shooting feature films with it

Funny thing about toddlers...they grow up. Guess what my kindergartner loves to do with my smartphone?

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[hibiki_r]

Even for toddler playing, 16 GB is tiny quick. First, it's not really 16: The OS makes it closer to 10. You need another 2 open just to be able to do OS and app upgrades. So really, you are in trouble if you have 8 gigs of apps. Many apps for toddlers are big, as they are full of animations and sound. Games that use half a gig are not unheard of. And then there's books: Don't be surprised by 100 megabyte children's books.

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind ABCmouse is a shell corporation for Scientology. You might want to consider teaching your kids with something else.

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

It occurs to me that someone might want to check my facts. The CEO/President/Owner is a fellow named Doug Dohring. Look at his Wikipedia page. The CTO is a fellow named Bill McCaffrey. Guy who makes the curriculum: Dave Hendry. Google those guys. The entire C-level structure is filled with Scientology people, but not just ordinary normal Scientology people, ones who are also at the top of the Scientology cult as well.

Re:same for my family . Bought it for a purpose

[RespekMyAthorati]

I have a 16GB iPad Air.
I've had it about 6 months, and am only using about 2/3 of the space.
The only people I know that are using much more have dozens of apps that they downloaded, didn't like, then didn't bother to delete.

Year after year, Apple is always wrong?

[danielcolchete]

It starts to get hilarious how there have been always someone saying that their smartphone is better than the iPhone, that their strategy is better, that they have a new feature that will make the iPhone look silly. I wonder why, after so many years of those horrible mistakes, people still take the iPhone as the top reference, they always try to show how their product compares to the iPhone. I hope Apple will still make those mistakes for years to come.

Make a smaller phone

[Culture20]

Hey Apple! Make a phone that fits in my pocket!

Re:Make a smaller phone

[BitZtream]

Stop wearing girl jeans with pockets that aren't deep enough for you to get your fingers into the knuckle and you won't have that problem with a regular iPhone, will you?

Nice try fanboy, you just look stupid.

Re:Make a smaller phone

[Culture20]

I wear regular jeans that even the iphone 6plus would fit in if the jeans are laid flat on a surface, but I'm not 300 pounds, so my pockets curve more than Apple expects and the 6/6s demand. And there are smaller people than me! How did skinny California engineers come up with a design that doesn't fit in ordinary pockets?

Re:Make a smaller phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded...

The 6 is too big to hold properly; thus, it's no longer a one-handed device; thus, it's a phablet. The 6+ is a the duplo version of the 6

Re:Make a smaller phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? The current Apple phones are the perfect size to fit into your purse.

I mean, I assume everyone still buying Apple crap carries a purse around to dump it into. Real men don't buy phones just because they're shiny.

Re:Make a smaller phone

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still selling the 5s. Its cheap too.

Its a good device. 64bit cpu, touch ID. Just lacks the NFC/payment stuff (Unless you pair it with an iwatch)

Re:Make a smaller phone

[antdude]

No kidding. 4S is a decent size. Newer models are too big for my kid sized disabled hands and pockets. :(

Yglesias is correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

But he's hardly the first person to say this. This has been a topic of conversation for some time in the Apple developer community. See Gruber's interview with Phil Schiller at the WWDC. http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2015/06/09/ep-123. Note that Schiller and Apple are not backing down.

Apple don't want people to buy that phone

[DrXym]

They only have a 16GB phone so they can post a lower price - "from $649". It doesn't matter if the phone with that capacity is worse than fucking useless because they intend to hit people for an extra $100 for the 64GB version when they walk in to buy one. I expect the actual production cost of 48GB more storage is $10 tops so the rest is pure profit.

Gross margins

[sjbe]

One problem is not Apple offering a 16GB iPhone, it is that those who want more must pay 20 times Apple's cost.

Your cost analysis isn't a useful one though I think I understand the point you are trying to make. Apple has gross profit margins around 40% and around 56% of their revenue comes from the iPhone. Gross profit is revenue minus cost of goods sold and is a crude measure of the raw profitability of a product before you pile on the costs of running the company and selling the product. While Apple doesn't break out their numbers for cost of goods sold for the iPhone line, it's not hard to prove that even if everyone were to buy the more expensive product, Apple doesn't receive anywhere close to a 20X bump in gross margins. The marginal profits received from the more expensive models is meaningful but it's not an improvement to the degree you are implying.

