Obsession with thinness: why is Apple so out of touch with its customers?

[jabingla2810]

Why can't they make the iPhone and iPad 1 mm thicker and put a bigger battery in there?

Good design doesn't stem from thoughts like this.

When designing the Mac Mini, Steve Jobs and Jony Ive looked at lots of different size cases.

The case size they settled on was only a couple of millimeters too small to fit in the a desktop size HDD (3.5"), which mean't they would have to use more expensive smaller HDD (2.5").

Did they change the design because of this? Make it an extra mm bigger?
Of course not.

The size they chose felt right and looked right.

 

[maflynn]

I wouldn't say they're out of touch, but I think the design decisions of making it thin is out of touch to most consumers. At this stage, they (consumers) don't a paper thin phone, but a phone with a good amount of features.

 

[mattbnr]

I went to the store and played around with the iPhone 6 and was disappointed. It felt light and cheap compared to my iPhone 4s. I thought I was gonna be all excited and instead found myself putting it down right away and leaving cause it just didn't seem like a quality product.

 

[Indecisi0n]

Apple knows we like our phones like we like our women, thin and bendable.

 

[Septembersrain]

I guess I'm not normal that I chose a 5c over a 5s simply because of the way it felt. These super thin, light phones kind of freak me out to be honest. I'm thinking they'll definitely bend, shatter, etc if any slight bit of accident occurs.

It's not like I think it's ugly, I guess I'm just worried about the practicality in an "Oops" prone world.

 

[stasha]

I want thinner iphone snd ipad its what i want, you OP you dont even have the iphone 6 ,you are note 3 user,so dont talk about what iphone user want
You never hold the 6 plus i got it on my hand no way it would bend on normal use

 

[threelions]

The thinness and lighter weight is all for the non techies, it's a fashion thing not a tech thing. Unfortunately most Apple customers are part of this crowd who are wowed by the look rather than the use of a device.

A slightly thicker device means better battery, a stronger chasis and going back to the two LED strips fixing screen uniformity. But then you don't have that wow factor for the casuals in keynotes "A SLIGHTLY THINNER LIGHTER IPAD WOWZERS!"

Apple used to be about high quality look with a high quality use, now it's just the Emperors new clothes.

 

[maflynn]

I want thinner iphone snd ipad its what i want, you OP you dont even have the iphone 6 ,you are note 3 user,so dont talk about what iphone user want
You never hold the 6 plus i got it on my hand no way it would bend on normal use

I don't, I think the millimeters they're shaving off, are only making the phone weaker without really adding any benefit to the form or function of the phone.

 

[Max(IT)]

Why is Apple so obsessed with making iPhones and iPad thinner at the expense of battery size/life? The incredible advances they make in power sipping processors every year is negated by the barely adequate battery size. Why can't they make the iPhone and iPad 1 mm thicker and put a bigger battery in there? I don't think anybody would complain. Most people use a case with the iPhone and iPad anyway, so the marginal return on thinness that a user gets is much less than the marginal return you get from improved battery life.

I hope Apple sees the light of the day sooner and gives what people really want on their smartphones and tablets - better battery life.

Who says they are out of touch?
Customers are voting with their wallet, and the thin iPhone 6 is selling like hot cakes, so what's your point?
I'm fine with their design, and I don't have anything to complain about iPad or iPhone battery life.

 

[BvizioN]

When they had the keynote for their new iMac and touted "thinner and lighter" I was legitimately in disbelief, and got quite a kick out of it. Seriously? A desktop? Must a desktop be thinner and lighter?

I don't know about lighter since I wouldn't care if it's sitting on my desk but thinner? Hell yes. All flat monitors (TV's as well) are getting thinner and thinner and in my eye they just look more beautiful compare to the thick ones. Same goes with portable devices, thinner they look much better in my eyes. And trust me, is not stopping here.

 

[princealyy]

How about this, what if Apple created a super thin iPhone and allowed customers to order a "high capacity" iPhone ... 2 ways to do this.

1. Offer a larger battery capacity model (this would be a lot of work to manage, so either limited colors and varieties of this type of phone) This would allow people who want a larger capacity, a larger capacity.

2. Allow customers to buy a higher capacity battery, customers can pay for an appt at the genius bar, where the frame of the phone is replaced with a larger battery capacity and slightly larger / thicker frame.

 

[Max(IT)]

I went to the store and played around with the iPhone 6 and was disappointed. It felt light and cheap compared to my iPhone 4s. I thought I was gonna be all excited and instead found myself putting it down right away and leaving cause it just didn't seem like a quality product.

That it feels light, being bigger, is a quality, not a flaw.
And I don't know how an iPhone 6 could feel cheaper than an iPhone 4....

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I don't, I think the millimeters they're shaving off, are only making the phone weaker without really adding any benefit to the form or function of the phone.

A reduced total volume is always a benefit for a portable device.

 

[itsmemuffins]

Why is Apple so obsessed with making iPhones and iPad thinner at the expense of battery size/life? The incredible advances they make in power sipping processors every year is negated by the barely adequate battery size. Why can't they make the iPhone and iPad 1 mm thicker and put a bigger battery in there? I don't think anybody would complain. Most people use a case with the iPhone and iPad anyway, so the marginal return on thinness that a user gets is much less than the marginal return you get from improved battery life.

I hope Apple sees the light of the day sooner and gives what people really want on their smartphones and tablets - better battery life.

You mean the 10's of Millions of customers that have bought the new iPhones and iPads?

We as customers (the vast majority anyway) want thin and light, and thin and light is what we get.

The thinner and lighter, the better.

 

[mantan]

Who says they are out of touch?
Customers are voting with their wallet, and the thin iPhone 6 is selling like hot cakes, so what's your point?
I'm fine with their design, and I don't have anything to complain about iPad or iPhone battery life.

