[kristianc]

Nearly all of the things you describe there aside from the camera are software/services based and don’t require improved hardware year-on-year at all. This is a problem for a company that makes its money selling expensive hardware.

[armchairhacker]

Even the camera quality could be improved with post-processing like upscaling and color correction, which have somewhat recently become much better.

Although my understanding is that the new cameras are incredible, so while you could get a "decent" photo on an old phone, unlike the other features it would be noticeably worse than the new phone.

[alfiedotwtf]

It’s not the cameras that are bad. In fact, I sold my Canon with a 24-70mm f2.8 L because the iPhone photos were great!

The HUGE L by Apple is their shitty Photo App. It’s great if you have under 1Gb of photos, but over 100Gb - forget it - it is fucking. God. Aweful. PAINFUL!

And then they have the nerve of once in a while having a non-compatible Photo database format and so your WHOLE photo collection has to be converted… over 4 days wtf!

I specifically learned Rust so I could make a better Photo app. Sadly, time has shelved that project like many others, but man I would like be for someone to solve the iPhone -> Laptop photo management problem.

… and no, cloud backups? Not for > 400Gb thanks. All it takes is for Apple to kill your account and then ALL your family photos are gone. F that.

[calgoo]

I use PhotoSync to sync all photos to MiniO s3 docker container on my desktop pc. The only issue is the initial upload that I slowly did over a week (only synced when charging etc). Works quite well as a iCloud replacement for photos. I use syncthings for anything else like my keepassxc files.

[hcurtiss]

Yeah, I use PhotoSync to sync back to FileRun. FileRun places all files in a basic share, which I access by smb on-prem and via FileRun's webdav server elsewhere. When I'm at home, transferring over LAN direct to storage was the fastest option for offloading volleyball videos, which I can then promptly share with others without waiting for upload to a service like iCloud or OneDrive.

[valval]

Why would Apple delete your photos, and why would your solution for storing them be more robust than Apple’s?

I rarely relate to issues people paint about Apple products. The Photos app is great, and moving stuff around between my MacBook and iPhone is seamless.

Could it be user error?

[alfiedotwtf]

You’ve never heard of people getting locked out of their accounts? Or companies shutting down services? Apple is no different.

How many hundreds of gigs is your Apple Photo library? And have you used it long enough that you’ve had to bare the pain of an Apple Photo database upgrade?

And no, it’s not user error.

[trinix912]

> Even the camera quality could be improved with post-processing like upscaling and color correction, which have somewhat recently become much better.

Sorry, but this is the one feature I hate (not being able to turn off) on today's phones. All the wannabe HDR, noise reduction, upscaling, color corrections that make the pictures look plasticky and overly colorful and just plain kitsch when compared to the same scene taken with a 10-15yo pocket camera.

[rickdeckard]

Agree. But the company also pays a large chunk of its services R&D and operations by bundling it with the hardware and have people pay upfront for it.

New hardware would not be needed for most of it, but then Apple would have to make every iOS user a fixed yearly fee for a generic package of "some services at our disclosure". And that's quite impossible to achieve and stay competitive...

[kristianc]

Here’s the rub though: convincing customers to pay for something they used to think they got as part of the hardware package isn’t going to be easy.

People love the seamless integration of hardware, software, and services that Apple provides, but introducing a mandatory yearly fee would erode that goodwill pretty much instantly.

It would be more or less impossible to pull off.

[gffrd]

I think you hovered over something significant: yes, most of the "new features" of the new phones are software features … but the line between "what is software and what is hardware" may not be crystal clear to a lot of the population.

Imagine the effect of a TV spot touting a new OS feature on the new iPhone. Do I need the new phone to get that feature? As soon as you've asked the question, you're at the doorstep of "I wasn't thinking about it, but I will need to replace the battery soon ($$) and it's been getting slower …"

You may learn the feature is available in an OS update, but it's inconsequential: you've already rolled the idea of a new phone around and remember how nice it is to start fresh. This one may not get you, but next year's definitely will.

Some confusion around hardware -vs- software is key to draw people in.

[kristianc]

> Imagine the effect of a TV spot touting a new OS feature on the new iPhone. Do I need the new phone to get that feature? As soon as you've asked the question, you're at the doorstep of "I wasn't thinking about it, but I will need to replace the battery soon ($$) and it's been getting slower …"

I’d say this works exactly once - Apple will get a one time hit out of customers upgrading to an AI enabled phone, which will have a SOC capable of running AI (customers don’t need to know what a SOC is).

For anything beyond that, the media will likely pick up that it’s not strictly necessary and you’ll already have pocketed a lot of the benefit from having your first AI integrated phone.