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Hilarious. The 5C is still going to be a fantastic phone. What do you mean by catering to the bottom of the barrel? People or product?

They are pushing into a larger market with a economically made high-end iPhone. Sounds very smart to me.

People or product? BOTH. They no longer worry about launching the BEST in each segment they participate, and THEN being successful at that - they are running after market share with a device that is already crippled before even being launched.

And yes, this trend had ALREADY started with the non-retina iPad mini, even though yields were more than sufficient and market demand was clearly in that direction. The end result? A considerable fall in normal iPad sales in favor of the lower-margin mini (as opposed to a higher-priced mini with retina) while at the same time leaving the high-end to the Samsungs of the world.

And all of those devices involved compromising on features in order to meet a lower price point. This isn't new.

WRONG. Each and every one of those devices constituted the best in its respective segment. Even the puny Shuffle suffers no competition from the rest. The premise was NEVER to compromise on features; it was to build the best possible device within a given segment, which is surely not the iPhone 5C's premise now.

Again, what make you thing that the lower cost iPhone won't be the best in their respective segments?

As much as I hate Android and everything that it represents, it is a FACT that not even the current iPhone 5 is the best in its class feature-wise, period. To launch an iPhone 5C with the aim of catering to "emerging markets" is a magnified nonsense that not only misunderstands the wealth and sheer size of those markets (particularly China and Brazil), but also ignores the fact that, price-wise, the 5C will only be slightly cheaper than its bigger/better brother.

The two countries mentioned above have HUGE domestic markets and MILLIONS of people richer than any average US or European citizen. At the same time, the relatively high tariffs of countries like Brazil completely defeat the purpose of a "cheaper" phone which will, in the end, cost almost as much as the already successful iPhone 5.

Apple has no reason to do it, but Cook continues to follow anal-ysts instead of leading the market.

Yeah. It was the top of the line iPod that was plastic. :rolleyes:

And the original iPod shuffle.

You know I am NOT talking about plastic per se - I am just saying that Apple is launching a manifestly cheaper and crippled phone that won't hold water to other average Android phones out there.

I think a lot of the features of the iPhone 5C with plastic are convenient for Apple. As many others mentioned, the 30-pin connector could be retired. It would be easier for Apple's suppliers to have this phone assembled in places other than China, say Brazil. That might help Apple sell more phones in places where there would otherwise be extremely high tariffs. I think it would also be easier for Apple to swap out a chipset if that would help get the phone on say China Mobile. (I still contend the last thing China wants is a de facto Qualcomm monopoly on LTE baseband chipsets.)

Brazil ALREADY produces iPhones; the iPhone 5C will change little in that regard.
 
Prediction

I predict that the main differences between 5S and 5C will be:
- the material
- the amount of storage
- the finger print reader
- camera quality
- battery life
- CPU speed
(and of course price)
Nothing else is needed to differentiate them.
 
WRONG. Each and every one of those devices constituted the best in its respective segment. Even the puny Shuffle suffers no competition from the rest. The premise was NEVER to compromise on features; it was to build the best possible device within a given segment, which is surely not the iPhone 5C's premise now.

:D The premise was to build the best possible device at a certain price point no matter how much you want to talk around it. The same premise will undoubtedly be the basis of a lower cost iPhone.

As much as I hate Android and everything that it represents, it is a FACT that not even the current iPhone 5 is the best in its class feature-wise, period.

And we get to the heart of the argument. You simply disagree with Apple's choices.

To launch an iPhone 5C with the aim of catering to "emerging markets" is a magnified nonsense that not only misunderstands the wealth and sheer size of those markets (particularly China and Brazil), but also ignores the fact that, price-wise, the 5C will only be slightly cheaper than its bigger/better brother.

So... what price point have you made up to support this argument?

The two countries mentioned above have HUGE domestic markets and MILLIONS of people richer than any average US or European citizen. At the same time, the relatively high tariffs of countries like Brazil completely defeat the purpose of a "cheaper" phone which will, in the end, cost almost as much as the already successful iPhone 5.

Apple has no reason to do it, but Cook continues to follow anal-ysts instead of leading the market.

