Tech Breakthroughs Take a Backseat in Upcoming Apple iPhone Launch (reuters.com) 114
Stephen Nellis, reporting for Reuters: The new iPhone is expected to include new features such as high-resolution displays, wireless charging and 3-D sensors. Rather than representing major breakthroughs, however, most of the innovations have been available in competing phones for several years. Apple's relatively slow adoption of new features both reflects and reinforces the fact smartphone customers are holding onto their phones longer. Timothy Arcuri, an analyst at Cowen & Co, believes upwards of 40 percent of iPhones on the market are more than two years old, a historical high. That is a big reason why investors have driven Apple shares to an all-time high. There is pent-up demand for a new iPhone, even if it does not offer breakthrough technologies. It is not clear whether Apple deliberately held off on packing some of the new features into the current iPhone 7, which has been criticized for a lack of differentiation from its predecessor. Still, the development and roll-out of the anniversary iPhone suggest Apple's product strategy is driven less by technological innovation than by consumer upgrade cycles and Apple's own business and marketing needs.
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It's all clouds and dewdrops now. That's last decade's battle.
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That's what I meant by clouds and it being last decade's battle.
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Even Android has basically done away with this over the years, then Google fought a war on SD Cards and semi-lost, but had a victory in the way they encrypt them. I believe in Androids case it's to arm-twist people into using and paying for Google Music.
I have found KDE Connect [kde.org] to be a reasonable and useful replacement for using the phone as a USB device. I can do more than 90% of what I used to do while using it as a USB device, and the fact I'm using a Google phone makes the other 10% not matter, now th
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Oh, I've done it. I did it on my M8. Every time I had wanted to use USB I would have to go into developer options and enable USB for data access. If I unplugged my M8 even momentarily I would have to re-enable USB access in the developer options regardless of what software I had installed. I'm sure I could have gotten some other firmware for it where this was no longer the case, but running the Google Play Edition ROM kept me from wanting to do that.
BTW - as you can see from the fact I called out KDE co
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There was a short period where they really wanted all the manufacturers to drop SD support and recommended it. There was a bit of a revolt and Google quietly backed off. I was against this recommendation.
Now that they're actually putting enough storage in a phone - I have a 128 GB Pixel. I'm okay with not having an SD card because my music will fit directly on the phone with enough room to still have the rest of the phone. There was no reason bigger storage couldn't have happened earlier, the chips were
iTunes hasn't been a requirement for years (Score:4, Insightful)
Get rid of that awful fucking iTunes software and let me access the phone like any normal USB device.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I opened iTunes on a desktop computer or synced my iPhone with it. That hasn't been a requirement for years.
As for using it as a USB device, I feel you but doubt it is going to happen any time soon.
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Even though I no longer user i-Devices as someone in I.T. I works with lots of users who use them religiously.
I still recommend users of iDevices open iTunes occasionally and sync if for nothing more than backup purposes. I know most of it syncs to iCloud or whatever now, but the solid backup on your own system still seems to be the best way to restore user data when an iPhone falls into an iCrapper full of iPeed and must be replaced.
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i like the no file system access and having apps use their own dedicated storage which can be locked down
means i can lock down apps and the data in them so my kids can't access them while playing with my phone
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Once again an AC troll who claims that "you gotta use android to do that" is wrong...
VLC on the iPhone is free and allows you to transfer videos to an iphone without even using iTunes:
http://ioshacker.com/how-to/tr... [ioshacker.com]
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If the device management and synchronization functions in iTunes were split into a separate application, the iTunes interface for music and video could be made more usable again for that specific purpose. There's nothing like having to keep relogging into iTunes Store when I just want to send a set of slideshow photos up to my iPad. And for s real exercise in frustration, just try exporting a set of albums from your iTunes library as MP3s on an SD card for playing in your car.
Well there's a surprise (Score:2, Funny)
Doing it for the money, who woulda thought?
It's true though, every time they come out with a new feature it's like they invented it.
Re:Well there's a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing I will give Apple is that they will take technology that is mostly mature, fix lots of bugs and kinks, then roll it out and proclaim it "New! Exciting! So Pleased to show you!"
