I was in NY for vacation during the opening Friday and decided to head into a queue and line up for the 5s, suspecting that it may sell out quickly while also leveraging the pricing difference between Europe and USA. This was the first time that I lined up for any Apple launch (execept for the yearly WWDC waiting line of course), and it was overall a fun experience, not only because my girlfriend joined me there and we had breakfast while waiting, also, it was sunny.
The 5s has been my first new iPhone since I got an iPhone 4 in 2010 and for me, coming from an older device that didn't even have Siri, I am extremely happy with it. It may be a moot update if you already haven an iPhone 5 (or maybe even a 4s) but to me it feels like an entirely different device (not only because I also updated to iOS7 at the same time, of course).
I really like the finger sensor, as it makes login a lot faster. Of course, there're security issues here, but for me it is just a convenience method, if people are able to break through this sensor, they will also be able to use other methods to gain access to my data.
I also look forward to apps that leverage the M7 as I tend to do a fair bit of walking and running and like to see at the end of the day how well I performed.
I really like Siri, again, this is my first time having access to it, and I already use it for writing text messages, checking the weather, or creating schedules / appointments.
In general, the speed difference between my old iPhone 4 and this one is staggering. This, of course, was to be expected, as the 4 was crazy slow at times, but it still makes me happy.
All in all, for me, the 5s is a great update and I hope that the 'most forward thinking phone yet' comment from Apple is close to the truth, as I again, plan to use it for at least 3-4 years before updating again.
I upgraded from a 4 as well. I could not be happier so far. There were many apps that I had thought were just complete sh that now zoom on the 5s (spotify, g+, and a few others). Finger print reader is surprisingly useful, although a minor feature. Possibly the most noticeable thing for me from the 4 to the 5s is the speaker. I always have podcasts running as I walk around the house and noticed a huge difference in quality and volume. With the 4 I often had to plug in headphones to be able to hear over an AC unit or a my car's engine. The 5s speaker cuts through a lot better.
I'm not so sure why you wait that long, maybe things are different in the UK, but I think this info could be useful to a lot of people. I'll just throw out a scenario I tell everyone when it comes to buying Apple devices that's strictly just financial and not exactly being an Apple 'fanboy.'
Two options here, if you buy a phone on contract for say $200, then you can always sell it in a year, or even two, for around double of what you paid for it. Example, iPhone 5's are going for around $450 in my local market. I just paid $200 a year ago for it on contract. Some people hate contracts and say it's cheaper to not have data or what have you, but like I said this is just this particular scenario if you are on a plan.
Option B, you can buy a device for full price, ie $650 and wait the year or two and sell it for ~$450 but now you have a gap of $200, but you still own the device outright. Sometimes depending on what carrier, you can get an iPhone discount of $100 when not in your contract and that could bring it down to ~$550.
These examples exclude taxes and exclude some abnormalities with the pricing and buying markets such as unlocked > locked phones such as Verizon. Verizon phones don't have the same desire as AT&T phones because of the CDMA vs GSM difference with being able to use it on other prepaid carriers easily and worldwide use.
Anyway, that's my two sense from what I've learned over the years. If you buy a phone on contract and take care of it, you'll still get a great phone and double your money in a year when you go to sell it. That's how the markets have been treating them so far over the years.
Edit: I will say that if you wait too long such as the large jump from 4 to 5S, the resale value on the 4 is now dipped to ~150-200. So to me it makes more sense buying every release or two on contract, and then letting the phone pay for itself.
But you're missing an important point: If you own your phone you can get much cheaper 'SIM only' deals with the mobile carriers, meaning that over your 1-2 year contract, you'll pay far less.
Getting a new phone as part of a 'subsidised' contract is effectively borrowing money to buy a phone. Your loan repayments are the monthly fee. If you have the cash, buying the phone up-front is almost always cheaper.
Not the biggest U.S. mobile carriers. AT&T and Verizon have awful BYOD plans, as I understand it. I'd be thrilled to find out I could do better than my grandfathered AT&T unlimited plan (two phones, 5GB/each before throttled, $120/mo.), but keep their network.
My phone's getting a bit old (4S), and I'm taking this opportunity to move to T-Mobile, where the BYOD offerings are much better.