(Disclosure, I'm a certified accountant in my day job - among other things)

Steve Jobs did everything necessary to positioning Apple products at the top.

They position their brand near the top but not always the products themselves. Apple often starts their products at or near the top of the market but they routinely sell products that are no where near the top of the market. In phones and tablets and ipods this is simply their older models which they continue to sell. In PCs they sell computers that are designed for market tiers below the top. I have a Mac Mini myself that even when it was first introduced was no where near state of the art and wasn't designed to be. Apple HAS to provide products that aren't at the top of the market because if they didn't their competitors could easily undercut them from the bottom end of the market. Apple doesn't want to compete on price alone but they cannot ignore lower tier market segments.

Offering a new model of iPhone with only 16GB is a sure way to get negative comments, and it did.

Only by people who wouldn't buy one anyway. The 16GB model is probably not intended for you. It is intended for people like my Dad who uses about 3 apps and doesn't take a meaningful amount of photos or video and isn't trying to store a Library of Congress worth of music on his phone. He uses less that 8GB of storage on his phone and that isn't likely to change. Providing a 32GB model would cost Apple money and really only benefits a relatively tiny group of users who happen to need more than 16GB but less than 32GB. I'm pretty sure Apple has done the research and if a 32GB unit would result in them selling more units then they would make one. I am certain that there is a very large group of users like my father who want the basic features of an iPhone but simply don't use much storage.

Re:Gross margins

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought 16GB was a great introductory model as well, so that's what my wife and my mom both got.

But if you use Photostream, it's going to eat your storage like there's no tomorrow. A single stream is easily several GB, and you can't prune how much of a stream remains on a single device -- delete a picture from a stream, and it's gone from all devices. And if you have a shared stream among multiple family members (or multiple streams for different sides of the family), there goes more space, especially if someone shares a video.

So both of them are regularly unable to take pictures because their device is full.

Re:Gross margins

[Anonymous Coward]

People also seem to be ignoring iCloud -- when your dad (and mine) get close to the 16GB limit, along comes an email asking if they'd like to upgrade their icloud account for only $10/month (what's the margin on that sale?). Dad clicks yes -- it's only $10 vs $100 on a better phone -- and Apple gets even more money out of them.

Yes, this is a dumb analysis, but it is the analysis many people do -- Apple knows that. Get them in cheap and focus on the post-sale sales opportunities.

Re:Gross margins

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a couple of friends that bought the iPhone 6 and 6s. I find that the build quality and performance are sadly lacking when compared to much less expensive Android phones. Both of these friends now regret buying the vastly overpriced iPhones, when they could have had something better for less than half the price. Also the friend who got the 6s now complains that it is far too large for a phone!

This only reinforces what I already knew...only an iDiot buys an iAnything!

Re:Gross margins

[penguinoid]

One problem is not Apple offering a 16GB iPhone, it is that those who want more must pay 20 times Apple's cost.

[...] Apple has gross profit margins around 40% and around 56% of their revenue comes from the iPhone. [...] even if everyone were to buy the more expensive product, Apple doesn't receive anywhere close to a 20X bump in gross margins. [...]

I think what he meant was that (price of 64GB - price of 16GB)/(cost of 64GB - cost of 16GB) = 20. Or if you prefer, that 48GB don't cost anywhere close to $100.

However, by my count a cost of $2/GB is not unreasonably high, especially if we're talking higher end solid state memory and include additional services.

Re:Gross margins

[khellendros1984]

Also the friend who got the 6s now complains that it is far too large for a phone!

Speaking of phone size, I'd be interested in a 1080p Android phone with a screen around 4.5 inches, but such a beast doesn't seem to exist; all of the phones with a nice CPU, enough RAM, and enough storage seem to be 5" screens and larger at this point. Apple's not the only vendor that's obsessed with stupid-big phones.

Re:Gross margins

[AK Marc]

What you're talking about is the Break Even Point - which is the term you need to be using instead of the fucking MBA stated Gross Profit, which it isn't.

Then MBA stated Gross Profit isn't. EBIDTA is the MBA term you are looking for, usually called Gross Profit by those who don't understand economics. As you've proven you don't know.

As an American Tax Payer, I've already suggested that the IRS clear up the Definition of Profit by simply informing those companies stupid enough to call something "Gross Profit" that's what they're tax liabilities are based on.

Well your suggestion causes inflated expenses. Increase expenses to minimize profits. You might as well just tax dividend payments only. As that's the only direct way a large corporation pays out profits.

