Apple Slashes iPhone 5 Part Orders Due to Weak Demand

Cubytus · Jan 21, 2013

irDigital0l said:
-updated UI
-notification center
-multitasking
-facetime group chat
-shared video streams
-decent notes app
-better siri
-better maps

I think you miss something important here. iOS wants to remain unobtrusive, and a notification "center" is surely one clumsy way of grouping everything. Notifications shouldn't stick anywhere; you glance at them quickly, then they automatically disappear. If you need to look at them for a few seconds each wondering if it requires immediate intervention or not, the issue is not iOS, it's the originating app's.
multitasking: isn't it already perfectly working? My Nokia does "true" multitasking, and it drains juice in no time. Probably not what you want to have.
facetime group chat: why not... If you were lucky enough to find even one person willing to Facetime with you. Personally this was only for testing purpose, but with no practical application, since most people still don't have an iPhone ($800 hurts, even when you have money). But I get your point here. I would like to see an iChat-like application on iOS with multi-user chat and messages.
shared video streams:What are you referring to, specifically? One can send a link to a video stream, if that's what you're referring to..

What application are you comparing the iOS notes to?

+1 for Siri. I never used it, but read it had trouble with accents and non-English languages.

Maps is currently the butt of many jokes. Even if my place is accurately represented, many places aren't. I just love the navigation, much more flexible than previous Google versions.

xtacee1990 said:
There's no point catering to their needs and messing up the existing LOYAL customers.

I wish you were right, but it wouldn't be the first time that Apple messes up with loyal customers.

In recent history, there was the FireWire port removal on unibody MacBooks, the removal of the ExpressCard 34 slot on 15" MacBook Pros, the termination of the 17" MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro, and, absence of high-power compact laptop to replace the 12" G4, and in some regards, the design change leading to unibody, as well as the termination of the optical drive in larger Macs.

Mac OS X Lion and up also dumbed down the OS compared to Snow Leopard in many regards, including the loss of back-compatibility without any satisfactory replacement (Lost Front Row, Rosetta, added Launchpad, etc.). So we have reasons to be wary of Apple's "evolutive" moves.

xdhd350 · Jan 21, 2013

Cubytus said:
facetime group chat: why not... If you were lucky enough to find even one person willing to Facetime with you. Personally this was only for testing purpose, but with no practical application, since most people still don't have an iPhone ($800 hurts, even when you have money)..

I have Facetime conversations with lots of folks. Mostly to show something to the other party in my environment. Think remote diagnostics. Doesn't require an iPhone, can be later gen iPod touch, iPad2 or any late Apple computer. Because it's limited to those devices and uses Apple's servers, the quality tends to be very good. And if you don't want to see each other, you can press the home button and cut the video feed and still enjoy much superior audio to that of regular cellular connections.

-g

KnightWRX · Jan 21, 2013

Cubytus said:
I wish you were right, but it wouldn't be the first time that Apple messes up with loyal customers.

Quite the opposite really. Sometimes your "loyal customers" are the ones keeping you down, preventing you from moving forward and on to bigger things. Same for customers too. Why be loyal to a vendor when others can come in and have better offerings at any time ?

Loyalty in the consumer market only leads to grief. In the end, you owe them nothing after you paid for your product/serivce and they owe you nothing after giving it to you over the counter/rendering said service. Any return service should be based on future offerings, not past "loyalty".

chrissyhume · Jan 21, 2013

my thoughts

The thing is, I got the 3G, and then a year or so later I got the 4, and a year or so later I don't really have the money (or the free upgrade with ATT) to move to a 5... When you think about it, given the economy, it almost feels wasteful to switch out my phone that much... I mean, I gave my old phone to my daughter, and she uses it as an ipod, and that was how I justified transitioning from 3 to 4... Also, The 5 sounds great and fun, but I really am still loving my 4... At least, that is how I feel about it.

Nale72 · Jan 22, 2013

xtacee1990 said:
Do you realize you're listing features on an Android phone?

Yes, I even wrote that this was features that Android phones have, that I wish my iPhone also had. I'm coming from several Android phones, one reason that i would like to check out what's true and what are myths about iPhones. I like the size better than the S3 or other Android flagships, which was another reason I switched. I want a high-end phone in a smaller format.

I really like my iPhone 5, but that doesn't mean I can't wish for some functions that are missing and that I personally would like to have?

xtacee1990 said:

Go buy one.

Innovative and constructive comment

Click to expand...

Cubytus · Jan 22, 2013

xdhd350 said:
I have Facetime conversations with lots of folks. Mostly to show something to the other party in my environment. Think remote diagnostics. Doesn't require an iPhone, can be later gen iPod touch, iPad2 or any late Apple computer. Because it's limited to those devices and uses Apple's servers, the quality tends to be very good. And if you don't want to see each other, you can press the home button and cut the video feed and still enjoy much superior audio to that of regular cellular connections.

