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ENduro

macrumors regular
Sep 10, 2008
129
141
Detroit, MI
As someone who has sold iPhones for seven years now, if people would just offload some of the 10,000+ photos they have on their phones, the majority of folks could easily install the upgrades. Not to knock this feature, it's always good to have options, but I personally believe this was wanted mainly due to laziness on the end user's part.

Seriously, nine times out of ten when a customer comes in saying they can't download the update it's because of pictures they haven't offloaded or backed up, ever.

A better solution would be to make off loading them more intuitive for people who aren't tech savvy. I'm constantly helping family and people at work out with this seemingly simple stuff.
 
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urtules

macrumors 6502
Jul 30, 2010
319
348
I personally believe this was wanted mainly due to laziness on the end user's part.
No disrespect, but that's the difference between your company and Apple. Apple always makes extra effort for making consumers life easy.

Please do recommend to your customers enable iCloud Photo Library with option to save storage on. It will upload all photos to iCloud and will save storage space automatically.
 

mark-vdw

macrumors regular
Jan 20, 2013
143
185
you have to wonder... what is a greater threat to the bottom line?

the amount of resources and time needed to create this "feature"
OR
selling devices with an adequate amount of storage in 2015
I'll bite.

Resources and time needed for this feature: 2 programmers for a few months, 5 testers for a few weeks, a few dozen marketing type folks for localization and documentation purposes. Rough estimate: one-time cost of $ 200k, taking > 100% contingency I think you can safely say the cost is max $ 500k. In fact the biggest cost is probably the opportunity cost of these people NOT focusing on something else.

Selling 100 million iPhones per year with 2$ cheaper memory inside: recurring benefit of $ 200m. Now of course people won't pay the same price for a 32 GB iPhone then they do for a 64 GB iPhone so that doesn't quite hold true. But people are implicitly paying for usability, not for memory size by itself. If you combine a boatload of tricks like "App Thinning" and "On-Demand Resources" and this "Temporary Delete to free up Space" to squeeze 64 GB of usability out of 32 GB of hardware - you can sell a smaller phone for a higher price. So let's assume on the safe side they can get 10% of that benefit - that's still a 20m $ return on a 500k $ investment.

There's also the notion that this feature probably fits into the bigger picture of what they're trying to achieve with things like On Demand Resources, where the OS proactively manages the storage on the device to proactively delete app assets to make room for other assets. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of iOS proactively deleting the least used apps and then re-installing it as required will appear as an option in iOS 10 not just for iOS updates but for any app installations, and what they're doing here is basically testing the water to see how people respond to such a notion and start getting them used to it.

Note these ideas of local storage optimization keep applying on all future generations of these devices. Since memory and app sizes can be expected to scale up together this will perpetually remain a problem and this feature is a perpetual solution - replacing the 16GB model by 32GB is a one-time fix with no future benefit. Network speeds have historically been increasing faster then storage costs have been decreasing; extrapolating this 5-10 years it should be no surprise if the vast majority of your data is simply downloaded as required and local storage is only a cache. This probably seems a bit unnatural given today's network speeds but given technology trends it seems inevitable. This is probably the future that Apple is building for (as the prophet used to say: "skate where the puck is going, not to where it's been).
 

rorschach

macrumors 68020
Jul 27, 2003
2,272
1,856
A better solution would be to make off loading them more intuitive for people who aren't tech savvy. I'm constantly helping family and people at work out with this seemingly simple stuff.

1. Plug into computer.
2. Press import.

It would be pretty difficult to make the process simpler.

Many people, however, don't want to bother taking a few minutes to learn something.
 

greg8799

macrumors newbie
Nov 21, 2009
21
26
Manchester, UK
everything you said indicated you are exactly who i was replying to: young and too tech savvy for an iPhone base model.

everything in my comment you ignored: there are MILLIONS upon millions of people who aren't tech savvy and don't need the storage. for real, it may shock you, but there's a good portion of the population who buy an iPhone, find someone to set up their stock apps for them, download kindle and Facebook to keep up with their Soccermom/dad friends (or nothing at all since the app store is 'intimidating'), sync up to iCloud, and they're done worrying about/ tinkering with a phone for 4 years or more.

if you think it's all 'pricing' and no market research, you're kidding yourself.

Maybe you're right although my non tech savvy friends all moan at their iPhones being always full as well. They don't know how to use the iCloud and have to call me to ask how to move their photos from to their PC, and always ask what else can be done to empty some space... And they piss me off by constantly moaning how rubbish iPhones are...