If you weren't a complete idiot, you should have suggested that the IRS collect payment on corporation's gross income. Cut the rate to 1-2% and tax income, not profit. The tax will be simpler, easier for everyone to understand, more consistently and fairly applied, and revenue neutral (as in the tax on gross income would collect as much for the IRS as the current tax on profit, even at a much lower percentage).

You claim nobody uses the terms like you do. That's correct. Income (is gross income). Earnings is any form of adjusted income or profit. Profit is net profit. There is a continuum between income and profit. Some people call the middle ground different things. You apparently want to use Break Even Point (though nobody else on the planet uses it like you do). And the MBAs you hate so much don't use the terms incorrectly as you state. Maybe that's why you hate them so much. You don't understand it.

16 gb for enterprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

I carry two phones. My work has provided me with an iPhone 6 Plus (16gb) and I have a 6 Plus 64gb that is my personal phone I had before I took the job. I have only loaded office and some remote administration tools on the work phone and since I don't use it for music, movies, taking pictures, games,or streaming 16gb is tons. I have a grandfathered "Unlimited" (Now with less throttling) for my personal phone so really I only use the work phone for email and after hours trouble calls. With the concerns of privacy and conduct issues with work devices would this less storage option become the fleet phone?

App Slicing and the Cloud

[redfood]

Apple has been working on a number of technologies to reduce storage requirements including Photo's iCloud storage and app slicing.

I'm pretty sure Apple knows what they are doing when it comes to balancing costumer satisfaction and profit.

Re: App Slicing and the Cloud

[redfood]

That should have been "app thinning."

I'm loving my 5s so far

[Anonymous Coward]

First apple product ever, did my research, and the 32gb 5s is the best phone for the price/size/features. I had to go in last saturday to pick it up and everyone at the verizon store thought I was nuts for wanting an older model so for a little revenge I started blabbing about my special loyalty rewards and plan that was $60 less a month with the same GB than verizon's new basic plan which started turning customers heads and getting them chirping about wanting that plan too. Chaos ensued and they wanted me OUT of that store ASAP. LOL

Anyways the 6s model is just plain overkill for anyone who isn't going to use the thing as their primary computer/tablet and then you have to ask yourself seriously... would you buy a modern computer full of cutting edge features with only 16gb of ram? Oh HELL NO.

On a side note the one thing I can't stand about my new apple is after I charged the iphone my first two instant message ever were both advertisements. After owning an andriod for almost 6 years and never ONCE getting an advertisement txt... it was pretty infuriating to see them on my new phone. Then I dug into the options and noticed apple is the one that sells you out to them with only a limited option to turn them off. WTF!?!?

Half tempted to return my phone now.

Many people don't need huge storage

[sjbe]

Of course, 16GB is too small - unless you want a smartphone for email, web, messages, maps, etc etc, and don't plan on shooting any HD video.

Which describes a HUGE number of users out there including my parents, my in-laws, the owners of my company, and probably 2/3 of my aunts and uncles. Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone users their smartphone the same way you or I do. I use close to 100GB on mine. My father uses less than 8 and there are many more like him.

I have a 160GB iPod classic for music, and a camera for photos. Separate devices are better. All I need is that bag of holding to keep them all in...

Separate devices are not necessarily better. I have a 128GB iPhone and it stores my entire music collection and all my point an shoot photos and video with room to spare. What benefit would I get from carrying around separate devices if I don't need specialty performance? If I need the performance of an SLR camera then sure, I'll carry one but that is pretty rare. And most people feel the same way. That's why iPod sales have dropped, point and click cameras have plummeted, etc. People don't want to carry around 3 devices when 1 will do the job fine. Thanks but I'll carry around just my smartphone which will serve me very well 99.9% of the time.

Some Think Otherwise

[brwski]

I have heard an argument from the corporate IT side that Apple needs to continue to offer the 16gb model for the sake of corporate clients, who don't want to stuff them full of data or apps, but want to tightly control what apps are on them, and need little more room for anything else. As they're not going to make one just for corporations (this is Apple, after all â" scaling & possible scaling down the road, or they're not going to do it), they might as well make it the baseline version.

Apple is not a monopoly

[sjbe]

There is no other industry where a single player can keep a global monopoly.

