I have an SE, and I like it. The size is nice, I like that it lays flat, I like that it has a headphone jack. Newer models don't have compelling features my SE lacks, and take away things I like. I have no incentive to upgrade, and will likely explore other manufacturers when it eventually wears out.
I have an 11" Macbook Air, and I love it. The size and weight is nice, the keyboard is great, the touchpad is precise, I love that it has MagSafe, and I consider the ability to plug in DisplayPort monitors and my USB-A devices a must-have. Newer laptop models don't have compelling features my Air lacks, and take away things I like. I have no incentive to upgrade, and will definitely explore other manufacturers when it eventually wears out.
It's frustrating when a company makes products that suit your needs well, and then changes its mind. I just don't seem to be in Apple's target market anymore.
I'm in exactly the same situation. The SE's killer feature for me is that I can easily operate it with one hand. I commute on the NYC subway, and that means I have to be able to hold a handrail with one hand while using my phone with the other. I "downgraded" from an iPhone 6... because apps put controls everywhere on the screen, and I just couldn't hold the phone and operate it with the same hand. (The thing was also very slippery; it never slipped out of my hands and got smashed, but I always felt it was inevitable.)
I am also not planning on upgrading. The iPhone X family looks great. Amazing screen. I don't care about a home button or a headphone jack or whatever the improved battery life is. Until I can be guaranteed a seat on the subway, it's all a net negative because I can't actually interact with applications during my commute. (When I'm not commuting, I have a 32" monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse which is WAY BETTER than a 6" phone and my finger.)
(More honestly, I don't see $1000 in value-add over my current phone. I don't need the latest gadget to be happy... but if it makes me $1000 happier over its lifetime, sign me up.)
I feel like it's a cultural thing. "Designed by Apple in California" where you just drive to work so a bigger phone is only a benefit (larger battery, easier-to-read text when you're using the phone). But in NYC, small is a huge benefit, and it's a shame that the transit-deprived West Coast tech companies don't understand our use case here.
I feel like it's a cultural thing. "Designed by Apple in California" where you just drive to work so a bigger phone is only a benefit (larger battery, easier-to-read text when you're using the phone). But in NYC, small is a huge benefit, and it's a shame that the transit-deprived West Coast tech companies don't understand our use case here.
Ahh, you nailed it and I've bitten my metaphorical tongue to avoid saying loudly: the damned mobile phone ecosystem is designed and tested by people in giant suburban, car environments like California. Not subway takers. Not pedestrians. The giant two-handed phone design obviously is torture on a subway. With navigation buttons even Andre the Giant would have had trouble reaching.
You know what else, though, shows the bias? Apps that think they're always connected to data. Even Spotify, with its glorious offline ability to play music, hangs stupidly in its main home screens (the one that has the we-made-this-for-you playlists). Other video playing apps with no real caching or notification or awareness to the user when there's no data.
There are many examples of blind spinning waiting type hanging behavior, as if no one can fathom using a phone during a commute that isn't in a car (or a red yellow and green type of bus?)
Sorry but this does not sound very convincing. If the car culture in California is causing Apple to produce large phones, why didn’t Apple start doing it earlier? It’s not like the sprawling suburbia of California only came into existence in the last few years.
Samsung, on the other hand, has been producing huge phones that no one is going to be able to use with a single hand since a long time ago, and has no problem selling them in places like Hong Kong. It doesn’t seem to me that it is suburban culture that is inflating the size of phones.
(Don’t get me wrong. I like dense urban environments, public transport, ability to use apps without internet connection, and, at the same time, smaller phones.)
2) A battery life hack. (Number of pixels to illuminate goes up like the square, volume of the battery in the phone goes up like the cube... so larger phones will have better battery life. This was a huge, huge, huge concern on Android when the big Android devices started showing up. Remember the days when your Android phone couldn't even last 8 hours in your pocket at work? That is when the big Androids started showing up, and Apple introduced large phones after that.)
3) Most people don't use PCs anymore, so their phone is their only computing device.
These three concerns obviously weigh into the equation in addition to usability on public transit.
But really, New York is kind of unique in how over-capacity the transit system is. Tokyo is similar. Bought a Japanese phone recently?
I'm pretty sure that phablets are primarily due to demand, either by consumers or developers. Market research certainly indicates that users engage more with larger screen sizes
People buy them for sure, but I'm pretty sure that market research is not why they were invented. People were not carrying around Nexus 7s in their pockets, which are not much bigger than current phablets but predated the existence of them.
Yes, that's true, but at the same time, flip phones remain(ed) popular in Japan for years after smartphones took over the West due to their physical keypads and small size.
My experience was that flip phones remained popular in Japan for 2 reasons: corporations that didn't want to pay for data plans for their employees, and elderly people who were more comfortable with buttons. Never heard anyone here say they have one for the size (although they may very well exist)
Japanese is a lot less cumbersome to type on a numeric keypad than English. (The common input method was that every key had a consonant and the number of times you pressed the key was the vowel. Current touchscreen input methods are very similar, using the position for the consonant and a swipe direction (up/down/left/right/none) for the vowel. Wayyyy better than having 26+ touch targets on your tiny screen for English.)
Apple's market cap is over $1 trillion. They sold over 40M iPhones last quarter. They have way more data than either of us do, and the market has spoken: there is not enough demand for small phones to justify a separate SKU.
(Also, as a fellow strap-hanger for 6 years, I just shoved my phone in my pocket and listened to podcasts while riding. But I know everyone has a different use case!)
EDIT: Folks complain on one end about Apple’s lack of product focus and on the other end about cutting out SKUs that do not make sense at their enormous scale.
As much as you all love the SE, it went untouched for years at a time. I imagine there were no components that made sense for the smaller SKU as Apple transitioned to larger phones (and batteries, crucially). It is also a low-ASP phone to begin with, which makes less sense for a company who increasingly makes “luxury” tech products.
Obviously it is for Apple to decide who Apple's customers are. It is just really sad to have something that works so well for me that no longer exists.
I won't buy a large phone, which in 2011 meant I could buy the best phone on the market and in 2018 means I'm facing a future with some phone that just doesn't match a 2011 iPhone in looks, style and maybe even functionality and objective quality.
I'm sure they have great reasons, but it is very tempting to wave a fist in the sky and yell "why do they have to keep changing things?". The Apple ecosystem was great for me, and now I'm being forced out. It is like watching open source projects try to nuke themselves out of existence with the Big Trendy Rewrite; except Apple is wildly profitable and successful.
Apple would sell millions of the SE2 without cannibalising sales. Every other phone manufacturer would salivate at this opportunity, especially at 100%+ margins. "Not enough" smacks of a lackluster excuse of an adhd department head.
You have absolutely no idea if any of this is true and you risk nothing saying it. It sure sounds nice though.. :)
Making things at the scale that Apple makes them is hard. If the SE was a great business idea, Apple would keep doing it.
Maybe they will make another one in the Spring. It's not dead dead yet.
My understanding is that the SE is made out of leftovers—not in a micro sense of things literally left sitting on the factory floor, but rather in a macro sense: they're made from the tail ends of multi-year component supply contracts, where Apple is obligated to take receipt of components that no longer feed into any current product they're building. They're a "bone broth", a way to use up those tailings and make a profit (however slight) off of them.
This was also true, ten years ago, of the iPod Touch. It was the reason for the iPhone 5C. It's at least partially the reason for the iPhone XR today. It's also the reason Apple keeps selling the iPhone 7 and 8.
The problem (for consumers) is that, eventually, you run out of the tailings you were using to make one of these "byproducts", since you never signed on to produce more of them. (That being rather the point of the whole process, from Apple's perspective.)
Once the supply contract for iPhone 5S "chassis" components is run through, that'll likely be the end of that form-factor. No device Apple has produced since then has that form factor, so there are no hand-me-down components to repurpose into a new device of that form-factor.
They released the SE, originally, because there was enough demand for it. They said pretty much exactly that in the announcement of it. That demand clearly still exists.
Does that demand exist at a scale that makes sense for a $1T company with many rapidly-growing product lines and high product margin expectations, though?
they don't actually know the demand for all these new iphone Xx models. it's an educated guess. and... to some degree, a portion of the market will go wherever apple suggests they go anyway.
apple got caught 'behind' in the 'bigger phone size' competition, and it seems they'll keep going bigger.
you could keep the 'high margin' on an se-sized phone - people would buy it anyway, because they want that size.
> They have way more data than either of us do, and the market has spoken: there is not enough demand for small phones to justify a separate SKU.
Let's not pretend this is some natural result of "the market". The UX of most iOS apps, including Apple's, has been steadily getting bloated with bigger buttons, bigger labels, more padding in text fields, and reams of whitespace. This is personally annoying, but manageable on the bigger, newer phones. On iPhone SE it means that many apps can be maddening to use - with only a little bit of content visible on screen in some situations.
iOS 7 on the iPhone 5 form factor was great. iOS 12, not so much. Apple clearly sees no future for the smaller phones and their UI designers consider them an afterthought. It's little wonder that only diehards are willing to put up with this kind of UX compromise.
I moatly use mobile web, and maybe 2 screens of common apps. The SE works great for me. Every now and then something is a bit off, but I’ll just ditch the rare site/app that doesn’t work right. There’s plenty to do in this life.
