'Apple charm' going away?

[floral]

Hi, I haven't posted here in a hot minute, apologies. I was bored of obsessing over the latest Apple headline and did more interesting things. But, lately I feel like Apple has been losing their 'flair' or 'charm' in relation to the simplicity of iphones offered.

For example, back in the day there was only iPhone, iPhone S, and maybe iPhone Plus, that was it. I think there was one where they offered S and Plus combined but don't ask me to recall which one. 5C existed but the C stands for Color so it's fine. Point being, S means better performance and Plus means better size/battery. Easy as that.

This brought an advantage over its competitors because Android phones were largely indistinguishable from each other - usually you were lucky to even get a memorable model number (something like S3842M) if ordering from a manufacturer that wasn't Samsung or HTC. Meaning if someone went up to you going 'oh cool! what phone is that?' you couldn't give them a straight answer. Less word of mouth = less marketing = less sales.

But now, I feel like the iPhone lineups have gotten pretty confusing. There are a bunch of 'versions' that Apple has brought into the fray that are meant to offer alternative takes on the base model, but sometimes it isn't clear what's actually different about the version, or if it's worth having an entirely separate phone. Here's a mouthful:

'Pro' is apparently the new 'S' except you also get a better camera system (but some S models had better cameras anyways, why make a whole new name?), same thing goes for 'Max' (which is exclusively if you buy a Pro phone that has the Plus size), 'mini' means a smaller phone even though SE already covered that market which is probably why it died out 2 models in (but SE did too??), 'Air' is rumored to be a lighter iPhone 17 (but I have no idea what they're doing to make it so light.. also weren't the smaller phones lighter by default?), plus that one '16e' thing they did (which is a cheaper model of the 16), but then there's XR which apparently means better value. SO that's the same idea as 16e. But what does the R stand for?? Retail?? What about E?? And why did they never use it again??

I don't know. I just feel like they're trying too hard to assemble a giant platter of special models for every phone release. Why can't they keep it simple? Don't their phones usually cater to a large majority anyways?

 

[eyoungren]

What Apple is doing is working for them. Whether you agree with it or not, they continue to do it because it makes them money. It makes sense to them.

It's not about us and how we wish things were the way they used to be.

PS. I disagree with your characterization of the numbered/S model releases. Apple never stated 'S' was for better performance and 'Plus' was for better battery. If you can find an official Apple statement on that, I will retract my words. Until then, it's only an assumption.

 

[fatTribble]

Apple has a very nice compare tool on their iPhone page:

iPhone - Compare Models

Compare features and technical specifications for iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone SE, and many more.

www.apple.com

I’ve never found their line-up confusing.

I can’t tell from your post if you don’t like the models they offer or you’re confused by the differences.

 

[eyoungren]

I’ve never found their line-up confusing.

Neither have I. However, I have never actually tried to figure it out. I don't need to.

I'm not an indecisive person. I tend to just know what I want/like. In the case of the iPhone that tends to be whatever model is the largest (size wise) that they offer at any given time. That used to be the Plus, now it's the Pro Max. What it will be in the future, IDK. Apple is still not offering a size of the iPhone I prefer so until then it's this.

Which means I don't pay any attention to other offerings. I don't need to because I already know what I want and anything else is just distraction. I'd be intensely irritated if someone tried to push something on me I didn't want.

Business (any business) makes a product offering to customers that will sell. There is no profit in producing something that will not sell and you take a loss until you stop selling it. So obviously, Apple which is a business, is selling everything it produces. Or they wouldn't be selling it. As a customer I don't need to understand or make any sense of that because it's irrelevant to my life. I'm not the one in charge of Apple's product line.

Some people just get so wrapped up in Apple for some reason. It's a business, which makes a product - nothing more than that.

 

[maflynn]

Apple charm?
They're a trillion dollar company, I've long stopped considering them to have a certain charm. don't get me wrong, I love their phones and computers, but they've long stopped being the scrappy underdog willing to do anything to get ahead.

They have plenty of skeletons in the closet, just like any other large corporation.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

This gets posted every 2-3 months, I think AAPL is ok.

 

[cateye]

“charm” is a marketing construct. Apple is a corporation, like any other. Their job is to do whatever it takes to sell more product to more people. Buy what you want or need and don’t let them live in your head rent free for any other reason.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The whimsy and fun are gone (IMO)

As they've grown, they have largely turned into just another mega tech company.

