Victimhood.

The ‘cheap’ iPhone Xr starting at $750 + tax.

Despite a new battery my iPhone6 is becoming very sluggish. Apple makes sure this happens with its older devices by loading them up with ever slower code in its unending pursuit of planned obsolescence. My original iPad Air is suffering the same symptoms.

So announcement of a new series of iPhones sort of catches my attention. While I want a new iPhone like a hole in the head, the operating realities of my current one leave me no choice but to upgrade. And as 50 of my 64GB remain unused, it’s not like it’s a memory issue.

The sad truth is that the technological edge of two manufacturers – Apple and Samsung – has landed consumers with an inescapable oligopoly. Your choice is the Sammy with the insecure, rat infested Android OS or Apple’s ‘my way or the highway’ iOS. And as I would rather keep my credit card out of Ivan’s hands when he next goes on a free shopping spree, I am pretty much tied into iOS.

Now I am not obsessed with the need for an edge-to-edge screen and am most certainly averse to shelling out a minimum of $800 for a new iPhone, you know the one without a headphone socket and that ridiculous face recognition technology replacing the excellent thumbprint sensor on my iPhone6, which has yet to let me down. But, sadly, $750 + tax is the lowest point of entry to the new iPhone universe, with costlier models (one is appropriately named the ‘Xs’ which will be immediately read incorrectly by the 99.999% of the populace without an education in Latin) adding unnecessary OLED displays in lieu of LCD ones and adding more costly storage when none is needed in the age of the cloud. That’s monopoly pricing power for you, albeit you must respect Apple’s pun in the name.

But a friend points out that, given my modest needs, an iPhone7 will do just fine and he pointed me to the web site ‘Swappa’ (doubtless run by chaps in Sicily) as an alternative to the slime pit that is eBay (full disclosure: my last two iPhones were sold on the slime pit to Russkies!):

Clicka da image to goa to de Swappa.

Here you can sella your olda iPhona and buya a later, if discontinued, replacement for a whola lotta lessa dan de latest iPhone from da gender challenged boy in Cupertino.

So I’m thinking I mighta giva da Swappa a chanca befora shelling out $800 on the latest and greatest. My friend upgraded from an iPhone 6 to a 7 and noted a large speed increase, so that upgrade path seems rather appealing. After sale of his iPhone6 his net outlay was very low indeed. Sadly, however, the iPhone7 deletes the headphone socket, meaning yet another adapter is required.

CPU speed? Check this Geekbench chart. The iPhone7 offers the best bang for the buck over the iPhone6 on CPU speed with a speed gain of 147%. Thereafter, later models are pretty much hitting the law of diminishing returns.

The ‘new iPhones’ are nothing but a bait and switch from a disingenuous Apple. There are zero compelling new features for the outrageous 25% price increase. How long will it take consumers to realize that they are being conned? AAPL’s unit sales of iPhones were up just 1% last year with all of the large revenue gains resulting from the high price increases on the iPhone X. How much longer can Apple get away with this ‘no product upgrade’ strategy for a 25% increase in price?

Update:

I bought a mint, boxed 128GB iPhone7 from an established Swappa seller for $429, shipped. I get 81% of the speed of the iPhone X for 54% of the cost and will happily resell my iPhone6 on the Swappa site once all is said and done. It will be a cold day in hell before I lay out $1000 or more on a cell phone. (The iPhone7 is still being sold new by Apple. The price I paid is $180 less than they are asking and, if needed, I can have the battery replaced for just $29 through 12/31/18 – Apple’s ‘guilt price’ after they were caught cheating on battery lives. Replacement sky-rockets come 2019, with Apple hoping no one notices).

The iPhone7 is indeed much faster than the iPhone6. No more grinding waits while it processes ever more bloated code. And the haptic feedback is well implemented and a ‘nice to have’ feature as is ForceTouch which Apple just discontinued on its latest iPhones, ever in search of greater margins. (You push down on an icon for more options – for example accessing bookmarks in Safari). The iPhone7 is a recommended upgrade for owners of the iPhone6 and earlier models.

No comment.

I got 4 years’ hard use from the iPhone6. Not bad.

A solution looking for a problem.

Say hello to the future, for it is broken.

Apple’s much hyped tenth anniversary iPhone, the iPhone X, was hyped to market yesterday in a presentation from Apple’s over-the-top palatial new HQ in Cupertino. I have long given up watching these hypefests, sick and tired of the sleazy, self-congratulatory tone and now follow them using online text services. And follow them one must for any market investor must be aware of what is happening to a company which constitutes such a significant proportion of the major market indices.

The feature most hyped in the new phone, not available for many weeks yet, is FaceID, replacing the TouchID fingerprint sensor. Not an adjunct to TouchID, mind you. A replacement. This is claimed to be far less likely to go wrong but casually denies some of the troubling Constitutional realities of the technology. And, by the way, where are all the complaints about TouchID which I find works just fine on my relatively old iPhone 6?

Constitutional realities? The fascist masquerading as a cop in your hometown doesn’t like your face at the rally protesting his relative in the Oval Office and applies his nightstick to your head. While you are down for the count he uses FaceID on your iPhone X to unlock your phone only to find that you are a fully paid up member of the ACLU and a routine opponent of trigger happy cops with guns. It’s off to the slammer for you.

Next he finds that you are a strong supporter of DACA after searching your emails, that as a civilized human being you desire peace and solace for immigrants whose only language is English and who came here as babes in arms. Remember that bit which goes “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? Well, there goes the gaol door key in the river. Fourth Amendment be hanged.