And now we are back to pretending that a significant price umbrella doesn't exist. And that Apple didn't already deal with a similar price umbrella with the iPod by releasing models with fewer features at lower price points.

You know I am NOT talking about plastic per se - I am just saying that Apple is launching a manifestly cheaper and crippled phone that won't hold water to other average Android phones out there.

I know what you are trying to say. I just disagree with your arbitrary classification of a lower cost iPhone as "crippled" as opposed to an iPod mini being best in class.
 
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Except that someone must've mistreated the crap out of this iPhone to look anything like that.

It was very common, I had 3G and 3GS models that had hairline cracks, as did a few friends. Apple settled a class action suit regarding the matter. If you recall, Apple recalled a great deal of them due to "bad batches".
 
Based on what?

Based on just any random whim of the novice investors.

As a substantial Apple shareholder of 22 years I've seen it all.

Based on my unemotional investment strategy, and having got in at $20 per share, then cashing 90% of my investment when it peaked at $700, it doesn't take a mathematician to know that I made a Kings ransom via my long term position.

Turn & burn is a fools game.
 
I don't use the text dictation for a couple reasons: it makes more mistakes than it's worth, and it often just hangs since it always has to go to the Apple servers. Only thing I use Siri for regularly is setting alarms, and I can live without that

You're wrong on both counts. I use both Siri and dictation for a large part of the day, every day.

Siri, while not perfect, is extremely useful to me for numerous things. Finding restaurants, checking movies, directions, timers, telling me when and where my meetings are, setting up calendar appointments, and many more things that I won't enumerate, since I've made the point.

Dictation works nearly flawlessly for me. I get very few errors, unless I mispronounce and mumble words. I can type a two paragraph email response in less than 20-30 seconds. Something I could never do by keying it in. Perhaps you should work on your diction.

People who blast Siri as useless are obviously annoyingly ignorant. Those of us who do use it know that, so you can stop the trolling.
 
Based on just any random whim of the novice investors.

As a substantial Apple shareholder of 22 years I've seen it all.

Based on my unemotional investment strategy, and having got in at $20 per share, then cashing 90% of my investment when it peaked at $700, it doesn't take a mathematician to know that I made a Kings ransom via my long term position.

Turn & burn is a fools game.

Investors buying up the stock after comments by an influential, historically successful investor is based less on emotion, in my opinion, than mass selling of the stock based on ridiculous "Apple is Doomed" comments.
 
Here are my predictions, attempting to create an oranges to oranges comparison in pricing, but also because those of us outside the US don't give a rat's arse about the contract/subsidised pricing model unique to that market.

iPhone 4/4S will be discontinued.

iPhone 5C 16/32/64GB - $350 for base model featuring A5 chip, runs full iOS including Siri, data only SIM utilising 'C'loud services (i.e. FaceTime, iMessage, Skype and others), think of this phone as something between an iPod Touch and an iPhone

iPhone 5 16GB only - $550 (because this is still a great phone and they need to protect the price of the top of the line iPhone)

iPhone 5S 32/64/128GB - $650 for base 32GB model (more storage at same price points provides sense of increased value and reason to pay more for this phone over iPhone 5, includes latest tech inside, better camera, a fingerprint sensor)

What they will not do is put some less than the greatest technology in a plastic shell and sell it alongside their premium model at a greatly reduced price, because as many people in this thread alone have stated today, they'd quite happily forgo features like Siri or some stupid fingerprint sensor to save quite a lot of money, which is how the average consumer would think as well and that would mean every single 5C sale is a lost 5S sale, and that would eventually reduce the perceived value in price of the iPhone such that the expensive model would simply die. The 5C, if it exists, has to be radically different such that the premium price of the 5S is more than a few features and functions that only a techie crowd finds interesting.

Apple will never ever threaten the profit stream that the premium iPhone provides - they won't give consumers a choice in iPhones, unless it's obvious any choice other than the current (and expensive) model is last year's model - a newly introduced model (i.e. the 5C) would be a whole new iPhone (new in the minds of consumers) and if it's just an iPhone in different clothing that would mean Apple is suddenly competing against itself, and if you offer the same thing with a cheaper price tag, only the pretentious and people with more money than sense would be stupid enough to buy the expensive model.
 