I'm specifically thinking of the Music and Messages apps which show very little content while typing a search or message. It's hard to reply to a set of text messages when it feels like you're reading them through a keyhole and typing anything scrolls you back down to the bottom. Music is just as bad and shows ~1 result while the keyboard is up during search.
It think it means that some of Apple's wins came from building something no one knew they wanted. So no amount of market research would have led to it.
> I feel like it's a cultural thing. "Designed by Apple in California" where you just drive to work so a bigger phone is only a benefit
This born-and-raised Californian also rides the subway (bart) to work every day, and I'll have a hard time giving up my SE for similar reasons to you. Don't let assumptions about what California is like get in the way of a good argument.
I loved the SE, but last year in New York I suddenly knew the SE form factor was doomed. I forget the app I was using, but with the navigation buttons at the top and the options at the bottom, there was less than a 1 inch vertical bar with the content left. I want my cell phone in one hand and my coffee in the other.
Clearly app developers had already abandoned the size, but worse I realized how horrible all the apps had become. Apple iOS apps are now the same complicated disasters as every other platform. I was hanging in there with my Mac Book Pro 2011 hoping for a new machine that deserved to have Pro in the name and now I knew that soon there wouldn't even be an iPhone that I could use with one hand (comfortably - Yes I have heard all of the Apple apologists and Android phablet fanatics)
It is difficult to remember how lost we were, Microsoft Vista, Donut and BlackBerry. Steve changed the world one last time, but can't imagine Apple will again.
The iPhones sold off within a day and the Mac Book Pro 2011? To a musician with a rig that connects to Firewire.
Meh, I ride the BART every day in California, and before that I rode the tube every day in London. The bigger size is just something you get used to, it doesn't prevent one-handed operation, you just use Reachability or do a little hand shimmy.
I get the elegance argument about 4/5/SE design, but the screen size thing is just the market speaking. A lot of people use their phone as primary computing device and a bigger screen is nice when it's your only device.
Yeah, I can just about manage a 7 one-handed. But definitely couldn’t go bigger. Not a fan of the big phone thing at all. It’s not just a problem on the train, either; a one-handed phone is also useful while walking.
I had a 13 inch MacBook Pro 2016. Sold it. Went back to using my 2013 MacBook Pro. I have an iPhone 7 and I miss my headphone jack every day. The best phone I ever owned was the se.
Apple is happily going off in a nonsense direction where their products are less and less useful because they are less complete and therefore less “self reliant” as devices.
See that’s what people don’t articulate. It’s not that the design changes are bad. Some are great. It’s that the balance of great design and great utility is what made apple impossible to beat as a phone and a laptop, and then there was the fact that they were seamlessly integrated (something apple has still failed to fully exploit — their stuff could be mind blowing). This is what made the brand great, and I feel like people miss that part of the argument.
When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances. I didn’t need a dongle to present and I didn’t need a cable adapter to charge my phone. When I packed for a conference I would grab my laptop, a power supply (that I could trip over in hotel rooms while working with no worries and that neatly wrapped up), and an hdmi to dvi adapter in case the projector failed, but that was it. Now I feel like Apple has externalized all of that utility in an effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters, both for phones and laptops (and actually the 2013 Mac pro was the same problem).
Apple needs to understand what made them great was that they weren’t the ultimate steak knife, they were the ultimate survival knife, and get back to building the most useful, thought out and self-contained devices like they used to. They had a sweet spot, but we’re going back to the Apple cube across all product lines again, and nobody wants that.
The pro computer failure and the move away from nerd needs to slab of glass has lost balance and is heading into design over substance. The pendulum needs some rebalancing.
> When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances.
Except it didn't have VGA which is still popular in conference rooms to this day, so you needed an adapter for that. Some people probably needed an adapter for Ethernet as well.
Not to mention you needed a MagSafe 2 charger instead of a universal USB C charger.
> effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters
They did it on the MacBook because USB C is more convenient than having specific use ports. The same reason you're happy that the 2013 MacBook had two USB three ports instead of two PS/2 ports and a serial port.
As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
This mythical device does not exist. USB-C PD includes 5 different power profiles[1] and even if your adapter is big enough subtle compatibility problems still pop up - my colleague's laptop complains about his adapter every time you plug it in for some reason. The situation is better than when every PC product line had their own power connector, but if you were in the Mac ecosystem you already mostly had the same thing because every laptop just used the same of Magsafe connector.
USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
> As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
I've been using the top rated "budget" Bluetooth headphones from The Wirecutter for a year now (Jabra Move) and they blow. Like most bluetooth devices, the connection only works "most of the time", sometimes they connect but don't identify as headphones (?) and I have to power cycle them.
They also weigh noticeably more than my previous favourite, portable, wired headphones (Sennheiser PX 100-II) with worse sound quality to boot. I only noticed this when switching back to my wired headphones after I forgot the Bluetooth ones at work and realizing that the wired ones felt almost weightless by comparison. If this is the best that Bluetooth headphones in the ~$100 range have to offer, I don't want it.
Oh yeah, and I have to charge the fuckers every day because what I needed was another device that's useless unless I remember to plug it in constantly when I'm not using it.
> All you should need to know about a charger is the max wattage.
Right. It should be that easy, but in practice not everyone is going to implement the spec correctly. If you call Apple support when someone else's power adapter doesn't work I guarantee they will tell you that only official Apple power bricks are "supported".
At the moment, in practice, I've mostly seen USB-C chargers showing up with newer tablets, not laptops. So if you need to bum a charge from someone you're probably going to get a charger that's too small.
> This mythical device does not exist. USB-C PD includes 5 different power profiles[1]
It does exist. Yes, there are issues like the ones your colleague experience but most of the time you can charge your phone, MacBook, or Windows laptop with the same USB C charger.
> USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
You can buy an adapter for this if it's really something you're worried about [1].
It should also be pretty clear by now that Apple expects most of their users to not be using their MacBook while it's plugged in. The majority of MacBook owners will rarely need to thanks to the improvements in battery life over the past five years or so.
> What if I want to charge my phone and listen to music and own really nice headphones that don't need to be upgraded every year?
You can't. Again, most people never use this functionality. It is unfortunate for those that do but that's why the adapters exist. Much like the lightning to USB 3 adapter I have for my iPad. It would be convenient for me if I didn't need that adapter to plug a midi keyboard in, but the amount of people actually plugging midi keyboards in doesn't merit including a USB port on the iPad.
All of your complaints about bluetooth headphones are perfectly valid. Some people like them, some people don't. Lucky for you, a $9 dollar adapter for your wired headphones will solve all of your problems. Hardly even worth complaining about, especially if you were willing to spend ~$100 on a set of bluetooth headphones.
Well, I will just not buy devices with no analog audio out.
Saved those adapter, charger, hassles and all my existing gear works great!
Same for ports. I will not purchase one of these all in one port devices.
Charge and listen happens all the time in cars, BTW.
MIDI is not comparable to the charge and listen case.
Besides, a whole lot of people hate dongles. I am one of them.
And yes, I stepped right off the Apple train the moment I heard these things were coming. Did not look back.
I have things from the freaking 80's, like great headphones, that work just fine. Got other things to spend my money on, and chasing adapters down really is not one of them.
> You can't. Again, most people never use this functionality.
I don't think I'm THAT much of an exception. I sit at an open-ish desk all day and wear headphones to block out ambient noise. I also need to charge my phone at some point in the day if I want it to last through my commute in the evening. This means that I often need to charge while listening.
Given the popularity of open offices and limitations in phone battery life, I don't think this is so rare.
This. Just moved back from my 2014 rMBP Pro to a 2012 Thinkpad X220 for the trackpoint and keyboard. Shame about the display but eh there are external FHD displays when you really needs to. Retina screen and trackpoint is going to be amazing when I upgrade to a X1 sometimes I guess haha.
Do you have an IPS display for your X220? It doesn't increase the resolution, but it does make it much better. (The X220 is pretty easy to swap the screen on too.)
No I don't, but I am looking to swap the TN display with a FHD IPS screen, as mentioned in [0], but sadly there are very few aftermarket kits around these days last I've checked.
I have a couple of the FHD mods from here ( https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=122640 ), but they took quite a while to get to me, and by then my enthusiasm for experimental soldering had waned, but sometime I will try.
But even just swapping in an 1366x768 IPS panel for the TN panel of the same resolution makes a great difference. And those you can find fairly cheaply.
Well, the 2012 model was very nice. Also OSX of the era was bit better perceived than current ones, I think it was in some ways around the peak of OSX.
I think the point is more about people being so change-averse that it's basically impossible to take many of the "reviews" of new generations of Apple products seriously. Every time they roll out something new the universal consensus on sites like HN is that it's not just useless but actually has negative utility; it's the worst thing anyone has ever put on the market; if Apple ever does manage to sell any of this piece of crap they'll all be returned and exchanged for older models; Apple will be bankrupt within the year because they just don't understand how to make good things anymore!
And then a couple years later when the next next generation comes out, suddenly that worst-thing-ever-that-was-going-to-bankrupt-them turns out, actually to have been amazingly great and darn near perfect, so why did they go and mess it up!
Responding to you on a '15 MBP-- completely agree. Mine is still running like the wind, in great physical shape, and now sports a Big Lebowski sticker. What more could I want?
Fun comparison; for all their efforts to reduce the physical size of the device Apple has managed to shave whole 2.5 mm from the thickness. To get that, they have needed to drop ports, compromise keyboard, and reduce battery size about 15% (99.5 Wh -> 83.6 Wh).
