That’s why I said I think what is getting alluded to here do you not know what that means? It’s only a forum chat about storage & people opinions on it.
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Apple's Base 128GB iPhone Storage Tier Needs to Go
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No, you got this wrong. MR is a 100% accurate representation of the Apple user base, no ifs and buts.
Kidding of course but it sure seems that way, doesn’t it?
And not to even mention that for things like storing photos and videos, there are lots of non-Apple options you can use for these things as well such as:
1. External drive. Even with iPhones with a lightning port you can get adapters and/or thumb drives that work with lightning. And with newer iPhones, it’s really simple with USB-C.
2. Other cloud services. While people are quick to point a finger and claim “see, Apple’s just restricting storage so they can “force” users to buy more iCloud storage. The only problem with that, and it’s a big one, is that it’s very easy to use other cloud storage services, and many people do. I actually use OneDrive for a lot of my long term file storage (even though I abhor Microsoft and only use it because I have a Microsoft 365 plan for business use). But it works for storage, and is very simply to transfer files and photos and such from my phone to it. A lot of people also similarly use Google cloud storage with an iPhone, or DropBox and such. There are just lots of cloud storage solutions other than Apple’s, and it’s very easy to use them. So no, nobody is “forced” to buy more iCloud space, and many actually use competing alternatives instead.
3. Mac or other computer. Yes, many iPhone owners also own a Mac or other computer. And it’s very easy to either use the Mac’s internal storage for offloading iPhone files, or an external drive connected to the Mac. And it’s actually even pretty simple to set up a Mac’s internal storage, or an external drive connected to the Mac so that it can be remotely accessed by the iPhone, kind of like a private cloud storage. There are various guides for doing this, and it can also be done with a Windows or Linux computer as well.
My point is, it doesn’t matter what my usage is, there are many different options people can choose. The base spec seems to be plenty for the average user.
yes in your opinion the base spec seems plenty & that’s your opinion.
I just happen to disagree with your opinion
I used to wear a waterproof watch, with a replaceable battery, while swimming. That was before the first iPhone was even invented! If my watch can be fit for swimming, despite having a replaceable battery and the less advanced technology of the time, I don't think Apple has much excuse.
When compared to an an internal solid state hard disk: Yes, an SD card is slow. But slow compared to that is still plenty fast for many things! I would not want the iPhone running iOS off of the SD card (unless the hard disk is broken). Nor would I want the iPhone indiscriminately putting apps onto the SD card, some apps would slow way down if the iPhone did that. But photos, documents, etc.: The SD card is perfect for that!
In other words: An iPhone could make good use of the extra storage added by an SD card, without the iPhone itself getting slow. It's just a matter of Apple setting up iOS to property handle SD cards, to properly pick what goes onto the SD card and what goes onto the (solid state) hard disk.
A. A waterproof watch isn’t the same as a smartphone. And a replaceable battery isn’t directly exposed to the elements in the same way. A watch battery is housed in the watch case with a gasket and screws required to be removed in order to access it. An SD card slot is open to the elements.
B. You can plug a much faster external drive directly into the USB-C port (and even lighting port on older iPhones with an adapter or drive designed for lightning). With much faster USB external drives, it wouldn’t make much sense to use a much slower microSD card.
C. The iPhone has never had a microSD card slot, yet it is a highly successful product. It doesn’t seem there’s much demand for an SD card slot on the iPhone. Why add more expense and remove internal capacity that could be used for other things iPhone users actually care about like more battery, better speakers, etc. for a card slot that most iPhone customers clearly don’t seem to care about? We all get worse battery runtime or more tiny sounding sound systems to appease a few niche people who might use it for some document storage? Makes zero sense. Much better sticking with the internal fast and snappy storage if more is needed, or use an external drive and/or cloud storage.
An external thumb disk, dangling off of my iPhone's USB port? As opposed to a card which lives inside of inside of my iPhone? Pass!
Then Apple can protect the SD card reader with gasket and screws.
While Apple's at it: They can use that same gasket-and-screw system to give us replaceable batteries. Batteries lose their ability to hold a charge over time. That's why, if an iPhone is a few years old, it's quicker to lose power then a new iPhone. But if we can put a new battery in whenever we want, that's not such a problem!
Also, we'd be able keep a spare charged battery with us when we're out. If our iPhone's getting low on power: We can remove the drained battery and insert the charged battery. Instant 100% charge!
No, no other smartphone with an SD card slot uses a plate with gaskets and screws over it. It would be too hard to access. Instead, other smartphone brands use fragile port covers that easily break, and are still somewhat of a nuisance to open, though less than removing screws.
Batteries in iPhones can be replaced and often are.
Again, an SD card slot has never existed on any iPhone, yet it’s one of the most successful products in the world, so clearly most iPhone customers don’t seem to care about a silly SD card port that would make the phone more fragile, would be of little practical use, would take up valuable internal space in the phone that can be used for other more important components, etc.