But other practical obstacles exist, none involving pigs with guns or oval offices. Sure, your identical twin can unlock your phone using FaceID but, let’s face it, that affects a handful of users, so no big deal. But you are a keen motorcyclist and actually like to protect the space between your ears, always wearing a helmet. FaceID? Fughedaboutit.

I suppose one should add, on a positive note, that the masked bad guy or gal using FaceID to call home asking how to set off that explosive vest will be at a loss, but most of these folks use burner phones from WalMart in any case. Why waste money on an iPhone when the savings can be put to work by procuring more C4?

FaceID is the ultimate solution looking for a problem and I expect it to encounter many.

But there’s an amusing, or troubling if you prefer, side note to these ruminations.

As I was following the live text updates yesterday, when a senior hypeman started the iPhone X presentation he picked up the new phone boasting of how it would recognize his face and unlock the phone …. only to have FaceID fail. Oily marketer that he is he smoothly switched to a back-up phone but it was too late. The market has priced in this technology as a competitive advantage over Samsung’s pathetic offering (FaceID uses 3D sensors so – it is claimed – that it cannot be fooled by a 2D photograph, unlike the Samsung system which can be thus fooled). The reaction of the stock, shown in the red rectangle below, was swift and brutal. It appears I’m not the only one who follows AAPL:

That’s a loss of market capitalization of exactly $22.02 billion in 30 minutes. Way to go, Apple. You need better carnival barkers, though your best has long departed this world.

As I said, a solution looking for a problem and finding one before the gadget was even in the stores. The key feature, and it fails. And they are asking $1,000 and up for the HypePhone. That’s more than even an Apple laptop. Pass.

Ubiquity in a decade.

It’s easy to remember the date as it’s the one on which I shelled out a shocking amount of money on a device the likes of which no one had seen before.

Seldom has technology been so compelling, so obvious in its promise of fulfillment of an unknown need.

Mercifully I was living in central California at the time so the lines at the local Apple Store in San Luis Obispo, a poor college town, were nothing like those in affluent San Francisco with all those memorable images of crowds around the block. Indeed, the device was so costly that Apple refunded $200 of the purchase price some months later after crafting the now famous financial subsidy model with AT&T. And AT&T was the sole carrier, there were no apps or AppStore and you pretty much enjoyed what the device came with. And you were deliriously happy that something so magical fitted in your pocket.

I paid my small tribute to Steve with a snap taken – where else but in San Francisco? – on the day of his death, October 5, 2011.

Pacific Stock Exchange building, Pine and Sansome, San Francisco.
G3, kit lens @ 71mm, 1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 1600

The iPhone roll out some months before the availability of the gadget remains the greatest promotional video ever.

Click to watch.

If one looks at the global penetration of smartphones – the iPhone and its many knock-offs, the device’s acceptance has been faster than that of all the key technologies which make life livable. Vaccines, modern medicine, transportation, electricity, sewers and so on, none has reached most of the world as quickly as the smartphone.

We now know Steve’s presentation to be some of the best showmanship since P.T. Barnum was a boy. He had multiple prototypes hidden on his body each barely capable of doing one thing. The iPhone was still months from a production model and was insanely buggy. But the master showman and carnival barker got away with it and the device remains one of the most reliable and bug free computers ever made. Watch that presentation. It is seamless. And today, for most consumers, a smartphone is the only computer they own.

Will Apple’s pricing and profit hegemony at the top end of the market prevail? The device has already taken Apple from a rounding error to being the world’s largest business and the single product dominance of its profitability, along with a chief executive who has yet to have an original idea, does not augur well for continued leadership when it comes to tech income statements. But no matter. This remains the most transformative device in human existence. And it was Steve who bashed all those engineers’ heads together and brought it to market.

Hurry up and wait.

The iPhone7 manages to be an exercise in three things at once: arrogance, greed and desperation.

Arrogance, as Apple has removed the traditional 3.5mm headphone socket replacing it with wireless earbuds whose poor 5 hour life and need to carry a charger manage to simultaneously break something which did not need fixing and make the result worse. “Our way or the highway”. Did the iPhone get slimmer, the rational (?) reason to pull that socket? Nope. It’s the same as the iPhone6+, but the battery life has increased. Given that the battery was already good for a day’s use (and more with the bigger model) this a solution looking for a problem. The iPhone ergonomics, meanwhile, make a kitchen knife look sophisticated, with poor placement of buttons and easy to accidentally shift modes in the camera. Yup, you have been there.

Greed, as those earbuds will run you a shocking $159 to remove that oh! so onerous earphone cable, while deleting its handy control button. This for a device which likely costs $10 to make.

Desperation, for Apple is clearly out of ideas – those went to the grave with Steve – and is trying to milk its margins with silly earpieces. Look out below.

Apple’s onanistic boasting about how they redesigned everything, with no user benefit, smacks of a loss of awareness of customer needs much as their bizarre new headquarters building smacks of a zenith in the company’s fortunes. Building castles all too frequently means you have peaked. Ask Henry VIII and the Tudors.

Meanwhile Siri voice recognition remains worthless (come on, do you know anyone who uses it?), there is still no ‘delete to the left’ (needing but one line of code) and spelling correction has zero contextual logic. iOS is an abomination, seemingly riddled with security holes. 

The other day I was in a Toyota Prius whose driver placed her Blackberry on a small shelf at the base of the console. Now I’ll admit the Prius is not everyone’s cup of tea. There are so many videos, tones and flashing lights going on that I swear the thing would drive me potty were I to stay in one over 15 minutes. But that little shelf contains an inductive charger, common to Blackberries and many Google devices which removes a cable which really needs removing – the charger cable. Not the one to your ears.

So we wait for iPhone8. Meanwhile I hope I can get the thieves at Verizon to reduce my bill as my iPhone 6 is now paid for.