I don't know what sort of bubble the product manager or whoever lives in that makes that a reasonable tradeoff. Sure, it might seem neat on paper that they have reduced the height 13% and total volume 18%, but in practice, well...
Compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 6th Gen they’re just one mm thinner, but much worse keyboard & ports config and 20% worse battery life. I guess it’s exactly one mm too thin. The Lenovo also weighs 1358-1126=242 grams less. And then there is also the silly TouchBar...
Indeed, I consider myself lucky that I happened to by a Macbook in 2015. Hopefully by the time I need to upgrade they'll have sorted things out again. Otherwise I may have to go for a windows pc next time.
2015 MBP 15" retina has the older, more reliable, keyboard, magsafe power, decent CPU and adequate GPU, HDMI, 2 mini-DP, regular USB 3 ports.
You could go older but there's no need unless you want a DVD drive. And you'd sacrifice CPU performance and maybe memory capacity.
Alas, it seems the Apple official Refurb store sold the last of their 2015 MBP models earlier this year. The earliest ones I see now (in US/UK/HK stores) are 2016 models.
You could swap out the DVD drives for a second hard drive. But that era MBP was a bit underpowered IMO. I had a great 2012 before the keyboard started failing. Now enjoy a 2015.
You are correct. But they're backward compatible with Mini DisplayPort. The only cables I've seen people plug in to them are minidp to {DVI, HDMI, DP}.
External hard drives are mostly USB3, and I don't know anyone with an external GPU.
The 2015 was the last of that body style, so it has the latest "guts" (CPU etc) with the previous keyboard and ports (USB-A, HDMI, Magsafe). Plus, with the non-mechanical touchpad, there's room for a slightly larger battery¹.
1: "The 2015 revision brought the modern Force Touch trackpad and used the space savings to increase the battery to 99.5 Wh, just under the 100 Wh carry-on limit for most commercial airlines" from Marco Arment, https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
have you ever repeated that line in an Apple store or any other tech shop?
it turns into the twilight zone with the rebuttals they come up with. mostly it is related to the sells and extrapolating that to consumer satisfaction.
Agree - I'm still using my 13" Mid 2009 Macbook - it has everything on it that I need, I got offered a latest Macbook from work, had to turn it down. That weird bar at the top, a keyboard that just feels horrible to type on, and a shiny screen that is just not for me.
Of course this is a matter of taste, but I seriously don't get the hate for the new keyboard. It took me two days to get used to it. The one thing I concede is, that it is loud.
The 2018 keyboard is much less clacky than the 2016 one but the travel is the same. I’m glad most of my typing is on an external keyboard anyway.
I don’t have a problem with Esc being on the Touch Bar because it’s the leftmost target and nothing is that close to it. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was a regular vi user.
I liked it well enough until keycaps started sticking to my fingers and falling out while I was typing. I think the overheating weakens the tiny and fragile plastic hooks. Also, some keys get stuck or repeat letters but I got used to it.
If it is a 200€ laptop, I might be okay with this. But paying 2800€ (15" model, least expensive configuration) and then not being able to work because the keyboard falls apart … unforgivable. Let’s hope Apple introduces a more reliable Pro laptop next year. Until then I have to plug along on my 2014 model.
Assuming you were offered a MacBook (as in, non pro), you made a great choice. The dongle life is grim and even with the right ones (good luck there) you get stuck. Yuck.
> I just don't seem to be in Apple's target market anymore.
I say this more and more each day. I'm in the same boat with the SE, and it's also the same with the MacBook Pros for me. I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro last October, the one from 2015, the last one with a great keyboard.
It seems that April 2016 was the peak of where Apple and I aligned.
This topic coming up feels like such incredible validation for me. I’ve held this opinion for a while. I went back to the 5s(e) after a jaunt with a 6s and it really is a superior phone for me.
I would gladly pay £1000 for this phone to be a first class citizen again, it feels like apps aren’t optimised or suitably spaced for the small phone. But I _love_ the size, the design. The touchID- everything is where it feels like it should be. Ugh.
FWIW. I even jumped to android to get my tiny-phone fix. But Samsung crapware pushes me back.
Just get any small Android device which is supported by AOSP and derived distributions, install one of those (Lineage comes to mind, AOSP Extended, MoKee, etc) and you're set - no 'crapware', no data harvesting if you don't feel like being harvested. No need to pay ₤1000 when you can get what you want for around ₤150 I'd say?
I've been using the Sony XZ compact, headset jack, waterproof, USB C, figureprint scanner. XZ2 has no headset jack, but at least USB-C for a standard wired headset.
I have been a big Xperia fan for awhile now but I can't really reconcile paying that much for the XZ2 or XZ2 Compact when the XA2 (which I ended up with) is small-enough--as small as the Compact, but manageable, and I don't have large hands--and costs half the money or less.
The design language for the XZ2, particularly the weird back, is unappealing to me too, and the button configuration hearkens back to the Z3 (still, IMO, their most satisfying design).
If only Sony had not followed the fad of putting a glass back on the Z3/Z3C... I've replace the back on my wife's Z3C two times now and lo and behold, it is cracked again. The back glass is more vulnerable than the front glass which makes it all the more annoying that it is there in the first place as it serves no purpose other than to look shiny.
There's a lot of hate in this thread for some of Apple's design choices. I do understand it. I just want to share my counter-viewpoints - these are my personal preferences obviously.
1) I moved to all bluetooth back in 2012. Headphones and wires have always been a nuisance for me. I'm not sure why Apple removed the headphone jack - but I never felt the need for it. I don't even carry the dongle anymore.
2) I loved the HTC One's display. I don't like screens that are too big and hard to handle but the iPhones were always too small for me - too hard to read anything. I switched to iPhones only after the 6 - and yes, that's because finally it had a screen size that I liked.
3) I did love Magsafe - no doubt about it. But I'm ready to let it go as well. I can now go to pretty much any desk at my office and plugin a Dell usb-c dock - that's shared with PCs and start working. At my permanent desk, I have just one dongle/adapter to which everything is hooked into - it's actually simpler than my previous setup where I had a 4-port USB Dongle + Display port Cable + Power adapter to plugin/disconnect. Now it's just one cable to plugin to my computer. And yes I have tried some docks as well - it was still at least two.
MagSafe is such an awesome feature. The newer MacBooks have usb-c but the cables don’t fit right. So you may think the laptop is charging, but it’s not. So annoying going to meetings and seeing the battery dead.
New Apple very much seems to optimize for their profit margins and gimmicky features at cost of usability.
I think Steve Jobs may forever be remembered as the CEO who legit gave a shit about usability.
Guaranteed someone/a few people at Apple are reading this thread and sending an email to their boss to do some more mkt research into demand for an SE refresh.
As another poster downstream pointed out, they could be saving the release of the new SE for another announcement in 6 months to avoid cannibalizing their new flagship phones
As a low risk way to assess the real impact. It was low margin as others have pointed out. To remove it will have minor revenue impact, and by doing it at same time as launching new phones they are testing to see if this is the time that will force/cajole/motivate the 5/SE users to finally 'let go' (of the form factor or their money) and go up to the XR.
The announcement is basically telling those users (and there are millions of them!) that it is time for a change.
The decision is good business sense. And given they often announce products in Q2 as well they will have data of demand for new phones, and also how many have exited the Apple ecosystem due to price, and then in March they should be able to decide whether or not in best interests to release an SE2 or bring back the SE1.
As to margin above it should also be pointed out that the components in the SE are now aged. To do the same again, and take latest components and stuff into a smaller form factor will take a major engineering effort as new components and usage is for a larger cavity inside. To take all those and stuff them into a smaller space is actually like inventing a whole new phone - one literally has to rethink the physics of everything. Big investment.
Also if they continue to sell the SE it means they and suppliers must continue to produce the components and parts. And for much of this that means factories worldwide, including here in mainland China where i live, need to keep running nearly obsolete processes, equipment, and that wont be viewed well by their investors unless it is a cash-cow.
This is done for business reasons. When a company gets bigger than most global trading blocs the decisions they make have enormous global trade implications from the mine to mainstreet.
App developers already started abandoning the platform over a year ago. Sure the app would work, but usability keeps getting worse. 80% of people use their phone as their primary computing device. Within the 20% are niche markets and some are not price conscious at all. Eventually someone will figure that out.
I feel _exactly_ the same. And I know many, many other people who feel the same thing too. Apple will eventually run into a wall, like it did before in the 90's. They don't have a clear vision or connection to the actual user. They just milk the cow that Steve Jobs left them.
I have a 128gb SE that I love. I guess I will be keeping it for much longer than I anticipated, or until Apple again produces a smaller form factor phone.
For me it’s not an issue of being able to use it with one hand. It’s an issue of having a phone that itself is just small. It fits easily in my pocket where I barely notice it. I don’t want a phone that feels like an iPad in my pocket. I don’t want something that feels way better than my wallet in the keys+phone+wallet combo that I always have with me when out in public.
It is light to carry around and I can throw a case on it and it still a reasonable size.
Absent the introduction of another smaller model, I guess I will be forced to upgrade to a larger phone in the future if I want to stay with iOS (which I do) but I will be doing so with no enthusiasm.