BYOD means $20 off your monthly bill (or subsidizing is +$20, whichever way you look at it), and the BYOD rate is legitimately substantially cheaper than similar plans from AT&T or Verizon.
Plus even if you subsidize the device the terms are far better. The $20/month goes towards paying off a debt, which is simply unsubsidized price - subsidized price. If you leave early you pay the remaining balance and the phone's yours. This is in stark contrast to AT&T's rather punitive early-termination fees that exceed the actual subsidization provided initially.
That sucks! I've only got experience of the UK carriers, you can get something like 600 minutes, 'unlimited' data for around £10/month here SIM-only. And on a one month contract!
That seems bizarre in the UK. I pay $24/mo and get truly unlimited data, with tethering included, as well as 2000 minutes and 5000 texts (and receiving doesn't come out of your allowance in the UK, the caller pays that fee).
It's absolutely cheaper to buy devices outright here.
Example of Three's One Plan for a 32GB 5s (£):
24 mo contract
Device 99
Plan 46
24 mo total = 1203
12 month contract + BYOD
Device 629
Plan 15
24 mo total = 989
Assuming you dont voice much. T-Mobile offers prepaid(bring your own phone) $30/mo unlimited 4G and SMS with 100 minutes. Assuming you always want the latest iPhone, you save about $200 per 2 year. This deal was way back before LTE availability, So it WAS a hot deal.
If you actually use most of the 5GB each month, $60/mo is competitive with what you would get from any MVNO. The MVNO plan would include tethering, but I'm told that people just use tethering on AT&T plans without paying for it.
The 5S is my first cell phone. I love being able to make calls from outside of my house and quickly and easily write "text" messages to my friends. I use to have to wait until I was at work or at home to make a phone call, but now I can do it from anywhere! I also love these app things, there is one for everything.
I also can't believe I can just connect to the internet from anywhere, and there are not even any tubes connected to my phone. How is that possible?
You intend this to be ironic, but a proper perspective would be that:
1) 10 years ago this was way bulkier, far less convenient and more often than not without an intertube connection,
2) 20 years ago this was absolute bare-bones and only for upper middle class and rich people,
3) 30 years ago it was science fiction.
Now, a 20-something would of course take all this for granted. But technology will have some surprises for him down the road too, and he'll learn to put things in perspective when 2030 tech is 100 times more awesome than today's.
A minor nitpick on (3), commercial mobile phone service dates to 1946, and the first service that we'd identify as being something like a modern "cell phone", with actual cells, automated handoff, integration into the POTS network, etc., came in 1978.
Technology always seems to progress both faster and slower than you think.
Not sure about bulkier 10 years ago, the nokia 8310 was all the rage back then and they were so tiny that people used to lose them down cracks in sofas. Not to mention better battery.
Sure, but that was a barebones model. I had the equivalent of today's iPhone style things (a Sony-Ericsson P910 IIRC), and it was like 3 iPhones in bulk.
FTA: Analysts had predicted between 5 and 8 million launch weekend sales across both devices
That is a link to another earlier article on Apple Insider discussing such predictions:
"In fact, Kuo said in a note to investors on Wednesday that Apple will likely ship 6 to 8 million new iPhones over the devices' first weekend of sales. By comparison, Apple racked up 5 million sales when the iPhone 5 debuted last year. Earlier in the day, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster forecast 5 to 6 million unit sales, a more conservative number based on the prior model's in-store launch sales."
Remember all the naysaying? One story on HN claimed Apple had a "Windows 95 problem". Yet it seems that every time Apple reveals a product that tech blogs are disappointed with, it goes on to set sales records.
First of all, this is an international phone. Second. there are TWO phones. It's likely that sales figures are very similar to last year's marked-down 4S and 5 sales combined, but if you count the delayed international launch last year and combine the sales after all markets were opened to the net sales this year, there's likely little to no difference.
As mentioned on the other thread, pointing to the official announcement, the iPhone 5 launched in China on a different date, so it had 2 million sales on its launch there.
So to get the real comparison you need to add first weekend sales of the 4S in standard launch countries and China to that 7 million figure.
That makes the 9 million figure a whole lot less impressive. From 7+ million to 9 million... but it's not that unthinkable that there could have been 2 million iPhone 4S's sold when the iPhone 5 launched, so that it could even be a step down from the previous year.
