
Apple is more excited about the iPhone 5C and so am I. - astrojams
http://blog.joshkerr.com/apples-midrange-iphone-5c-appeals-more-to-me-than-the-top-of-the-line-5s
======
derefr
Yes, Apple want you to buy a 5C, not a 5S. This way, they get to use the 5S as
the limited-first-run of the parts that will go into the 6C (when we'll have a
6S that's a limited-first-run of the 7C, and so on.)

Let me just quote my previous post, it's equally applicable here:

> Apple has never been able to make enough iPhones of each successive
> generation for people to get their hands on during the first few months
> after release. Whereas, once they've ramped up production, they tend to have
> all these parts left over in the pipeline that they have to sell off as N-1
> gen hardware to price-sensitive late adopters. (This is also why the iPod
> Touch was originally created, to serve as a sink for N-2-gen parts.)

> Now, Apple are trying to shift the purchase frenzy to the N-1 gen, and
> position their new gen-N tech -- whose production hasn't yet been ramped up
> -- as something for early-adopters only. In other words, to switch from an
> (N-1, N) view of the world, to an (N, N+1) view.

> Everything in the S will filter down to the C of the next gen. They'll get
> their pipelines saturated with 5S parts just in time to wrap them in plastic
> and call them 6C parts. As long as more people buy Cs than Ss, this works
> out perfectly.

This is their strategy, working out perfectly.

~~~
yaeger
You talk about the "S" and "C" iterations but what about the "normal" phones?
What about next year? The iPhone6 is supposed to come out.

I still wonder how they will position themselves now. Before, they had it
simple. Last years model and the new one. And the new one was divided into
"This year the spec bump of the old model, next year a brand new phone"

But now, they canned the "old model" and went with the "C" variant. So right
now, there is the 5C and 5S. So what'll it be next year? Do they then use a 3
device line up? Will it be: 5C,5S and 6? And the year after that: 5S, 6C and
6S?

------
raldi
_> I disable the flash on every piece of camera equipment I own. In my book,
there is never a scenario where it is okay to use a flash, if it is too dark
to take the photo, then don’t take it._

That's about 90% bathwater and 10% baby.

Yes, the vast majority of the time ordinary people use their flash, they
really shouldn't be. But there _are_ genuine situations where even snobs like
us to need to just suck it up and break the no-flash streak.

The most obvious is when you're _not_ trying to take a beautiful photo; you're
just trying to take an accurate one -- like inside a crawlspace where
something needs to be repaired.

And then there are the times when you only get one chance to capture something
amazing, and there's not going to be time to set a long exposure and pray for
no-blur. This happens a lot when children or animals are involved:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2281710004/sizes/z...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2281710004/sizes/z/)

But even in broad daylight with relatively still scenes, there are still
flashworthy situations. For example, when all the light is behind the subject:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2408341744/sizes/z...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2408341744/sizes/z/)

(That one is from the days before HDR -- if the flash hadn't fired, either the
subjects' faces would have been underexposed, or the sunny background would
have been overexposed.)

Now, just to give equal time to the opposing side, this non-flash photo would
have been absolutely ruined if the flash had been used:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2407218105/sizes/z...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/18575617@N03/2407218105/sizes/z/)

~~~
coin
I agree. Furthermore, it's better to use the flash than not capture the moment
at all.

> In my book, there is never a scenario where it is okay to use a flash, if it
> is too dark to take the photo, then don’t take it.

Statements like this reminds me of audiophiles that refuse to listen to music
on "substandard" audio gear. Real music lovers enjoy the content, and would
rather have poor quality than no music at all. They love the music and not the
equipment. The same applies here. No photo vs photo with suboptimal lighting,
I'll take the latter.

------
jeffgreco
_I’m really happy with my iPhone 5 running iOS 7. It is plenty fast, has great
battery life, takes great photos and runs all of my favorite apps. Put those
phone guts into a much more exciting shell, make it more comfortable to hold,
increase its battery life and you’ve got a good upgrade._

Or, spend ten bucks and get a blue plastic case.

~~~
thex86
I think with most Apple products and Apple "fan boys", they try hard to
justify Apple's overpriced new products, which usually have features that are
way behind other phones.

Every year a new phone is released, which has marginal improvements over the
previous ones. But you know what? People will _still_ buy it and Apple knows
that very well.

