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Apple Might Discontinue the iPhone X This Summer (bgr.com)
BGR shares a startling prediction from Ming-Chi Kuo, the Apple analyst at KGI securities:
Kuo -- who we should note has an exemplary track record with respect to iPhone rumors -- adds that Apple may opt to discontinue the current iPhone X entirely if sales are underwhelming. "KGI also expects a trio of iPhone models in the fall of 2018," AppleInsider notes. "He predicts the iPhone X will be 'end of life' in the summer of 2018, instead of being retained as a lower-cost option in the following year." If Kuo's projection pans out, this would represent a marked shift in Apple's iPhone sales strategy. Going back nearly a decade, Apple has always positioned older iPhone models around as a wallet-friendly alternative for users who weren't keen on paying a premium for Apple's latest and greatest.
As long as they keep the SE in the current form factor. The SE is basically the only iPhone that has good price/value ratio. I had the philosophy of getting my wifes old iPhone when she gets the latest model every two years. Last one she got was a 7 and, as such I got her old 6. Never again. These phones are so thin, I basically let it slip all the time, and within two weeks I let it fall, shatter the screen and TouchId was ruined too. Third party repair was so-so, and a half functioning phone sucks. So, I ponied up for the cheapest SE, getting back the 5 form factor. I couldn’t be happier. First time in over 10 years, I actually paid for a new phone.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It's just an environmental nightmare. Phone hardware per se can last 10+ years, WHY do we have to buy the new shiny model again every 12 months? And what happens to the rest?
Apple being "environmentally friendly" is just a huge joke. They don't even pretend to greenwash anymore.
Last time they at least could go re-hire Jobs.
They need another Jobs at the helm. Design by committee and a leader that doesn't know exactly what he wants is killing them.
It's not surprising. The iPhone X is a terrible phone, and Apple has been caught trying to trick people into upgrading.
Face ID is a failed experiment. It manages to combine barely working with being insecure as hell: you have to hold the phone at very specific angles to get it to see your face, meaning that casually unlocking the phone is a chore. But it will also unlock using a simple folded photograph if held correctly, making it trivial for adversaries to unlock. Face ID needs to go away.
The removal of the home button is disastrous, if only because Apple already delegated a ton of functionality to it that now has to be redistributed across the rest of the phone. The home button used to perform different functions based on if you tapped it, or clicked it, or double-clicked it, or double-tapped it, or triple-clicked it. But now they've removed that button entirely and replaced it with ..... nothing. So now the power button has to take over for functions like accessing Apple Pay and Siri. Meaning that as simple a thing as turning off the phone now involves secret button combinations. (It's click volume up, click volume down, then hold the power button, in that order. I kid you not. Hold the power button briefly to bring up the power controls, longer to forcibly reboot.)
The new "home space" as the bottom means that a ton of apps now have UI that is right next to it, making triggering it incredibly annoying. Of course, "legacy" apps that aren't "optimized for iPhone X" have giant black bars on the top and bottom, meaning that the apps that place controls on top of the "home space" are in theory "optimized for iPhone X" but developers don't seem to have figured out how to deal with a giant dead area at the bottom of the screen.
And then there's the notch, transforming a somewhat nice looking display into a horned ugly mess. You'd think this being an Apple decision the status bar wouldn't have been an after-thought, but quite a few pieces of information are flat-out missing on the iPhone X because there flat-out isn't space. Don't believe me? Swipe up the control center and .... no, wait, it's now swipe down the control center, but only from the right horn, because the left horn handles the old "swipe down" gesture. Anyway, swipe down the control center, which will display the "old" iPhone status bar, and look at all the icons that used to be hidden. "Minor" things like bluetooth status and battery level, for those bluetooth headphones you now have to use because there is no headphone jack.
So, anyway, I'm not surprised. The iPhone X is a disaster even if you ignore the price.
"Apple" and "wallet friendly" in the same sentence simply does not compute. Really not. And I've got an MB Air myself.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
BGR, an Android boy-Army? LOL - BGR is about the biggest Apple enthusiast out there!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sorry for the rant, but I just had an encounter with an idiot in the grocery store and I am still pissed. Not that it does not happen every day though.