Apple doesn't break down numbers to the device level. 5M sold last year was 5m combined iPhone sales (all models). So this really is an apples to apples comparison...
I don't think that comparison would be completely apt. In the eyes of the public the different name and colours will stir up different buying emotions.
Sure, but prices dropping by $100 also stirs up emotions.
I'm not implying that Apple didn't do a great job by moving to the 5S/5C split, just that it'd be fairer and more useful to compare 5S/5C to 5/4S and 4S/4 - if only for the fact that it doesn't leave any room for pedants like me to argue :-)
I realise 5S supply would be very, very constrained initially... so how well did introducing the 5C unconstrained at launch work?
I think the 'champagne' phone would have sold out in the launch weekend, regardless of supply. Is Apple playing this out? (yes).
Every customer lining up, or entering stores are dropping almost a grand. You want to keep some top tier 64gb 'space grey' in stock, to sop up those who missed out on a different alloy.
And everyone who isn't eligible to upgrade? Well you get a fantastic OS, and you can buy a nice case! Well played Apple. And I mean that without bitterness. Great product launch.
This article is claiming that most of the phones sold are 5S's, actually... which would mean the 5C is making a moderate difference to that number... just enough to bump from 7 million to 9 million, perhaps!
I wonder if people are associating the color options/not metal on the C as making it more teen/younger set oriented? Or just cheaper overall? Quite a few people still find status in the phone they carry.
It depends what you mean by "fair." One could just as easily argue that it's not fair to compare last year's 5 + 4s sales to this year's 5s + 5c sales, since this the latter is two brand new models.
So I had a few separate experiences with this over the weekend:
1) A friend stood in line for a few hours, got to the front, found out they didn't have the color he wanted and left.
2) A colleague in another company got one and she immediately remarked, "it looks just like Android!".
3) A neighbor returned theirs because they couldn't read all the low contrast stuff on the tiny screen.
4) Another neighbor has kept theirs, but complains all the colors and things are too bright and too loud.
5) Another neighbor went in to buy his, got some time to play with it, decided he didn't like it and went and bought a couple Galaxy S4s for him and his wife instead.
6) Coworker said he like it, thought the control panel and "slide away the background apps" was great. Hated that the slide away the emails is now the wrong way.
1) A friend stood in line for a few hours, got to the front, found out they didn't have the color he wanted and left.
– At the Apple store I was at, Apple staff greeted people entering the queue, asked them what they intended to purchase and gave them a card (reservation)
2) A colleague in another company got one and she immediately remarked, "it looks just like Android!".
– You overheard a conversation in another company? Good ears. Extra credit for "she".
3) A neighbor returned theirs because they couldn't read all the low contrast stuff on the tiny screen.
– "Hey neighbour! I couldn't help noticing you aren't mowing your lawn with a phone?!" "The screen was too tiny neighbourino!"
4) Another neighbor has kept theirs, but complains all the colors and things are too bright and too loud.
– "IT'S TOO LOUD, HOW DO YOU SHUT IT OFF?? I'M BLIND!!!"
5) Another neighbor went in to buy his, got some time to play with it, decided he didn't like it and went and bought a couple Galaxy S4s for him and his wife instead.
– 'Hey Wifey, wanna line up in this 2 hour queue? Dum, de dum [two hours in the queue pass]. Oh hey, we're at the front of the queue! Nah this sucks. Wanna go buy some Samsung Galaxies? YES!'
6) Coworker said he like it, thought the control panel and "slide away the background apps" was great. Hated that the slide away the emails is now the wrong way.
– Your astro-turfing obviously disinterests you, as does your job and it shows dude :[ Quit your job.
> – At the Apple store I was at, Apple staff greeted people entering the queue, asked them what they intended to purchase and gave them a card (reservation)
Didn't do that at either of the two Apple stores I'm aware of (there are 5 in my area), or the three AT&T stores my friends went to.
> – You overheard a conversation in another company? Good ears. Extra credit for "she".
Grownup companies sometimes do things together, not every other company is your competitor.
> – "Hey neighbour! I couldn't help noticing you aren't mowing your lawn with a phone?!" "The screen was too tiny neighbourino!"
My neighborhood has a very active community message board and I know many of the member personally from neighborhood events.