Phones are at the saturation point that laptops have been for a while. A 2015 phone and laptop work great for everything I do. Google Maps, Podcasts, email, texting and calling and web browsing are not gonna suddenly need a new generation CPU to work supremely smoothly. I honestly don't understand why people keep buying new phones every year unless they play a ton of high end games.
Hah, as if.
I had to upgrade from an iPhone 3G to a 4S and now an SE, and it wasn't because the phone was damaged. The software gets slower every year. Things that used to work fine will one day get "updated" (which btw is irreversible) and overnight will become slower and jankier, forcing you to eventually give in and buy a new model just so you can get back the same performance you used to have before.
From what I have seen, something about the phone necessitates a decision for replacement of one or more problematic parts (usually screen or battery) or upgrade to a next generation and most people I know seem to choose the latter.
I would gladly pay markedly more for an updated SE with newer internals, perhaps an uprated camera etc in the same case (that can't be improved) and keep the headphone jack. Especially as small phone choices have dwindled to zero.
Surely not having to redesign case, mechanical switches etc should give scope for more margin, not less?
Yeah, I think they'll keep pushing until they reach max profit. If they go to high in price and profit falls, they have enough cash to ride a year, then they'll release a lower price version and spin it to be something about cost savings in production. Never, we got too expensive and had to back down.
I recently bought iPhone 8 256GB. I paid a lot for it. I would buy iPhone SE, but it's hardware is too old, its fingerprint reader is old and it lacks force-touch. If there was iPhone 8 mini or something with identical hardware, I would buy it for the same price.
I never had first-hand experience with force-touch before, so I thought it would be an useful feature. I'm using it mostly for moving cursor and occasionally to preview web pages by force-touching the link. Also you can force-touch notification and e.g. type answer immediately, I don't actively chat, but I imagine that there are people who will find it useful. Anyway now I don't think that it's a very useful feature, but it's nice to have it.
> I have an SE, and I like it. The size is nice, I like that it lays flat, I like that it has a headphone jack. Newer models don't have compelling features my SE lacks, and take away things I like. I have no incentive to upgrade, and will likely explore other manufacturers when it eventually wears out.
This is what the author of the article should have written. Instead he's filled his piece with inane bollocks.
"It honed that design to a cutting edge and then, when everyone expected the company to leap forward, it tiptoed instead, perhaps afraid to spook the golden goose."
It's really difficult to look at the iPhone X and not see a company leaping forward. Look at the critical reception and customer satisfaction. This is a phone which was widely considered to be a huge leap, and which Apple explicitly acknowledged at the unveiling.
> It was the best object Apple ever designed, filled with the best tech it had ever developed. It was the best phone it ever made.
At the time, arguably. There's little disagreement that the processor, camera, screen, GPU, and security in iPhone X is better.
> To me the SE was Apple allowing itself one last victory lap on the back of a design it would never surpass.
> Newer laptop models don't have compelling features my Air lacks
Honestly, after you try a retina MacBook display - you can't possibly think that it's not a compelling feature worth upgrade. My old macbook air's screen looks like complete garbage now after I use new macbook pro's daily.
> Newer models don't have compelling features my SE lacks
While I do like SE design too - the camera on that thing is just horrible by today's standarts
You mean, the iPhone 6S camera is horrible as well? Because the SE and the 6S share the same sensor...
Sure, it doesn't have the AI-powered features of newer camera software and it also isn't a dual camera system, but I reckon it's still good. I prefer the Pixel 2 for photos to any iPhone anyway (still waiting for the new iPhone Xr/Xs features, fake bokeh effect et all, it may lives up to the Pixel's standards).
> I consider the ability to plug in DisplayPort monitors [...] a must-have
Out of curiousity, is there any advantage of DP compared to HDMI? I've never had anything that would use it, and HDMI makes more sense as a standard-to-upgrade-to, coming from DVI monitors. Quick googling suggests HDMI has twice the data bandwidth as well.
(not that Macs offer much in the way of HDMI ports anyway...)
My 13" i7 MacBook air is still my daily driver. I wish I could upgrade the RAM to 16gb, other than that it's plugged into an external monitor mostly and gets the job done, while adding very little weight to my backpack.
That's showing an 8, the entire SE is ~1/10" bigger than the 8 screen alone. That's a decent chunk smaller with then bezel, and considerably smaller than the X.
> I just don't seem to be in Apple's target market anymore.
I'm not sure why it's so hard for people to understand that Apple's market is people who want to be cool.
They don't sell hardware devices, they sell coolness.
These people don't care at all about how the phone/laptop is. It doesn't matter that you only have USB-A adapters or mini-jack headphones, if Apple says that the new cool is USB-C and AirPods, you are going to buy that and then snicker at people using the "old stuff".
It's like in the joke: the only thing worse than not having an iPhone is having last year's one.
I used Windows laptops from various OEMs up until I switched to a Macbook in 2011.
The quality of the software (all the UX/UI beauty and reliability of Snow Leopard, iTunes used to be good) and hardware (touchpad was revolutionary, backlit keys, great keyboard layout for toggling sounds/brightness, built-in HD camera) was YEARS ahead of the competition, which is just now starting to catch up.
If you look at the market now, all the laptops look like knock-offs of Macbook design, and the software is evolving to be that way as well.
Apple was ahead of its time for usability and a frustration-free experience, but it's a stretch to say any of their new products are cool. Apple Watch/Airpods/iPhone 10X SE are not cool...they just signal that you have a lot of disposable income
Now that I am stuck with Windows again, at least Lenovo still knows how to make a great keyboard, and I will note that the trackpad is fantastic (Still second to Mac so far though)
In my opinion, Thinkpads have always held the #1 spot in the keyboard category, over Apple and others. Apple does have arguably the best trackpad, but the Trackpoint wins out for me. I wouldn't want a laptop without one.
I'm always surprised by this. I remember trying to use iTunes back when I had an iPod Video and it was a piece of garbage. I guess it's different in osx?
I find iTunes to be fairly close to garbage on OS X as well. Maybe if I used it more, I’d learn it, but at this point, I mostly just use it to backup and restore iDevices. Anything past that, and it’s even money whether I’ll need to google to figure out how to get what I want onto or off the phone using iTunes.
I also agree that OS X 10.6 was the pinnacle of consumer operating systems. Nowadays I use a Surface Book. Microsoft finally knocked off the Macbook successfully and stuck in a tablet with a pen and access to the full desktop OS. Windows 10 is not bad once you disable every form of notification.
Here's the history of Cadillac tail fins of the 1950s and 1960s.[1][2] Each year, the tailfins were re-designed to make the previous year look un-cool. Apple follows that approach. The new models are not better, just different.
(The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado [3] was "peak tailfin". The tailfins almost reached the height of the windshield. We'll have to see how far Apple pushes their "notch".)
He'd have a point if they weren't making the best hardware, highest performing chips, the most ethical company regarding privacy and security, or the best operating system (that's the one mark on my list that I'll admit is subjective).
Unless your definition of "being cool" is wanting the best, I'll take that.
"Absurd" numbers? Total Mac laptop sales are tiny compared to PC laptops bought in mass numbers and used basically to run Chrome and Excel.
You're also of course distorting the average sale price of Apple laptops, which is way under $2000.
Apple sells user privacy and products that work better and last twice as long as the competition. Everything else is secondary.
As an aside, you don't seem to have mastery of when the Jony Ive era began, at least not if you are referencing a post about the iPhone SE being the best.
> Apple sells ... products that work better and last twice as long as the competition.
not a chance. my original black macbook had the dvd drive replaced like 4 times before they replaced the whole computer, because it never worked in the first one. my 2011 macbook pro was never able to use bluetooth audio due to known and common bluetooth audio buffering problems, it struggled to age, even after upgrading to 16GB of ram where mac os x seemed to just say "thanks, i'll take all of that now", and eventually petered out as the trackpad diminished and the wireless card stopped working, rendering it useless as a laptop. my 3 year old ipad air has been having random reboot issues and recently just stopped turning on. apple will "repair" it for $300, which is around 50% of the original price. my brother, who buys nearly every iPhone and iPad version, has the same problem with his iPad air, and his iPhone 7s plus completely stopped working literally one day after the 1 year warranty ended. apple would do nothing. i don't own a single apple product that still works, and i take good care of my stuff. meanwhile, my lg phone and surface pro, which take way more abuse in that they actually leave the house, still work. i have never owned an apple product that just works, and i don't know anyone who has.
That's kind of reductionistic. Most liquor, cars, technology and clothes are sold as coolness. I agree Apple leans into it heavily, but so do Samsung and Google (although less effectively). I don't think coolness is all of it.
I've talked with a lot of people about why they stick with Apple. Why the pay so much and then pay even more money for accessories. No one really has a compelling answer they just shrug and say "it's what I've been using" or "I'm bought in."
I think people are aware of the ways their being nickeled-and-dimed, I just don't think people care enough to switch. And I kind of don't blame them.
Switching ecosystems is a lot of work. If your whole music library and playlist collection is on Apple music, exporting it to Spotify is time consuming and confusing, you may not even know you can do it with a tool. You'd also have to learn a new OS, re-buy any apps you've previously purchased. It's a pretty big hurdle to switch.
No one really has a compelling answer they just shrug and say "it's what I've been using" or "I'm bought in."