Yes Premium Android Smartphones have had everything that the Iphone8 will have for years. Apple will bring that capability to the masses and then the fleet of android handset manufacturers will push those features out till every single phone has it.
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It's not the marketing, it's the consumer. The vast majority of consumers want mature technology. They don't find bugs and quirky behavior a selling point nor do they want that on them even if it means some kind of bragging rights. Apple does it right by consumer demand. It's not cutting edge but it works and I'm more than happy with that. I can't recall the last time Apple put something out there that I really felt that they should have done sooner. I remember far too many rushed-to-production "features" o
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That must be why seven Android phones are sold for each iPhone.
That might be due to the fact that you can get an Android phone for free, or a couple of bucks most of the time. Now if you want an S7, sure you'll pay as much as an iPhone, but Android on the other hand, on the whole is much cheaper (you can choose what that means to you).
All technology is a refinement of previous tech (Score:3)
This speaks to the /. crowd not really understanding what "technology" is.
Do you think Thomas Edison really "invented" the light bulb out of thin air?
New technology is pretty much always a slight improvement from some previous tech. Marketable consumer technology makes its improvements in things that consumers care about (i.e., getting rid of those bugs and kinks--and this isn't easy, btw, try it someday). Apple wins in the market because they are (a) trying to solve the technology problems that matter most
Re:Well there's a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well there's a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Turn by turn GPS navigation, WiFi hotspot, contact cloud synchronization, large displays, water resistance all worked just fine on Android before being copied by Apple. I don't mind if it is called "beta" by Google as long as it works.
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So? When is it the last time Apple released something that matters for Android? And no, that "move to iOS" app doesn't count.
Android had this important feature first. Just like the others I mentioned and many more.
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Sometimes they did invent it, or do it first. Sometimes they took something pre-existing and polished it enough to be practical. Sometimes it was done better by other companies first. But this sort of describes every major smartphone vendor.
My point is that while there's certainly some of it, Apple isn't entirely "me too". They've had some firsts, like beating everybody else to market with 64-bit ARM by something like a year, and they've generally been something like 3-6 months ahead of the curve in terms o
The market is saturated (Score:5, Informative)
There is pent-up demand for a new iPhone, even if it does not offer breakthrough technologies
No, not really. As long as it gets security updates and still works, why bother upgrading? I just replaced the battery in my iPhone and expect to get at least a couple more years out of it.
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There is pent-up demand for a new iPhone, even if it does not offer breakthrough technologies
No, not really. As long as it gets security updates and still works, why bother upgrading? I just replaced the battery in my iPhone and expect to get at least a couple more years out of it.
My wife finally replaced her iPhone 4 last year. With one of my parents' old iPhone 5 that they had laying around since they both now have work provided phones. Even phones that are 2 generations old are still plenty good enough these days. I was using my S5 until last week when it got smashed in my car door to the point the display was shot. It's the only reason I now have an S7, but I was planning to hold on to my S5 for at least another couple years.
Re:The market is saturated (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, not really. As long as it gets security updates and still works, why bother upgrading? I just replaced the battery in my iPhone and expect to get at least a couple more years out of it.
Anecdata: with every new iPhone release, a little less than half of my friends upgrade. The next release, the other almost half upgrade.
Most people I know are on a every-second-phone cycle that seems to suit them pretty well. There's a very small percentage (maybe 2-3 people) who always upgrade to have the latest one, and a slightly bigger group who stick with their phone until it dies.
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No, not really. As long as it gets security updates and still works, why bother upgrading? I just replaced the battery in my iPhone and expect to get at least a couple more years out of it.
Exactly my thoughts/experience... there is no reason for me to upgrade my iPhone 4. It does everything I need it to do, and if it doesn't, I'll jailbreak it. The phone is still using the original battery; I fully cycled the battery anytime I got the chance to (which was pretty much every charge) and it still goes for days. Amazing, really.
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Which model do you have? I am debating to keep using this 4S with its crappy original battery life or upgrade/replace it since it is slow and no more updated iOS.
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I know a tech innovation they should include... (Score:3, Insightful)
a headphone jack.
Always wait for the S version (Score:2)
Why should I be someone's guinea pig for new features when this phone meets 99% of my needs.
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Why should I be someone's guinea pig for new features when this phone meets 99% of my needs.