> – "IT'S TOO LOUD, HOW DO YOU SHUT IT OFF?? I'M BLIND!!!"
Here are the exact quotes
Neighbor 1: "I'm not a fan. Hate what they did to ical. The new icons look like they are for small children (that i can get over). And the bright white is obnoxious. What the hell did they do to safari?? I'm sad ... But im sure i will eventually get used to it. "
Neighbor 2: "I'm not "upgrading" yet. Hate the font."
Neighbor 1: "Everything is bright white and hard for me read...feeling old."
Neighbor 3: "So far I actually like it. The calendar took me a minute to get used to as well. At first I didn't like it until I realized you get a 5 day shot when you turn it on its side. I can't figure out how to do a list view yet - is there one?"
Neighbor 1: "I have light sensitivity issues (Astigmatism in both eyes - and I also have cataracts - God I sound old!) so the bright white is just harsh for me and not having huge contrasting colors is also hard on my eyes. Yep I agree the one swipe to have controls is nice and I do like what they did with the photos."
Neighbor 4: "Steve Jobs is probably rolling over in his grave right now..."
Neighbor 5: "I downloaded on my iPhone the other night, not a fan. But I downloaded on my iPad earlier today, and I don't mind it at all. But it is way too bright."
Neighbor 1: "Thank you for saying its too bright ... I was beginning to wonder if it was me."
> – 'Hey Wifey, wanna line up in this 2 hour queue? Dum, de dum [two hours in the queue pass]. Oh hey, we're at the front of the queue! Nah this sucks. Wanna go buy some Samsung Galaxies? YES!'
Talked to him in person (he's next door). And that was pretty much the conversation.
> – Your astro-turfing obviously disinterests you, as does your job and it shows dude :[ Quit your job.
Minimally, the first point is wrong. Official Apple Retail stores all do this the same way. Reservation cards were provided. It's possible that the person while in line was informed they didn't have the color they wanted and left, but highly, highly unlikely (unless they entered later in the day) that they made it into the store and had to walk out.
FWIW, I did see a few people leave because the color they wanted was not available, either to try a carrier store or order online and wait.
Also, 9M in sales and the huge upgrade numbers pretty much speak for themselves. YMMV, but the anecdotes from your circle are not reflective of what happened.
You're probably right about the apple brand stores. My personal network didn't relay it that way though. Time will tell if these are sustainable sales figures. They are certainly impressive no matter what. But with a year between phones, I don't think a weekend hit sales model is the best way to do things.
I guess my analogy must have been confusing, since you assumed that the "line waiting" referred to Samsung phones...which it clearly does not since nobody waits in line for Samsung phones.
I was interviewed at the launch of the 5S, the interviewer noted that Samsung runs commercials making fun of people waiting in line for the latest Apple whatever. I noted that Samsung WISHED they had people waiting in line for their products.
Looks like around 9 million, if you assume 1 phone per person. One way Apple does it is by having good marketing, but I think the more important way they do it is by having consistently excellent consumer satisfaction ratings for their mobile products.
7) Reseller gets homeless people to queue up overnight at the Apple Store in Pasadena, California. Apple refuses to honor the homeless people queuing, so then the reseller refuses to pay them, resulting in fights and arrests.
most frustratingly this is another datapoint that won't matter much in the current slew of punditry aimed at talking Apple down.
just go back to the HN post of the 5s launch event and it's full of doomsayers.
seems like apple is going against the very fabric that unites neckbeards around the world - and is crazy successful. just like carmakers that stopped catering to the tinkerers. here's to the crazy ones.
next week? we'll return to the usual apple is doomed because innovation and open blabla.
"Apple recently unveiled its new iPhone 5s and 5c models, to a collective “meh”. The stock sold off and is poised to continue moving lower. The market is telling Apple that it is not innovative enough and that its need to do much more, and within that lies the crux of Apple’s problem."
But yeah, a lot of comments, falling over each other in their collective agreement. will that same random blog now turn 180 and consider it's failure?
Will that same random blog now turn 180 and consider it's failure?
No.
(Queue a half dozen responses about how Apple actually has failed by selling more phones than both Nokia and Blackberry last quarter in a single weekend. Sometimes, I think people who think Apple is a failure are actually it's biggest supporters, because really, who but those most invested in the company's success are pushing for it to do better? You'd only call them a failure if you thought they could do better, right? So...tell me who the Apple fanboys are, again?)