I made the jump from MBP to Surface and I’m very happy with that choice. Great screen and keyboard, thin and light enough for anyone reasonable, swapped VirtualBox for WSL and that’s great too. Still waiting to see any of these ads people claim W10 is infested with too.
The smartphone industry's decision making in the last few years has been... bizarre. I've been an Android user up to this point because I appreciated the vast feature set, open architecture and diversity of hardware that I could find. That initially meant settling for a lot of the quirks and general cheapness of early Android phones - Apple had them all so thoroughly beat on polish. With the advent of really good high-end phones from Samsung and others, and the great advancements in Android's software, it seemed to me that we were getting to the point that there was no particular reason why anyone should prefer an Apple smartphone over any of the other high-end options.
The phablet craze and the ridiculous explosion in screen size should have tipped me off that something was very wrong with the industry. It didn't make sense to me that literally no-one would offer a phone that was small enough for one-handed use. And then they started eliminating the headphone jacks. And then... the notch. Multi-billion dollar development teams started chasing each other down degenerate design paths. The modern smartphone is this weird art project that's uncomfortable to interact with, and doesn't have a lot of basic features I use. Swappable battery? Expansion slot for microsd? Rare, and getting rarer.
Worse, Google seems to have totally abandoned the initial premise behind Android, and every handset manufacturer has erected a walled garden filled with bloatware and with no expectation of any future support. If I'm going to live in a walled garden, I would rather live in a nice one.
I won't put the iPhone SE on a pedestal. It's older hardware, and you're definitely sacrificing some battery life and camera quality (two of the few positives of these modern phablets). But I can reach across the whole screen with my thumb, and I can listen with any set of headphones I want, and it's really very pleasant to use - after only half a day of use, it has just seamlessly disappeared into my life. Exactly as it should.
The SE was what drove me to buying an Apple smartphone and I'd very much like to stay with iOS, which clicked in a way for me that Android never did. I will not buy a phone ever again bigger than the SE. It really is the perfect size, and it even looks and feels very good, too.
It's the first smartphone I've ever used that I actually enjoyed.
(Even though it is rather inconvenient and cumbersome to move data from or to the device.)
> The smartphone industry's decision making in the last few years has been... bizarre.
Is it really that hard to believe that most people like phones with larger screens and there's little reason to include a third way to output audio from your phone (in addition to Bluetooth and lightning)?
I'll kind of give you the notch, but I honestly like the look of the iPhone X quite a lot.
Why not go with the Xperia XZ1 Compact then? Because of this? ->
> Worse, Google seems to have totally abandoned the initial premise behind Android, and every handset manufacturer has erected a walled garden filled with bloatware and with no expectation of any future support. If I'm going to live in a walled garden, I would rather live in a nice one.
I'm asking because I'm torn between Xperia XZ1 Compact and the iPhone SE...
> I'm asking because I'm torn between Xperia XZ1 Compact and the iPhone SE...
As someone who's in the likely unique position of carrying an iPhone SE and an XZ1 Compact in their pocket every day (and a Pixel), I'd recommend the iPhone SE:
- The iPhone SE is 20% lighter, which you notice over an extended time of using both phones.
- The camera on the XZ1C is frankly abysmal. The iPhone SE has a far better camera.
- I think the iPhone SE runs iOS better than the XZ1C runs Android.
However:
- I think the XZ1C has better battery life.
- The XZ1C has a MicroSD slot.
- You can install open source ROMs and MicroG if you want to own your device.
I have the Xperia XZ1 Compact and it's a good piece of hardware. Sony's put a bit of bloatware on it, but also Stamina Mode which I think is worth it vs Google's stock. Signal strength and speed have been good for me. I reboot it every few weeks.
But, using an OS made by an ads company is starting to get a bit creepy, so maybe it's time to switch.
I used an Xperia Z3 Compact for a while before I bought an iPhone SE and loved it. Sony's walled-garden for Android was pretty nice, I'll probably be back as long as they continue making compact phones once my SE gets too slow/old/breaks/whatever. The SE was my first iPhone, and unfortunately seems like it might be my last.
I also had a Z3 Compact before switching back to an SE. There was some stupid crap, off the top of my head I believe the camera's image processing was DRM locked and didn't work in any 3rd part camera apps. Low light noise reduction was the most obvious symptom.
This might have been fine if Sony's camera app wasn't a trainwreck compared to the 3rd party developers'. It also meant that image quality in other apps like Snapchat suffered. I was never 100% clear on whether the better camera algorithms were available to 3rd party devs if they bothered to implement them as a Sony specific feature, or if they were entirely locked to Sony's own camera app. In either case, 3rd party camera apps were bad.
Similarly, if you unlocked your bootloader you'd lose those image processing DRM keys and the camera turns into hot garbage.
> Sony has updated the text of the bootloader unlock warning on its website to be clear about the camera impact. It reads, "...the removal of DRM security keys may affect advanced camera functionality. For example, noise reduction algorithms might be removed, and performance when taking photos in low-light conditions might be affected."
I don't know whether they're still doing this nonsense or not. Other than that it was a decent phone. They didn't mess with the OS too much. I don't hate Android as an OS, but it seems like whichever OEM you pick you're just deciding which particular flavor of bullshit you want.
> The smartphone industry's decision making in the last few years has been... bizarre.
By selling what the market wants? From sales figures it is quite clear what people want and it's probably because the phone is most people's primary computer outside of work. That's not the case for a typical HN user, but big screens make a lot more sense when you don't come home to a computer.
That’s the problem with monopolies. They’re the company offering iOS devices. So if they suddenly make only big phones then there won’t be any demand for small iOS devices because none are for sale (new old stock doesn’t count). It automatically makes the big phone choice a winner simply by incumbency. As a result, Apple cannot know the size of the small iOS device market.
The 6s and SE were their last remaining headphone jack phones. Maybe they’re trying to force the wireless headphones change as well as pave a way for new models. The SE actually sold more this year. But adding it’s 8% made it a clear 33% model replacement.
I bought a used SE to upgrade from my 5C. I'll never buy a bigger phone than this. We've had smart phones for 8 years now. I've figured out my use cases. They don't really need the latest and greatest. Podcasts, Maps, email, Safari. None of these really need a 12-core CPU to work flawlessly.
- Costs $650 less
- Does everything I need it to
- Does it one-handed
I'm sure the new camera and OLED screen and everything are very nice but I just don't care enough to spend 3x as much money on fancy phone with a huge screen when I'm already trying to stare at my phone less, not more.
Maybe the goal is to make phones so uncomfortable to use that you won't want to take them out of your pocket.
And they were talking about wanting to make devices last longer to use less materials and reduce waste! The solution to that is apparently:
- Use more materials to make larger phones
- Make the phone more difficult to grip securely
- Wrap glass around the edges so it can always land on glass no matter how you drop it
- Move control center so far away that you have to let go of the phone to reach it
Take off the band and use it as a phone? We could all put them on chains again instead and walk around like 19thC gents with their chained pocket watches?
It really is that simple. Phone makers are ignoring the basics. The ~60mm width of the original iPhone was not an arbitrary design decision - it's how wide it needs to be to get your thumb across the screen without having to shift your grip.
i can get my thumb across a pixel 2 xl just fine. however, i cant get even 50% up it on the left side and 90% up it on the right side. i can reach the top of a 5/se no problem. height is the problem, not just width.
The width is almost exactly the width of a pack of cigarettes. If those marketing folks know anything it’s what to make something feel good in your hand.
1) Because the iPhone SE was a new phone with flagship quality 6S guts, and I'm commenting on the apparent direction of Apple's new phone development.
2) The iPhone SE was price dropped to $350, so with the 7's new price drop it's $100 more expensive, not $50.
3) Everything I said about the XS applies to the 7 too, if not as strongly. It’s been a continuing trend.
4) I’m looking from the perspective of an existing SE customer, many of which will be looking to replace their phones this year or next. No current SE users are interested in replacing a 2.5 year old SE with a 2 year old 7 for $450.
Agree, though everybody with an SE had better put a case on it as they become increasingly irreplacable :(
This is why my iPad Pro has a hard case instead of just a smart cover. The whole reason I got the damn thing is that you can write on it with a stylus, but somebody at Apple decided "Let's make this not lay flat on a table because people are buying a tablet to use it as a camera."
The only thing I've ever taken a picture of with it is probably a whiteboard.
With "Continuity Camera" or whatever it's called (1-click to take a photo with your camera and automatically import it into a program on your Mac), this becomes even stupider. Take the camera bump off and do that with phone to iPad. Everyone has a good camera on their phone already.
> why my iPad Pro has a hard case instead of just a smart cover. The whole reason I got the damn thing is that you can write on it with a stylus, but somebody at Apple decided "Let's make this not lay flat on a table because people are buying a tablet to use it as a camera."
A more likely reason is that it‘s easier to pick it up from a table if it isn‘t flat.
The sides of the iPad are tapered, you can grab under the edge even if it’s flat. If you needed it to not sit flat my case would have made it harder to pick up.
I bought an iPhone SE when it came out. It's the perfect phone in my opinion. I am fully prepared to use it until it falls apart and it's so well built I think it may take a while.
Nothing they released after it makes sense to me. Too big and they deleted features I want while adding nothing useful to me. I wasn't expecting an SE2 so I wasn't disappointed when it failed to appear.
This iPhone and my MacBook Pro 2015 are the last Apple products I'll expect I'll ever own. Not out of spite but because they no longer make things I need, or even want.