 

[TechRunner]

Being comfortable with both MacOS and Windows 11 and iOS and Android means I don't have to be concerned about a company's charm. I get to choose the devices I'd like with an eye towards how they fit my needs, with few other considerations.

Having said that, I've noticed a shift in the general attitude towards Apple in the twenty years I've used their products. As others here have said, they've gradually become just another bottom line-focused tech monolith.

 

[klasma]

I don't know. I just feel like they're trying too hard to assemble a giant platter of special models for every phone release. Why can't they keep it simple? Don't their phones usually cater to a large majority anyways?

Confusing customers with a complicated product lineup is a time-honored strategy to upsell them to more expensive devices.

 

[eyoungren]

The whimsy and fun are gone (IMO)

As they've grown, they have largely turned into just another mega tech company.

I must have missed that.

From 1980 to 1990 there was a TRS-80 CoCo and a Commodore 64 and 128 in the house. A VIC-20 too. From 1990 to 2003 there was a 286 XT, a 486 a 586 and a Pentium. In 2001, the first Mac arrived, a Christmas gift of a TiBook 400mhz.

In 2003 I converted to Mac at home. I used Macs at work and previously in design school, but again I must have missed the whole 'whimsy and fun' thing. I do not recall LC Macs and iMac G3s fondly.

I do not recall OS9 fondly - ever. As the OS on a production machine for daily and weekly newspaper/ad design it was difficult to work with. There were other qualities that drew me to Mac, namely OS X. There were certain personalities that PowerPC Macs had, largely coming from early versions of OS X. But that wan't whimsy and fun and it didn't pass on to the Intel Macs.

I did get opportunities to engage with Macs of the 1980s though. The Classic Macs with the small dinky screens. A friend had a B&W one. Those engagements always reminded me that I had a Commodore 64 with a 15" monitor and the ability to hook up to color TVs.

I did and still do like OS 7, but that's from a graphical perspective - not functionality.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I must have missed that.

That's ok - We're allowed to have different feelings from different eras of the company.

Cheers
✌️

 

[boswald]

I still get excited for Apple products and WWDC, and I'm broke as a joke. The charm is definitely still there. I think people are just cynical and jaded (for a lot of reasons, really). You only live once; enjoy it.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The charm is definitely still there. I think people are just cynical and jaded (for a lot of reasons, really). You only live once; enjoy it.

You can disagree without name calling others.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

You can disagree without name calling others.

He literally didn’t name call anyone, he just said his belief.
A belief I actually agree with, although I don’t think it’s new.
People have been cynical and jaded on this forum since it opened 25 years ago.
Apple has been perpetually doomed and money hungry since the day Jobs announced an MP3 player when people wanted a new Newton PDA. That thread still exists, you can find it quite easily.

 

[Clix Pix]

I think part of the problem now is that there aren't as many surprises as there had been in the past. Those get spoiled by "leaks" in advance of whatever big announcement or event Apple is about to present. Case in point: we already know about the upcoming change in the naming convention for iOS, and now there's been a recent leak about the (likely) new name for the next iteration of MacOS. For me part of the fun each year while watching the keynote opening of WWDC has been finding out what the new name for MacOS would be, and whether or not I'd guessed the correct one out of the various possibilities.

By the time the actual keynote rolls around there will be few, if any surprises left, and that does take some of the fun out of things. And then people complain that the announcement(s) were boring, just a big yawn, there's nothing new, nothing exciting, whatever...... Sad, isn't it?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I think part of the problem now is that there aren't as many surprises as there had been in the past. ...... For me part of the fun each year while watching the keynote opening of WWDC has been finding out what the new name for MacOS would be, and whether or not I'd guessed the correct one out of the various possibilities.

By the time the actual keynote rolls around there will be few, if any surprises left, and that does take some of the fun out of things.

Some of these - what you term 'surprises' - were utterly transformational, and not just in tech terms, but in how they changed the way we lived and thought about certain things.

Actually, I would go so far as to argue that the introduction of the iPod, the iPhone, and the (original) MBA - I will never forget my awestruck amazement when the late Mr Jobs removed the original MBA from an A4 envelope - were utterly transformational.

For they introduced entirely new concepts - and not just products, - products that we hadn't even known we wanted (let alone needed), until we first laid awestruck eyes on them, products that would go on to change utterly how we interacted with, and related to the world.