If the 5c has the same res as the 5, I am sold. Nothing else matters to me. Lower specs make it better for development (optimisation), just have the same res for testing purposes is all I want.
 
The 5S fingerprint scanner will HAVE to do more than unlock the phone... Thats MAJOR money invested in something most people probably dont use. I dont need a password nor does anyone I know.

For the 5S to be faster and thats it isnt going to go over too well. Ill surely go for a cheaper IP5 than 5S, as will many people. The 5 is VERY fast compared to my 4S...

You must not know a lot of people. To counter your example, everyone I know has a password on their iPhone.
 
iPhone 5S 32/64/128GB - $650 for base 32GB model (more storage at same price points provides sense of increased value and reason to pay more for this phone over iPhone 5, includes latest tech inside, better camera, a fingerprint sensor)
I hope the 5S will come with 32GB for the base model. I've been waiting for that since the 4 came out
 
There's always one! Go buy an Android if you want a bigger screen because if Apple does do a bigger screen you have at least another year to wait for it and I don't know if I can stand reading comments about a bigger screen (especially on threads that have nothing to do with screen size) for that long.

Yea and theres always the blind Apple fanboy, read the post next time it has everything to do with the new iPhone release. I care about Apple as much as the next person here. They have had long enough to develop the new iPhone now so should have realised long ago people want a larger screen, and why should I buy Android just for this? Have you ever held an S3 next to your iPhone? maybe your so blindly happy it doesn't matter, well to some that want larger screen it's obvious.

It seems like Apple are just doing the minimal amount of upgrade for maximum profit, but lets wait and see, I think if the screen doesn't increase it won't matter a jot wether it's missing Siri or not, for a lot of Apple buyers it won't matter as they won't buy it, I certainly won't.
 
I also read this from the other mac rumour site last night. I agree with their thoughts on this, which is that Siri is software based. The 5C is going to be at least 4s innards, probably 5, so absolutely no reason why it couldn't run Siri. Apple owns Siri and it cost them nothing to have it in the phone, no cost savings in not having it, so why take it out?

If they do, its a stupid move by Apple. If you look at google now, it comes in all Android phones, so they'd be putting themselves at a massive disadvantage.
 
It would introduce a whole new resolution, a 4inch non retina display.
A whole new level of clusterf*** would have been introduced to the ecosystem for NO reason, there are no concerns with battery life or performance issues with retina on the iPhone side, like there are with the iPad so the comparison is pointless.

Well, I hope you are right on this. I still believe that a non-retina display with the same aspect ratio as the iPhone 5 wouldn't be a problem to programmers at all, as the display specifics would be handled by iOS internally.
 
Here's a random thought: what if Apple starts selling two "flavors" of iOS? You can get iOS - Core on your 5C plastic phone, but if you want to add
  • Siri
  • Panoramic, Filters, Square photos (instead of just rectangles)
  • iCloud sync and find
  • Passbook
  • FaceTime
  • iTunes match
  • insert new unannounced feature here
...those are all "in OS purchases" that you can upgrade to?

The 5S (and legacy upgraded phones) come with all of them unlocked. The price points would be something like:

Think of the outcry if they did that!

----------

There's a universe of we folks who care little-to-even-less about iPhone and iPad. Enough Already. Let's hear some $costs and options and projected dates for the new Mac Pro so we can make a decision whether to continue our 25-year realtionship with Apple products. This is "mac" rumors and i-This and i-That don't have "mac" anywhere in the name. Macs are minis, macbooks and mac pros.

Then why click onto the iphone story?
 
They could remove features from the software and say something like "Although we don't charge for upgrading iOS, you pay a one time fee when you buy the phone basically. Therefore, since it's cheaper, you will lose features because you paid less up front."
 
Which is exactly why I suggested that if Apple leaves out Siri, there must be some sort of significant incremental cost involved (Nuance licensing.) :)



How would that be the wrong move? Considering you would go with a higher priced model? :)

No,i would go to find a buy an used 5 one.
 
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