Slashdot Mirror
Apple To Extend iPhone's Product Cycle; Shift To 32GB Internal Storage On Base Model: Reports (nikkei.com)
According to Japanese outlet Nikkei, which has a good track record, Apple is planning to extend its iPhone's product cycle. The Cupertino, California-based company, which currently utilizes the same design language for two years, now plans to make major refreshes to its iconic smartphone every three years. The report claims that Apple is changing the refresh cycle as it struggles to innovate and provide new features and substantial improvements to its iPhone. For those planning to purchase the next iPhone, don't expect any design changes, the report adds. From the report: The new version slated for this autumn will look almost identical to the current iPhone 6. Functions such as the camera, water resistance and battery capacity will likely be improved, and the headphone jack will be removed. Also, a high-end version of the model will give users better-quality photo capabilities via correction functions. On the sidelines, the media is abuzz with reports that the next iPhone will have 32GB internal storage in its base model.
why would you do this? to artificially inflate battery life or make it slimmer, not worth it, this is a stupid move.
Wow!
why purchase $5.00 headphones to listen to highly compressed lossy music, when I can purchase the same headphones, at 10-20X the price, because of a proprietary connector.
Also, they should have a DRM chip in the headphones themselves, so users can't plug in headphones from someone else's device, they can market this as an anti-theft feature, it's helping the users!
Also, the connector should be as flimsy as possible, breaking at the slightest use.
Headphones are disposable anyway, a 3 month life time should be considered normal.
Yup, we're all out of innovation here.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I actually USE the headphone jack. I have a new 6s+ and will not replace it for some time, but when I do, I will not consider a jack-less phone if there is a competitor with one. So, Apple, remove the jack, and Samsung here I come.
On the other hand, I'm old enough to remember when Macs dropped the serial port in favor of USB, and all the squalling about "b-b-but my cheap modems!" Heck, I remember the complaints about non-standard (i.e. not DB9 or DB25) serial connectors.
Maybe it'll look boneheaded five years from now, maybe it won't. I'm going with "will", but I've been wrong before betting against Apple.
"and the headphone jack will be removed"
Is this what people want? I mean, I know a lot of people like their wireless ones... but I prefer wired. I hate charging the stupid things. I hate pairing the stupid things. I like just being able plug them in and go. I like that by being plugged in the headphones stay with the phone; and don't get left behind. I like that they are cheap and easy to replace.
Plus I still occasionally connect it to aux inputs and such in cars. My daughter uses headphones with her iphone all the time. Everyone i know has wired headsets and headphones... only a handful prefer wireless/bluetooth solutions.
So they're not innovating as fast as they used to.
What was that about Silicon Valley being the center of innovation? Now innovation is decreasing.
So instead of innovating more, they're going to innovate less. My problem with the iPhone and others is that they keep making them smaller and getting rid of the bezel, where the hell am I supposed to hold on to it? Without a case it's tough as heck to hold it above my head while lying down or even while doing lots of movement.
Apple probably won't even miss the people who will move to other brands because of this design decision.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The 32GB base absolutely makes sense as 16GB is not nearly enough for anyone but a casual user. Load up a couple dozen Apps, store email on your phone and take some photo's and BAM, your 16GB is done.
As far as the headphones, I personally do not care. I use bluetooth and for those that still want to use headphones, there will be a lightning adaptor to do so. I really do not get the reason, though. To make the phone .xxx MM thinner? IMO, it's already too thin and quite cumbersome to use w/o a case on it.
That's what Apple thinks.
Apple is no longer able to convince people to upgrade as frequently as they had in the past, because Apple is no longer able to come up with good reasons for those customers to upgrade.
How cute.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
One shudders to think what the mind who thought up that idea thinks of Android.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People won't even know the headphone jack is missing until it is in their possession and they are asking their geek relative how they can plug in their hello kitty headphones. Due to the elements stuff just doesn't last where I live. I went back to using the headphone jack for everything. cables and headphones are much more reliable and much cheaper to replace when they break or go missing.
Oooh, a whole 32GB? Wow, such a blessing from Apple to reward its faithful with something other phones have had for a long time now.
