Do not adjust your set: Hats off to Apple, you struggle to shift iPhones 'cos you're oddly ethical

Drones

I was there when they promised to stop 1984 from happening.

Instead, of course, they are a major stakeholder in the THX Project.

I still have my flip phone c'ause it's a phone, CrApple can go screw itself, so can android.

I feel sorry for the last few generations bound to the grid, they'll fit in well when Chinese style Social Credit systems are unleashed upon them, unable to dodge the collar.

I may be a dinosaur but I can master it all so I'm still here, chugging away...

Ditch your phone the way we ditched our watches.

Maybe if you used half the time you spend on your phone on your wife, child or dog the world might avoid the coming storm.

End rant.

Ethical?

"You've behaved ethically, putting long-term consumer concerns first"

If they were ethical they'd make them easier to repair and whilst they may support their obsolete products better than most, they don't support them long enough to entice me, I would call it "Mid-term consumer concerns first" at best

"Apple sees nothing from second-hand trade"

...except a replacement purchase by the seller ?

"Apple represents a strong alternative to people creeped out by Google's disconcerting data slurping."

The implication being that Apple is better than Google in this regard. If true, it is an excellent reason for Android users to make the switch, and could be Apple's salvation.

Like Microsoft, who were workstation based and just never "groked" the network, Google is network based and cannot grok people's privacy concerns, and never will. And there is the key to Google's eventual downfall. If Apple or another FAANG can make privacy their main product, they will dominate into the future.

Ethical you say ?

So the company that has put the price of their product up by the same number as the phone edition in dollars, then sold it to us mugs in the UK in the same number but in pounds & tried to make old phones run slowly until they were taken to court, is ethical ??? WTF you must be smoking Androids :)

So my 3 was £300, the 4 was £400 the 5/6/7/8 were the same in pounds & the 9 was skipped & went straight to the X (10) at £1000 due to poor sales of the 8. Now its does not cost anymore to import from China to the UK or the rest of Europe than it does to the USA, so a $999 phone should have been about £765 +VAT, so circa £920. Highest taxes in the USA are around 10% so the $999 would have been worst case $1100 !

So I would not call a company that charges customers in one country more than another just because they can, ethical.

But given the choice of the Malware hell that is Android & its disparate lack of commonality, I'll stick with my iPhone.

YMMV

No sympathy

Apple still skims off a third of all revenues which go through the iStore. They're still making boatloads of money whether people upgrade their phones or not. I have no sympathy for them here.

Built in obsolescence?

My experience is that my Samsung S7 keeps chugging along in spite of many firmware updates, while my IPad got slower with each revision till I binned it as unusable. A simple "Don't take this update - you do not have enough memory" would restore my faith in Apple. Till then, I'm cynical.

After all these years

Does AndrewO still have to point out to you that when the word 'Ethical' appears in a sentence in relation to Apple, one of three situations has occurred

a) it's sarcasm foo

b) the word is being used comparatively

c) AndrewO needs an ambulance

Time to change the business model.

Currently, Apple (largely) relies on new hardware sales. Clearly, it would seem they are several years behind Microsoft - who themselves aren't known to be market leaders, and moving from product to service and subscriptions.

"Apple sees nothing from second-hand trade"

Apple will buy certain iPhone models as a trade-in, refurbish them, and sell them for a profit.

Are you sure?

Apple still deliberately throttles old iphones and has had an issue on many older models. I don’t know what makes you think they’re made to last.

Iphone x has screen burn and colour shift due to the way OLED screens work.

Iphone 8 has logic board issues.

Iphone 7/+ has audio ic issues and no service issues.

Iphone 6/+ has touch ic issues.

Iphone 6s battery randomly dies.

There’s quite a bit of material on all the iphone issues online and a few ongoing class action lawsuits. You should check it out. I’ve never heard anyone ever claim the things last a long time before. That’s really not their spiel.

2nd hand....