And then people complain that the announcement(s) were boring, just a big yawn, there's nothing new, nothing exciting, whatever...... Sad, isn't it?

Yes, it is sad.

Time was when tech announcements were actually exciting.

 

[Clix Pix]

Some of these - what you term 'surprises' - were utterly transformational, and not just in tech terms, but in how they changed the way we lived and thought about certain things.

Actually, I would go so far as to argue that the introduction of the iPod, the iPhone, and the (original) MBA - I will never forget my awestruck amazement when the late Mr Jobs removed the original MBA from an A4 envelope - were utterly transformational.

For they introduced entirely new concepts - and not just products, - products that we hadn't even known we wanted (let alone needed), until we first laid awestruck eyes on them, products that would go on to change utterly how we interacted with, and related to the world.



Yes, it is sad.

Time was when tech announcements were actually exciting.

Exactly! Of course, too, many of those announcements were exciting because it was a time when there was a lot of change going on in the tech world and also because Steve Jobs was especially charismatic and had the ability to get his prospective audience and customers excited about whatever was being announced.

Like you, Scepticalscribe, I still remember watching Steve remove that very first MBA from the envelope and my mouth fell open in astonishment. As soon as they were available for display and sale at my local Apple retail store I was over there standing at a display table and picking one up, holding it and marveling at it. I wanted one and indeed I bought one. I loved that little machine!

There was good reason why people referred to Steve's "Reality Distortion Field" and eagerly watched each keynote and event hoping for him to say as things were supposedly wrapping up, "and one more thing......"

 

[eyoungren]

IDK. Perhaps it's just me. I came over to Apple because their Macs and OS just worked - unlike the PC/Windows I was having issues with at the time. Later on, I liked the design of the iPhone 5 and iOS, and so converted to iPhone. And those are the reasons I stay.

I didn't come over because of excitement about some new feature or innovative product. For now, I can make my Apple stuff work the way I want it to and that's all I really care about - not some bold new thing that is going to force me to change in a manner that Apple wants.

I decide how I work and what I will use and how I will use it and if and when I will change that. Not Apple. Not any other manufacturer. Me.

So…excitement, charm? Irrelevant to me.

 

[211]

If you mean losing charm as in everything just worked, it was easy, simple and intuitive to use their products and services whether you're 8 or 80, attention to detail was key, then yes. If you mean the number of products they have, I wouldn't consider that to be losing its charm

 

[Scepticalscribe]

IDK. Perhaps it's just me. I came over to Apple because their Macs and OS just worked - unlike the PC/Windows I was having issues with at the time. Later on, I liked the design of the iPhone 5 and iOS, and so converted to iPhone. And those are the reasons I stay.

I didn't come over because of excitement about some new feature or innovative product. For now, I can make my Apple stuff work the way I want it to and that's all I really care about - not some bold new thing that is going to force me to change in a manner that Apple wants.

I decide how I work and what I will use and how I will use it and if and when I will change that. Not Apple. Not any other manufacturer. Me.

So…excitement, charm? Irrelevant to me.

I came to Apple because of the iPod, via (or, on account of) what has been described as the so-called "halo" effect.

My iPod - which I had purchased two days prior to my departure on a deployment, in my capacity as an international election observer, a deployment that would last a couple of months to observe an election in a country where government control was so extensive that I knew there would be little by way of socialising, not even my own staff felt able to accept offers of casual (social) coffees, hence, inevitably, I was quite aware that there would be many evenings spent by myself simply listening to music - was (and remains) an astonishing device, and I loved it.

It opened my (very impressed bespectacled) eyes to the world of Apple.

Prior to that, I had been quite content with Windows, and candidly, I had found the slightly condescending and evangelical element of the Apple brethren (and, yes, they tended to be male) rather off-putting.

Thus, a few years later, I finally switched - in 2008, my MBP was a belated birthday present to myself, and I joined this forum not long afterwards as I had questions I wished to ask.

However, while I quite liked my MBP (and, although, while it did travel quite a bit with me, at 15", I found it too large and too uncomfortably heavy to use it as a fully portable device), I will readily concede that once I had seen the late Mr Jobs remove that MBA from an A4 envelope, I was - for almost the only time in my life - absolutely awestruck and completely smitten by a piece of tech, or tech device.