What are you babbling about? Apple is not and never has been a monopoly. Probably the closest they ever got was with the iPod in the MP3 player market and even there they never achieved monopoly power and that market has largely gone away due to smarphones. They sure as hell aren't a monopoly in smartphones where they aren't even close to a majority market share much less monopoly power.

Re: Apple is not a monopoly

[jmac_the_man]

Probably the closest they ever got was with the iPod in the MP3 player market and even there they never achieved monopoly power

I'm not sure what your definition of monopoly is, but by the real definition, Apple used vendor lock in to secure a monopoly in the sale of digital music and standalone players by preventing synchronization between iTunes and competing players, or between iPods and competing synchronization software. They then coerced accessory manufacturers to only support iPods, rather than competing players.

They were an abusive monopoly in exactly the same way Microsoft is accused of being.

As you correctly note, the hardware market they monopolized no longer exists in a meaningful way. And although iTunes is still an anti-competitive pain in the ass, there are other meaningful music stores now that prevent iTunes from being a monopoly.

Re: Apple is not a monopoly

[Dixie_Flatline]

They were never a monopoly because you didn't have to buy music from them--not only were there other digital stores, physical sales were still a thing. The iPod was the most popular digital music player, sure, but that itself isn't a monopoly; there were lots of other players to buy. If you had an iPod and wanted to buy music online and sync it easily, you would probably get that music from iTunes, but you didn't have to. You were always allowed to add mp3s to your library and sync them to the iPod. If you didn't have an iPod and wanted to get music from iTunes, too bad--but that's not a monopoly either. They're not obligated to make their service work with arbitrary hardware.

At any point in the chain, you could decide to avoid Apple. They had no monopoly in any sense.

What? I don't even.

[drinkypoo]

Look, I've learned to hate Apple over the years, but this story is ever so much ignorant, clickbait bullshit.

Matthew Yglesias writes at Vox that Apple's recent announcement of an entry level iPhone 6S is a serious strategic mistake because it contains just 16GB of storage â" an amount that was arguably too low even a couple of years back. According to Yglesias, the user experience of an under-equipped iPhone can be quite bad, and the iPhone 6S comes with features â" like the ability to shoot ultra-HD video â" that are going to fill up a 16GB phone in the blink of an eye. "It's not too hard to figure out what Apple is up to here," writes Yglesias. "Leaving the entry-level unit at 16GB of storage rather than 32GB drives higher profit margins in two ways. One, it reduces the cost of manufacturing the $649 phone, which increases profit margins on sales of the lowest-end model. Second, and arguably more important, it pushes a lot of people who might be happy with a 32GB phone to shell out $749 for the 64GB model."

Obviously it is not a strategic mistake if people are paying and Apple is pocketing the money, idiot. If it's driving upsells, then it's a good plan. You're just jealous. Me too, but don't make shit up.

If Apple really cared...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been bumped to 32/64GB years ago... It's not technological and the fans have surely made their voice clear..
To add insult to injury, there's no microSD.. I dont get it..

We have this great new phone, it shoots 4K video.. But you cant store it on your phone!
Dumbest brilliant people I know.

16GB is fine

[danbob999]

The problem is the price. I agree that 16GB is low for a $650 phone.

Re:16GB is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Android makers have followed suit with not-so-great $650 offerings. It's amazing that many of them don't come with microSD card slots (or maybe they realize the market for such phones is upscale and will just pay more for base storage).

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Andrewkov]

With a hammer.

Nice post

[myurbancountry]

Nice post .Thanks for share

Work Sucks

[Bigbutt]

Work has decreed they will no longer provide a Company phone for us in IT per the corporate overlords and that we have to load the company email application on my personal phone, for which I'll receive a few bucks compensation a month (but they also dropped the internet compensation they've been paying for years).

Rather than giving the corporate monkeys World access to my personal phone, I added a second phone sufficient to run the company email application and isolated it from my personal data. New Apple account, don't browse the web other than for work related stuff, don't check my personal email.

16G is fine for what I need it for. More than that would be a waste of space.

[John]

Excellent post

[myurbancountry]

Excellent post. thanks for share..

Critical thinking

[fluffernutter]

The thing is, in this life there is critical thinking and there is marketing. The two are related in that successful marketing overcomes critical thinking skills for as many people as possible, and that is what Apple is done. The stronger critical thinkers out there just can't understand how people could be defeated so easily, but it is a fact of life; there are millions of weak thinkers out there. Sad, but that's just the way it is.

