This topic has many MANY threads already. Why does someone decide to make a "dick move" and create another one? And why is it so hard to actually enter a DESCRIPTIVE thread title?
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The 16gb Iphone 6s is a slap in the face to consumers
- Thread starter buster84
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He's referring to the intentional crippling of Apple's recent base models, as a method of advertising a lower starting price and upselling from there. HDD-only drives will noticeably slow down Macs, and IMO the absence of an SSD is simply unacceptable for a $1999 Retina iMac. The SSD or Fusion drive upgrade costs another $200 on top of that.
The original iPhone running iPhone OS 1 offered a max 16GB of storage in spring 2008. The original iPad shipped with 16GB of storage. The iPhone 6S ships with 16GB of storage too. If we look back to a MacRumors post from a year ago, the 16GB iPhone 6 was estimated to cost $200 in parts and the 128GB iPhone 6 was $247. So that's a difference of $47. If you click through to the linked RE/CODE story, they say Apple was paying about $0.42 per GB. So a 32GB module would cost them $6.72 more. However NAND prices have really dropped over the past year. For instance, you can pick up a Samsung 850 EVO SSD in 500GB capacity for only $150 now—which launched at $250 in December. In theory the 32GB size should cost pretty close a year later. But now Apple is making an extra $7 per device. Great for shareholders, poor for uninformed customers, many of whom run out of space within months.
As someone who is a shareholder and frequently helps people with their iOS devices that run out of space, I'm quite frustrated with the whole thing. On contract these people will use these devices until the end of 2017 on average. A customer buying a 6S next summer will have it until summer 2018! 16GB of storage isn't likely to cut it by then. Then you have people like my wife who keep a phone for at least three years. At least I can tell her which one to get. Although I've told my friends and family to get more storage but they just ignore me. I've heard "Well if Apple is selling it then it should be good enough for me. I'm not an extreme user!" Then, when their device gets full within 6-12 months months (or 3 months for my grandma), I have to spend a bunch of time showing them how to see how much space each app takes up, how to quickly remove them, how to move photos off onto a computer or if they don't have a computer, how to setup iCloud Drive and start paying for that. I know a lot of people who couldn't even upgrade to iOS 9, lol, despite it being much smaller in size than iOS 8! I've been working with several of them this week to clear space.
As someone who is a shareholder and frequently helps people with their iOS devices that run out of space, I'm quite frustrated with the whole thing. On contract these people will use these devices until the end of 2017 on average. A customer buying a 6S next summer will have it until summer 2018! 16GB of storage isn't likely to cut it by then. Then you have people like my wife who keep a phone for at least three years. At least I can tell her which one to get. Although I've told my friends and family to get more storage but they just ignore me. I've heard "Well if Apple is selling it then it should be good enough for me. I'm not an extreme user!" Then, when their device gets full within 6-12 months months (or 3 months for my grandma), I have to spend a bunch of time showing them how to see how much space each app takes up, how to quickly remove them, how to move photos off onto a computer or if they don't have a computer, how to setup iCloud Drive and start paying for that. I know a lot of people who couldn't even upgrade to iOS 9, lol, despite it being much smaller in size than iOS 8! I've been working with several of them this week to clear space.
There's ALWAYS an intentional crippling of the base model to advertise a lower price. That's what makes it a base model. Whether it's a car, a TV, a phone, or snow shovel. Then it's up to the individual consumer to decide what "upgrades" are important to them, at what cost.
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If apple did 32gb base then a lot less people would buy the 64. Therefore they'd lose $100 x the number of people buying the 32 over the 64. They like money.
Sure, but it depends how much the base model has been crippled. No one deserves 16 GB in a $750 smartphone, or an HDD-only drive in a $2K Retina iMac, at least not in 2015. 16 GB is very limiting for larger apps, photos, and 4K videos, and the HDD-only drive will make the base model Retina iMac feel a lot slower than the other models when running newer versions of OS X, perhaps even slower than a 5-year-old Mac with an SSD upgrade.
Sure, but then with that logic, why did Apple go from 4 GB base to 8 GB base, and then from 8 GB base to 16 GB base?
"at all costs" is at best a short term strategy. You'll not catch me ever buying a Sunbeam product again.
Plastic mixer gear boxes that bust the first time you try to use the darn thing. Reputation mining like can be very corrosive to brand perception, and Apple's success is very much about brand perception.
When the Apple car comes out I will be wondering if they shaved a few pennies off their cost by using less reliable brake pads etc.
Because they decided to. And last year they did again by going from 32 to 64 at the same price. In essence there was a price cut at 64 and 128.
You'd be suprised at how many people don't use that many apps, record much video, or take many pics. Typically it's older females. For instance, my mother in law and several older females (I'm talking mid 30's and up) just use the basic apps and Facebook. You'll see Instagram here and there, but their most used apps are Facebook and Safari. Not everyone needs more than 16GB. Apple is FORCING anyone to do anything. I'm pretty sure Apple has tons of data about their customers storage needs and thus continues to have 16GB models. If you need more space, then pay the extra $100 (which is a damn good deal) and ****.
If you need more space you would opt for the 32gb, which apple nicely bumped to the 64gb. I can't understand why anyone would complain.
Same thing just happened to my wife. She is not a "power user" in any way, shape or form... yet her 16GB phone is full after 2 years (standard AT&T contract). I really thought Apple would realize that 16GB isn't cutting anymore, the base phone sold today *should* be 32GB. Anything less is just too limiting for the customer to use the phone as intended (photos, videos, apps, music, etc). The irony for me was the first things I started deleting was MUSIC from iTunes. Of course Apple will point out that you can store everything "in the cloud" but then you are eating thru data at a high rate. This article pretty much sums it up: http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/25/should-apple-discontinue-the-16gb-iphone/
If you wanted the 16, obviously the 16 is good for you. If you wanted the 32, you got the 64. Win win.
Sure. That doesn't change that Apple changed things for everything before, but not this time, for fairly clear marketing purposes. As mentioned before, they could have easily kept the low end at 8 GB too with an approach like that, but they didn't, meaning that there is a time when it's time to move on. In this case it seems they are dragging out that time period to help boost the slightly pricier 64 (and 128) models. That's certainly within their prerogative of course, just as much as people seeing through that not not being all that happy about it as well.
So it's about price. They are getting more for more if they go 64. It's common sense.
It's about moving ahead with techonology as things progress. Like they do with RAM and delayed it somewhat this last round finally boosting it up even though it would have been better at last slightly earlier. Same in this case with it making sense to progress to the next level of storage across the board, as they have done a number of times before, but only did it for the higher end models--meaning they saw the need to progress but this time took a more marketing approach to it to try to make more money off of it. Again, certainly makes sense for them and their right to do it. Just as much as it is for customers to see what they did and feel one way or another about it.
Agree with you on ram, and I would add the iPhone 6s screen as terrible for a 650 phone. The storage is not a big deal to me, as like I pointed out consumers have options. I have no interest in 16gb but I know people who ordered 16gb 6s. They say they are fine with it.
The part that makes it better is that there are options. But if you think about RAM in the same type of context, you could see how it might rub people in a somewhat wrong way: if they released 6S and 6S with the same old 1 GB of RAM and then also with 2 GB of RAM but charged more for the versions with 2 GB of RAM--people would have an option, but it still wouldn't feel all that right that they would have new devices using more or less an outdated amount of RAM (perhaps even if many typical users would be fine with the crappier performance 1 GB of RAM provides, as many have been with 6 and 6 Plus in particular) essentially because more RAM was made available on a slightly more expensive version.
Well ram affects actual phone performance, storage is just the amount of stuff you can keep on it.