Yup, Apple is as doomed as ever. Also their customers are sheeple, they are marketing geniuses (even when I write a blog post painstakingly detailing why their ads are terrible), reality distortion field, disruption, etc etc.
Um, excuse me, don't you realize that Android has been installed on approximately 8 million times the number of devices that iOS has been installed on? Think of how many feature phones, Arduinos, and toasters have all of the same capabilities Apple's iterative, piddly phone offering. Probably more features, now that I think about it, since, like, I don't have to jailbreak my toaster to get all of the features I want.
In the long run we are all dead. And all companies go bankrupt.
Aggregated numbers do not tell the whole story.
If smartphones mature to good enough and people shift to slower upgrade cycles (think 2006-7 in PC terms) then apple will have trouble growing. And in our quarterly reports world growth is what counts. Which is already hard when you have the revenue of a couple of countries. And there are not many people that can afford to pay the apple premiums and are not already paying them.
For me the interesting stuff is what is the breakdown of the sales. If the majority of these 9 millions are iPhone 4/S users that switch it can mean one thing, if 6 of those 9 million units are new customers is another story.
We work in industry where the rise and falls of titans is rapid. I will be equally unsurprised if in 5 years Apple still have amazing performance or they are on the brink of bankruptcy.
Apple have some structural problems that they need to address to stay on top - the lack of Steve Jobs (mostly as a perception thing for the products), the store, how to reach to new users that are poorer and protect the margins and the perception of premium-ness of their brand, deal with the growing share of Android etc. None of them are unsolvable but combined they are a challenge.
I saw that when it came online, you can't prove the latest kimmel video's honesty by using an older one. He also revealed posting fake youtube fail videos so now everything he shows is questionnable.
Everything he ever showed is questionable, he's an entertainer not an investigative news reporter. However, pretty much all of these segments have been real in the past, so I'm not sure why that would change now. They obviously cherry pick respondents.
Fair enough. But how do you know the previous ones weren't staged ? Maybe they weren't, it was a believable prank to compare a device with itself and see the average person make up fantasy differences. But here it's an ipad mini of twice the surface, and screen tasting ... I mean come on.
What do you mean by staged? In a sense they all are- I'm sure they ask the question to a lot of people who say "that's not an iPhone, that's an iPad Mini". But they edit those ones out. They're not intending to portray an accurate image of the American consumer.
Nothing moves the stock like a successful product. I am glad they did not bow to market pressure and announce more dividends or stock buybacks. Stock buybacks are just dead money. They should instead use that money on their business and not to satisfy investors over the short term.
That is an oversimplification. Apple has more money than it could possibly hope to reinvest in its core business. When that is the case, and when the stock is undervalued as is the case with Apple, stock buybacks are a great use of a company's cash.
The point behind stock buyback is simply to assert some confidence in the stock. Which means the market does not have confidence in it in the first place and probably has negative momentum. Most cases I have seen the market is correct. So even if the stock is bought back the increase in the price will be temporary as the negative momentum will surely vaporize the stock increase. It does not help anybody but investors trying to make a profit in the short term. I have not seen a single stock buyback work. I would rather they throw money at anything but this.
Carl Icahn does not a market represent. Carl Icahn and his Twitter account represent himself (and potentially a growing disconnect with reality since his CompUSA days)
I’m honestly not too sure about that. Knowing the split between the two would be very interesting.
I would imagine that they can make tons of 5c phones while the 5s may be more problematic. So the balance between the two may be more even than it seems. (Also, I would be really interested whether the 5c or 5s is the more high margin device. I could imagine that at least for now the 5c has a higher margin than the 5s – well, at least the 16GB 5s.)
"This makes sense since those who feel the need to buy a new device the very weekend it launches are most likely the power users who want the highest-end phone experience."
It's only really good for Apple if the profit on the more expensive model is greater than the profit on the cheaper one.
All the Apple blogs were talking as if the 5s wasn't really available in large numbers and the plan was to sell lots of cheap-to-make 5c models instead. Which is just one more terrible prediction to chalk up, but it seems they at least thought that would be a good thing before today.