Out of curiosity, assuming you are doing a payment plan and not paying for the phone outright, if the phone meets 99% of your needs why are you upgrading every 2-3 years as soon as you get your old device paid off? With the 2 year upgrade cycle people are locking themselves into perpetual device payments.
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Out of curiosity, why are you doing a payment plan? My take is that if you can't afford to pay for a give phone outright, don't buy it. Same as buying shoes, why would anyone buy them on a payment plan?
Any time I get the opportunity to pay installments with 0% interest, I generally take that option. I could easily buy an $800 smartphone up front, but as long as Verizon is willing to give me an interest free loan why would I pass that up?
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Yes, the opportunity cost on $700 is huge!
Why, in fact, I have this really cheap stock that you should buy $0.05 right now, guaranteed to go to $0.35! get 7x your money back.
blah blah blah
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Because you're still on the hook for a $700 or $800 phone or whatever. The interest rate isn't the only factor to take into account.
The interest rate is the only factor when deciding whether to pay up front or with a payment plan (or nearly the only factor), which is they only question posed by the GP. Deciding whether a phone is worth $800 is another matter.
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Because you're still on the hook for a $700 or $800 phone or whatever. The interest rate isn't the only factor to take into account.
Well if you have any other debt at all, you're better off being on the hook for $800 at 0% interest and applying that $800 to your other debt. Most mortgages will permit extra payments. You've basically taken a 0% loan from your cell provider and used it to reduce the balance of your 3.5% loan.
Even if you have no debt, if you're half financially competent you should still take the 0% phone loan and put that $800 into an investment.
Where you burn yourself is if you take the 0% phone loan, and then use the $8
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Funny thing with this rationale is that it fails to quantify the benefit of not having a monthly payment obligation.
Also - if you have $800 in your pocket now and you want to take out a 0%/24-month loan and "invest" the cash instead of buying outright, that means you have to have an investment where you can withdraw $33 a month to make the payment on the 0% loan. You can't just pay that $800, say, into your mortgage because that money is not really liquid and you can't use it to make the payments on that 0
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IIRC, the AT&T Next program or whatever they called it made my last iPhone (6 Plus, so it's been a while) basically an 18 month interest free loan.
If you're upgrading on two year cycles, then that's at least 6 months with no payments. 3 years would make it 18 on and 18 off with payments.
In some cases, even "perpetual" payments may not be as bad as they seem. Until the 6 Plus, I upgraded every year but my wife got my year old handset and her handset got pushed down to be our "home" phone. So each phon
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We switched away from buying our phones through Verizon, to the Apple Upgrade Program. It's a zero-interest loan over 24 months, but you can upgrade every 12 months by extending the loan so that you have another 24 months remaining.
On this plan, the most logical behaviors are to 1) pay off your phone and hold onto it as long as possible, or 2) upgrade the moment you can so that you're not continuing to make payments on last year's model. The worst option is to upgrade every two years, because your monthly p
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The way Verizon currently handles the iPhone and the Galaxy S line is on a yearly upgrade cycle now exactly as you described. I pre-ordered the 7 Plus to replace my strangely behaving Note Edge, and I'll be able to get the new iPhone when it is released, without having to go straight to Apple.
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I can choose to upgrade or I can stay with the current phone. 2-3 years is the length the phone batteries last, screen gets scratched to shit, device gets wonky. A hardware refresh keeps me uptodate and I got my money's worth out of the device.
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Apple tends to let others release new "innovations" first, and then released improved versions of those innovations that are more stable and easier to use.
People seem to forget that Apple didn't invent the smartphone, or even the first smartphone with a touch screen. Microsoft had "Windows Mobile" products years before Apple, but they were unstable and difficult to use. They basically were a mess because they tried to cram a Windows XP style UI onto a 3.5" screen.
