Must make for a huge 1099 for taxes next year (2023 for tax year 2022)
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Apple Slashes iPhone 14 Plus Orders With Supply Chain Makers
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And the software on iOS have been full of daily bugs for 3-4 years now. Newest devices and software. Not pls. Setting actions that the phone ignores. Or turns back on, all by itself. The hand off between iPhone and HomePod. They don’t care about software. Just rebranding old devices as new bc they know people will still buy. I’ve had every iPhone and nothing but Apple Watch iPhone issues for 4-5 years now. And I upgrade ev single year. Except this.
And not everyone wants a phone to watch Tv or endlessly scroll on Fakebook to Tic crock.
I could write a book.
The mini is perfect for me and people who use their phone for pictures daily and are not so slip media obsessed or want to watch Tv on my phone..
So they are selling their high end gear as fast as they can make them, bravo Apple!
Is that why iPhone 14 Plus production has been cut?
Well, I’m sure inflation has a lot to do with it.
Is that why iPhone 14 Plus production has been cut?
No, Apple aren’t offering a cheap big screen at £949 lol. The 14 Plus is iPhone Pro money this year and it’ll become popular no doubt once prices start coming down. If they don’t, all models will suffer in the long term.
The same thing is reported every year and ends up not being the whole picture.Is that why iPhone 14 Plus production has been cut?
For me, this is due to five factors:
1) Inflation making prices go up
2) The cost of living crisis
3) Market saturation: more people each year are choosing to keep their old phones (they're good enough)
4) Lack of innovation. This isn't entirely Apple's fault, it's just that each year it's getting harder and harder to innovate. There's a lot of areas where Apple - and other tech companies - are reaching that ceiling that's restricted by broader technology advances and raw materials. For instance...it'd be great to have a battery that's half the weight and lasts twice as long, but lithium-sulfur (and other battery technologies) aren't quite there yet. Same goes with MicroLED, and countless other technologies. The technologies are either not fully developed, or aren't at a point where it's logistically possible - or viable - to implement them in a cost-effective way at the consumer level.
5) Greed. Apple could easily offset the above somewhat by making the iPhone better value, not by cutting the price but doing things such as increasing the base storage to 256gb. I mean, it should be this anyway, but more so now that prices and going up. This is Apple all over, they're modern-day when "teaching" customers about things such as inflation, supply lines and raw materials; but they're quite fittingly old fashioned when it comes to storage (and other things). It's all...when suits.
1) Inflation making prices go up
2) The cost of living crisis
3) Market saturation: more people each year are choosing to keep their old phones (they're good enough)
4) Lack of innovation. This isn't entirely Apple's fault, it's just that each year it's getting harder and harder to innovate. There's a lot of areas where Apple - and other tech companies - are reaching that ceiling that's restricted by broader technology advances and raw materials. For instance...it'd be great to have a battery that's half the weight and lasts twice as long, but lithium-sulfur (and other battery technologies) aren't quite there yet. Same goes with MicroLED, and countless other technologies. The technologies are either not fully developed, or aren't at a point where it's logistically possible - or viable - to implement them in a cost-effective way at the consumer level.
5) Greed. Apple could easily offset the above somewhat by making the iPhone better value, not by cutting the price but doing things such as increasing the base storage to 256gb. I mean, it should be this anyway, but more so now that prices and going up. This is Apple all over, they're modern-day when "teaching" customers about things such as inflation, supply lines and raw materials; but they're quite fittingly old fashioned when it comes to storage (and other things). It's all...when suits.
If Apple had priced the iPhone 14 at 809€ instead of 1019€ and the 14 Plus at 909€ instead of 1169€ then they would both sold really well.
Also the fact that you can buy a used 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max for 700-900€ with the same soc but better screen, body and camera makes the 14 and 14 Plus seems like a big joke for the price.
Despite high inflation, U.S. iPhone prices are the same as they were last year and the year before. For example, the 128GB iPhone 14 is $829 which is the same price as the 64GB iPhone 12 was at launch in 2020. The 14 is the same price as the 12 and that's with twice the storage.