The janky “crack open my phone (which btw is cheap and crappy plastic rather than aluminum and glass) to stick a different battery in there” idea is a crap-droid special, not something that most iPhone users would be interested in. Same with an SD card wasting internal space that would be better used by other more useful components, and would make the phone more fragile and janky. People who want either of these things are probably the target audience of several cheap crapdroid devices, not the iPhone. The iPhone has never had these things, nor should it. It’s not something that most iPhone users seem to want or care about, and it’s something that even crapdroid manufacturers are starting to drop from their designs.
Much better to stick with internal storage and buy what’s needed, or add some cloud storage…
The reason Apple have never offered an option like a micro sd slot is because if they offered that then why would you be a device with more storage & cloud storage.
So from a business point of view it makes no sense to offer it.
It’s mostly antiquated at this point. Even several flagship crapdroid phones don’t have SD card slots built-in. Internal space in the phone case is limited, so manufacturers try to make the most efficient use of the space as possible. Very few people seem to care about SD card slots on a phone at this point, so even manufacturers that formerly included them have removed them to make room for other hardware that more people will benefit from. Same is true of the headphone jack. All of these became less commonly used things, and so were removed to make better use of the space. And sure, some might buy a higher storage spec, but many just buy the base spec, because Apple offers more than enough internal storage for the average user on the base spec. And aside from that, many people use cloud storage services other than Apple’s own, so the idea that Apple is just not adding an SD card slot because it would somehow eat into iCloud sales or such doesn’t make much sense. Maybe you could make an argument they’re concerned about SD card expansion cutting into storage upgrade sales, but that doesn’t even entirely hold up. Apple has never had an SD card slot on the iPhone. Every implementation of that from other phone brands has been incredibly janky with fragile “covers” that break, and makes the whole thing more fragile. And now it’s mostly antiquated, most modern flagship phones don’t seem to include SD card slots including crapdroid handhelds, probably because there aren’t a whole lot of people using them and they didn’t provide enough benefit to most users with the amount of internal space they hoarded and the fragile design. It looks like Apple again got it right, and now the crapdroid manufacturers are starting to realize that and change, like so many other things that Apple has gotten right from the start that these “competitors” didn’t.
I’m being polite about this
One of the only reasons Apple have never Offered a micro sd slot from the beginning is so they can up sell you.
why would you buy anything less than the base storage device if you could easily expand the storage for about 32 quid instead of paying about 100 pounds more yeah because that makes good business sense.
Why would you buy higher storage tiers? Because much more reliable and faster storage, storage that apps can actually run on, etc. SD cards would pretty much only be a very mediocre way of storing some documents potentially, loading times are so slow on microSD cards and they are very unreliable, there’s a reason I don’t generally use microSD cards for even document storage. And microSD cards (even from good brands mind you, not the bargain basement cards many consumers would try to use) can corrupt very easily, so you end up losing the data you have saved on them. Who will the consumer blame, the cheap card they bought, or Apple? Who will get the customer support calls with some uninformed person railing about how the iPhone ruined their SD card, etc. It just makes no sense. MicroSD cards are slow and unreliable, and the unreliability aspect alone would be a very big negative for a brand that is known for its reliability. Even “competing” brands have discovered it’s a failed idea and have removed them from their flagship models.
I think in the end, the "regular" iPhone (and that includes the rumored Air model coming later this year) will have 256 GB and 512 GB storage options. The iPhone Pro models may standardize on 512 GB, 1 TB and maybe a new 2 TB storage option. I expect the majority of higher-end Android phones to have 512 GB and 1 TB local storage options soon, too.
(Narrator)
"...and despite wide protestations, the 128GB iPhones soldiered on for many more years, as the stingy Apple CEO raked in the upgrade profits, despite a lesser experience for the company's users"
"...and despite wide protestations, the 128GB iPhones soldiered on for many more years, as the stingy Apple CEO raked in the upgrade profits, despite a lesser experience for the company's users"
(Narrator)
“…and despite wide satisfaction with the base spec iPhones and high sales, the handful of niche users who felt they were somehow entitled to nicer specs for free kept whining and complaining about how unfair it was that Apple wouldn’t give them gobs of excess storage for free. These niche users continued to complain and whine about the audacity of having to actually pay for more storage, despite the masses of happy base spec iPhone customers who found the storage tier to be more than enough for their needs…”
PS, why are you even in this Apple fan forum? You only seem to complain about Apple and Apple products. If you dislike Apple so much, there are plenty of other options…
I don’t understand your insult, nor do I care. The vast majority of base-spec iPhone users seem to be happy with the 128GB of storage. It seems more than enough storage for most average users. Again, I don’t understand why you frequent an Apple fan forum when all you seem to want to do is complain about Apple and Apple products?I think I preferred the Narrator I hired
😂
There was no insult intended
Could you please be a little more polite?
Your entire tone is way too aggressive and personal
Btw, you've obviously missed lots of my posts...
I'm in LOVE with Mini M4, iPad Mini 5, a new app for Apple Photos backup, iPhone SE1s ..
I've posted about all of this just this week and some literally this morning!
