Dear Apple,
Go ahead and skip the premium iPhone launch this year. The iPhone 11 is still in great shape.
More importantly, you already launched the iPhone SE to great success. We really like ours. It’s fast! It takes perfectly good photos. You’ve made sure it’s secure and runs the latest apps (except Fortnite, but we’ve got a Switch for that!). A more budget-friendly yet still powerful phone was a great look for those of us strapped for cash this year. Pushing a minor upgrade at premium prices has considerably worse optics.
What could you possibly give us that would be a thousand dollars cooler than the iPhone 11 series? Those phones were great. The iPhone 8 is still great (if you do say so yourself). You’ve been scoring a solid 6/10 repairability rating on iPhones for a few years now; not many Android phones come close. Worried about looking left-behind on 5G? Don’t be. 5G is undercooked and not worth the effort. PC Magazine’s real-world tests found that AT&T’s 5G is slower than 4G. We’re all at home with our fast Wi-Fi anyway. And do you really want to pay the steep Qualcomm tax any more than you have to?
You’ve let Samsung do the beta testing on new features before—this is the perfect opportunity to sit out “the race” and let someone else take the flak for miserable first-gen battery performance. Relax for a year, let us play with our cool new home screens, and swoop in with great tech next year. We promise we’ll be way more excited then.
You’ve got a great product lineup right now. You just launched new Watches and iPads, and you’re working feverishly on wireless tracking dongles. Sure, you missed with AirPower, but that’s fine by us—wireless charging isn’t the best for the environment anyway. Just around the corner are some exciting Mac updates with the custom silicon in which you’ve invested so much. Let’s meet up with iPhone next year, refreshed and with renewed enthusiasm.
Remember your bold proclamation as to why you dropped the headphone jack? I mean it became a meme. Now would be a great time to flex some actual Courage. Your 2020 environmental report is a thing of beauty, and waxes poetic about the importance of making long-lasting products. Why not put your money where your mouth is and do the best thing for the environment: Fewer phones that last longer is the fastest way to reduce the carbon footprint of the technology in our lives. If every new iPhone SE owner uses their 2020 SE as long as my husband used his 2016 SE, we can lock down a big environmental win through 2024. (It’ll probably need a new battery or two before then, but iFixit’s got him covered.)
I’ll remind you about that one time Phil said that old tech is sad. It’s not—it’s a triumph. We all want these phones to last. A vintage phone is a mark of pride! Your 2016 SE is still in high demand—the headphone jack may have something to do with it. Backmarket has been selling them like hotcakes at $150. You built these things the best you could, and you did a darn good job.
Don’t get us wrong, we love covering an iPhone launch. It’s great traffic, and always fun to see what you guys have packed into familiar slabs or totally new forms. But this year, I think we’d all agree it’s not needed. Take a break, you deserve it.
The planet could use a break, too.
Love,
iFixit
30 件のコメント
Nice opinion, I do agree on all points.
Maybe you forget to mention, Apple made iOS 14 to be supported on the 2015 iPhone lineup (say iPhone 6s and original iPhone SE), this is incredible! THIS is a real achievement to reduce the environmental impact and enhance value (and then the will to keep the phone and repair it)!
If there was an official iOS for my iPhone 4… after 10 years (10!) it’s still working, my beloved…
Please Apple, focus on the environmental values: an investment for you, which will turn out in a big revenue for us all!
Lucertola Maculata - 返信
What exactly are you talking about? I’m not sure if I get the argument here. This would make sense if you assume that everyone buys new phones every year, and this ain’t the case.
I’m still rocking my iPhone SE 2016, but it is time for it to go, and I would prefer to buy a phone that was released this year than one released 1 year ago. Not because I need the latest and greatest, but because phones inevitably get obsolete and need to be replaced. Say both iPhones (11 and 12) have 5 years of support from their release date, if I buy an iPhone 11 next week instead of an iPhone 12, I will have 4 years of usage before my phone goes end of life, and I would still be much more likely to be limited by my phone’s performance in the future, possibly even having to replace it before it reached end of life.
Incremental changes are also way better as they make obsolescence a gradual process preventing you from ever buying a phone today and have to replace it next year because it is suddenly obsolete.
Daniel Novaes - 返信
I’m with you on this. I buy a new iPhone every 4-5 years & my current 2016 iPhone SE original series is in need of replacement. Also the comparison of 5G to 4G is only on one specific network & not the world over.
Paul Lukabyo -
This is exactly the right way to look at this, and it’s why Apple releases a new phone every year. Don’t tell Apple not to release a new phone, tell its customers not to buy a new phone every year—which most don’t anyway. And those that do sell their old phones, so that those who otherwise couldn’t have afforded a recent phone can now get one. I really think your logic needs revisited here, iFixit.
Besides, I’m using a 2016 SE as well, and I’m very much looking forward to the iPhone 12 mini, which may just be the phone I’ve been waiting for for most of a decade.
Calion -
Hmmm, I wonder why you guys didn’t mentioned Samsung or LG or other android manufacturers to not make phones this year
D Harris - 返信