See, I'm the opposite, but I know exactly where you're coming from. I stayed away from the iPhone until they started increasing the screen size, because the original was waay too small for my tastes. But when it came time to get a work phone, I purposefully chose the 5S and then later the SE because I was already carrying a huge phone. I didn't need to carry two.
I still feel the SE is a bit too small to be my main phone, but I do wish they kept making a phone that small. I know my sister prefers it, I prefer it for my second phone, a lot of people liked it.
Plus the 5S/SE industrial design is 10x better than any phone that came before or after. It's just beautiful, it's easy to hold, it's durable. It's just a great small phone, even if I think it's too small for my tastes.
I started with the iPhone 4 then moved to Android for a bit with a Galaxy S3. I thought the S3 was perfect until I went back to a iPhone 5S. When the TouchID gave out, I went with the SE.
Much like you, I believe that the SE is absolute perfection.
Even with my large hands, I don't personally have a need for anything larger. The only benefit, for me, is that I could have a larger playing field for Galaxies [1] -- but that's about it.
Combine the form factor with the fact that 11.3.1 is an excellent version of IOS that is also jailbroken, and I've pretty much covered the bases for my needs and desires.
With the SE and talk of the SE2 (RIP), I was really hoping that smaller phones would catch on.
Macbook-wise, I'm on a late 2013 15", and I love it. I'm quite protective about both of these devices, as there doesn't seem to be anything comparable coming down the pipeline.
> This iPhone and my MacBook Pro 2015 are the last Apple products I'll expect I'll ever own. Not out of spite but because they no longer make things I need, or even want.
I'm on this boat too. SE and 2013 MBA user here. I like Apple much more than any of the competitors but their recent products are far away from my needs. I don't know what my "upgrade" path will be.
> Nothing they released after it makes sense to me. Too big…
The iPhone XS itself is 13mm wider than the S.
As someone who uses an iPhone 7 Plus with one hand, I'm surprised that 13mm would make a difference. I'd be curious to hear what you thought after using one for a week.
It's the screen size that matters. I can reach the top corners of a iPhone5-sized phone with ease. iPhone6-sized phones require me to strain or give up and use the reachability feature. I don't think I'm alone in this.
Goodbye SE, you will be missed. You had every feature a person could need. Your tiny screen kept the addictive app mania at bay. You fit in every pocket. You survived a drop a week for 2 years. You could not survive apple's quest for more profit margin.
Bear in mind the iPhone SE was not announced/released alongside the flagship iPhones in a September event, but in more low-key fashion 6 months later. There's still a chance something might come to fill the gap. They wouldn't want it to distract or cannibalise sales of their flagship models.
I believe the solution to the SE is the XR model. Apple thinks it's the phone for the "Every Man" except the every man doesn't have a 6 figure tech salary and thinks it's about $250 too greedy.
Having lived all my life through a period where it was safe to assume that eletronic devices would only get better, it hasn't been easy to adapt to this new trend.
We'll make it thinner, regardless of optical limitations, just leave a camera bump. We want edge to edge display, but need a camera on the front and can't quite put it under it yet: behold the notch. We will assume Gordon Gekko was ahead of its time and simply have everyone use preposterously large phones.
The iPhone XS has a total 6.3" diagonal, with 5.8" display. The SE has a total 5.4" diagonal. If you gave it an edge-to-edge display, you could get a 5" diagonal screen on it, which is bigger than the iPhone 7 screen size (4.7" display, total diagonal is 6.05").
So a maxed out screen size on an SE body would give you a better screen than the 7, but in a smaller phone. How is this not an obvious direction? Lag the other hardware by 1-2 years to keep costs down a bit and avoid directly competing against the XS. I'd still buy it.
With the Touch ID that isn’t really a button but is, and the headphone jack. With current generation internals I’d pay more for that than the current phones.
Sadly most of us would not be able to reach the top of the screen one-handed on a phone that size. Even on an iPhone 4 form factor it’d be a stretch for those of us without enormous hands.
Macbook Pro Mid 2012 / iPhone SE user here (just bought a 2nd 128gb SE last month)
Apple has lost my business for upgrades with their new product direction in both laptops and phones
But we are not their target market anymore - it's the people/enterprises that can splash out $1-2k every year for the latest pic taking and video watching tech
And there are enough people out there to keep the company's revenues booming and the market happy
Would love to see someone focus on our slice of the market again, I just don't know if it can be done in a profitable way at this point
Honestly, in some ways I liked the iPhone 4/4s even better. It had the best hand feel of all of Apple's phones. But, when I upgraded to a 5, I did appreciate more screen.
I have an SE now, and I am totally dejected about these big phones. I don't live on my phone (like the rest of the world seems to). I want something that fits unobtrusively in my pocket and that can be easily manipulated with one hand.
Agreed about the 4s.
I expected having the same form factors with less borders for a bigger screen. There was quite a potential in that (edge to edge screen might been exciting the coolness chasers as well). Shame did not happen.
The problem with smartphones today is that it hurts to hold them in the hand. The SE is the best phone Apple ever made, but man do I wish Apple brought back the rounded-back form factor of the 3G/3GS.
Someone mentioned this in another thread, but I think there's a huge market for an iPhone "Nano," something between an XS and Apple Watch in size, but that has 85% of the functionality of the XS. No gimmicks, no bullshit, just a beautifully made "utility" device.
There's just no room in Apples lineup for loved products with small sales numbers. Case in point: the 17" Macbook Pro. I have large hands, large fingers, and enjoy having a massive display on my laptop, and it was perfect for me. I would love nothing more than for Apple to make a true desktop replacement laptop. However it seems their only interest anymore is in appeasing the mass market of ultra slim portable devices which most people want. You simply cannot buy a Macbook quality 17" laptop in 2018 and that's insane. I really think there's a market opening here for someone to fill that niche.
Keyboard is the same but you have a lot more space to stretch out and rest your palms for larger hands. I’m cramped in 15” and 13” is totally unusable.
Every film director in the world groaned in unison when they heard the 17" was discontinued. I wish the newest version didn't have such awfully outdated specs, I'd love a 17" MacBook Pro again.
> Flat, symmetrical design? Check. Actual edges to hold onto? Check.
Every iPhone made by Apple after this, in my view, is a “wet soap”. They’re all so slippery and bound to fall from one’s hands easily. I personally cannot hold them without a case that mimics flat and better edges, essentially changing the shape of the phone to that of an iPhone SE and also increasing the weight. What a lost opportunity to make a great device again in every respect, Apple!
From a consumer’s standpoint, Apple seems so shortsighted and completely out of touch with what people love (not jut like), want and desire. Mac mini, now iPhone SE...voting with your wallets alone won’t help while ASPs of new iPhones are more and profits are increasing. Write to Tim Cook over email and let him know why you’re switching. Maybe, just maybe, when the good times start to turn bad, Apple may realize its follies and change course.
These kind of articles also help, but consumers need to voice their thoughts to Apple. Send emails to the top people and also write on Apple’s feedback page.
My wife is really annoyed at the death of the SE. It's the biggest phone she can hold and use in a single hand while holding stuff in the other, dealing with kids, etc. As the screen is getting water damaged and it's generally becoming flaky with age, she might have to jump ship to Android but she really doesn't want to.
It sounds like there aren't any small Android phones either, at least not high quality ones.
I sympathize: I actually prefer the original 3.5" screen iPhone. Even the 4" screen seemed a bit too tall for comfort. I finally decided if I was going to need two hands periodically anyway, I might as well bite the bullet and go with a large phone.
She had a Sony Xperia briefly between the iPhone 5 and the SE which was pretty small. The current smallest Xperias (XA1 and XZ2 Compact) are now rocking 5" screens though, so only half an inch smaller than the X/XS.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact was a great phone. But unfortunately it had a design flaw that meant the screen would become unglued and it's very hard to repair. I "upgraded" to the X Compact but it's complete garbage in comparison. So many things wrong with it. I really don't want a big phone, though.
There are still a few third parties selling them, and (non-factory) refurbs all over the place. Might want to grab one up now while there’s still stock.
I, for one, can never purchase a device that has to take a photo every time I lift it. That’s literally illegal where I’d use it 95% of the time. I also can’t be the only person who doesn’t get much utility out of the selfie cam.
But I definitely like having a phone that fits comfortably in my pocket with my wallet - and that I can use one handed.
Couldn’t they ditch the notch by having the speaker on the edge of the device? I have no problem hearing the speaker with my phone pulled away from my ear.
>I, for one, can never purchase a device that has to take a photo every time I lift it.
iPhone X series is great fit for you then since it doesn't do that. Face ID uses an infrared dot projector and independent viewer to do a 3D read and then that goes directly to the independent security processor which acts as a black box (all cryptographically tied together, just like Touch ID). There is no photo of your face being taken let alone going anywhere. You can quite literally and trivially (as in I just did it right now) completely cover the front facing camera on an iPhone X and it will unlock with Face ID just fine.
If you're just worried about the mere existence of a front facing camera period then you should physically block it or drill it and inject it with black epoxy or something of that order.
>Couldn’t they ditch the notch by having the speaker on the edge of the device?
The notch is pure function defining form where the function is Face ID and a front facing camera. Face ID is a very valuable and important security feature, even if they ever figure out how to get Touch ID to work again through a screen. And a huge proportion of the market wants a front facing camera (as long as it's sufficiently secured, which Apple does a decent job of in iOS). Maybe they'll figure out how to profitably mass produce those features through a screen too someday but I don't see the notch going away in the mean time. Speaker function is by far the least important role there.
