I stand by my assertion that Apple has gone from BMW to Volkswagen to Tesla. If nothing else, the fact they\u2019ve gone all in on the iPhone X price range – with no ship date for the cheapest model – should be as clear an indicator as you could ask for. The baseline \u201cnew\u201d iPhone has gone up a hundred bucks or more in the last two years, and the top of the line has gone from $850 to $1100 – not to mention an absurd 6.5\u201d display; no wonder they aren\u2019t making the iPad mini anymore. With the cancellation of the SE, Apple has abandoned the one-handed phone market and gone all in on chasing the Chinese luxury market. How you feel about that probably depends on whether you came up in the era of \u201cthe computer for the rest of us,\u201d even when it was more expensive than competitors. Because you could at least be assured you were getting value for money, rather than “premium materials” and a series of gimmicks that would make Samsung blush if they weren’t trying to imitate them.<\/p>\n
It starts with the Watch, which you now have to replace if you bought the original and still want the latest version of watchOS. Which I guess is about par for the course given that the original iPhone only got updated to iOS 3.1.3. Only problem is, you sort of expect to have to replace a phone every two or three years. If that\u2019s the expectation for a watch, that\u2019s a big ask when you\u2019re throwing down a thousand bucks on a phone. Then again, depending on who your market is, $1500 every two years might not be that big a deal.<\/p>\n
The interesting thing is the FDA-certified ECG in the watch for detecting atrial fibrillation. Or hell, falls. There are seriously useful things about having medical-grade telemetry on your arm, and for $400, that ain\u2019t hay. The only thing is, I don\u2019t need those (yet), and the Fitbit Charge 3 will get me to 90% of the functions I need from an Apple Watch for half the money\u2026and five or six times the battery life. Which means sleep tracking, something Apple still can\u2019t do because \u201call-day battery life\u201d means you\u2019re still expected to plug the damn thing in every night.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the phone. The iPhone XS–<\/p>\n
Hold up.<\/p>\n
What idiot seriously proposed calling this the XS? And what asshole seriously thinks people will pronounce it \u201cTen S\u201d? You\u2019re supposed to interpret the first letter as a Roman numeral and the second as a letter? And \u201cXS Max\u201d? Are we having this phone in 1996? And the \u201cXR\u201d – why R? Because it\u2019s less than S? This is what we\u2019re going with?<\/p>\n
Never mind that the phone is basically the same. Slightly faster, 512 GB version if you want it, some gimmickry around the camera, but if you have an iPhone X, you\u2019re good. Thank god my employer was enough of a dullard to be conned into paying for it. Because I\u2019ll be damned if I lay out THAT much money for a phone – the most I ever spent on my own device was something over five hundred for a Sony Ericsson P800 in a shady Bowery cellphone shop in 2003, and laying down double that for something I can\u2019t expect to get more than three years from is asking one hell of a lot. Not when my cousin is still getting by just fine on a Moto G3 he paid maybe $250 for.<\/p>\n
And this is the risk Apple is taking. My wife needs to replace her 6S, but she\u2019s not about to buy anything in the X line. So\u2026what? Buy an 8 with last year\u2019s processor for $600 and hope for the best? Buy a pre-aged 7 for $550 for the 128GB model rather than cut your storage in half?<\/p>\n
All I know is, I\u2019m laying down $29 for the battery replacement on my SE, and you\u2019ll prise it out of my cold dead hand. Singular. And I\u2019m going to wait another year and see if Cupertino can collectively pull its head out of its anus before the next phone release. I\u2019m not hopeful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I stand by my assertion that Apple has gone from BMW to Volkswagen to Tesla. If nothing else, the fact they\u2019ve gone all in on the iPhone X price range – with no ship date for the cheapest model – should be as clear an indicator as you could ask for. The baseline \u201cnew\u201d iPhone … <\/p>\n