There is no doubt Apple knows their stuff (market research wise), but I do wonder for how long will their current model last. People have been crying out for upgrading the capacity of the base model for years.
I might be wrong but their first 16gb base model was an iPhone 3GS which was in 2009. But that phone had only a 3 MP camera and VGA videos... new iPhones are 8MP and Full HD video but are still 16GB for base models. This means the phone is no longer fit for purpose. And why is Lightning sill at USB 2.0 and not 3.0?

That's really disappointing and I definitely won't be buying an iPhone 6 or 6s unless the 6s gets either of the above...
I bought my iPhone at the Apple store contract-free because I prefer to pay upfront, but I'm not paying almost £600 for a device which is seriously limited in terms of storage capacity.
 
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Bbqthis

macrumors 6502a
Apr 12, 2015
935
1,844
Bay Area, CA
On last week's episode of the Talk Show, John Gruber and Guy English both strongly implied that the flash supplier Apple uses does not produce a viable 32gb option. But hey that's just what they said.
 

RepentHarlequin

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2015
26
6
I assume they're only going to do this for Apps that either don't have any locally stored data... or apps that only store data in iCloud.

Seems like quite a tricky thing to get right... if it goes awry people could easily lose data.

Also: think about stuff like Spotify. It is the largest app I have on my phone (currently ~8GB). I have all of that music saved offline for listening on the subway. If Apple blows away Spotify and reinstalls it... I now have a chore ahead of me to re-download many hundreds of songs.

I don't see this being all that popular of an option...

How it works: No one seems to know - thus any guess is as good as another.
Sounds as though it reloads your temporarily deleted apps after installing the iOS update.

If the download is 1.3 GB, what amount of extra space qualifies for this "option?”

From where does it get the reloaded apps? Is there a match to your existing apps?
If you don’t have a working Apple ID, what happens?
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,390
19,458
On last week's episode of the Talk Show, John Gruber and Guy English both strongly implied that the flash supplier Apple uses does not produce a viable 32gb option. But hey that's just what they said.
Interesting how they have a viable 16 GB version and 64 GB version, but somehow not a 32 GB version.
 

Abazigal

Contributor
Jul 18, 2011
19,551
21,993
Singapore
Not really relevant to me since I am never going with less than a 64 GB iOS model.

Apple should drop the 16gb model and go with 64 and 128 variants only.
 
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Xenc

macrumors 65816
May 8, 2010
1,043
290
London, England
This also occurs when you restore an iPhone backup from iTunes, but have deleted the app files from your computer drive. Your previous data is restored as you reinstall apps from the App Store.
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,390
19,458
Wouldn't it be better and easier to lose the 16gb and go to 32gb instead. Fix the problem don't just use a bandaid.
That wouldn't fix the problem given that all kinds of people max out their storage no matter what the storage is.
 

mlody

macrumors 68000
Nov 11, 2012
1,592
1,220
Windy City
Wow, I am totally not impressed with this. If anything, this gives Apple a reason to justify 8GB iPhones down the road :(
 

dumastudetto

macrumors 603
Aug 28, 2013
5,016
7,135
Los Angeles, USA
This is a fantastic idea and really preserves the notion that making smaller capacity devices available at the most affordable prices is the right path forward. Well done Apple for finding an innovative solution to a problem that needed solving.
 

ardent73

macrumors regular
Jan 14, 2010
156
61
Quarterdeck called from the 1980's and said they want their kludge/kluge back...
 

pokerplayer73

macrumors 6502
Aug 18, 2011
259
59
Florida, USA
So, it seems like 16GB base storage option for near future. No hope for 32GB base option if they are trying out ways to optimize whatever little available space on the phone.
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
in reference to the "Auto degrading quality of Netflix video and users saying on here its just by-passing the problem of a congested connection", I'll say the same here too..

Apple's just using this auto-delete, to by-pass a problem of having not enough space of your device..

Apple tells you how much space it will take.... so why is there an issue? no point is taking the quick way out, when the proper way will be done right.

It looks like a good feature, but there if one issue that Apple has not addressed. Not only backing up the app, but in addition any login's associated with that app.

The idea that u loose login credentials when u restore an app would take more work on your part to re-enter then in...... I would think the same think will be done here too even on the device... and if so, then HA .....

I can't believe Apple in this day and age can't retain *everything* about the app... Voip settings, passwords etc... included from that app.

Make u wanna just cry...
 
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