> But I'm sure they'll re-introduce a revolutionary new fingerprint scanner soon enough.
I doubt it. Having to use TouchId or enter my code on my non-X devices feels archaic now. FaceId works so well on my X, I often forge the device locks at all. I'm ready to buy a new iPad when it finally gets added.
That has already been done by Synaptics and is used in the Xiaomi Mi 8 [1]. Seeing that Xiaomi copied most of the design from the iPhone X - notch and all, unfortunately - I guess Apple should get a pass when they copy the under-screen finger print sensor from Xiaomi.
That's what I was referring to. It'd be a great feature. Apple would just nail the design and execution, give it a trademark name, and go to town with it.
Not so sure, Apple have made it clear they’re done with Touch ID, they’ve made enough points that Face ID is way more secure. They would look a bit stupid if they went back on it now and re-introduced touch
Just don't set it up. You can select the option to skip/setup later and just never do it. Of course you are then limited to using a PIN as there is no other biometric option on the X/Xs sadly.
>Couldn’t they ditch the notch by having the speaker on the edge of the device? I have no problem hearing the speaker with my phone pulled away from my ear.
That triggered my PTSD from watching the Nokia N-Gage ads. That was cringey.
The N-Gage was my first 'smart' phone. Back then, just like now, I did not use phones so much to call people so the 'taco to your ear' pose did not bother me. I'm no gamer either, I just got the N-Gage because it was the cheapest freely programmable phone at the time. It also had good sound and doubled as a media player. In reality it was quite a usable device, all that was really missing was WiFi.
Definitely sucky, I was waiting for and would have upgraded to an SE2 in a heartbeat. It's the perfect size and I really don't understand why folks no longer want phones that can be used in one hand or fits into a pocket.
I don't think it's a case of "folks no longer want phones that can be used in one hand or fits into a pocket"
I think it's more a case of the companies saying "what you want is a bigger, shiny screen so you can use it like a computer, nobody has small phones anymore, don't be left out"
They have gone from a useful accessory, to a status/fashion symbol where bigger and faster is always better*
* For a given value of better
(Obviously some people actually do want bigger screens because they need it for things, but I would say they are in the minority)
I'm not convinced that it's the minority that want it though. It probably _is_ the minority that _need_ it.
But if I look around, I see a bunch of crappy big screens around, because "bigger is better" right? And sometimes, those bigger screens really are crappy. Some of them are decent quality, but they tend to also cost a packet, just like the iPhone, but not as crazy expensive as an iPhone. Still there are a lot of big crappy screens to be found around.
It's not people who changed their mind, it's Apple.
Most people never wanted small smartphones. It's particularly true in Asian countries. When I first came to Korea in 2010, some people jumped on the Galaxy Tab, because it was the first Android device that was big enough (and believe me, it was terrible tablet in many ways, and even worse a phone).
Apple probably doesn't want to bother selling niche products in highly saturated markets anymore, especially given that the SE was also a lower margin model. For one American/European consumer that is unhappy, they'll probably sell ten iPhone Xr's somewhere else.
I love the SE because of the form factor. Would have bought the next one.
But I have to imagine a lot of SE buyers were doing so based on price rather than because it has an awesome form factor. Apple is now serving the cheap side of the market with the 7, which will probably make the cheap buyers a lot happier than the SE.
I had a 6S work phone for half a year, then decided to try an SE for a few weeks (and send it back if I liked the 6S better). So I had both at the same time. SE won hands down.
You would probably be wrong. I had a 5S before and got the SE.
Really like the form factor and to me this is peak Iphone. Everything after this is a downhill ride for me.
What I like about the SE is the small form factor, supported by a vendor who I know will keep providing OS / Security updates. All the status and 2FA applications I need running on a supported platform.
I've used every iPhone since the 5, including the SE, and I think the X is the best phone they've ever made, so much that I don't plan on upgrading until next year's refresh.
The only reason I'm not buying a second one right now to keep as a backup is that the SE's small screen eventually will not be worth supporting by my favorite apps. My guess is by this time next year, I'll need a new phone just to be able to use them.
I find it hard to believe us small phone people will be taken care of by Apple ever again.
I love my SE. I'll probably get an over-sized Android in the future just for web browsing and watching movies, but I'll keep my SE until it breaks for everything else where some measure of security is important (auth keys, emails, communication, etc.), and I'll probably replace it with another SE when it does.
Yeah. I like my SE and I'll keep it as long as I can (which will probably be for another year before I start running out of storage) but if I were in the market for a new iPhone today I'd go with the 8. It's not that much larger than the SE, it's certainly a lot cheaper than anything in the X series and it has wireless charging, not to mention a home button. Now that Apple has eliminated the SE the 8 is the best phone they're making.
The problem with Apple is that their iOS products older than 2-3 years are becoming quickly unusable.
I have some old iPads and I cannot install anything necessary like Firefox because their iOS is too old and there is no update available (happens with iPad mini).
Or battery life deteriorates much quicker than in a typical Android phone (happens with iPhone 6).
Or because next software update had made device totally unusable (that happened to iPad 1 which become literally unusable due to apps/browser crashes).
While everyone is moaning the demise of the SE do note that iOS12 supports the SE and the 5S. My guess is Apple is doing this to hold onto the small form factor customers long enough to make the final decision on small form factor product.
I am a happy owner of an SE and I am afraid of the moment it breaks down. Can anyone recommend an alternative compact phone with similar build quality and the same features in terms of software and hardware?
I'm still using an iPhone 4S 64GB with a Third Rail removable battery case. Blog posts like this make it clear that there's a market for small-screen phones, even though none of the usual companies are building them. I think it's time to give up hope for Apple, and build a new ecosystem.
Old iPods are very hackable [1]. There are suppliers making replacement backplates, click wheels, extended capacity batteries, and SD card adaptors. There's plenty of room for a Raspberry Pi Zero in the back, although I use a PQI Air Card. It can't run touchscreen apps though, which rules out maps/cameras/typing/many other apps.
Is there a touchscreen that can fit inside 103.5 x 61.8 mm? That's the part I would need to build my own iPod successor.
My kids have SEs, and I have an X. I appreciate the X oh so much in comparison. I absolutely love swiping up instead of clicking a home button. I delight in FaceID which works flawlessly even as I’ve lost 20 pounds and the shape of my face has changed fairly significantly over the last year.
Most of all, I can actually type on the X, whereas when I go back to the kids’ SEs I can’t figure out how I ever got anything done on that thing at all.
Headphone jack? Where we’re going, we don’t need jacks.
The one and only downside of the X is that it must, must be in a case. I never put my iPhones in cases and never managed to crack one. The X with its all glass back, super slim profile, and curved edges is just too damn slippery.
The bonus of putting the $1,000+ device in a case is that the camera bump disappears and the thickness ends up just about right for me.
Wireless charging has been great, especially once I got one that held the phone raised up instead of flat (easier to position on just one axis) and rated for 10W.
The size of the X I feel is so much better than the SE and still perfectly usable one handed.
I really really don’t miss the home button. I find it so damn clunky on the SE now after getting to live without it on the X, and particularly double clicking home (versus the swipe up and to the right on the X) is just tedious.
I assume the extra waterproofing you get without the home button has literally saved my device several times by now.
I had an iPhone 4. And 5. And 5s. It’s a beautiful device. But it’s by no means an insurmountable pinnacle of design.
I honestly haven’t look that closely at the new lineup, but I’m just not currently in the market for an upgrade. The X covers every use case and leaves me wanting nothing. The home buttons on all my iPhones always wore out, got sticky, or eventually unresponsive after a few years. I’m somewhat curious what will ultimately take down my X, if I don’t drop it hard, I can’t see what about it could possibly wear out.
Last year my iPhone 5 died while on a flight, so I stopped in duty free to buy a new one. I was about to pickup an iphone X when I realized that I couldn't stand it up on it's end and take videos, which I do on a daily basis when practicing my instrument. There was an iphone SE 128GB sitting next to the iphone X for less than 1/2 the price ... I expect to use this phone for another 3 years until they've slowed iOS down enough to make it unusable.
Unexpectedly, the killer feature for me ended up being, "Can I record myself drumming without needing some stupid attachment?"
I just preorded a new iPhone XS to replace my pixel, but I think I have to agree.
The iPhone 5s was the first iPhone I ever bought and the experience was simply magical. The phone itself was so beautiful, and the operating system just gave it this unbeatable cohesion.
I hope the iPhone XS can replicate at least some of that feeling, and I'm willing to let it. But I'm also skeptical of that.
I guess Apple strategy for this is: if you need secondary device for situations where it is uncomfortable to use your primary big screen iPhone - buy Apple Watch cellular, if you just want cheap entry to iOS - there is older gen phones (iPhone 7 for this year). Probably those who just want a small primary phone is a niche (and not very profitable) market.
As a developer the SE is a pain because the screen is so much smaller (especially horizontally) than every other model. Things that fit on other iPhones are big issues on the SE.
This will make life easier in the long run. And I’m guessing this is true for Apple too.
But I get why people loved them. I like the 6 screen size and don’t want to go back, but the SE feels ‘right’ somehow.
