Re: Apple tacitly admits their CPUs and new Modem are merely a marketing gimmick

On 3/6/25 16:00, badgolferman wrote:

sms <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

On 2/22/2025 3:38 AM, -hh wrote:
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In any event, there's more things than just geekery to criticize the new
iPhone 16E about.  Since the Apple modem is to not pay Qualcomm's high
chip licensing costs, then why did the price jump up by so much?  For
the $170 increase from $429 to $599 is a whopping +40%.  Tariffs?

>
It's a certainty that the pricing reflected careful research of what the
believed would generate optimal profit. If they are wrong, they can
lower the price to $499 or $459, or whatever.

They could, but it will probably take an economic contraction and for DJT to retreat on his tariff wars before they'd really be comfortable going back down in price.  They need to support their stock price too.

The 16e is going to be purchased by a lot of corporations that provide
iPhones to their employees, and that see the $599 price as a good deal
because previously they were not forcing employees to take the SE, with
the smaller screen, and were paying more than $599 (or whatever
corporate price they negotiated). At my wife's company, a lot of her
colleagues took the SE despite being allowed to take a larger screen model.

Indeed, that's another factor.  I actually had a SE 2022 on order just before the 16E launched to retain the smaller form factor; was probably a week or two too late; Apple offered a 14 but I chose refund instead.

I got a new corporate phone about four months ago and had the choice
between SE, 14, 15 models and all their variants. I chose the regular 14 to
match my personal phone because I didn’t want two different chargers
(lightning, usb-c) at home, work, car.

I've not been tracking how the USB-C port is working out on smartphones in real life hardware reliability, but I am concerned that eventuality.
Thought I read somewhere that some Apple Techs are doing an unauthorized mod during port repairs to add some glue to strengthen the connection. Sounds like YA typical Apple design failure like they had with the original Lightning cables which fatigued away far too quickly because they felt it was more important to save a half penny in manufacturing.
-hh