-g

I am not denying the many possible applications FaceTime has. But precisely because is is used only on Apple devices, it remains a niche application, almost as much as Skype on webcam. iChat does it as well. Well, who actually uses iChat's full capabilities? I am not really old, but I see lots of people around me relying only on SMS and phone calls to keep in touch. Many of them don't even have internet access on their devices.

KnightWRX said:
Quite the opposite really. Sometimes your "loyal customers" are the ones keeping you down, preventing you from moving forward and on to bigger things. Same for customers too. Why be loyal to a vendor when others can come in and have better offerings at any time ?

Loyalty in the consumer market only leads to grief. In the end, you owe them nothing after you paid for your product/serivce and they owe you nothing after giving it to you over the counter/rendering said service. Any return service should be based on future offerings, not past "loyalty".

Makes sense but you'll have to be more specific here. First, "moving forward and to bigger things" is ambiguous. If you are talking about lessening the capabilities of a device, hardware-ly speaking, customers will also move elsewhere, but will be pissed off as it would imply more than one expense. Same for pros who complained a lot about FCP X. I never used it, but I can easily understand why having invested tens of thousands of dollars, or more, feels like a scam when the new versions cuts plenty of ties with the older one, breaking workflows, etc.

Customers tend to stick with what gave them a pleasant experience. Such is mine, overall, with Apple, as well as many users here, despite a few hiccups and missteps. I tried to switch to Android for a phone, because I consider that $800 for an iPhone 5 is grand theft (same for $700 iPhone 4S, etc.). Simply put, no personal experience, advice from Android long-time users, or reviews, or forums led me to think that it would be a 1:1 replacement for iOS. Whenever it was described to me, this seemed awkward and heavy, with incompatibilities, applications that don't comunicate with each other, etc. In short, as I understood it, there's no replacement yet for iOS if you're using a Mac. I am desperately waiting for someone to prove me wrong. Get your facts straight: if a customer was loyal in the past, why in hell would he move when his concerns are acknowledged and, as much as possible, adressed?

Second, you may not be right saying that company don't owe you anything after product is bought. This led to Microsoft's mentality of not giving a **** about customer's issues with their products, blaming the builder, who blamed Microsoft. When a customer have bought from you for years, as a company you can't just say "you've paid, thanks, now **** off." I wouldn't have been able to negociate with my cell phone company if I wasn't a loyal customer, but ready to move out for a best offer.

KnightWRX · Jan 22, 2013

Cubytus said:
I am not denying the many possible applications FaceTime has. But precisely because is is used only on Apple devices, it remains a niche application, almost as much as Skype on webcam. iChat does it as well. Well, who actually uses iChat's full capabilities? I am not really old, but I see lots of people around me relying only on SMS and phone calls to keep in touch. Many of them don't even have internet access on their devices.

Let's say you have 10 developers working on FCPX. This brings in X$ revenue/profits. You can hire 10 more developers to work on a new project to bring in Y$ revenue/profits, or use those same 10 on the more profitable endeavour.

That's one way.

Then there's the whole conservatism. You've had X users for a few years. They've become attached to a few features in your application that while nice to haves are not really that great to begin with. The issue is, those features prevent you from implementing newer ones, as you'd need to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. This would bring in X*10 users at the cost of those X users. Are you really going to keep around the old features ? No of course not.

That's why I say loyalty only brings grief to both sides. It prevents vendors from moving on to bigger and better markets where they can continue to evolve and it results in users being frustrated when the vendor does. If no one is loyal, then the vendor does what is best for itself and the user is always ready to move on to the next guy anyway, because he's not having any loyalty.

Cubytus said:
Customers tend to stick with what gave them a pleasant experience..

Exactly the problem for vendors and exactly the source of frustration for users. The computing market is young and in constant flux. Conservatism is not yet going to be possible or plausible for any of the involved parties.

Cubytus · Jan 26, 2013

You still seem not to consider the heavy investments user made in a given workflow. What these users would lose, financially speaking, by not being able to pursue their money-making business just because their vendor decided to ditch a heavily relied-upon product, and sold at a large premium?

Plus, these software are extremly complex and cannot have any drop-in replacement. I think this is the core of the problem. They may be ready to move, but no other suite will be as simple a swap, hence their high price tag, also implying decent long-time support.

Either the vendor doesn't listen to loyal users, and keeps on by moving forward faster and faster in search for new markets, and user loses; or they cater to their smallest desire, keeping them faithful, but potentially losing to other growing companies. As far as I can see right now, Apple is agressively adopting the former view, but it is not clear yet what firm will sell something competitive to those users as Apple moves out. And as such, I believe they are right to complain. It's not like if Apple sold its FCP pre-X branch to another Mac-software producing company, or gave it away for free as a discontinued product, or opened the source code for others to maintain and enhance it.

