Everything Apple Didn't Announce at Today's Event

[jimothyGator]

Because some people would buy the SE if it existed in a new format (of course) but Apple has to ask, how many of those would also buy the iPhone Xr or the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 7? If the answer is 75%, they might not bother updating the SE because of business reasons.

My point is you've contradicted yourself. At one point, you say that the SE doesn't exist because their isn't a market for it. Then you say Apple doesn't want to see it because people would buy it instead of a more expensive phone; that means there's a market for it. The latter may very well be true, but they can't both possibly be true.

That the iPhone SE is no longer for sale is not a sufficient indicator that people don't want a smaller phone with modern components.

 

[Baymowe335]

My point is you've contradicted yourself. At one point, you say that the SE doesn't exist because their isn't a market for it. Then you say Apple doesn't want to see it because people would buy it instead of a more expensive phone; that means there's a market for it. The latter may very well be true, but they can't both possibly be true.

That the iPhone SE is no longer for sale is not a sufficient indicator that people don't want a smaller phone with modern components.

I never said there wasn't a market. It's not large enough to make sense for Apple and/or they have determined those people will buy phones with better margins. Simple.

 

[rjtyork]

AirPower is gone. Apple realized it was a stupid idea since it kills nightstand mode on the watch, which is a big deal for a lot of people. Not to mention there are wireless chargers that cost $6 at Walmart now. Within another year they’ll be $2. The price of their stupid mat was going to be ridiculous and completely unrealistic.

 

[Sackofnickels]

October event should be good (esp iPad Pro)...but what a day today. I still can't believe we now have an EKG in a wristwatch. It's just bonkers.

It's ECG not EKG. That and the "I fell down and can't get up" feature should attract older customers. I wonder if they can get the watch through their Medicare provider? Old people beware! Apple's coming for your Social Security income...

 

[jimothyGator]

I never said there wasn't a market. It's not large enough to make sense for Apple and/or they have determined those people will buy phones with better margins. Simple.

Allow me to quote never then:

“They can screw up, but if the market wanted an updated SE, it would exist. Period, end of story.”

I guess I can’t convince you of how absurd a statement that is. If Jobs (or any one who ever created a product) believed what you said, there would never be an iPhone. After all, if people wanted an iPhone, it would exist already. If people wanted a car, they wouldn’t be riding horse and buggies.

 

[Baymowe335]

Allow me to quote never then:

“They can screw up, but if the market wanted an updated SE, it would exist. Period, end of story.”

I guess I can’t convince you of how absurd a statement that is. If Jobs (or any one who ever created a product) believed what you said, there would never be an iPhone. After all, if people wanted an iPhone, it would exist already. If people wanted a car, they wouldn’t be riding horse and buggies.

Yeah, I stand by that. The market will shift to other offerings, so it's dead. If the market wanted the SE, it would exist but plenty of people have bought the 7, 8, and X to make it dead...for now. If Apple release these and in 6 months wants another boost, you may get it in March 2019.

You're taking what I said and completely changing it. I never said the market would have demanded an iPhone. We are talking about a different kind of iPhone...and a niche one at that.

Apple can do whatever they want and they will go buy customer demand. You're proposing they are losing out on sales because of a lack of an updated SE? LOL...they aren't...and they know better than us.

 

[betasp]

I was really hoping for a "one more thing" with a new iPad. I am holding out now for the next model. I handed down my 9.5 pro and

 

[violetdudley]

While mundane in context, the absence of a decent battery charger protector case (anywhere) for the X series is a barrier to upgrading. The battery life and device fragility issues are show stoppers for some. A more comprehensive and expensive Apple Care option is not a solution.

What happened to Mophie’s X model case presented here in Macrumors last spring? One hopes Apple sees this as a collateral concern and is taking it into account as it fills in its product line to serve the perceived growing number of “niche” markets.

 

[zla]

That would require Apple to be omniscient and infallible, neither of which is the case. They obviously do a pretty good job of anticipating what the market wants, but they are not perfect. The story is not over.

How could an updated SE cannibilize sales if the market doesn't want it?

Your claim is that whatever is on the market at any given time is exactly what customers want, and that's just absurd. I don't know if you believe that's true for all industries, all companies, or if Apple just has a remarkable ability that every other company lacks. Either way, you are incorrect.

If the market wanted a headphone jack... oh.. wait..