Same deal with the tablet. There were plenty
filesystem (Score:2)
Idiocracy (Score:3)
That's exactly right. And because these devices are designed down to the level of the ignorant, rather than uplifting them, they don't have to learn. And those of us who could use these devices to a much greater extent remain reined in by this pandering to market. Subfolders are too complicated, the apologists tell us. There's no saving people too stupid to learn what a subfolder is/does. Bu
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You've really missed the point. You are after complexity of the OS so that you can do complicated things with the OS. But most device users are after simple yet powerful solutions for the complex problems they face. Like airline pilots who use IBM's Plan Flight app to calculate fuel loads. I'm pretty sure pilots could cope with a sub-folder, but they really don't *want* to, nor do they *need* to -- they'd rather have big-data-driven decision support for optimising fuel loads presented in an intuitive, fast-
Idiocracy doubles down (Score:2)
No, I really have not.
I just want bloody subfolders and the ability to get at the filesystem. I don't care if I have to turn it on specially. I don't care if your snowflake pilots can't see it. I just want it to really work without having to root the bloody phone.
Good grief, no. I'm arguing for pre-1990 levels, almost prehistoric levels
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Why do you want access to *the* filesystem? If you just want the ability to access "a common place to store files that work across apps", you've been able to do that since IOS 8 over two years ago. If you don't like iCloud Drive, you can use Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and a few others. I believe all of the rest of them give you the ability to use folders.
Once any of these apps on your phone, any app that supports Apple's document picker, including Apple's own apps like Safari and Mail will let you load
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So I can control and organize my data.
I don't want to give my data to a third party. I want to be able to control my own data. I have plenty of local storage, and no need or desire whatsoever to place my information in someone else's hands. If you want to do so, of course, by all means. For myself, I'd j
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Luckily, if you care about folders and not having your documents on a third party server, you can do that. With just a quick perusal of the App Store I found two programs - Transmit and Documents. They both work with any app that supports document providers and they include share sheet extensions.
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This is a partial solution. It still doesn't let me organize my applications.
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First you said you couldn't get access to the file system and that iCloud didn't do folders.....
I posted four or five different apps that you could use instead of iCloud.
Then you said you didn't want to Store your documents in the cloud because you have plenty of local storage options.
I posted two apps that you could use that met your requirements.
Now you can't organize your applications??? Do you really have so many apps that you need sub folders.
this word, "breakthroughs" (Score:1)
This word, breakthroughs, I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Most of the innovations..." (Score:2)
How can features be "innovations" if they're already present in other phones?
They may have been innovative features when first released - but they're already out in the market now.
Upgrade for the sake of upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is pent-up demand for a new iPhone, even if it does not offer breakthrough technologies"
Why is there demand for a very modest upgrade? It seems like people are holding onto their old phones because the upgrades are insignificant..
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That and the iPhone 7 is a rather significant downgrade in two respects: the obvious loss of the headphone jack and the less obvious loss of the physical home button.
Slashdot has reported on this some, but the home button in the iPhone 7 is no longer a physical button. It's now a pressure-sensitive "soft" button. This means you can't use it if you're wearing gloves (not even the ones that "work with touchscreens") and that it can just randomly stop working when the software crashes. It no longer feels like
I have my phone (Score:1, Flamebait)
Same as PC-land (Score:1)
I feel like this is consistent with PC upgrade cycles. Sure, there are tech breakthroughs, but as someone who upgraded their PC every year or two for over a decade, my last one went for 11 years and was really still perfectly usable and acceptably played what I threw at it. I only upgraded because it was starting to not like POSTing on a regular basis.
I feel like for most users, they're not pushing their iDevice or Android anywhere close to it's potential and will be able to continue using it far longer tha
Amazing (Score:2)
We have reached the stage of good enough (Score:1)
Headphones (Score:4, Interesting)
She likes the iPhone technology stack (I'm an Android guy), but refuses to buy a phone without a headphone jack. For times when she does want to go wireless, bluetooth works fine for her.
Tech breakthroughs can go into a new tower (Score:2)
I want a new Mac Pro Tower, not another box using throttled laptop parts. Oh, and I'm not storing video projects in the cloud so I need to have a box that has a lot of room for hard drives. And two ethernet ports.
Heh... (Score:2)
Interesting way to twist the narrative from Apple being a leader in innovation to Apple purposedly delaying tech breakthroughs to their advantage... I guess it's the fanboy distortion field operating once again.
If they remove features to sell more dongles it's for having courage to take the next step, if they don't adopt a tech that is plenty mature it's because they have something in development that is better, if they close down the system it's either for security or privacy, if they make accessories prop