Which - running into idiots, or you getting pissed? :)
AC comments get piped to
The Mac Pro wasn't universally hated. A certain subset of pro users like it a lot — the ones who don't have any significant storage requirements and need really, really quiet machines. A different subset hate it — the ones who now have to install a separate RAID enclosure right beside their machine because they can't stick up to 240 TB of SSDs in each one like you can with the previous generation (or, more realistically, up to 48 TB of spinning rust), and are instead stuck with the paltry 1 TB that Apple graciously allows you to buy. (You can get more storage even in their laptops now, which is beyond sad.)
The bigger problem with the Mac Pro, of course, is that it is too small to accommodate subsequent generations of twelve-core CPUs and high-end GPUs, so they can't upgrade it to the current tech without significantly redesigning it. Their insatiable lust for thinness/compactness and their bizarre infatuation with proprietary SSD-only storage slots finally bit them in the a**. And it's good that they're having to rethink things. Maybe next time, they'll pay more attention to their target audience saying, "Here are our minimum requirements" before they design things, rather than just saying, "You'll adapt to what we sell," because at some point, their customers will get tired of doing that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
hopefully china will flood the market with decent phones
As a matter of interest if all you're doing is phone calls and txt msgs why are you waiting for a "decent" phone? There's plenty of options out there even with the label "smartphone" that could suit you for under $100.
Hell go buy a second hand Galaxy S5 and a fist full of spare batteries and you'll have something that lasts you forever.
FaceID is optional. If you don't like it, don't enable it.
I don't think the problem is that people don't want to use it. I think the problem is that people just like the fingerprint sensor more and opted for the lower priced 8 with it than going for the more expensive X that lacks it.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
The apple store in that picture would easily pass as a very cultish church. All you have to do is replace the apple logo with a church of scientology logo.
Creative Labs' Nomad. It had more space than the iPod. Some models might have had wi-fi. It wasn't lame. (That's the meme, at least.) I had a Nomad. It was terrible. It had a 6GB laptop drive (compare to the original iPod's 5GB 1.8" drive), was the size of a portable CD player (compare to the iPod's "bar of soap" size), and transferred music to/from the drive via USB1.1 (compare to the iPod's Firewire connection). Oh, and it didn't have WiFi either. That's why the CmdrTaco "review" of the iPod has been such a dank meme for so long. It was hilariously off-the-mark.
Cassidy & Greene's SoundJam MP3. Apple didn't buy the company or the software. They hired away their developers, then tasked them with re-creating SoundJam MP3, but with more brushed metal texture and fewer supported audio formats. Total dick move, and the press called Apple out on it back then. That was before Apple had gotten fully and firmly past the press' collective gag reflex. Now, journalism is practically sustained by the "protein shakes" dispensed by Apple.
You think Gil Amelio would've kicked ass and taken names like Jobs did from 1997 to 2007? Hardly. When interviewed, Amelio called bringing Jobs back was his greatest act to help the company. Because it worked. Yes, basing Mac OS X on NextStep helped. But Mac OS X isn't NextStep. It's FreeBSD with some cross-pollination with OpenStep. There's A) no original NextStep code involved (since NextStep ran on 68k machines only) and B) it's not OpenStep either, but instead FreeBSD with a GUI that works somewhat similar to OpenStep's, but is based on PDF instead of PostScript. (And, yes, I'm aware that PDF is technically PostScript 3. But it has some compatibility breaks with PostScript 2 and earlier.)
Tim Cook, however, can't run the company for shit. Time after time, he's made POHR mistakes. He's John Sculley 2.0. I'd rate AAPL a "sell, now", starting with the day Jobs died. And as for Android, I wouldn't rate Alphabet much higher. Android is a shit-show of epic proportions. It makes Windows look well-engineered and secure.
Or even the summary.
The iPhone X might be deprecated as a low cost option. That means it wonâ(TM)t be around next year for cheap. Instead, the iPhone 8 will be the cheap option and the three new phones will effectively be 3 different updated iPhone X models.
There will still be Face ID on the new phones. They will still not have home buttons.
If you were hoping to get an X from Apple $200 cheaper next year, this might be disappointing to you, but it doesnâ(TM)t mean much else.
Whatâ(TM)s wrong with smart quotes?
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