How about something REALLY innovative, like a MicroSD slot with adoptable storage, like Android 6.0 has? You can get cards with up to 256GB of storage. I have a 128GB card in mine. With the base 32GB, this gives me 160GB of storage for days when I have to work in remote areas without the benefit of cloud access via WiFi or cellular data.
Don't say it can't be done. It can. Apple just doesn't want you to be able to.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Where are the reports on how we'll be able to connect our existing headphones to the iPhone 7?
I had to backup and restore to reclaim 3.5GB of lost storage space, thanks to the massive bug that loses storage space when they download unwanted OS updates. Deleting the update doesn't reclaim the space.
32GB will help, I guess. Longer period between having to refresh everything
I bet 32 Gigs of MicroSD is really expensive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K0948545
10 bucks? Oh ...
As a new feature. if apple is anything, they're incredible marketers.
I'd like to see some customization option, such as a little slide-out section that allows one to pick what kind of jacks they want. Apple could charge say an extra $30 for non-default or extra jacks, and make a profit on that aspect. Win-win!
Table-ized A.I.
This. They'll lie about taking it then refuse a refund. That's what they did when I bought an iMac in 1999, and it didn't have the needed floppy drive. At that time, USB floppy drives were pretty rare, and my Apple dealer didn't know they even existed. I got screwed and had a computer I couldn't use. Apple refused a refund. They're still the same dishonest company. They're refuse to give a refund for an MP3 player that is so broken that it can't even play MP3 files. Well, it can over the speaker, but who wants to listen to that crappy speaker? Apple has always hated us and screwed us, but doing this proves they're just fucking full of hate and want us to die.
Is this "confirmed"? Who wants this? I really don't want to add headphones to the list of things I need to plug in.
Any word that they will skip the 64gb version so those that need to upgrade will be forced in to the next size bigger? They have done it twice. 16gb was skipped and people had to go to 32 and with 6, 32gb was skipped. You either have to delete a bunch of stuff or get the bigger phone.
I almost died when they refused to fix a key that fell off of my three day old MacBook. I confirmed with a friend that Apple doesn't provide repair parts to the stores so they can't fix problems like that. Also, they get punished for the percentage of visits that result in a repair so they fight like hell against doing repairs.
That's the biggest problem with Apple. We can't accept things for repair so we have to makeup excuses. I don't want to be fired for accepting too high of a number of devices for repair.
Apple probably won't even miss the people who will move to other brands because of this design decision.
That's because of two things:
1. The numbers you speak of will be a statistical rounding error.
2. EVERY other manufacturer will scramble to follow suit within one product-cycle.
You need to get outside more often.
When the two different sizes came out they used to have identical capabilities with the only difference being the screen size. Now they are giving the larger phones extra capabilities and the SE gets even fewer features. If you can't use the largest screen then you have to give up on features that you may want. Or if you feel like you need a feature you end up buying the bigger phone. Yes, Apple is free to configure and price their phones how the want but I'm also free not to like it.
When the buzz originally started regarding removing the headphone jack, it was because Apple wanted to make the phone even thinner and there was simply no room for it.
Now, this article is saying that they're not changing the phone, but still removing the jack? Doesn't make sense.
It is only the Square magstripe reader that connect via the headphone jack. The chip reader and contactless Apple/Google pay reader connects wirelessly. Unless you have been living under a very large rock, you should be aware that magstripe is now legacy tech. If you continue to accept it at point of sale as a vendor, you now eat any and all fraudulent charges instead of the bank or card issuer. You can always keep an iPhone 5, 5s, 6, or 6s around for pint of sale use, and it is possible that Square will come up with a lightning connector model. I am also sure there will be an Apple headphone to lightning adapter.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
This is about hiding their poor sound quality behind BlueShit. That's all it be.
I bought a 32 GB flash thumb drive the other day for about $10 retail. I assume Apple gets it cheap buying in bulk. No reason why anything as expensive as the iPhone should come with anything less than 64 GB.
Unless Apple is planning on shipping a pair of Bluetooth earbuds with the product, this sounds very much like a marketing tactic. Apple owns Beats Audio, and I guarantee there will be "seamless integration" with their headphones. This is the same company that charges $200 for headphones of dubious quality, i.e. they're "nice" but "not $200 nice" and endorsed by conspicuous use by celebrities. I know the headphone jack eats up a lot of case space, but wouldn't running Bluetooth a lot more than you would with analog headphones negate any battery life increases?