~~~
jshen
The iPhone has many features that best android phones, and I'll give you the
most significant in my eyes. My iPhone gets OS updates when the newest version
is released. This is not true of the vast vast majority of android phones.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Please point me in the direction to a cost-comparative (to the iPhone) Android
device to an iPhone that has not received updates.

At least Android devices give you the option to upgrade. I've been forced into
iOS upgrades on devices we use in the enterprise that have been made obsolete
because of new bloat we didn't need (nor can we downgrade).

~~~
jshen
I had a droid x2 and it didn't get 3.0 despite being priced similar to an
iPhone and it was less than a year old when 3.0 was released. This is very
common with android phones.

~~~
trvr
Android 3.0 was a tablet only release.

~~~
jshen
I didn't mean 3.0, I meant any version from then on. For a phone that came out
in may 2011, it was infuriating to be stuck on 2.x.

Other than nexus phones, all android phones are at the mercy of the carrier
and manufacturer. None of them get updated on the day a new version of android
comes out, most experience long delays, and many see no major version bump.

When iOS 7 comes out next week there is no doubt I will be able to install it
on my iPhone.

------
iancw
> I disable the flash on every piece of camera equipment I own. In my book,
> there is never a scenario where it is okay to use a flash, if it is too dark
> to take the photo, then don’t take it.

I think the fact that you (and I) don't trust current camera flashes to make
photos worth keeping is actually an argument that it's a problem worth fixing.
It remains to be seen how successful the 5S flash will be, but I think it's
cool they're trying. I'm also glad Apple made the sensor elements larger
rather than cramming in more mega pixels. Normally that's a concern of the
geeky DSLR consumers, and point & shooters suffer with noisy low-light
performance and more pixels than they need.

~~~
zippergz
I welcome improvements in the iPhone flash, because there are cases in which
I'm forced to use it. But the biggest problem is also the hardest to solve:
the flash is too close to the lens. A flash right next to the lens will always
look bad, no matter what you do. Being able to pivot and bounce it is even
better, but just moving it a few inches away makes a big difference.
Unfortunately, all of those things are fairly incompatible with the need to
make phones that fit easily in peoples' pockets.

~~~
plorkyeran
Moving it a few inches away isn't inherently impossible, since you could put
the flash at the other end of the phone from the lens. At the minimum it'd be
a lot more awkward to use, though.

------
beloch
Apple made a lot of compromises in designing the 5C to make it cheaper, but
they completely failed to make it cheap! It's still more than two and a half
times the price of a Nexus 4 unlocked. Unlocked sales for the 5C will be
pitiful. Under a multi-year contract the 5C isn't substantially cheaper than
the 5S, so people who want the best phone will shun it. The iPhone 5C is going
to fail utterly in the market segment it's designed for.

However, I do see a couple of possible markets where the 5C may succeed.
There's the Hello Kitty "anything in pastels is _squeeeeee_ " crowd. This
market includes little girls, people buying phones for little girls, and Josh
Kerr apparently. _IF_ the 5C proves more durable than the 5S it might also
capture the tough-wear crowd that wants a phone that doesn't have to be hidden
inside a giant blob of silicone to survive a 6" fall onto concrete. Let's face
it, not many people are going to want the cases Apple is trying to sell for
the 5C. I'm just speculating about the 5C's durability though. Plastic phones
might not feel as nice in the hand, but if they use high quality plastic and
are well built they do tend to survive better than phones made entirely out of
metal and glass.

Will it sell? Never underestimate the Hello Kitty crowd!

~~~
reginaldjcooper
I wish you could have written this without the ad hom implication that men who
like certain colors are necessarily both effeminate and puerile. If Josh Kerr
fucking loves pastels that doesn't make him any less of a man.

------
slowdown
This is more of a fanboy ejaculatism than anything else. Why is this even on
the frontpage?

------
BadassFractal
I find it really difficult to care about the iPhone when a wonderful fully-
unlocked Nexus 4 can be acquired for $199.

~~~
rys
I find it really difficult to care about the Nexus 4 when it doesn't run iOS
apps.

For me, personally, that's worth paying extra money for, discounting all other
differences at the hardware level, and it seems to be worth it for millions of
other people too.

You have to understand that there are people in the world that make a solid
value judgement that the iPhone is what they want and they can afford it, it's
not bad value for their money, they want iOS, they don't mind being locked in
to Apple's world _and_ that those are very sane choices to make.

That reasoning works, even in the face of a $199 unlocked Nexus 4.

------
coin
> For practical purposes, 64-bit means that the processor in the phone can
> address more than 4GB of RAM. The 5S has 2GB of ram so it isn’t even taking
> advantage of it.

Interesting observation on the 64-bit processor. From an enduser's point of
view, what advantage does a 64-bit CPU have?

