Arguably, less useful...
...but shinier.
Apple has sold more than 13 million new iPhones in just three days, the company crowed announced on Monday. The new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus models went on sale on Friday and set a new record as fanbois scrambled to pick up their newest bauble. “Sales have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales …
"Wahh Street will punish Apple with a drop in their stock price..."
Too late. That happened shortly after the market opened in New York this morning.
In other news, How's them watches doin', Apple? Can't seem to find any numbers for those. Oh, wait, I guess when phones are 2/3rds of your bottom line, it really don't matter, do it?
I'm typing this on an iPhone, in my opinion the iPhone is amongst the top tier of devices but: what's the difference between this year and last? Who has been won over that wasn't before?
My pet theories mostly revolve around Apple getting something from Samsung's regression to the mean, the economy being a little better and the slow death in the US of the 24-month contract making some of these not newly acquired customers but merely customers of increased frequency. For all of which I have no direct empirical evidence whatsoever, obviously.
Even if there were zero differences between the 6S and 6 aside from the name and the usual upgrades you get every year like CPU and graphics performance that would not be a problem for Apple. The 6S is not designed for people who have the 6 to want to upgrade to it, but for those who have older ones.
Cook said less than 20% of iPhone owners have upgraded to a 6, meaning there is a lot of room for people with 5 and 5S to upgrade to the 6S (and they'll sell those to Gazelle or whatever and they'll be refurbished and resold to someone elsewhere in the world who is still sporting a 4) Apple does not bank on yearly upgraders, those are a very small percentage of their customers.
Apple literally invents a market by asking "How will people use this product", rather than the hardware engineers approach of "Let's have fun making hardware and try to sell it without it being useful". (Not an original by Apple, but they do share a lineage via Alan Kay and others to Bob Barton who designed the Burroughs B5000 which was designed with programmers in mind, not hardware engineers).
Apple make a high-quality product which people want to buy - Register characterises them as 'mindless fanboys' who can't think for themselves, but are duped in someway by an evil Apple.
Apple sells very well - which in business terms would give them a good report, but Register makes out this to be bad as well.
Grow up Register.
They are grown up: credulity is a mark of the immature; cynicism comes from age. But look closer: the Register's beef with Apple is not with the products, it's with Apple's PR machine, and its totalitarian approach to media relations.
Sure, the rest of the tech "media" might be happy to suck on Apple's co teat in exchange for access, but the Register is one of the few online publications that won't do that, and is why I still read it. (Honestly, it's the only tech news site I still read anymore - the rest are nothing more than mouthpieces these days, uncritically repeating whatever preview of the next press release the PR person emailed them that morning...)
I'm also reading this site long enough to remember when it was Microsoft that had the fawning attentions of the tech press, and Apple was only mentioned when preceded with the word "beleagured", and in the context of taking bets on when the company would close. In those days, the Reg was one of the few sites that gave Apple anything like a decent write-up, and as an Apple employee (as I was at the time), I was happy to see someone, ANYONE, in the press actually looking and seeing that we were making good products. But in the media environment of the time, it looked like a soft ride. Meanwhile, Microsoft (and Dell - remember Dell?) were being lauded everywhere, but were mocked by the Register for their hubris.
"Hubris" describes Apple very well these days, and I can't think of a better reason to take pot-shots at a company than they themselves claiming to be the best thing since sliced Jesus...
And on the topic - yes, iPhone is a very popular product, but we knew this: where are those Watch sales numbers, Tim? I think Wall Street's small sell-off of Apple stock isn't unhappiness with iPhone numbers, but more a sign that investors are nervious about the world's richest company becoming a one-trick-pony, particularly one that's beholden to mobile phone network operators for most of its sales.
Nice spin - but that is all. The same old people who were knocking Apple all the way through from the 1970s are still at it. Since the Register posts such snotty articles about Apple - no wonder Apple does not give the Register first-hand access to their news.
It all just smacks of those who have resented any success of Apple because they represent the counter-culture of Silicon Valley, putting people in control of computers and out of the hands of nerds and business people who wanted to use computers to control people and just make them be a part of the huge business machine.
If the Register wants to make points against Apple, then they can do so, but in a mature fashion, not just insulting it's Register-reading Apple buyers by calling them fanbois and implying we are falling for some kind of line from Apple. The counter-culture is too ingrained than to be controlled by any one corporation, including Apple. But Apple have done a good job of making computers useful for the average person and not just to computer scientists (of which I'm one), enthusiasts, and hobbyists.
And if you did not notice - all stock markets everywhere have been routed today, not just Apple on Wall Street.
... represent the counter-culture of Silicon Valley, putting people in control of computers and out of the hands of nerds and business people who wanted to use computers to control people and just make them be a part of the huge business machine.
I see what you did there.
But Apple have done a good job of making computers useful for the average person and not just to computer scientists (of which I'm one), enthusiasts, and hobbyists.
Yes, and Range Rover has done a good job making light trucks useful for the average person and not just to farmers, livestock dealers and small builders.
>>Yes, and Range Rover has done a good job making light trucks useful for the average person and not just to farmers, livestock dealers and small builders.<<
Your comparison is invalid. Computers work because of a small set of simple ideas with a few instructions (sequence, branch, loop, recursion) on a very small data set (0 and 1). Their power comes because they can do those things very fast. They are thus mostly about ideas, not about the physical form of computers. That makes them quite different to any other hardware comparison.
You need a cover for your iPhone, unless you want to glue card to phone.
Place card between cover and back of iPhone ensuring you do not cover the camera, flash.
Some coverage of the Apple logo is inevitable.
Now you are good to PayByBonk, for a much cheaper price.
Anyone else with an Apple device been force-fed iOS9?
My partner has an iPad which was still on iOS7 because it didn't have enough space to download the iOS8 update. Last night she complained that it had completely run out of space...
Odd, I thought I had freed up about 2GB.
Looks like the iOS9 update was downloaded and used up all the space. Couldn't see how to remove the update. Couldn't do anything else... so installed iOS9.
It seems OK, and the 2GB has magically reappeared, but would have been nice to decide myself if and when to upgrade.
Let's see how Apple sold so many iPhones so quickly this year.
1. First time included China as a day 1 release.
2. Increase the registration period by a week.
3. Claim (as they do EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.) that there is not enough stock in the first few weeks.
= New record for iPhone sold on day 1.
Honestly, I'm surprised that the record wasn't broken by a higher margin, being day 1 release in China as well.
Interestingly, over in Hong Kong, you used to be able to sell your new iPhone for a nice profit practically as soon as you left the Apple Store. 3 Years ago, I got lucky with day 1 Hong Kong release and made around 400quid on 2 phones. There's stories of people only making 100quid if they are lucky this time round.
I'm not an Apple fanboi, I don't even own any Apple products, but this is actually a very good piece of equipment. (I'm not a fanboi but I seem to know several -- they're actually 'fangrans' -- the silver set seem to get hold of these things before the kids do.)(They've got the money.....)
(Sure, the Apple watch is an overpriced bauble of dubious usefulness but its also a rather well engineered overpriced bauble of dubious usefulness.)