 

[PickUrPoison]

It makes a lot of sense if you can imagine a new Mac Pro starting at, let's say, $9,999 and the new Mac (Pro) Mini starting at about $2,999. I'm afraid our longed and beloved Mac Mini is dead as we know it. Apple wants its entry level desktops with a screen attached. Sad future for the less wealthy. But you know Apple...

Per rumor, I imagine a more pro-oriented Mac mini that would almost double the starting price to around $899-999. (There is no rumor of a “Mac mini Pro”.) CPU and storage minimums will eliminate the consumer friendly $499-799 price points.

The new Mac Pro will likely start in the $2,999-3,999 range, depending in minimum configuration.

 

[jimothyGator]

Yeah, I stand by that.

Heck, I can't keep up. Did you say or never say there was no market?

Apple can do whatever they want and they will go buy customer demand. You're proposing they are losing out on sales because of a lack of an updated SE? LOL...they aren't...and they know better than us.

Yes, I'm saying exactly that, but neither you, I, nor anyone at Apple knows for sure, because it's impossible to know for sure. Apple isn't omniscient, Apple isn't perfect, Apple isn't immune from making mistakes or misjudging customer preferences, and they aren't above placing short term profits over long term customer satisfaction (at least that last point you tacitly acknowledge).

No matter how well Apple is doing, they can always do better. If any of Steve Jobs' spirit lives on in "Apple's DNA", as Tim Cook claims, he'd admit that as well. Hopefully, it's only on MacOS Rumors forums that you'll find people who insist Apple can do no wrong, that they have perfect market insight, and that whatever they are offering is exactly what people want. Because if that kind of hubris is within Apple, five, ten, twenty years from now, they could be looking back, wondering where all their customers went.

History is full of companies who thought for sure their marketshare was impenetrable and that they had a unique understanding of customer's needs. IBM, Nokia, and Microsoft are recent examples.

Do I know for sure that there's a market for a modern iPhone SE? No, though I think there is. That's the key point: Where you assert that you, or Apple, knows for certain that there is no market, I've got the humility and honesty to say that knowing this for certain is impossible. If knowing exactly what customers want and are willing to pay for were possible, no business would fail. Heck, customers don't always know what they want themselves. Jobs famously knew this.

Apple's free to ignore the potential SE market. Maybe that's the right business decision, at least in the intermediate term. But for one last time, just because they've chosen to ignore the market, prudently or not, is not evidence that the market doesn't exist. And yes, you've stated exactly that.

 

[PickUrPoison]

We all know Apple have forgotten about the MacPro, but I'm disappointed that MacRumors have forgotten about it too.

Why do you think MacRumors has forgotten it? Mac Pro is a known 2019 product, no rumors involved.

This article covers the rumored/expected products that might have been introduced yesterday but weren’t. They’re expected to be introduced soon, October is the rumored timeframe.

 

[jimothyGator]

It's ECG not EKG. That and the "I fell down and can't get up" feature should attract older customers. I wonder if they can get the watch through their Medicare provider? Old people beware! Apple's coming for your Social Security income...

ECG and EKG are the same thing. EKG comes from the German acronym for elektrokardiogramm. The English equivalent is electrocardiogram, or ECG.
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If the market wanted a headphone jack... oh.. wait..

Exactly; Apple (like every company) doesn't give customers everything they want (nor could they; where's my 64TB iPhone for $1?). Sometimes that's the right decision, sometimes it's not. We can't know a priori.

Maybe getting rid of the headphone jack really was a "courageous" move, like dropping the floppy drive, and SCSI and ADB ports on the original iMac was. I take issue with people like Baymowe335 who claim that they, or Apple, knows for 100% certain. Anyone who is honest about business, or heck just life, knows that every decision carries some risk. Sometimes those risks pay off, sometimes they don't.

 

[Candykane75]

But at some point the internals change so much that it would actually be a total redesign even if it looks the same. I understand many of the SE fans are upset because they loved their little phones, but Apple doesn't think with emotions. They think as a business. Can a business case be made? I'm going to out out on a limb (but not that far) and say the answer is no. They ran the numbers and found a much better business case can be made by making the iPhone 7 their introductory budget iPhone.

An expensive small screened phone just wouldn't survive in today's premium market. There were many people that bought the SE because they liked the size, but I promise many more bought it on price. Throwing huge amounts of development costs into a phone that people expect to be priced cheap is a good way to start losing money on a product line.