The extended upgrade cycle makes sense now. Carriers have pretty much stopped subsidizing phones, so the only option to avoid a one time $900+ purchase is a leasing agreement that ends up costing users more over time. There's less stuff to stuff into a smartphone, and fewer simple technologies with silly names like "Retina Display" and "Night Shift" that consumers can be fooled by. I'd be happy if they'd replace the headphone jack with a micro SD slot...even if they called it "Escape Pod" or something silly like that. The mature product cycle plus the fact that a smartphone's true price can't be hidden as easily anymore means people will be buying fewer replacement phones. Add to that the fact that I think most people realize they're walking around with a computer in their pocket and have started treating them a little more carefully than the average built-like-a-tank Motorola cellphone from the 90s/2000s.
The one thing that drives me the craziest as an iPhone owner and a user of Apple's computers is the fixed-capacity non-upgradable nature of them. They might as well be saying "Please throw our products in the dump when you're done with them." Maybe some upgradeability will come from this shift away from yearly phone upgrades. Seriously, I hate paying $300+ for an extra 128 GB of flash memory in a "professional" laptop computer!
Loss of the headphone jack on the iphone, not a problem. Loss of MagSafe on the new MacBook, huge problem. I'd have bought one already if it weren't for that. I mean... even if they've decided that USB-C is the new hotness and all, couldn't they have at least improved the connector on the MacBooks side to lose the friction plug and include the magnets?
Imagine all the people...
One of the big wins Apple scored in the past decade, outside their own industry, was the way they spurred automobile manufacturers to add iPod/iPhone integration. Now, the average car on today's roads is about 11 years old. Most cars of the mid-2000's provided just a 3.5mm aux Jack. I realize Apple's customer base skews to the higher end of the income spectrum, and likely drives newer cars, but that still will leave a large number of customers out in the cold because they don't have the means (or willingness) to change their car.
USB and Bluetooth integration are increasingly common in new cars, starting from 2011 or so. But in many cases the Bluetooth is limited to phone calls and can't do streaming audio. CarPlay has even less penetration, and is only in cars (at all) from 2014 on, is not yet remotely ubiquitous in new cars, and likely won't become moreuniversal until the federal backup camera mandate kicks in in 2018 and rail-roads all cars into having in-dash touchscreens.
USB is a standard and works with everybody. Lightning is proprietary and only works with Apple devices. So unless you use Apple's products exclusively, you'll need to carry around a second headset or an adapter forever. So you're likely right, it will be seen as boneheaded... but then, you can see cars sold with Apple specific connectors :`(....
16GB is actually a pretty good amount of storage for a few different users:
1) Enterprise customers just just load a few apps on an iPad.
2) Elderly people that just use the iPhone/iPad for a few things and do not really care much for games.
Photos don't take up much room and if you have the iCloud photo thing turned on you will not run out of space. People who take a lot of video will run out of space faster but that's not everyone...
I think the only reason Apple is moving to 32GB is because it's reached price parity where it's almost as cheap to order the 32GB storage as the 16GB storage, as companies move away from producing modules in smaller sizes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> On the sidelines, the media is abuzz with reports that the next iPhone will have 32GB internal storage in its base model.
I understand this is rumor, but it makes sense. Memory has never been cheaper, and it just doesn't make any sense anymore to pay a boutique-grade premium in order to get a usable amount.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
because it's reached price parity where it's almost as cheap to order the 32GB storage as the 16GB storage
Nailed it. That and they can still make good margins on the 64/128/256 flash at $100 per increment ($200 for 256, I assume).
16 works fine for anyone who is mostly cloud-bound, and with a couple dollars a month you can upgrade your iCloud storage to keep all your photos safe and out of your local storage. Not that iCloud is going away - no, you'll still need that subscription to backup the (now larger) internal memory. Win-win (for Apple, that is)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It would cost a hell of a lot more than $30. The entire reason for removing the jack is to make the phone thinner and provide more space for things like more battery capacity.