Increased overseas prices are due to currency value changes more than any sort of Apple "greed."
Pricing the iPhone 14 in France at €809 as you suggest would put the pre-VAT price at around €663 or $652 USD. This would be over 21% less than the pre-sales tax price of the same iPhone 14 in the U.S. I don't think selling it THAT much cheaper overseas is realistic.
As it is now, the price in France is already slightly lower than the price in the U.S. when adjusted to USD. The pre-VAT French price is around €835 which is $821 USD. That is less than the pre-sales tax U.S. price of $829. It's the currency value changes that are causing increased overseas prices.
As I like to take photos the iphone 14 PM blows my XS Max out of the water. So the xs max is no longer good enough and will be replaced next month.
I don't see a lack of innovation coming from Apple. What I suspect is that innovation has a personal and moving definition.
The price is the price. If the price to value ratio is not good enough, people will speak with their dollars. They will either hold on to their existing hardware or go to a new manufacturer. It's Apple prerogative to sell a product for what they want. It's the customers responsibility to decide if the product is for them. It's as simple as that. Greedy corporations typically implode eg Bernie Madoff, Enron. That was greed.
Fair point in terms of inflation, I didn’t realise that US prices had remained the same, I thought they had increased as well over the last couple of years.
In terms of greed, I meant in terms of Apple not moving with the times with basic specifications, on their iOS and macOS devices.
Apple are a premium tech company, that sell premium products at a premium price. But…128gb is not “premium” on a phone, not by a long shot.
I don’t agree with the reasoning of your 64gb point. 64gb was the base storage from the iPhone 8 to the iPhone 12, so it was well overdue. By the time of the iPhone 13, it was a necessity, if you consider that Apple need to confidently make sure that it adequately performs for the lifetime of support.
Operating systems get larger in size, so do apps, the number of apps that people use, the size of photos and videos, the number of photos & videos that people take, the size of video files, etc. Storage capacity increases as a necessity, which has happened since the birth of computing.
So, Apple going from 64gb -> 128gb for their base storage from the iPhone 12 to the iPhone 13 I don’t see as charity or a gift, it was just a future-proofing absolute technological necessity.
But again, it’s a premium product, and “what’s absolute necessity” shouldn’t be the baseline for any component inside their machines. But they do this with the RAM and storage on all of their machines.
I fully appreciate that they’re a profit-making company, and to an extent greed-is-good, as Gordon Gecko would say. I just think they’re going across that line of “too greedy”, and deliberately under-speccing their premium products, but that’s obviously just my opinion…like most comments on here. 👍
Yeah but if you owe more in taxes, it is typically because you made more. Which is better? Earning less and owing less taxes or earning more and owing more?
I don’t really see anything you’ve said that really goes against what I said, but maybe it’s just how I interpreted it. Your iPhone XS Max is four years older than the iPhone 14, so you saying that the photos on the iPhone 14 are a lot better, and you personally value that and have chosen to upgrade your four-year-old phone…well I don’t know what point you’re making.
On your second point, I think that’s just two points of view, I mean it’s quite a fiddly topic in itself - trying to judge a tech company’s level of innovation. What’s possible? What are other companies doing? What do people want or expect? How much does each iPhone blow people away? How much had it evolved from its predecessor? How do you gauge innovation and know that it’s innovative enough? Obviously, all rhetorical questions.
And yes, exactly, the price is indeed the price. Apple decides what they want to sell, people decide what they want to buy. Etc etc etc. I agree with everything you said there, and don’t think I originally said anything otherwise. The only thing I think is a bit of grey area is about greedy corporations imploding. I don’t think it’s quite as black-and-white as greed results in implosion. If you’re way too greedy, sure. I think that possibly a corporation can be a little too greedy, which impacts their sales slightly, without the company completely going bust.
But that’s just…my opinion.
Yes, that is the point. The speed, camera, screen, battery life are all better.
Yes, those are my points as well. There is a definition of innovation, but people see it differently.