Re:Critical thinking

[david_thornley]

Try, sometime, to imagine that people who disagree with you aren't weak thinkers. You'll learn more that way.

Re:Critical thinking

[fluffernutter]

Oh I encounter them every day, just not when it comes to apple products. They just don't make sense. People are paying hundreds of dollars for a shiny metal case and a pair of handcuffs.

probably not pure profit.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I don't think it's about pure profits. If it was, they'd sell 8 gig iphones at a price point of like, free/99/149 on contract. They don't. Not this cycle. Not since the 5c dropped off the lineup. Now the 5s, the bottom end for Apple, ships in 16 or 32.

Not only that, but given that the 32 tier no longer exists for most devices, and that tier's occupied by 64 gig devices, I doubt that selling price is the reason here. If that were true, the 128 gig iphone would've been priced at $100 more than the 64. Instead, they dropped the price on the 64, eliminated the 32 and introduced the 128.

I think instead they imagine that some users just don't actually use more than 16 gigs of space on their device. So they've laid out a trajectory with their supply chain that matches. Granted, this is in terms of future pricing and guaranteed stock, not in terms of the technical ability for flash suppliers to supply such modules(although I touch on that later).

Unfortunately, we don't have actual numbers to back anything up at this point. So, I'm making an extremely wild guess here and thinking that a lot of people just don't use or feel the pressure at the 16 gig size. Aside from when it comes time to upgrade iOS that is. I mean, the things that take up the largest amount of space on iOS devices are either hardcore games or video. I'm pretty sure that games like the GTA iOS games aren't sold in such huge numbers that the average user who plays games on iOS will even notice.

In an ideal world with uniform excellent signal, no congestion and no usage caps where we could just stream all of our content and upload anything we create directly into some kind of cloud storage. iCloud's pricing tiers suck compared to the competition, but even if you consider it's relatively crappy price structure, for the same price as an upgrade to the next tier, you could pay for ~33 months of 200 gig storage.

I'm assuming that most people don't have tens of hundreds of gigabytes of music or sync that much too. Obviously some do, and I get to read about it at length whenever anyone comes out with a phone with out an SD card. But I don't think that's the average case.

I'm also willing to bet that there might be a technical reason, and it's in such a super boring way I saved it for last.

That's yields on flash memory.

At Apple's scale, I don't think that the market can bear out having to supply 32 gigabyte modules. I don't think that they sell large enough quantities of 64 and up iPhones or iPads.

The 32 gig iPhone 5s and the new Apple TV model are the only iOS devices Apple ships these days with 32 gigs. So I think the supply chain for those modules is pretty well supplied.

I'd love it if we got something concrete, because when I see the iPhone 6s being sold at the 16 gig level, I just want to eat my own brain. Even though I know there are probably good reasons for it, it still bugs the ever loving shit out of me.

Mindless Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

A company in Apple's enviable position ought to be pushing the envelop forward on what's considered an acceptable baseline for outfitting a modern digital device, not squeezing extra pennies out of customers for no real reason."

But there is a reason, mindless greed. It's not just Apple either, any corporation in that position would squeeze their customer base because of the arrogant belief that the company somehow "deserves" it. Apple has NEVER cared about satisfied customers as people seem to flock to buy their stuff no matter how crappy they are treated afterward. After all, they're just holding it wrong.

McIntosh?

[Anonymous Coward]

McIntosh?

Never heard of it.

At least if you are going to troll, troll properly.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[0123456]

And SD cards are pretty much useless in modern versions of Android, anyway.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT ICLOUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT ICLOUD?

Re:DID YOU HEAR ABOUT ICLOUD?

[fluffernutter]

Anything with 'cloud' in the name forces you to give up ownership of your files.. stay away, stay far away.

Cute

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone thinks he is smarter then Apple in making profit. Apple knows what they are doing. Thought they need to find a way to invest that money to increase earnings further.

iCloud

[Chewbacon]

My wife got the 16gb iPhone 6, which she immediately filled up with pictures and videos of our son when she migrated her data to it. I eventually set her up on iCloud which moves the full resolution version of photos and videos off her phone while leaving a thumbnail on the phone itself and download the full version when needed. Of course, this costs about $2 a month.

Re:iCloud

[DarthVain]

This. It is intentional and obvious. The business model is to make people dependent on cloud services, then monetize the crap out of that service. I think someone long ago saw the continuous profit potential of enabling a locked in dependent service, and that the selling of phones and such are just the icing on the cake at that point.

