[pistolpeteDK]

Interesting to see how they're marketing increasingly minor improvements as major breakthroughs. 16 Pro: Better camera, more zoom, dedicated camera button… isn’t that it? WiFi 7, faster ray tracing, USB-C/USB 3? Hard to imagine many people really need that.

Have we witnessed peak Apple?

Apple Watch: minimal updates. AirPods Max: new color. AirPods: some minor tweaks.

[crooked-v]

And the things they decided to not do are baffling, too. The AirPods Max doesn't even have the H2 chip and attendant features, for example.

[stephenitis]

What is the attendant feature?

Wow they really didn't upgrade to the H2 chip! I preordered this without looking too closely as I've been waiting forever for an upgrade to buy this. Very strange.

[phatfish]

It's like Call of Duty, you're not supposed to buy one each year and be amazed. Just wait two or three years and THEN you get a marginal improvement that means you can justify the purchase to yourself.

The yearly thing is to scam superfans.

[callalex]

And they still can’t figure out how to make the battery replaceable even though they claim to care so much for the environment.

[PhunkyPhil]

Why would a user-replaceable battery be better for the environment? Do you think that consumers are able to recycle hard-to-recycle lithium components like that _correctly_? Apple already offers battery replacements (comparatively) cheaply.

Beyond that there's huge issues with it such as third party batteries tainting the overall quality of the phone, having an entirely removable back plate would kill their water/dust resistance rating, it looking bad (Yes this is important to Apple) etc, god-knows-what other issues arise changing the internal structure of their components that drastically.

Don't assume they can't figure out an engineering problem because you're upset that phones aren't the same as they were 20 years ago.

[callalex]

The battery replacement service is not comparatively cheap. I just paid $90 for my iPhone 11. There is no world in which a cell phone battery of even the highest quality costs anywhere near that much. For example iFixIt offers a comparable battery for less than half that price, and generic sellers less than a quarter the price. You could argue that the labor required justifies the price but that makes the design all the more predatory.

The battery disposal is not really the point of the conversation, you could make the same argument about the whole phone. The point is that all of the components of the phone last a lot longer than two years, but the sealed in battery will barely make it that long. They obviously benefit financially from the current arrangement because they’ve shifted consumer decision from “should I pay $40 to increase my battery life by 25% on my 2 year old phone” to “should I invest $100 in this older phone or just throw it away and spend $200 (subsidized) on a new one?” The second one makes a lot more money for Apple and has a much larger negative impact on the planet.

As far as waterproof ratings, such phones exist, even in the thin form factor. This argument is a non-starter that doesn’t agree with observed reality. It’s an active choice they’re making because the incentives are misaligned.

As to the argument that users will use bad components, how is this any different than the myriad of bad Bluetooth headphones available that degrade user experience? Should Apple disallow those as well to protect their stupid users? What about cheap chargers? Cases that induce thermal throttling? Screen protectors that greatly degrade visual fidelity?

I’m not upset about phones being different than 20 years ago, I’m upset that the planet is being destroyed to slightly increase profits, all while Apple lies to our face and parades Mother Earth around the keynote stage.

[Iulioh]

The problem is the human labor to change that battery...

[callalex]

Agreed. The catch is that it’s an entirely self-made problem.

[ReptileMan]

I want replicable battery just to be sure that my phone is turned off when it says it is turned off.

[unethical_ban]

I really don't know what people expect. That Apple won't market a product? That there will be a fivefold increase in performance each year?

[reducesuffering]

I'm not sure what more you'd expect after the 14 barely had anything on the 13. The stagnation happened 3 years ago.

[nabaraz]

What about any other things like Word, Operating System, Cars? Are they not all doing smaller improvements year after year.

[MangoCoffee]

Smartphone has reached its peak. What's left to innovate? maybe Huawei's triple-fold phone(?)

[ilikeatari]

I think there is still some room. For me screen technology would be an innovation. Envision a screen that is hybrid between eink and current OLED. Or Siri that is useful (I think thats what they are working on). Or envision other inputs other than your thumbs :-) Maybe ironed out version of what they developed for Apple Vision Pro in terms of eye tracking or some other inputs. So many ideas!!!

[fsflover]

> What's left to innovate?

How about running a normal OS without artificial restrictions, so that you could completely replace your laptop/desktop?

[rqtwteye]

The same happened with laptops a long time ago. They basically do everything that's needed.

But in general I agree that the innovation output of Apple is really low compared to their size. But that seems to be the case for most of these mega trillion dollar companies. The bigger, the more conservative they get. But they are very good at making profits so it's all good as far as the CEO's bonus goes.

[joshstrange]

> The same happened with laptops a long time ago. They basically do everything that's needed.

And yet I would consider the M-chip Apple laptops to be a massive improvement.

Every year can’t have a huge paradigm shift, most users update every 2 to 4 years and so a bunch of small improvements can feel much much larger. Personally, I think releasing a phone every year is the right move even if the improvements are small.

[matwood]

For the phone we've settled on a current form factor of a slab of aluminum and glass. All changes are at the margins. A little thinner, a little lighter, a little better X.

Until some other form factor takes off, this is where we are.

[laweijfmvo]

ehhhh, maybe. they used to do small updates (other than CPU) and call it the "S" update; now they seem to keep increasing the number but doing similar small updates?