Ok, I thought it was supposed to be an insult, but apparently not. What have I said that was impolite? I’m seriously not trying to come off as impolite, I didn’t think calling Android crapdroid would be triggering in an Apple fan forum. That’s the only thing I can think of that may come off as impolite. And I’m not trying to come off as aggressive or personal either.
Sorry I made a couple of assumptions, I haven’t looked at your post history, but every time I land in a comment thread you’re commenting in, all I see is your negative comments that come off as accusing Apple of being some evil stingy/greedy corp who just doesn’t care about it’s customers and/or actively wants to harm it’s customers. That’s how the majority of the comments I’ve seen you write come across, even if that’s not what you mean…
I’m just so tired of these yearly recurring artificial clickbait “scandals” drummed up by content creators to generate clicks. It’s like with the M4 Mac Mini you love, a lot of these content creators were too busy whining and complaining about the power button location to recognize how great of a piece of hardware this Mac Mini is! 👍🏻
I would just encourage you to not be so accusatory if you're admitting you're making assumptions and haven't looked at my post history. You're getting an incomplete picture of who I am and my opinions about Apple, perhaps by way of only seeing me in certain threads.
As I said, literally just today I've been posting enormously positive things about aspects of Apple and their products
Like most of us here, I have a nuanced view of Apple and it evolves and is different depending upon which aspects of the company and the products are being discussed.
I appreciate your follow up reply, thank you 🙏
That’s not the reason they never included it from the start because if they did then practically nobody would buy the 8gb model.
Good day sir
And that’s your subjective opinion about the reasons for Apple’s design decisions. Your subjective opinion is duely noted, but I disagree, and I don’t think you can say your subjective opinion is fact when there many other potential reasons for the lack of a port for a very unreliable and slow storage type. I don’t claim my opinion is objective fact either, I could be wrong, but I think there are many more valid reasons that explain that, and Apple even talked about SD card reliability issues when they dropped the SD card slot from MacBook Pro models in favor of more stable USB-C. But again, that’s just my opinion, you can take it or leave it, but nobody here should be pretending their opinion is fact (including myself) because we simply do not have any real information or evidence about Apple’s motives and/or reasons…
Good day to you as well. 👍🏻
Thanks, I’m sorry I came off as accusatory, I probably should have looked at your post history before coming to that conclusion, but I forget to do that and I have apparently only seen your negative takes. 👍🏻. I apologize for the misunderstanding I caused, and coming off as aggressive, that certainly wasn’t my intention. 👍🏻
I have a nuanced view as well I think, but I genuinely believe that Apple actually does care about their customers, and genuinely provide the products they believe to be best for their customers. I don’t think Apple would be nearly as successful if they didn’t. Even if one wants to take the cynical view of business, the best way to succeed as a company is to do good by your customers. I have had nothing but good experiences doing business with Apple. And I think that’s what really one of the things that differentiates Apple from the “competition”. Apple clearly has much more data than we do about this question.
It seems from the polls and figures that we do have access to, the majority of average iPhone customers are happy with the 128GB base spec. With most things now being cloud-based and accessed via the internet, many users mostly use native storage for apps, which mostly don’t take up much room. And with HEIF mode enabled (I think that’s the proper acronym for it), people can store thousands upon thousands of photos on a fraction of that storage. And I don’t think most people keep all of their photos from the past several years on their native phone storage. At some point they either offload them to their Mac or external storage drive somewhere, or upload them to cloud storage (often not even Apple’s cloud storage, but competing cloud services like Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.).
You have your opinion about this, and that’s ok, I’m not trying to say you aren’t entitled to it or anything like that. But what really frustrates me is that there’s this whole subset of content creators who create these clickbait artificial “scandals” to generate clicks. Like the artificial clickbait Mac Mini power button scandal. Instead of talking about the amazing hardware and value on offer with the Mac Mini, and appreciating the more compact design, these people spent over a month complaining about the stupid power button that most regular users probably could care less about. Most people likely don’t routinely shut their Mac Mini down with the power button, heck, most people likely don’t even ever fully power down their Mac Mini, but just let it go into sleep mode. And in order to achieve that compact of a design, some changes had to be made, and some hardware had to be rearranged. Yet this subset of clickbait shisters need to make that the defining characteristic of the new Mac Mini… As a content creator myself, this really frustrates me because it isn’t good practice whether it’s Apple in question or Microsoft (which I basically loath with all that’s in me, lol 😂 )… I’m just so tired of these clickbait “scandals” that aren’t very helpful to the average reader or user because they’re completely out of sync with the average user or reader. It’s like what people say about first world problems on steroids. It just doesn’t actually reflect on the needs of most average users. Like with the Mac Mini example, average users will benefit a lot more from the more compact form factor and front-facing ports than a top-back positioned power button. Most average users probably won’t even care. But that’s all this subset of content creators want to focus on.
So my complaint is more with the original article and the content creators who push this kind of stuff than with commenters here.
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Well yes it is.
Did Apple not actually bring the sd card slot back to the new MacBooks because customers complained so they had to back track