Not saying I LIKE the idea -- I'm saying your suggestion is unworkable. They'd have to have two models with completely different specs from motherboard to case design.
I'm 100% not upgrading this cycle if there's no headphone jack. Let's let the early adopters figure it out. I like my apple earpods and not having to worry about mealy 8 hour battery life headphones.
This is a $88 problem to solve. I put a Sony head unit in my car for $300 back in 2012. Best decision I ever made. handles calls and streaming bluetooth audio. The new ones are $80 now with the same feature set.
USB is a standard. But you should recall that it was not originally *the* standard; and did not just "work with everybody". When Apple first switched to it with the iMac; support for USB on the Windows side was flakey and half-baked at best. And, at the time, the windows people widely criticized Apple for their "non-standard" choice to use this new-fangled USB thing that just barely worked outside the Apple ecosystem.
To some people, they will just never be able to do anything right.
Imagine all the people...
Same situation for the CD/DVD ROM for Mac laptops.
And there are even cheaper options. There are standalone bluetooth A2DP receivers with a 3.5mm output jack for $12.
I've owned and used one for close to a decade now.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Dropping the headphone jack seems boneheaded, just like dropping the serial port, just like dropping floppy drives, just like dropping DVD drives, dropping the physical keyboard on a cell phone, or the mother of all disses, dropping Flash. IIRC, Apple was one of the first, if not the first to drop those legacy techs. Could it just possibly be that they are doing it again? In 3 years, will the headphone jack, which seems absolutely irreplaceable today become what the floppy drive is today? Is it possible that Samsung and Google will jump on the bandwagon? I'm not saying it's a certainty, but I'm also not blind to Apple's past prescience for dropping stuff to make room for the next big thing. I'd recommend caution and an open mind to see what the future might hold.
The headphone jack dates back to around 1878, I somehow doubt apples lightning connector will last anywhere near as long.
Yep. One of the things I found weird about CarPlay is that the audio goes over Bluetooth and not the USB link.
This leads to hilarious issues where the audio will keep playing despite iOS having dropped the CarPlay connection (because the Bluetooth connection is still good and Apple's USB stack is shit) and issues where the CarPlay display will be active but the audio will be dead because Apple's Bluetooth stack is shit.
Incidentally this means that CarPlay's audio quality is horrendous compared to using a regular aux jack via the headphone jack.
It's honestly quite impressive how bad CarPlay is. Seeing decisions from Apple like removing the headphone jack helps explain why.
Yeah, right, what's next Apple, a car without wheels?!?! What are you going to do, make it, what, hover? I will never buy a computer without a 3.5" floppy! Or without a DVD ROM! Or a mouse! Or a monitor! Or a phone without a physical keyboard! Or, and I mean this especially, a car without wheels! ...said my good buddy, Lud.
That's when you tell them to buy the wireless Bluetooth adapter to plug their wired hello kitty headsets into, from the market supply of such devices that spring up as soon as this is done.
My 6S will be my last iPhone. I have too many other devices that have headphone jacks to bother with an adapter just for the iPhone, or a bifurcated collection of headphones.
USB is a widely supported standard. Whatever Apple replaces the headphone jack with is likely to be proprietary, like the other connectors on their phones. You will end up with a bunch of dongles or headphones that only work with Apple products.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Mini-DIN 6 was a standard RS-485 serial connector. Macs didn't use RS-232. They used RS-485. That was the source of the whining.
Only morons complained that it was non-standard. Everyone else just understood that there are lots of different standards for different purposes.
my newest car is 13 years old. I paid a total of $750 on repairs and maintenance last year.
your daddy is a car salesman.
Remember 3.5" disk drives? Mac OS classic to X? Yep, same thing. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The trouble with audio-over-Bluetooth is that it introduces latency. So, there go several different use cases. Want to do multitrack recording? Sorry, you can't because the track you are playing along with is reaching your ears 20 ms too late. Want to plug a MIDI keyboard into the phone, so you can use the built-in sounds from Garageband? Want to use any one of the "virtual instrument" apps that you play using the touchscreen (there must be hundreds of these)? Get ready for a 20-ms delay between hitting the key and hearing a sound.