I wouldn't know where to start estimating the profit margins on either phone, but it's worth mentioning since every other discussion about Apple is about how much profit they make, not how many they sell.
I've seen someone complains about this somewhere, and it happened to me on another website, quite confusing. Thanks for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6430521 explanation
Realistically, I'd estimate somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000, which is only slightly less absurd than your joke. From what I've heard, Apple stores typically only had ten or so gold units each available on launch day. That's what it was at the store where I was, and I've heard the same from others. Multiply that by the 413 Apple stores worldwide and... that's not very many. Pretty crazy.
I am sorry, but I think you are assuming a little bit too much here.
You are guestimating that 4000 gold phones were sold in the stores based on a 10 per store rumored number you've heard and 400 stores. Then you guess that retail is only 10% (another guess) and so multiply you original guestimate by 10 to get 40000 gold phones.
It's quite hopeless guesswork. We don't know the distribution of models in retail or online. We don't know how much is sold online compared to retail. We don't know how much was sold outside Apple's retail stores (by e.g. AT&T). We don't even know the geographical distribution (i.e. higher gold-ratio in China than US).
If we assume a factor 3 to 1 sales of iPhone 5S vs 5C based on Localitics'report (1), Apple has sold between 6-7 million iPhone 5S. Your 40.000 number isn't even 1% of that, so I think you are an order of magnitude off still.
OK, I probably misread the tone in your first sentence.
It's easy to guess! Nearly impossible to guess accurately, though, I agree.
You're right about it being less than 1% of the total, although I disagree that this makes the estimate absurd. I think it's entirely possible that the gold 5S constitutes less than 1% of production or sales so far. I certainly could be wrong.
The under supply can't be too bad though - I just checked on eBay, and 16gb gold iPhones are going for around $1000. You can buy a TMobile contract free for $650 online through the Apple Store. That's only a 50% markup...
Man, does eBay's search ever suck. I specify gold, 5S, unlocked, and it still gives me all sorts of irrelevant listings.
Looks like the typical price is around there, though. I do see some sold for well over $2,000, though. I wonder if that means the $1,000 listings are underpriced, or if those high-end listings just got lucky and found a few suckers.
Wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of the gold phones are shipped to Oriental countries, where the color is far more popular and sought after with much greater earnest (bordering on social imperative).
Purely anecdotally, a ton of the people in my line wanted gold, but only the first ten people actually got one. It seems plenty popular here too.
It will be interesting if we ever get a color breakdown to see if this "gold is for Asian countries" thing actually holds up, or if it's just another instance of bizarre cultural misunderstanding.
Other retail stores (Best Buy, Target, Wal-mart, cell phone stores, etc) got at least some shipments over the weekend, did they not? Perhaps some golds were included in those.
Extremely few. I doubt they got enough phones to make any significant difference in the overall numbers.
Totally anecdotally, I reserved a black (sorry, "space gray") phone at Target on Wednesday as a backup plan, in case I failed at the Apple store. They still haven't told me it's ready.
From what I've heard (hooray for rumors!) non-Apple stores are getting just a handful of phones, while Apple's stores are going through hundreds or thousands.
I wouldn't be so quick to start doing the Apple victory dance. A lot of people waited to upgrade because the iPhone 5 was an iterative device and I have several anecdotal cases where people I knew said they would wait for a 5S.
Apple has painted itself somewhat into a corner now. Similar to Windows Service Packs, people are waiting for the second version of Apple products to get it 'right'.
This isn't to say they got it 'right' THIS time, either. It just is what it is.
I had this conversation with a friend a few days ago. He was like, "The 5S seems like what the 5 should've been."
When I said something like, "The 5 upgraded the body style, the screen, the processor, and the camera, what's left?" he responded, "Most of that was probably just suppliers saying they'd no longer make certain parts."
He's not a techy, but is a Boeing engineer. I'm not really sure where that attitude comes from, but it's interesting to see what people outside of the tech bubble think.
Based on Apple's existing precedent to 'revolutionize' phones to the average consumer, I'd consider all the devices in the 5 generation to be iterative.
We need a country breakdown considering this launch included China (unlike previous launches). That said, I'm assuming 30-40% in China and the rest elsewhere still puts it as a great launch.
Including China sales the increase was 29% (7m -> 9m).
