There's another story on HN that says, "The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones." That's actually my exact situation with Apple right now. My iPad Mini, iPhone 5, Mac Pro, Apple TV and MBP are all more than adequate. Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting.
The iPad was released less than 3 years after the iPhone. Now we're three years past the release of the iPad with nothing new to talk about. I'm sure there are exciting things happening under the hood at Apple, but the event was a bit boring.
Apple should also rethink their television ads. The style they popularized has become trite and they ooze with self-importance. The iPad mini video with the pencil reminded me of Facebook's terrible Chair ad. I miss the lightness and humor of watching a John Hodgman riff with what's-his-name.
Is three years a long time ?
There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span, and it matches m y experience pretty well.
A MBP easily goes 3000$, you could be expected to be satisfied with it for 3 years at least. Apple shouldn't need to convince people having bought an iPad 2 years ago to absolutely buy one now, same goes for the iPhone 4S or 5 (the 5 is from last year, yeah you might not _need_ a new one)
Looking at the software support charts, 2 or 3+ years devices are all still fully supported.
For comparison, I bought a 2010 MBA, it's plenty usable, but I'm having a hard look at the new generation MBP because it's actually a very very nice upgrade with featuers that really make a difference in everyday use. Same thing for the ipad, looking at the first ipad, I can't imagine anyone saying "that's good enough for me, why go retina, have 4x the RAM, 4x the speed all of these for half the weight ?"
> There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span
Using your MBP example, that would put it at $3 a day. You’d have to keep using the MBP for another 7 years for the ‘$1 a day’ rule to be accurate. Let’s not even do the math on Mac Pros, the rule just doesn’t work out for the Pro products.
But let’s try the rule on consumer Macs. I have a 4 year old mid-range Mac mini. It runs Mavericks fine, so I’ll continue using it for another year. That means the computer will have cost me $0.55 a day. I have a top-of-the-line MacBook Air I bought last year. I expect I will use it for 4 years. That will mean it cost me $1.02 a day. My mom has a 5 year old MacBook Alu, which I just upgraded to Mavericks. She won’t buy a new notebook for another year. By then, the MacBook will have cost her $0.50 a day.
I don't think it would apply to all products, but I am still using my 2008 Macbook which cost me around $2,500 i think... I have installed new HDD twice (1TB and then moved to a smaller SSD), also replaced the battery twice in that time. Probably adding another $1,000 to the cost. It is still going strong, probably keep working on this until it dies...
My MacMini is a 2011 model, I will probably install a SSD into it in 6 months and get another two years of life out of it...
iPhones on the other hand are pretty much 24 month life cycles for me.
iPad, I am still rocking a launch day iPad 2... it probably only has about another 6 months of life left. The battery only lasts maybe five hours of solid use which is barely enough for what I need each day at work.
Is the amount of time you spend in dealing with the resale included in the overall costings? My impression is that most people who do the resale dance aren't cheap when paid by the hour.
5 years is about long enough for a paradigm shift in software. Technology in general perhaps but this is a really odd question to try and answer adequately. I think it is a long time.
Android of 3 years ago doesn't look anything like it does today.
Change is often incremental. No one is suggesting you should replace your <1 year old iPad mini with the new model. To see how much tablets have improved, compare an original iPad with its original software to the new retina iPad mini running the current OS and apps.
Exactly this. I didn't buy an iPad since the first generation one, and it's been getting really long in the tooth.
I was really looking forward to the new series of iPads because I would like a new one, and also one which uses the same charger connection as my iPhone 5. :)
Now I expect the iPad Air to last me for quite awhile.
"Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting."
I agree. Things I have bought or preordered recently, however: Oculus Rift (not a developer, just want to see what it does) and Thalmic's Myo. Both because they are exciting.
The iPad was released less than 3 years after the iPhone. Now we're three years past the release of the iPad with nothing new to talk about. I'm sure there are exciting things happening under the hood at Apple, but the event was a bit boring.
Apple should also rethink their television ads. The style they popularized has become trite and they ooze with self-importance. The iPad mini video with the pencil reminded me of Facebook's terrible Chair ad. I miss the lightness and humor of watching a John Hodgman riff with what's-his-name.