Yes I agree. "Greedy" is another personal moving definition. The term is thrown around as applied to Apple as is if it is just a fact of life that everybody has common understanding of.That's not the case with Apple.
One of your "greed" comments was that Apple should increase the storage and keep the price the same and I was pointing out that they had done just that. The entry storage for the iPhone 12 was 64GB and the price was $829. The entry storage for the iPhone 14 is twice that at 128GB and the price is still also $829.
If I were to compare like storage (which I didn't), the iPhone 14 price is actually $50 less. The 128GB iPhone 12 was $879 and the 256GB iPhone 12 was $979 while the 128GB iPhone 14 is $829 and the 256GB iPhone 14 is $929. But, again, I didn't do that and was comparing the entry storage which is larger but price is still the same.
Ok. I'm not trying to entirely defend Apple here. I just think some of the comments make it seems like Apple jacked prices way up and yet despite high inflation, product improvements, etc. prices are actually the same or less this year versus recent years, at least in the U.S. Yes, they are higher overseas in those local currencies but that's due to currency value changes which is not Apple's doing or fault.
I've been think of going "money manager" for about 5 years now, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. My wife has one and when things are going good, it's always "we're doing fine", but when things are going bad, it's no longer "we're". The market is way beyond me for day trading although I'm guessing there's a lot of "moolah" for those that spend almost the entire day watching it. Up 500-800 points a day and then down the same a day later or maybe even during the same day. And yes, I'm all for paying capital gains because 85% of it is in my pocket.
I think we're both just on two separate ways of thinking here. Yes, they increased the storage on the iPhone 13 without increasing the price-point, but this is simply a natural and essential progression as everything gets larger in size (iOs, apps, number of apps, photos, videos, etc). This has always happened since the dawn of computing - the standard size and speed of RAM and hard drives grows through time. I mean, can you imagine where we'd be now if every time a computer manufacturer doubled the size of the standard RAM or hard drive capacity they added on $100 + inflation. A standard Dell would probably cost over $10,000.
But...it doesn't, does it.
All technology evolves throughout the years, such as RAM, hard drive capacity, CPU, GPU, screen type and resolution, etc etc etc. But my argument is that Apple intentionally under-specs the RAM and hard drive capacity for pure greed. And yes - I appreciate that Apple is a money-making company, and greed is good for a company's health, but like I said...imho I just think that they're being too greedy with this. They always keep the RAM and hard drive capacity at "Just about enough", and that would be fine in a mid-priced machine, but Apple makes premium machines at premium price points. I also don't judge RAM and hard drive size on the actual literal size, but more on the usefulness of free space (after the operating system, essential app & files etc are installed). Like I said, tech - and people's usage habits - evolve and *everything* gets larger. 64GB in 2020 probably feels nearly as restrictive as 32GB did in 2016, and 128GB will in 2024. Not quite, but nearly.
I don't buy into the argument of "Well, it's fine for me". I mean, that's not really the point, it should be fine for everyone (in that given price-point / product-expectation demographic, not literally every person on the planet). No one can convince me that 8GB memory and 256GB hard drive belong in the $1,299 13" MacBook Pro. I don't care that you daughter loves it for uni, or that you've been using it for a year and it's a dream, or that you've professionally edited photos without a hitch. Good for you all, but those specs still don't belong in a $1,299 machine.
Anyway, this just my very humble opinion, I know a lot of people agree and a lot of people don't. And I know that with this kind of thing, a lot of users (not yourself, other users) shoot people down with the same tired argument of "Well, Apple is a three dollar company, I think they know what they're doing." Which, of course, they largely do. But I still disagree with them on this one 👍.
At least the mini would serve an audience with a need for smaller phones. 14 Plus users can buy the 14 Pro Plus instead and Apple would benefit from higher margins.
Yea I never understand these people wouldn't work more OT because they said they made less:
A. At worst, we might hit the 15% bracket which means you still got 85% more minus other taxes/deductions
B. We never had it long enough to really be in that bracket, so you got the $$$ back at tax time
If there is a large enough audience to justify a "mini" model. Apple apparently feels there isn't/wasn't.