33% China would be 50% increase in China (2m -> 3m) and up 20% (5m-6m) elsewhere.
40% China would be a near doubling in China (2->3.6), and up 8% (5m->5.4m) elsewhere
For reference, the smartphone market is growing at about 50% a year, in Q2 Apple's sales numbers rose 20% year-on-year and their share dropped over 3 percentage points year-on-year (16.6% -> 13.1%).
(These launch numbers assume that no-one bought a price-dropped 4S on the launch weekend last year)
"phone" is a weird word to use for these devices. It's a computer in your pocket with instant access to the Internet that just haphazardly has a GSM module for legacy reasons.
This is even more striking when my kids (3 & 5) ask for my phone: I'm watching a common word get completely changed for the next generation. Adults think "phone" as a verbal communication device, often having been overloaded with a stunning amount of alternate communications & computing power. Young kids see a "phone" as a visual toy and movie player, with data communications, and voice calls relegated to "yeah, you can do that too". "Phone" may very well largely replace "computer".
These "phones" make such huge difference to my life that I can't imagine not discussing them.
I just moved to san francisco from UK. I have never been here before. Using my phone I can video call my family, who are missing my daughter, from a supermarket. I can discover places to shop, eat and have fun at the touch of a button. I can update my friends back home with how I'm getting on.
These phones impact at least 50% of my life, so of course I'm going to discuss them - at length.
It's exciting for some people. Technology is still changing relatively quickly in mobile. The improvements to hardware and software have been amazing over the past half decade. Apple only releases new phones once a year so the buzz gets more intense.
You hardly hear about desktop computers anymore unless you follow the industry closely. I remember when the Intel Pentium being released was a huge deal in all the news media.
It goes to show you just how hungry people were for change on the platform. Next up has to be screen size which would result in a similar massive weekend for the 6.
I wouldn't be so sure. The 4S sold over four million units on its opening weekend, which is pretty close to the 5's five million, but way more than the 4's 1.7 million.
Personally, I'm deliberately on the "S" upgrade cycle. I started off with a 3GS, then got a 4S, and now have a 5S. I figure I'll let other people deal with the bleeding edge, and I can get the model with all the refinements afterwards. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of other people think the same way. I don't doubt that the 6 will sell really well, probably better than the 5S, but it may not sell vastly better than the 5S.
Yeah, I'm on the non-S cycle, going from a 3G to a 4 to a 5. Each of those had a feature (3G, Retina, LTE) I wouldn't have wanted to live without for a year, but for quality of experience and useful lifetime, the "S" cycle is the place to be.
But I expect Apple will stick with the C/S distinction for at least one generation, and my next phone will be called a "6S". Or a "6X" for "extended"? No reason they have to stop at two letters/models.
I think it's also a good idea to wait a month or so after release. What's the rush? Let the first production runs go through and work out the kinks. So far I have heard some reports of screen issues on some 5s models. With a new and unusual part like the fingerprint sensor I'd rather wait a bit.
Personally, my rush was that I needed a device with an A7 in it for testing purposes. If it wasn't for that, I'd be right there with you and would have just ordered online and waited.
It will be for almost everybody, as long as you have someone somewhere with a 5S to use for a sanity check before you ship.
In my case, there was some code dealing with low-level stack walking and such that really needed the actual hardware in hand. Not a common case, to be sure.
There you go, more proof that most people don't give a shit about surveillance, privacy and the lot.
Here it is, the one device that can create the biggest fingerprint database in the world sold 9 million units in a couple of days. NSA must be jubilating.
Cell phones are basically mobile spy boxes. If you carry a cell phone with you, then the government can record every conversation you have, track your position at all times, and steal every password you enter into the phone.
If you're already OK with that, why would you possibly care about your fingerprint? I don't get it.
You missed the part where the fingerprint is stored so it's not even accessible to the OS and are never stored online?
Oh, but I guess the NSA has a back door and will manage to collect them all without anyone noticing, right? Just like they record all the sound from your phone mic and upload it?
I'm all against unlawful spying by the NSA, but give me a break.
>You missed the part where the fingerprint is stored so it's not even accessible to the OS and are never stored online?
I guess you missed the past 14 weeks of revelations. Either that or I admire your dedication to believing general company claims in the face of all evidence that this is not the status quo.
