I was an Xr basher , test drove one , and completely changed my mind &traded in my 7plus
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
To me the XR was the only interesting one at this years keynote, otherwise it was pretty underwhelming.
With regards to costs eventually coming down, I really hope you are right but since Tim Cook has taken over the prices for EVERYTHING Apple has really sky rocketed and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I mean not including the headphone dongle is just penny pinching to the extreme on devices that can cost as much as £1500.
With regards to costs eventually coming down, I really hope you are right but since Tim Cook has taken over the prices for EVERYTHING Apple has really sky rocketed and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I mean not including the headphone dongle is just penny pinching to the extreme on devices that can cost as much as £1500.
He took over 7 years ago. That’s close to a decade of explosive growth. I find it fascinating when people use the phrase “since Tim Cook took over” as if it’s a recent phenomenon as if discounting that he has navigated the company very successfully. Re: price, you have fewer people upgrading, excellent previous generation models at lower prices, and higher end options for those willing to pay. Seems like the classic findings of a mature market that Apple knows is plateauing, and that’s okay. it’s not high price plateauing. it’s that people are sufficiently satisfied with old devices which still take solid photos, allow for the same communication, and receive software updates for nearly half a decade. And that seems like that’s an overall win for the consumer even if the tech-forward crew has to commit to a higher price for the latest.
I understand that thought process for iPhones especially as carrier financing almost hides the true cost of the device and people seem happy to pay it.
However the prices for their other stuff is getting out of hand especially when you consider you cant upgrade the parts later.
I was kinda hoping that with iCloud/Apple Music/App Store etc that the hardware prices might have come down so that people are hooked into the "Apple ecosystem" but that has simply not been the case.
A few of years ago you could buy a Mac laptop for £750 but now the cheapest Mac laptop is a £1000 3 year old non upgradeable design with a puny 128GB SSD and the cheapest new design is £1200 for a dual core non upgradeable laptop also with a puny 128GB when the equivilent windows machines come with quad core processors with upgradable m2 drives.
The Mac mini doubled in price for a minor spec upgrade, the Macbook pros have also sky rocketed in prices in recent years too.
I actually switched to windows when they announced the new touchbar pros as the laptop I got for £800 beats anything Apple offers up until around £2k in terms of raw performance.
Once upon a time I could recommend Apple stuff to friends and family especially the older generations as MacOS I find is much easier and safer for a less computer literate person to use, however the recent prices mean I cant recommend them any longer.
If Apple switched to m2 standard for drive upgrades and standard RAM upgrades in their laptops the massive price of entry wouldnt be so bad as you could buy the cheapest and then make it better later for a lot less money than Apple charge which is what I did back when I got my old white Macbook.
I could still recommend iPhones though as there are much cheaper older models still kicking about, I've just recommended my mother in law to get an SE on a black friday deal as it was dirt cheap and will still last a few years for updates, but the rest of the Apple portfolio I cant.
The 7 Plus was an outstanding iPhone. And I mean that in terms of durability with the 7000 series aluminum and performance with the A-10 fusion. There wasn’t really any drawbacks to that specific phone, but after using the 8 Plus in Space gray as a ‘Work phone’, Apple ended the Four year mark nicely with the glass back, wireless charging, True-Tone and stereo speaker’s were tweaked louder, basically the 8 Plus is the ‘More improved’ version of the 7. The XR is nice and remotely similar to the 8, other than the obvious exceptions.