Memory has been miniaturized and dirt cheap for ages, there is really only one reason to do this.

No, no, not how it works

[DriveDog]

Apple doesn't satisfy its customers by providing satisfying products or services, it satisfies them by convincing them they're satisfied with whatever products or services it sells them.

Enterpise

[Anonymous Coward]

People forget that there is a lot of enterprise use of iPhones and in many cases there is little reason to have more than 16gb on an enterprise phone. Our company buys lots of iPhones and they opt for the less expensive 16gb model.

You are justifying abuse, I think.

[Futurepower(R)]

"Your cost analysis isn't a useful one..."

What is important is not what we think. What is important is what arrives in the minds of the average person, or even 5% of the average. Here is 32GB of storage, twice as much, for $14 delivered. That's retail, not the wholesale price Apple would pay, and includes shipping.

"Only by people who wouldn't buy one anyway. The 16GB model is probably not intended for you. It is intended for people like my Dad..."

That is not the point. People "like your Dad" wouldn't know if the 16GB model is correct for them. Some would buy a 16GB iPhone and discover later it isn't adequate. That would be a VERY painful discovery. People who have painful experiences with Apple products will be intense at selling the negatives and become a POWERFUL negative advertising force.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is not competent to represent Apple. That's my opinion. Yes, I think I could do better.

As I said, it amazes me how many people who read Slashdot justify abuse and general bad management.

Yeah

[Ryanrule]

Remember who is in charge. A logistics mba boy.

mistake?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

"Leaving the entry-level unit at 16GB of storage rather than 32GB drives higher profit margins in two ways. One, it reduces the cost of manufacturing the $649 phone, which increases profit margins on sales of the lowest-end model. Second, and arguably more important, it pushes a lot of people who might be happy with a 32GB phone to shell out $749 for the 64GB model."

The 16GB iPhone 6S is a marketing ploy, it allows Apple to advertise "prices starting at..." and then upsell the customer. It's the same thing car dealers and other stores do with loss leaders and entry level models. (But for some people, the entry level models do actually work.)

But this raises the question of what purpose is served by Apple amassing more money anyhow. Apple pays out large (and growing) sums of cash to existing shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks, but its enormous cash stockpile keeps remorselessly marching up toward $200 billion.

The purpose for Apple is that they are a for profit company seeking to maximize profit. And they are good at it.

The purpose for the economy is that other manufacturers look at the profits Apple is amassing and are saying "hey, we want some of that; what can we do to get it?" Apple's profit margin is why there are dozens of Android manufacturers and tons of mobile developers.

Troll piece, as usual

[khchung]

iPhone 6S comes with features — like the ability to shoot ultra-HD video — that are going to fill up a 16GB phone in the blink of an eye

The author obviously never bought an iPhone himself.

When you try to buy an iPhone from Apple's website, just next to the options for memory size, it has a helpful link saying "How much storage is right for you?", and if you click it, this passage pops up (emphasis mine):

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus come in three storage sizes: 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB. The term “GB“ stands for gigabytes. The more gigabytes you have, the more content you can store on your iPhone, such as apps, games, photos, HD videos, music, and movies. For example, if you have a large music or photo library or lots of apps, it’s a good idea to consider an iPhone with a larger storage capacity. If you rarely download apps or you don’t take many photos or videos, an iPhone with a smaller capacity may be better for you. When deciding which size to choose, be sure to consider how your storage needs may change over time.

So the author is basically saying, the 16GB model which Apple also told you is only good if you don't take many videos, will easily be filled up if you, duh, take many videos! No shit, Sherlock!

As usual, every time year when Apple releases the new iPhone model, there are these troll pieces coming out trying bait readers. Happens every year.

16GB...

[mutherhacker]

... ought to be enough for everyone :)

I can't breathe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's CDN$1029 for the 64GB version. I can't breathe. Someone tell me this is a joke.

Phone vs Tablet

[Cro Magnon]

What's funny is, I have an older iPad that's 16GB and a newer iPhone that's 64GB. I'd probably be better off the other way around, considering that several of the biggest apps on my iPad wouldn't work as well on the phone anyway.

Is subby serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Apple supposed to be above reproach? They're a company. They're in the business of making money. They don't really care what their products are...the company exists to make money. Like every other company out there.

iCloud

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Apple wants you to use iCloud; a good way is to sell you a 16 GB phone, and then an iCloud subscription when you don't have enough storage for your photos or your music (and maybe Apple Music on top). With the new iCloud pricing of $12 per year for 50 GB, it is not such a bad deal.

