The iPhone has plateaued so much. I was underwhelmed by last years phones and mildly underwhelming this year (saved by the Xr). Thats the reason prices are going up and up. Stagnant growth. Even apple was on stage bragging and encouraging people keeping iPhones longer. Add to that they made my 6S literally feel like new again with iOS 12. The overall design (aside from a glass back last year) has been nearly identical for 5 years. Apple doesn't care about you buying a new phone so much as you buying A PHONE, period. They want you in the ecosystem because of services. But in order to curb revenue loss due to no growth they have to up the prices. Last years iPhone 8 is 599. Thats what new phones USED to start at. Now the new phones are at 749 and 999. The watch went up in pricing too. Its just clearly a cash grab to meet their quarterly results before they launch new services.
Read between the lines. Put the kool-aid down for a sec. Apple is changing big time very soon. Tim Cooks defense of the high pricing is a joke. Apple was known for giving us the best, PERIOD. Apple already had premium pricing and thats fine.....now what do we call it ULTRA PREMIUM??? The XS is the most underwhelming update to an iPhone ever. These chips are so far beyond what people use their phones for that apple has now resorted to the old "speeds and feeds" jargon of the 90s. The performance for daily tasks between the X and the XS are nearly identical. Who cares snapchat loads .0005 seconds quicker. Most wont notice. Anyone going on about the speed of the XS is probably having a placebo effect coming from pre-iphone X models since the new gestures are making the phone feel much faster because they are. But that doesn't actually mean your stuff is loading any quicker, its just quicker navigation compared to touch ID and double clicking a home button.