I think I disagree regarding 2nd hand phones - a quick google says that an S9 is around £500, roughly the same as an iPhone X with half the memory, if you go down a bit the previous generation S8 is around the same sort of price as an Apple 8....all in all I'm not sure your argument stands up. I abandoned Apple after my 2nd iphone 6 went kaput in 18 months due to battery issues and I became aware of the S8 and it's MicroSD slot, meaning I could buy a much cheaper phone, that looked good and then upgrade it's memory to whatever I wanted for next to nothing.

well the best phone i've ever had is my current one - an iPhone 5. I've had it for at least 2 years , battery lasts 48hrs. Given to me for free , i declare myself the winner of the $$$ / functionality ratio contest

Killed the golden goose

Apple got greedy and killed of the SE which was £300. Now the cheapest model is what, £750?

Good luck trying to sway the SE owners to that deal.

Well, we were an apple house through and through.

4 iphones, 4 ipads, IMAC desktop, AppleTV and an Air. multiple iterations over the past 7 years or so, not anymore, Apple has priced us out of their eco system.

Now we're down to just the 4 phones, the IMAC just got replaced by a touch screen laptop, no matter what folks think of Win10, for what my family uses them for (Youtube, Netflix, school work) they are more than functional and a fraction of the price.

As soon as the phones start to give up the ghost then we'll be off to android, just cannot justify the prices, they are beyond silly now.

It's not just the hardware either, no itunes and appstore sales, that is the real long term killer for Apple, no more regular monthly impluse sales, how did Apple let it come to this....

True!

Obsolescence

"The fact iPhones are well made and continue to chug along so well brings along an ancillary benefit: they retain their value much better than Androids. Which, again, makes them attractive to buyers in the second-hand market. Apple sees nothing from second-hand trade."

It is a total fallacy that this is costing Apple lots of money.

New iPhones are so expensive that only a niche market can actually afford them, even considering operator tarrifs which include a premium that pays for the handset over time. The fact that those lucky few have a market to sell on the older handsets is of benefit to Apple because it provides an upgrade path for its existing customers and also goes a long way in promoting its brand.

If Apple behaved ethically, it would not try to kick out third party repair shops.

#RightToRepair

"Apple sees nothing from second-hand trade."

Yes they do, that's some of the point of your article.

The fact that they can sell on for good retained value is a selling point that helps shift phones therefore contributing to Apple's business.

Apple Ethics? Really?

Along with John Deere, Apple Service Center scamming consumers over ultra expensive repairs to push upgrades, lack of transprarency about self-repair and increasing use of monolithic device design has brought on themselves the cry for Right To Repair Legislation in the USA.

CrApple

Are the best at planned obsolescence

Their target market appeas to be the moron masses who demand features such as lasers in text messages and snapchat style augmented reality, as opposed to more useful features like laser measurements or dare I say it, a thermal camera

CrApple have lost their way, if they even had it to start with.

Whenever I visit their CrAppStore, I just despair at all the junk mobile app developers pushing out shitcode loaded with adverts and trackers. The amount of abandonware on there is incredible, and programs you've paid money for will magically disappear with no refund from CrApple. They're a bloody awful company, and thieves to boot

Let's just say, "Smart" phones have not lived up to my expectations, and I am very disappointed

data is all that matters ..

There is only one thing that really matters - my data ! Is it secure, can I export it and transfer to another platform easily>

Any platform that does not keep my data secure and give me total control and ownership of it is basically obsolete and only for fools!

At the end of the day bevels on phones , or bells and whistles, or OS updates are just window dressing. And what is best one year can fall behind the next !.

What matters is how compatible is the ecosystem with other platforms. And how independent , compatible and tranferable is my data This is increasingly the MOST important and only issue to me !

You still need to activate the damn things over the internet each time they are factory reset.

This DRM measure gives Apple the perfect chance to effectively disable them all within the period of 1-2 years.

non-ethical scumbags!

You're kidding ... right?

Quote:

We should be applauding Apple for shooting itself in the foot, as it's done the Right Thing by consumers. Who else relies so heavily on an upgrade cycle, but then goes out of its way to avoid forced obsolescence?

My response:

The only reason Apple is doing anything different from their historic pattern of forcing obsolescence is that they got caught slowing old devices down so that people would have to upgrade their hardware. C'mon, you guys reported on this - why are you giving them angel's wings now that they are merely doing what they've been forced to do?