I prefer however to buy a 64 GB version and not be dependant of Apple's services, whose reputation is not as good as their hardware.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"16GB is low for a $650 phone" Yes, but I still haven't filled the 2GB card in my Samsung slider phone that about 4 years old. Does anyone really need that much? I would be more concerned about the amount of RAM, or including a an SD card slot.

5S fits in a pocket

[clay_buster]

Stick with the smaller phone if you want to use smaller pickets. That's why they still sell it.

Re:5S fits in a pocket

[Culture20]

5s is already two revisions old. iOS 10 probably won't support it.

No one cares in the real world

[sjbe]

What is important is not what we think. What is important is what arrives in the minds of the average person, or even 5% of the average. Here is 32GB of storage, twice as much, for $14 delivered. [newegg.com] That's retail, not the wholesale price Apple would pay, and includes shipping.

So either customers pay $14 extra for something they don't need or Apple pays $14 extra for something customers don't need. Exactly who benefits here? I'm pretty sure Apple has done the math on this. If you are one of the very few people who needs more than 16GB but less than 32 AND actually gives a crap about the cost jump to 64GB, then buy something else. Virtually no one else really cares. Folks here on slashdot get worked up over it but it just isn't an issue.

That is not the point. People "like your Dad" wouldn't know if the 16GB model is correct for them.

Sure he would because he's a smart guy and he asks questions. He knows perfectly well that the 16GB model is fine for his needs and will remain so for some time to come. Same with the rest of my relatives. If they start having space problems they know perfectly well how to solve that problem. In the mean time it is a non-issue.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is not competent to represent Apple. That's my opinion. Yes, I think I could do better.

Think whatever you like. So far the evidence doesn't support you. The company is presently the most valuable company in the world, continues to grow, and you think you could do better? Riiight... How many large multinational corporations have you run?

As I said, it amazes me how many people who read Slashdot justify abuse and general bad management.

"Abuse and general bad management"? First off nobody is being abused here. Don't like the deal Apple is offering? Buy something else. There are lots and lots of very fine Android phones out there at almost every imaginable price point. Second, the purpose of a for-profit company like Apple is to make money. That is the measuring stick for good versus bad management and by that measuring stick it is hard to see how Apple could do better. Bad management would be to add expense for an extra product that virtually no one actually cares about aside from a few geeks with axes to grind.

16GB works for a lot of folks

[clay_buster]

My immediate family has 5 iphones, all 16GB. No one has yet noticed that they are useless. I will inform them :-0

Apple never has achieved a monopoly

[sjbe]

I'm not sure what your definition of monopoly is

My definition is THE definition of monopoly. A monopoly is a company which is the sole (or effectively so) seller of a product or service in a market. Monopolies are characterized by a lack of economic competition, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the existence of monopoly prices. At no time has Apple ever faced a lack of economic competition, there have always been viable substitute products, and while their prices are often high they do not and never have enjoyed monopoly pricing power. QED Apple is not and never has been a monopoly. I think they got close with the iPod but then the market died from cannibalization by smartphones and it became a non-issue.

Apple used vendor lock in to secure a monopoly in the sale of digital music and standalone players by preventing synchronization between iTunes and competing players, or between iPods and competing synchronization software.

So did other vendors. This was not remotely unique to Apple. Apple is under no obligation to cooperate with competitors. Expectations otherwise are naive.

They then coerced accessory manufacturers to only support iPods, rather than competing players.

"Coerced"? Apple was selling the #1 product. They didn't have to coerce anybody any more than Microsoft has to coerce companies to write software for Windows. Coercion is the use of threats or intimidation to get people to behave in some involuntary manner. Companies that made accessories for the iPods weren't coerced because they were doing exactly what a sane company would do. Namely building products for the #1 platform in the market. They'd be insane to do otherwise.

They were an abusive monopoly in exactly the same way Microsoft is accused of being.

Disagree. Apple at no time had anywhere close to the sort of market share and monopoly power than Microsoft enjoyed. Furthermore there even if they did have a monopoly (they didn't) there is nothing illegal about that. It's only illegal if you attempt to use that monopoly in ways that hurt consumers. Nothing Apple has done has come close to the sorts of anti-competitive practices Microsoft engaged in during the 1990s and 2000s. Believe me I'd be the first to call out Apple if they were really behaving like Microsoft but the evidence just isn't there. I won't pretend Apple is some warm cuddly company but calling them an abusive monopoly just doesn't fit the facts.