I didn't miss them, and I'd like you to link to the revelation that tha NSA routinely collects data stored locally on iPhones with Apples consent and involvement.
No, it can't. Why people don't listen to the damn talks given by the people who build these things is beyond me.
It was explicitly said during the announcement that no fingerprint is actually stored. It looks for certain unique ridges and swirls and builds up a hash from that. That hash is the only thing communicated to Apple. No fingerprint data is transfered.
You're wrong. Nothing is communicated to Apple, ever. Fingerprint data stays in the secure memory on the A7 and the scanner is the only thing that has access to it. The system is completely closed to the device which contains the TouchID sensor. For example, you can't use your fingerprint to activate a new device.
As people have written a thousand times so far, the finger print isn't saved off device. Yes, it is saved. But if someone can get your device, they can also get your fingerprint (probably from the screen of the same device).
Since you are making this claim, I'll assume you've read the entire codebase of iOS. Is there anything stopping Apple from sending out an update that uploads the fingerprint?? Is there anything stopping the NSA from requiring Apple to do this?? It's not paranoia anymore.
From an Occam's Razor POV: it would be simpler for some agency to require a backdoor or transfer the character-based unlock, which they could apply whether the phone has a finger-reader or not. Since I haven't read the entire codebase of any of the operating systems I use, my paranoid self says "Expect root-ation!" while my normal self says "Get back to work, quit reading and writing internet commments!"
Given the fact that we've seen no evidence of such updates previously, and rather we've seen Apple take many steps to protect privacy and even seen NSA leaked slides detailing how they need access to PCs to read iPhone backups, I think it's extremely unlikely that they would ever take the risk of pushing an customer-wide software update.
If you are worried about being specifically targeted, you shouldn't use an off the shelf cellphone at all, and this discussion is moot.
Is it possible for software to even read the fingerprint from the sensor, as opposed to only asking the sensor if this fingerprint matches a previous fingerprint????
The processing happens on the A7 chip, but separated from the OS. Of course, the question is whether it's possible for Apple or someone else to update the fingerprint software to give back more data than just the yes/no, or if you could reconfigure the hardware so that the OS can talk to the sensor directly.
But again, I'm much more concerned about all the other information my cell phone operator, so this is quite simply just hysteria, and undermines the rightful concern us techies have about surveillance.
My theory is the hardware is isolated precisely to prevent a software bug (update) from being able to access the raw fingerprints. "Children's game steals fingerprints" is exactly the headline Apple doesn't want to see. But that's just speculation, maybe it is accessible.
We've seen this for a couple of weeks now... The NSA can collect your finger print from the airport among other places already with technology specifically for this purpose.
How do they benefit from collecting your fingerprint from a phone?
What is it you think they can do with it that they cannot already do?
Tracking cookies from Facebook and Google can do far more to invade on your privacy.
In that case, I stand corrected and I am sorry about that.
However, it does sound like it would be really easy for the US government to convince everybody that citizens should also have their finger prints scanned to confirm their identity.
In fact it is really really odd that they only scan foreigners to confirm their identity.
I don't think the weird zealous paranoia does much to change their minds. If anything it might motivate 'normal people' to steer clear of questioning privacy issues.
The 5s has been my first new iPhone since I got an iPhone 4 in 2010 and for me, coming from an older device that didn't even have Siri, I am extremely happy with it. It may be a moot update if you already haven an iPhone 5 (or maybe even a 4s) but to me it feels like an entirely different device (not only because I also updated to iOS7 at the same time, of course).
I really like the finger sensor, as it makes login a lot faster. Of course, there're security issues here, but for me it is just a convenience method, if people are able to break through this sensor, they will also be able to use other methods to gain access to my data. I also look forward to apps that leverage the M7 as I tend to do a fair bit of walking and running and like to see at the end of the day how well I performed. I really like Siri, again, this is my first time having access to it, and I already use it for writing text messages, checking the weather, or creating schedules / appointments. In general, the speed difference between my old iPhone 4 and this one is staggering. This, of course, was to be expected, as the 4 was crazy slow at times, but it still makes me happy.
All in all, for me, the 5s is a great update and I hope that the 'most forward thinking phone yet' comment from Apple is close to the truth, as I again, plan to use it for at least 3-4 years before updating again.