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by keiyakins 2968 days ago
Apple is awful at providing a reasonable spread of devices though. There's no $50 iphone that does everything I need, I'd have to spend at least ten times that. Then I'd have to pay MORE to be able to develop and run my own programs?! At that point, why even have a microprocessor rather than using a simple fixed function ASIC?

Would I be happier if I could get a phone with the equivalent of BIOS and nothing else and vet and install my own software? You bet. If nothing else, I'd not have to install all those Play ____ apps I never use. But given the choices available, Apple is a bad one.
2 comments
krrrh 2968 days ago
$50 is a pretty amazing price point for something as flexible as a smartphone. However, you can get a perfectly usable used 5S for close to that range. Spend $15-40 extra and you can outfit it with new glass, screen, and battery, and it will feel like new, and probably perform at least as well as a brand new $50 Android.

You can get a free developer account that lets you develop and run your own programs since a couple of years.

I don’t know what you’re getting on about with ASICS, but I guess you may just need to accept being in a niche market segment.

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SlowRobotAhead 2968 days ago
No one would buy or make your low margin low cost phone, that’s why it doesn’t exist.

Almost like Apple has probably evaluated the business case of an open ecosystem low margin low cost phone, and then immediately went back to printing money.

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freeone3000 2968 days ago
The $50 price point being deliberately chosen seems to be a reference to Android Go, whose USP is that the max price of the phone, new, no subsidy, is $50. (Though in the US, ZTE actually sells them for $80.)

Of course, they're miserable little devices, but they are technically smartphones that technically run android.

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PhantomGremlin 2968 days ago
and then immediately went back to printing money.

I love the phrase "printing money". It's time proven. But it just occurred to me that it doesn't do Apple justice.

Apple's free cash flow for the trailing 12 months was $44.6 Billion. That's 446 million $100 banknotes. How many printing presses does it take to print that many bills? How many sheets of cotton/linen paper?

Apple's financial numbers are astounding.

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