"Apple removing the iPhone SE from sale does not mean you can stop designing for its resolution soon.
Non-Plus iPhones can be used in zoomed mode, which means they’ll have the same logical resolution as an SE."
Fwiw as a developer, being able to debug shaders, tinker with ARKit and have some sort of middle-ground baseline specs as my primary/everyday device is a huge win for me personally.
When „designing“ views I tend to face challenges from the other end of the spectrum: „what am I going to put here so there‘s not too much empty/negative space on the larger screens without making the layout look empty or clunky?“
Every part of this is wrong. But the "notch trend" bit is hilarious. The idea that the notch is a "trend" Apple started on purpose, rather than a design element that was necessitated by making a full-screen phone that still needs to have 9 sensors and devices pointing forwards is laughable enough, but the idea that Apple would refuse to implement another design because of the "notch trend" is full-on goofy. Apple doesn't think or work that way.
If you increased the effective resolution the touch targets would get very hard to use.
I don’t think the notch is a factor in this.
Apple knows how many they sell. I’m guessing their sales metrics show it’s just a tiny tiny portion of sales. The fact it’s no longer similar to other phones they’re still selling means the economy of scale isn’t there anymore.
I love the SE, but this is my biggest gripe - apps don't consistently work well on them, which IMO is one of the features of the Apple ecosystem (compared to Android, which is a shitshow of different device sizes/landscapes).
It's funny how a few years ago iOS developers griped about things when the iphone 6 plus suddenly came out. Of course back then, autolayout was still only 1-2 years old.
Agreed. Having to support both the iPhone SE and the iPhone X aspect ratio is really difficult since they are on opposite extremes. I'm quite pleased with the removal of this size configuration - hopefully in about 2 years we won't need to keep supporting it.
The little cross in the corner of tech crunch articles is very annoying, especially since it redirects you to some clunky, slow loading news aggregation page. Also the page redirects you as you scroll past the end of the article. If you scroll down, then back up, the article is no longer there! Absolutely bizarre and aggravating UI/UX...
The SE or it’s equivalent will be back. It’s going to be smaller than the XS, with an edge to edge display, no home button, and no headphone jack. I think it’ll be in the next 6 months, but if not, within 12 for sure. It just makes sense. The only reason we didn’t get one this week is to keep the “new” lineup simple.
I don’t know about best, but I do love the form factor and wish they had refreshed it. I’ll end up getting an Xs but I’ll miss having a phone comfortably in my pocket.
I guess the emerging market play didn’t work out? Or perhaps the Chinese market got to where large portions could afford the oversized screens sooner than expected?
I hope they make another. I'm on the 8. The X's screen is too large for me to use comfortably.
I would happily buy an SE2 and use that. Wouldn't mind a higher price either if it had specs to match the larger ones. I just want to be able to use a phone one handed and not be too distracted by it.
Damn. The SE is my fave too. BUT, I only owned a 4s prior. So my experience is rather limited. My GF has a 5c, and the SE is lighter than a 5c.
The 6 and later versions were too big, for bigger screen needs I have an iPad mini. Which also seems on a glide path to obsolescence.
If we were limited to one Apple mobile device per person by decree, then maybe the bigger iPhone would make sense.
Understanding that Apple wants to avoid hyper-customization a la IBM PS/2 AND wants to maintain an air of avant-garde, some decent products have to be sacrificed.
A poster made a comment about working with the SE's limitations when designing apps for the SE. Some apps (such as Amazon) looked very crowded on my SE. Another (Manhattan Metal Prices) looks great
Maybe the SE died because it forced unwanted simplicity on app devs.
I just think they are planning to launch a Xr Mini next year.
With the iPhone SE body size they could fit it with 4.7" Display.
If they had kept the iPhone SE in the lineup, and introduce Xr next year, the reaction from people will likely be Apple bump the price of small iPhone from $349 to $599 / $649 ( Assuming $100 to $150 cheaper than Xr )
Now that iPhone SE is gone. They can make a new iPhone entry next year. Instead of replacing something with a more expensive model, they are giving you something new. It makes you value it differently. I think that is how it is going to work out next year.
iPhone 8 > iPhone Xr > iPhone Xs. Each with two different Display size.
So I have had pretty much every iPhone. I did like the 5's size. I had a 6 and 6P and skipped the 7. The P was to big. I have an X now and did not thing I would like it (carrier was willing to give $300 trade in on the 6P for an X). I LOVE it. The face unlock rocks. It is a bit bigger then I want but I can ride the train (others comments here) and use it with one hand. Just need to hold it a bit more towards the middle of the hand. The OLED screen is amazing and the camera is pretty good. That being said if they made a smaller X I would get it. I have also switched to CarPlay for pretty much everything while driving.
I got sick of switching SIM cards when I traveled.
Anyway, grew to really love it.
The size is perfect. It's flat and perfect without a case.
Biggest feature: It has Apple Pay, a home button, and a thumb reader... I feel like such a putz trying to use Apple Pay on the X... like, "Hey hold on, Mr. Merchant, I have to take my sunglasses off and smile at my phone for it to authorize my credit card..."
I hate that we have lost the thumb reader. Facial recognition isn't better, doesn't feel more polished, and we just threw out something damn near perfect for something that's meh at best.
This is a well written article, but I can't help but wonder.. was TechCrunch inspired by my response yesterday to their XR article? The thought makes me chuckle.
"The people’s iPhone is still the SE.. made for human-sized hands, includes TouchID, headphone jack, is reasonably priced, and is the lightest phone they’ve ever shipped..."
I feel this way about the Nexus 6p, another beautiful phone that will never be back. These phones had a kind of identity that modern ones don't. Nowadays they're all the same.
I got a Nokia 6.1 (new model) and it's absurdly good for the money and I truly love the design.
The black and copper looks premium against my GF's iPhone 8, It's easy to hold, it's milled out of aluminium and strongly built, it's smooth, fast (Android One is great).
And it cost a fifth of what an iPhoneX costs here.
I even liked their cheeky piss take of the Johnny Ive videos.
Seconded - we bought a Nokia 7+ for work for Android 9 beta testing (cheapest phone that gets beta updates). Nice hardware and everyone in the office likes how it looks - I'm using it as my everyday phone.
iPhone SE topic: are there any manufacturers that take older iPhone model guts and repackage them with different bodies and screens?
I would love to use an iPhone (Google doesn't do privacy) but I can't justify spending 2 to 3 times the price on something I regularly break or lose... (I generally avoid fragile expensive utility items).
Personally I love big screen phones - I don’t talk much on them but do use he web a lot so it makes sense.
My mum thought only talks on her phone and she really likes something small and simple. We got her an SE to avoid going the Android route... if her SE needs replacing and we can’t find an apple replacement then it will have to be the Android route.
The irony is that when the Android phablets came out, Jony Ive got on camera and said unequivocally: “we tested it and the iPhone 5 form factor is the right size for single handed use.”
I wish he would just explain his thinking on this. It’s such a fundamental design decision.
Killing their own good ideas is what Apple does best.
Magsafe. Firewire. Cheese grater Mac Pro. Appletalk. Rosetta. Pre-2015 MBP. Original iMovie and iWork apps. The list goes on.
I'm pretty sure they didn't remove firewire from the MacBook line until the Retina came out, which had USB 3 and Thunderbolt. Both of which are faster than Firewire.
R is the new SE.
The profitability was too low on SE or was not shouting enough ´luxury´ so they retired it for a more expensive yet still value targeted new model.
My 6s might as well be dead, with each os update it runs slower and slower... now just scrolling the screen lags to a level that makes it mostly unusable... thanks Apple.
1. Battery was replaced 3 months ago
2. I run it in "low power mode" already, otherwise it's a brick.
3. Battery Health (Beta) reports:
- Maximum Capacity 100%
- Peak Performance Capability
Your battery is currently supporting normal peak performance
I can touch the screen and it acts as though nothing is happening...swipes, taps, etc... then seconds later it will run through all the things I've been trying to do all at once... pretty much unusable at this point.
This is the downside to phones that get frequent updates. My iPhone 5 got a ridiculous number of updates (2-3 major versions) over it's life but got worse with each one.
I have a Samsung S tablet that got one major update (installed literally the day I bought it) but is exactly as same in terms of performance and utility as the day I got it. It's still perfect. Probably has some terrible security flaws, though.
The iPhone X fits perfect in my hand. I upgrade from iPhone 6 and didn't notice any difference in size. Actually use it first.
When I have to use a button to open a phone now it feels like using a fax machine. It's so incredibly sluggish, slow and clunky.
And, when I look at an iPhone with huge borders on the edge (iPhone X goes right to the edge) it gives me claustrophobic anxiety because it's so small.
People are so afraid of change. Aside from the price, there's really no reason not to upgrade.
Seriously I love the SE too. And I was coming from large screen Android world to it as my first iOS device. Maybe they'll revive it by the time mine is ready to die...
I have an 11" Macbook Air, and I love it. The size and weight is nice, the keyboard is great, the touchpad is precise, I love that it has MagSafe, and I consider the ability to plug in DisplayPort monitors and my USB-A devices a must-have. Newer laptop models don't have compelling features my Air lacks, and take away things I like. I have no incentive to upgrade, and will definitely explore other manufacturers when it eventually wears out.
It's frustrating when a company makes products that suit your needs well, and then changes its mind. I just don't seem to be in Apple's target market anymore.