Profits

[sjbe]

So you're claiming that Gross Profits are not Taxable.

Never claimed anything of the sort though it is true that gross profits are not taxable. Net Profits are taxable. Gross profits are merely a useful tool to understand the cost of actually making the products.

Well I'm the Taxing authority and I'll take 25 percent of anything you call profit.

Good thing you aren't a taxing authority then because that's pretty ignorant.

What you're talking about is the Break Even Point

No it is not what I'm talking about. Breakeven analysis is not remotely relevant here.

Profit is what's left after all expenses are covered, which is the only acceptable use for the term Profit.

Well you are wrong but if you choose not to believe me then that is your problem not mine.

another article written by an idiot

[slashmydots]

That's funny because I read another article stating that 16GB vs 32GBis around $7 in manufacturing cost difference. Wow, what a margin! The author is sooo right.

$7? Not likely

[Radical Moderate]

I can buy a 32 gig thumbdrive for 9 bucks. Apple is buying in quantity, 32 GB chips couldn't cost them more than a couple bucks. Screwing your customers for a few cents is a great strategy if you don't want them coming back, this is a stupid move on Apple's part. I was seriously thinking about upgrading to a 6S, now I'm going to hold off.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Falos]

Consider the frequent cases where internal storage is full or behavior compromises made, and the value rapidly rebounds.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they useless? I use them for a large collection of music that I can keep in my phone, pictures, video, etc. If I fill up a card, I can get a bigger one or split across two swappable cards without having to spend hundreds on a new phone. This all works fine on recent Android systems.

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you like to take pictures, or listen to MP3s... ...Oh, hey - look what's on this uSD card in my Android phone!

Re:I don't see what's important about internal sto

[Anonymous Coward]

You open up the phone and wire one up, duh.

it's about the cloud

[r-diddly]

Apple, like Google before them, are trying to push more people into the cloud which coincidentally makes even more money for Apple and Google.

16GB iPhone 6s is Fine By Me

[mschwanke97402]

I make phone calls, send texts (occasionally with photos attached), take pictures, do email and online banking. Sometimes I might use one of a handful of other apps. I have a couple of GB of music. I have 5-6GB more music and photos in my iCloud account. Right now I have like 10GB free on my 16GB iPhone 6. What was the problem again?

It's about the cost

[sjbe]

I think what he meant was that (price of 64GB - price of 16GB)/(cost of 64GB - cost of 16GB) = 20. Or if you prefer, that 48GB don't cost anywhere close to $100.

I understand that but my point is that it's just not a relevant consideration. Of course it doesn't cost $100 - Apple is trying to make a profit and that's fine. But it isn't just the cost of the material that matters. Adding a 32GB model adds cost, both in materials and in logistical, sales and production overhead. Exactly how much isn't important. What is important is whether the added cost of offering a 32GB model will result in additional marginal sales. Apple has almost certainly done the math and the number of extra sales they would realize by offering a 32GB model they believe to be less than the costs incurred. They have reason to believe that the number of customers who "need" a iPhone with more than 16GB but less than 32GB is too small to justify the added cost of offering a 32GB model. It's more cost effective to just offer a 64GB model right now and most customers aren't likely to care since a 64GB model will serve their needs just fine.

interesting, thanks

[raymorris]

Indeed I pretty much ignored your first comment because is SOUNDS like a silly chain-mail rumor . "Yeah and Coca-Cola is run by the CIA."

A bit of Google with those names suggests you're right - the leadership of ABCmouse give a bunch of money scientology, and don't hide that fact. Scientology REALLY pisses me off, so we probably won't subscribe to abcmouse, since they'll send some of that money to Scientology.

Re:$7? Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

The $9 32GB flash drive will be slow, Apple would want better flash chips for their phones which cost more. $7 difference over the 16GB seems plausible to me, but I'd be surprised if it was less than that even in the bulk prices Apple would get, and $7 over millions of devices adds up quickly, but it isn't like Apple needs the extra cash.

Re:$7? Not likely

[anarkhos]

Apple doesn't set the price any more than wheat farmers. If people don't buy, the price will drop. Amazing!

Nobody is getting screwed here, least of all someone who's iPhone isn't going to be upgraded ASAP. /whitepoepleproblems