Is there any correlation though? Would a slightly thicker iPhone sell more units? Would iPhone 6 fail to 'sell like hotcakes' if it wasn't thinner than the 5?

I honestly wonder how many people it really moves the needle for at all? Over the years you've heard a lot more people clamor for better battery life than a thinner phone. But the keynotes inevitably focus on 'how much thinner' it is rather than improved battery life. The iPhone 6+ is the first iPhone released where significant battery life was touted as an improvement.

 

[Wild-Bill]

No one asked Apple to make the iPad Air 2 thinner either.

But since they did, the entire casing and screen resonates when music is played. BADLY. So much so that I'd rather keep my iPad Air and all it's constantly reloading Safari tabs.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I very much agree with the OP. My recent gripe with Apple have been some of the decisions they've made. I work at a reseller and often I'm having to try and push people away from the 13" MacBook Pro because they're not aware of the fact that it's nearly 3-year-old tech that hasn't been updated. And if they bought it, I'd very soon be getting angry calls about how their Mac is slow due to paging/no SSD.

The trouble is that Apple profess -- and not just subtly, but 'in your face' -- about how they only make the best products that they would use, and that they're at the cutting edge of technology.

Then we've got 8GB phones getting sold that pretty much require wiping, just to do an operating system update. We've got ancient tech still selling at 2014 prices. We've got a Mac Mini that stayed in the same shell but now can't have a RAM upgrade or a quad-core option. We've got 'lower cost' products that aren't really lower cost, but just old/poor-performance tech. "We don't ship junk", I recall Jobs once saying. Well the fact that Apple pushing out products with worse hardware to get into a cheaper market is the complete opposite of that.

Apple fans can justify paying a little more for quality -- but by encouraging new people to buy with lowered prices (at the cost of worse hardware performance), they're not going to get the 'Mac experience' that people buy Apple products for. They're not going to get a great product; and let's not forget that the 'low cost' iMac still costs quite a bit. It's ripping off consumers that frankly don't know any better -- and again to quote Steve Jobs, he said that Apple make decisions for their consumers, because consumers trust the products that Apple build. I don't believe that's quite the same now.

Perhaps it's through rose-tinted glasses, but I remember an Apple where you could purchase any of their products with at least some certainty that it's not completely outdated. I'm sure some people will quote this and give me a thousand examples that prove me wrong ... but that's the Apple I remember. And even if it's not true, that's the Apple that they should be, if their words can be taken at face value.

 

[cynics]

Regardless of design with iOS 8.1 my iPhone 6 battery is disappointing at best for a new phone. My 4S (with a relatively new battery 2-3 month old) is just terrible.

I like the thinness but not at the compromise of functionality. I understand kids want sleek, stylish and trendy phones to show off but I use my phone for work and find myself tethered to a plug so much I might as well be using a landline.

 

[CEmajr]

Apple is out of touch with the Macrumors complaining crowd (the OP).

I haven't heard an average customer complain about their iPhone 6 being too thin.

 

[opfreak]

Who says they are out of touch?
Customers are voting with their wallet, and the thin iPhone 6 is selling like hot cakes, so what's your point?
I'm fine with their design, and I don't have anything to complain about iPad or iPhone battery life.

no one is buying the phone because its tinner.


They are buying the phone because the screen is no longer the size of a postage stamp.

But then again your hero Jobs claimed no one would ever want a large phone. So he must have really been out of touch.

 

[Nipommu]

i like thinness better than improvement of battery. As long as the battery stay at where its at now. For me, the battery lasts all day with the things i do. Only sometimes it gets down to the red zone. I intend to charge my phone every night even if the battery is at 60.

Some people don't get the thinness craze...I don't get the "make the phone thicker for better battery". Maybe i don't use my phone as much as some people on here but thinner it gets, feels better to hold, carry, look at, use, etc etc.

As long as the battery life stays where its at and phone gets thinner and thinner is fine by me.

 

[heisenberg123]

everytime I read one of these threads I wonder how the OP of them knows how much "more" usage of battery you get from 1mm of thickness

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i like thinness better than improvement of battery. As long as the battery stay at where its at now. For me, the battery lasts all day with the things i do. Only sometimes it gets down to the red zone. I intend to charge my phone every night even if the battery is at 60.

Some people don't get the thinness craze...I don't get the "make the phone thicker for better battery". Maybe i don't use my phone as much as some people on here but thinner it gets, feels better to hold, carry, look at, use, etc etc.

As long as the battery life stays where its at and phone gets thinner and thinner is fine by me.

agreed if you can got from wake up to sleepy time on 1 charge its more than fine, I dont care if ther is 5% left at bed time of 50%

 

[HEK]

Consider re-titling this thread. Not sure what world you live in, but selling 40 million phones in quarter and 10 million new iPhone 6 type first weekend can't be called "out of touch with customers"

 

[maflynn]

A reduced total volume is always a benefit for a portable device.

Until you get to the stage where it affects structural integrity, which I fear has occurred. There's a point of diminishing returns and I felt the iPhone 5 was too thin. Now with the IP6, and the bending issue, its my opinion that they've gone too far with their obsession with thinness.

Yes, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus are wildly popular, and people are clamoring for them, but I do believe its a design flaw to have so thin that the camera protrudes from the rear and you can bend the phone so easily.

Edit:
Don't get me wrong, I have an IP6+, its a fantastic phone, but its possible weakness is a concern.

 

[KentuckyHouse]

Disagree with the OP strongly. I want a very thin iPhone, iPad, Macbook Pro, and iMac.

But why? I've yet to see a single person that says this give a legitimate reason for constantly making them thinner.

It more so just sounds like toeing the Apple party line.

 

[Jimmy James]

The obsession predates their commercial success and is partly responsible for it.