And then, there are, of course, decisions to ditch hardware even before its use becomes marginal. From the top of my head, I can think optical drive. Even as end-users are starting to replace them with hard drives for storage, Libraries still lend hundreds of them, as well as DVDs, also for hundreds of movies that will never make it to the iTunes store because they're not profitable enough. Granted, since drivers still exist in the OS, it is cumbersome but possible to replace these drives with third-party externally-attached ones at a reasonable cost.

You can't just ask users not to take anything for granted and be ready to move when interoperability is still a pious wish.

chagla · Jan 27, 2013

Cubytus said:
Customers tend to stick with what gave them a pleasant experience. Such is mine, overall, with Apple, as well as many users here, despite a few hiccups and missteps. I tried to switch to Android for a phone, because I consider that $800 for an iPhone 5 is grand theft (same for $700 iPhone 4S, etc.). Simply put, no personal experience, advice from Android long-time users, or reviews, or forums led me to think that it would be a 1:1 replacement for iOS. Whenever it was described to me, this seemed awkward and heavy, with incompatibilities, applications that don't comunicate with each other, etc. In short, as I understood it, there's no replacement yet for iOS if you're using a Mac. I am desperately waiting for someone to prove me wrong. Get your facts straight: if a customer was loyal in the past, why in hell would he move when his concerns are acknowledged and, as much as possible, adressed?
.

1:1 replacement? can you tell me exactly what ios does that android can't do? i'm really curious. also you may not be talking to right people i think. you should really try it yourself if you're remotely interested in android.

put it simply - android is very modular where YOU have full control over your device and software. you don't like something? change it! no hackery involved.

Cubytus · Jan 27, 2013

chagla said:
1:1 replacement? can you tell me exactly what ios does that android can't do? i'm really curious. also you may not be talking to right people i think. you should really try it yourself if you're remotely interested in android.

I am NOT going to invest $100s in an Android device if I can't know if it fits my needs.

Simply speaking, NOBODY using or supposedly expert with Android devices, as well as ordinary users, were ever able to provide an affirmative answer to all these requirements:

Podcast syncing without additional cumbersome software on the computer side
Music syncing (same condition)
IMAPS email with cross-account ability to move messages using a trustable application.
eduroam compatibility
Calendar two-way syncing
Address Book two-way syncing
Notes syncing, 2-way.
iPhoto syncing.
easy tethering with Mac.
Mac-based management of Android.

And all sync doable offline whe online sync fails (e.g., anywhere outside home, where wifi access proves difficult). Despite my best efforts, NO ONE ever provided an satisfactory answer.

put it simply - android is very modular where YOU have full control over your device and software. you don't like something? change it! no hackery involved.

Until proven wrong, the end-user doesn't control anything. When spyware and viruses can get into otherwise useful applications, or when there's absolutely no control over which application finds its way on the Store, how can one be refunded if it doesn't work as advertised, there are reasons to feel at the very least, concerned. Developers do have control, not end-users.

Oletros · Jan 27, 2013

Cubytus said:
I am NOT going to invest $100s in an Android device if I can't know if it fits my needs.

So, you want iOS, nothing more.

Cubytus said:
When spyware and viruses can get into otherwise useful applications

A quick remark, Android does not have virus.

Cubytus · Jan 28, 2013

Oletros said:
So, you want iOS, nothing more.

Not necesarrily. But between a sure bet and an unknown one, with imperative requirements and no alternative solutions in sight, nor any advice, iOS is a default choice, not a true "want".

A quick remark, Android does not have virus.

Google is one. Trolling aside, spyware and viruses may have some.

Oletros · Jan 28, 2013

Cubytus said:
Not necesarrily.

Yes, necessarily, you must only can be satisfied by iOS. And it is not said as a bad thing, anyone has their imperatives

Cubytus said:
Google is one. Trolling aside, spyware and viruses may have some.

No, there are no virus

Cubytus · Jan 28, 2013

Bubba Satori · Jun 12, 2013

StoneJack said:
I believe that by June appl will be around 600 dollars.

What year?
Timing is everything.

StoneJack · Jun 12, 2013

Bubba Satori said:
What year?
Timing is everything.

I guess I am wrong!

nia820 · Jun 12, 2013

This means iphone 5 screens are more solid than the 4's

Wicked1 · Jun 12, 2013

AHDuke99 said:
I need to dump the stock. I don't see it rebounding to $700/share.

got out at $600.00 bought at $280 whew now I get to hand over my profits to Uncle Sam, so thanks Sam for taking my $

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Apple Slashes iPhone 5 Part Orders Due to Weak Demand

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