How little do you think this market is? 1 million units a year? 2 million units a year? 3 -10? Why would they not make a profit ? The cost to build and assemble Apple's iPhone SE runs to about $160
source :
https://www.google.com/search?q=cost+to+build+Iphone+SE&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab

And financial year 2018 16% of all Iphone sales are Iphone SE's . How much is 16% of huge ? yes still HUGE . \
Many company's dream about sales numbers like this for a cheap model . I do think the SE would have a hard time because of the iphone 7 , basically its the same price as a SE when they where released. SE and new 7 (+) buyers are not the same people that will fork out a +1000 dollars to buy a top of the line new model Iphone.
they want a Iphone that's good enough for a res-enable price point. I know lots of people that have a 5S or a SE or a 6(s)
when they will upgrade they will not spend 800-1000 euro on a phone they would go for a nice cheap 7

sales figure source
Source https://www.ped30.com/2018/09/12/iphone-price-points-apple/
predictions is that the 7 models will take 28% market share .. that sends a clear message to apple i hope they are under estimated and it will be more like 40% sending apple a clear message we want cheap good phones not crap we did not ask for.

 

[sunwukong]

Once people have moved their pro workflow to Windows or Linux then they're not going to be in a hurry to move back.

This exactly. And further, that they will be MUCH less likely to switch back given that they would no longer trust Apple to keep the line supported, even if/when Apple came out with something that would be what they wished for. Is like, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, won't get fooled again."

 

[Anonymous Freak]

iPhone SE 2? No, I want the iPhone SE-X!

They'd call it the iPhone SE/30...

 

[Howard2k]

The Mac Mini update is a joke. Still no upgradability, heat management or real improvement.
Oh, but it does come with a brand new jumbo price tag now.
Just sell the OS so we can load it on our own custom built machines Apple. Your in-house ones are just sad.

There was a Mac Mini update?

 

[sunwukong]

So, I'll be taking advantage of EOL pricing for SE so that when my current one breaks (purchased day 1 of iPhone SE) I'll have a new replacement

HA! I did the same thing for our house of 6S's. Got a couple of 'back up' used 6S's for when any of our three completely conks out. My concern now is how long Apple will be signing iOS on 6S.

 

[PickUrPoison]

I'm not moving anywhere, no new SE just means that I will use the old one until it breaks. No small iPhone = no sale.

No different than those who only want a 17” MacBook Pro.

You’ll be able to buy SE’s for the next 10 years on eBay. At some point you’ll be running an older OS that will unsupported, with security vulnerabilities that will only increase as the years go by. Fewer and fewer older apps will bother supporting it, and newer apps will require more horsepower than it can provide.

In general the tech world is not kind to those who aren’t able to adapt. Things change rather quickly.

 

[Baymowe335]

Heck, I can't keep up. Did you say or never say there was no market?



Yes, I'm saying exactly that, but neither you, I, nor anyone at Apple knows for sure, because it's impossible to know for sure. Apple isn't omniscient, Apple isn't perfect, Apple isn't immune from making mistakes or misjudging customer preferences, and they aren't above placing short term profits over long term customer satisfaction (at least that last point you tacitly acknowledge).

No matter how well Apple is doing, they can always do better. If any of Steve Jobs' spirit lives on in "Apple's DNA", as Tim Cook claims, he'd admit that as well. Hopefully, it's only on MacOS Rumors forums that you'll find people who insist Apple can do no wrong, that they have perfect market insight, and that whatever they are offering is exactly what people want. Because if that kind of hubris is within Apple, five, ten, twenty years from now, they could be looking back, wondering where all their customers went.

History is full of companies who thought for sure their marketshare was impenetrable and that they had a unique understanding of customer's needs. IBM, Nokia, and Microsoft are recent examples.

Do I know for sure that there's a market for a modern iPhone SE? No, though I think there is. That's the key point: Where you assert that you, or Apple, knows for certain that there is no market, I've got the humility and honesty to say that knowing this for certain is impossible. If knowing exactly what customers want and are willing to pay for were possible, no business would fail. Heck, customers don't always know what they want themselves. Jobs famously knew this.

Apple's free to ignore the potential SE market. Maybe that's the right business decision, at least in the intermediate term. But for one last time, just because they've chosen to ignore the market, prudently or not, is not evidence that the market doesn't exist. And yes, you've stated exactly that.

Simple question. Why wouldn't Apple make the SE if people wanted it and/or wouldn't buy another iPhone?

The market might exist for a 3 inch phone with a plastic screen too, doesn't mean they should make it. It's all about making the right product and selling as many as you can at the highest price. The mix Apple has chosen most definitely has been based on enormous amounts of data, none of which we have.