~~~
corresation
It is the naive observation that is far too common. The A7 is about ARMv8,
which is an evolutionary step over ARMv7. The 4GB thing is the least relevant
aspect of it right now.

~~~
sliverstorm
Apple isn't talking about ARMv8 though, they are talking about 64 bit.

~~~
corresation
They are talking about improving the processor, and ARMv8 is a (or rather
_the_ ) 64-bit ARM instruction set. Should Apple have instead talked about
registers and wider SIMD, better double floating point, etc? 64-bit is just
shorthand for that.

~~~
derefr
Exactly. We went through this exact same marketing with game consoles, years
ago. The N64 was a _64-bit game console!_ What did that mean? Who cares, it's
four times as much as a SNES, and twice as much as a Playstation!

------
crystaln
This makes no sense. Why would Jony Ive, supposedly one of the greatest
industrial designers, and Apple, one of the greatest consumer products
companies, be so darn excited about rereleasing a 1 year old product in 5
colors for 15% less?

Do people care about the color of their phone? Not enough color choice is not
something I've heard as a complaint about the iPhone 5.

Are the millions of cases available not a reasonable solution for those who
care about color?

Would I really buy an iPhone instead of an Android because I can get it in
yellow and it ships with a yellow background screen?

The more likely explanation for the marketing difference is the lack of
production capacity for the 5S and/or lower margins.

------
yapcguy
_> I think the iPhone 5C is the perfect realization of hardware and software
running harmoniously on a single device._

Wow, really? The iPhone 5C hasn't even shipped yet!

------
vinceguidry
I will buy a 5S for the fingerprint sensor, as soon as its functionality gets
exposed to LastPass, and assuming it's as secure as Apple says it is. Apple
all but enforcing weak password security has made browsing on iOS unworkable
for everything except quick Wikipedia lookups. It was to the point that I
would have switched to Android otherwise.

As it is I'm skipping the iPad Mini and getting a Nexus. Unless Apple suddenly
comes out with one tomorrow with both Retina and fingerprint sensor the Mini
is useless for everything but as a Kindle reader.

I am less worried about the NSA having my fingerprint as I am about crackers
getting my passwords. If I was worried about that I'd go all Snowden and keep
my phone in the freezer. But if even one instance of fingerprint information
leaking out of the box Apple's keeping it in on the CPU surfaces, I may never
trust Apple with that information.

------
wavesum
"The iPhone 5C ships with iOS 7 pre-configured to use background wallpaper
that matches the color of the Phone. Little touches like this really
differentiate Apple’s products from its competitors"

Have you heard of Lumias?

------
cliffu
I'll be excited about an iPhone as soon as I am able to sideload an app,
install a white/blacklist. I'd be quite excited if I were also allowed to run
arbitrary apps in the background (listening to sockets even when not VoIP),
and add arbitrary interactive views to the Notification Center.

A plastic colored body does not appeal to me in the least.

~~~
epochwolf
Congratulations, you are not the target market! You may now choose from the
many available models of android and windows phones instead of making impotent
comments on social networks. :)

~~~
cliffu
No, I like making comments about it on social networks. If I get even one
person on board with freedom it's a win. If I get enough people on board that
Apple feels pressure and I can use unjailbroken iOS without these restrictions
that would be great, I actually like iOS when it's jailbroken. I know that's a
pipe dream but whatever.

~~~
Nerdfest
Inform enough people and Apple will be forced to open up or go out of
business, with either being an acceptable option. A couple of more years the
way the market is going and they're going to be driven to irrelevance, which
is also acceptable.

------
jemeshsu
I don't get iPhone 5C at that price, too close to 5S.

Even if you don't use the Touch ID and camera flash, the improved camera
sensor size/aperture and processor speed in iPhone 5S is enough to justified
the price difference.

------
dibbsonline
Apple also touted the G5 as the first 64 bit workstation but neglected to see
that many of us were running 64 bit SPARC workstations at the time. Not to
mention SGI boxen.

------
hackaflocka
Why do people revel in broadcasting their ignorance and shallowness?

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
...kind of like your post?

------
yeukhon
To me, I think Apple is trying to move into smart house industry.

------
pocketstar
No black iPhone5C, Jony I am disappoint.