I wanted that computer, and, much as @Clix Pix has already described, I sought it out as soon as I could - as soon as it had made an appearance - in an Apple store, held it, hefted it, salivated over it, admired it - I loved that fusion of form and function, that combination of power and portability, (and yes, I did read about them - those first generation models were underpowered, with limited memory, and even my iPods equalled, or exceeded, their available memory) yet I determined there and then that my MBP would be succeeded by an MBA. And two years later, it was.

 

[eyoungren]

I came to Apple because of the iPod, via (or, on account of) what has been described as the so-called "halo" effect.

My iPod - which I had purchased two days prior to my departure on a deployment, in my capacity as an international election observer, a deployment that would last a couple of months to observe an election in a country where government control was so extensive that I knew there would be little by way of socialising, not even my own staff felt able to accept offers of casual (social) coffees, hence, inevitably, I was quite aware that there would be many evenings spent by myself simply listening to music - was (and remains) an astonishing device, and I loved it.

It opened my (very impressed bespectacled) eyes to the world of Apple.

Prior to that, I had been quite content with Windows, and frankly, I had found the slightly condescending and evangelical element of the Apple brethren (and, yes, they tended to be male) rather off-putting.

Thus, a few years later, I finally switched - in 2008, my MBP was a belated birthday present to myself, and I joined this forum not long afterwards as I had questions I wished to ask.

However, while I quite liked my MBP (and, although, while it did travel quite a bit with me, at 15", I found it too large and too uncomfortably heavy to use it as a fully portable device), I will readily concede that once I had seen the late Mr Jobs remove that MBA from an A4 envelope, I was - for almost the only time in my life - absolutely awestruck and completely smitten by a piece of tech, or tech device.

I wanted that computer, and, much as @Clix Pix has already described, I sought it out as soon as I could - as soon as it had made an appearance - in an Apple store, held it, hefted it, salivated over it, admired it - I loved that fusion of form and function, that combination of power and portability, (and yes, I did read about them - those first generation models were underpowered, with limited memory, and even my iPods equalled, or exceeded, their available memory) yet I determined there and then that my MBP would be succeeded by an MBA. And it was.

People and their lives are very different…

Due to a variety of things, I ended up getting out of my job for UPS (physical labor) in 1999 and finding design work for newspapers. That put me in an office and most of the time the companies I worked for used Macs.

One job was 14.5 years long, during a time of financial struggle and raising kids. I learned to just make do with what I had. By now, anything Apple offers has to fit into how I use things.

There are two models of Mac I did actually want, the 17" PowerBook G4 and the PowerMac G4 Quicksilver. I do own other Macs. But, with the exception of iPhones/iPads, everything Apple that I own was bought used well after it was first sold. When older Macs come in to my price range, that is when I upgrade. I've been fully Intel only as primary Macs since 2020. I am solidly 12 to 14 years behind the current model.

So, I totally understand where you're coming from on excitement about a thing Apple offers. I felt the same way about the 17" laptop. I finally got it in November 2009, six years after it was released and three years after the Intel transition killed off PowerPC. And that in large part is why my excitement is often curbed.

 

[macnavarra]

Since the release of Mac mini m4 for sure , since you need hairdryer like device to upgrade the Apple Disk. LOL

 

[Scepticalscribe]

People and their lives are very different…

.......

Very much so.

And, not only are people, and people's lives very different, but also, individual lives will differ greatly (within the lived experience) at different times.

At different times, I have bought brand new Apple computers - including for siblings also as well as for the carer - (invariably at a time when I was deployed abroad, or years on end, in dodgy spots, with the EU, and was rather well remunerated), - and used to adhere to the three year cycle - hold onto a computer until Apple Care was about to expire - but, I have also bought refurbished computers, and, more recently, have also held onto computers for years and years, and years.

And, in common with you, Apple now has to fit into how I use things, and, besides, many recent advances are of no interest to me whatsoever, irrespective of income levels.

 

[GioGiusi]

Apple went from being on the verge of bankruptcy to being the most valuable company in the world.

The first half of that transition was the good Apple that focused solely on making great products, in a bet that people would want them, and buy them. It worked. It worked so well that they created a lot of loyal customers that appreciated that product and customer-first approach.

The second half of that transition has been a greed machine that has been doing everything it can to maximize what it can squeeze from every loyal Apple customer. That includes increasing prices while decreasing value, forcing customers to pay for things that Apple should be covering with profits, introducing some wildly overpriced products, and shipping low-quality software developed and managed by unqualified hires.