You're acting like they sold 50M SEs and now shoot themselves in the foot by discontinuing it. They've determined those folks will buy higher priced iPhones or the older iPhone 7 or iPhone 8. I have full confidence in Apple's strategy decisions, which is where I think we disagree.

For all intents and purposes, Apple has been right on every single iPhone move, so they get the green light from me on anything they do until the facts change. You're all conjecture...I'm looking at a working strategy.

Remember when people said no one would buy a $1,000 iPhone and the X would flop? Remember when they said the notch was a dealbreaker? Yeah, all wrong. Now every new iPhone has a notch and the simple average of all models is over $1,000 (when you consider all sizes). It's $949 if you do a simple average of the 3 phones in their base configurations. Works. Confirmed by strategy.

Just wait until they do $100B in Q12019.
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ECG and EKG are the same thing. EKG comes from the German acronym for elektrokardiogramm. The English equivalent is electrocardiogram, or ECG.
[doublepost=1536858126][/doublepost]

Exactly; Apple (like every company) doesn't give customers everything they want (nor could they; where's my 64TB iPhone for $1?). Sometimes that's the right decision, sometimes it's not. We can't know a priori.

Maybe getting rid of the headphone jack really was a "courageous" move, like dropping the floppy drive, and SCSI and ADB ports on the original iMac was. I take issue with people like Baymowe335 who claim that they, or Apple, knows for 100% certain. Anyone who is honest about business, or heck just life, knows that every decision carries some risk. Sometimes those risks pay off, sometimes they don't.

That's another thing we disagree upon. Overall, the market didn't care about the headphone jack. Right again. Apple wants you to go wireless, so they made that a priority. Some people care about it, but the majority clearly don't. Apple makes decisions based on millions of confirmations, not a few detractors.

 

[the johnmc]

This is the saddest timeline.

While I like the updates from yesterday (and will be buying both the Watch and the XS), what I really really want is an upgraded Mac computer. Maybe I should have just bought the MacBook Pro this Summer. But I've always had a desktop at home until my 2011 iMac crashed this Spring.

Yesterday was about iPhones and watches. It wasn't a Mac event. This is the time of year that the iPhone event happens. Wait for a Mac event in about a month.

 

[PickUrPoison]

I did exactly this. I would happily pay a premium for a high-spec, small phone that comfortably fits in a pocket. Guess that makes me crazy these days....

It doesn’t make you crazy, it makes you part of the 5% who are using an SE. The only problem is 95% of users want bigger, more capable iPhones.

Sometimes Apple can figure out a way to make a business out of a 5% product but usually it’ll just be discontinued.

 

[Firebrand]

If there's another smart phone with similar dimensions and performance to the SE, i'm all ears.

“Sure, it’ll need adjusting” or: other phones (e.g. clamshell) do exist that let you make a call ;-)

 

[TallManNY]

Yesterday was about iPhones and watches. It wasn't a Mac event. This is the time of year that the iPhone event happens. Wait for a Mac event in about a month.

Don't they sometimes do more than this? I know there seemed like too much to do in one event, but I was hoping that they would squeeze in the Mini.
I wonder if Watch has become so big that this will always be iPhone and Watch only event? That makes some sense.
Though frankly I found much of the iPhone part not very impressive. And trust me, I never say that. I'm not one of those folks who think an S phone has to have some completely new item. But watching Bokah effect put on pictures and some folks playing an AR game that basically no one is ever going to play in real life was very repetitive to last year's event. The only part about the phone that caught my eye was Steve Nash and the basketball app. But I am definitely the target audience for that thing.

 

[Soi Dog]

They can screw up, but if the market wanted an updated SE, it would exist. Period, end of story.

That said, it STILL might come back at an "off peak" time in another event, but it will never be updated during the major iPhone event. It cannibalizes sales. This basic product mix is something companies can really nail down and Apple has proven they are masters at selling the right product at the right price. Who is better at it? No company is perfect, but Apple is probably the best consumer products company of all time and executes quarter after quarter after quarter. I think questioning their strategy that has worked better than any strategy in corporate history is just being a vocal minority. When the facts change, I'll question their strategy.

And yes, with my logic, the market isn't demanding updated computers as fast as you think is necessary. Laptops/desktops have a longer useful life (particularly Apple hardware) and they have updated the MacBook Pro line, substantially. Your keyboard gripe is the same tired one that is again a vocal minority. Where is your data on how many keyboards "don't work?"

[doublepost=1536866183][/doublepost]Relax Apple fanboy. They still haven’t upgraded the Mac Pro and the Mini.