It's funny they have this marketing blog post based on competing on price yet don't disclose any of their pricing on their site only a schedule a meeting which is just about the biggest RED FLAG on pricing there is.
Our library is open source, the price is 0!! :-) Haha
We're actually mostly talking to people (that "schedule a meeting") to see how we can help them migrate their stuff away (from Heroku, Vercel, etc.)
But we're not sure of the pricing model yet - probably Entreprise features like Gitlab does, while remaining open source. It's a tough(er) balance than running a hosted service where you can "just" (over)charge people.
Just saw Nate Berkopec who does a lot of rails performance stuff posting about the same idea yesterday saying Heroku is 25-50x price for performance which is so insane. They clearly have zero interest in competing on price.
It's a shame they don't just license all their software stack at a reasonable price with a similar model like Sidekiq and let you sort out actually decent hardware. It's insane to consider Heroku if anything has gotten more expensive and worse compared to a decade ago yet in comparison similar priced server hardware has gotten WAY better of a decade. $50 for a dyno with 1 GB of ram in 2025 is robbery. It's even worse considering running a standard rails app hasn't changed dramatically from a resources perspective and if anything has become more efficient. It's comical to consider how many developers are shipping apps on Heroku for hundreds of dollars a month on machines with worse performance/resources than the macbook they are developing it on.
It's the standard playback that damn near everything in society is going for though just jacking prices and targeting the wealthiest least price sensitive percentiles instead of making good products at fair prices for the masses.
Jacked up prices isn't what is happening here. There is a psychological effect that Heroku and other cloud vendors are (wittingly or unwittingly) the beneficiary of. Customer expectations are anchored in the price they pay when they start using the service, and without deliberate effort, those expectations change in _linear_ fashion. Humans think in linear terms, while actual compute hardware improvements are exponential.
Heroku's pricing has _remained the same_ for at least seven years, while hardware has improved exponentially. So when you look at their pricing and see a scam, what you're actually doing is comparing a 2025 anchor to a mid-2010s price that exists to retain revenue. At the big cloud vendors, they differentiate customers by adding obstacles to unlocking new hardware performance in the form of reservations and updated SKUs. There's deliberate customer action that needs to take place. Heroku doesn't appear to have much competition, so they keep their prices locked and we get to read an article like this whenever a new engineer discovers just how capable modern hardware is.
I mean Heroku is also offering all of the ancillary stuff around their product. It's not literally "just" hosting. It's pretty nice to not have to manage a kube cluster, to get stuff like ephemeral QA envs and the like, etc....
Heroku has obviously stagnated now but their stack is _very cool_ for if you have a fairly simple system but still want all the nice parts of a mode developed ops system. It almost lets you get away with not having an ops team for quite a while. I don't know any other provider that is low-effort "decent" ops (Fly seems to directionally want to be new Heroku but is still missing a _lot_ in my book, though it also has a lot)
I think it’s easy to forget how much you get with a modern setup like this, and how much work it is to maintain it. If you’re at a big corp, the team who maintains this stuff is larger than most mid corp’s engineering departments. For a solo person, it’s fine. But if you have 10-30 engineers, it’s a lot of work, and paying heroku $1000/mo is significantly cheaper than having even a junior engineer spend 40% of their time on keeping up.
Well said. I’ve been expecting an obvious spiritual successor for a long time. They have a surprising number of features compared to most platforms. Their databases/redis and features like forking were quite good (as long as you were super big), logplex/log shipping, auto scale, add-on ecosystem, promotion pipelines, container support if needed (good build packs/git support if you don’t), good CLI or API, OS/patch management, hobby plans and enterprise plans, and more. And on top of all of that, the user/projects system is something mortals can wrap their heads around. They found the sweet spot between raw servers and the complexity quagmire of the mega-clouds a surprisingly long time ago.
There are some folks with good offerings (Fly, Railway, etc), but the feature set of Heroku is deeper, and more important for production apps, than most people realize. They aren’t a good place for hobbyists anymore though. I agree with that.
Is it deeper than render.com? Can heroku run static sites or distributed Elixir/Erlang? Personally I’m on fly as the pricing is even better and I prefer the UX, but render is basically what heroku should be in 2025.
Heroku made an application I worked on possible. I don't think we had the team to maintain the application stack without something like it. It enabled the company to exist long enough to get the magical stock exit. I'm forever grateful for it existing.
To be fair, AWS quite proudly talk about all the times they've lowered prices on existing services, or have introduced new generations that are cheaper (e.g. their Graviton EC2 instances).
> It's a shame they don't just license all their software stack at a reasonable price with a similar model like Sidekiq and let you sort out actually decent hardware
We built and open sourced https://canine.sh for exactly that reason. There’s no reason PaaS providers should be charging such a giant markup over already marked up cloud providers.
Heroku is pricing for “# of FTE headcount that can be terminated for switching to Heroku”; in that sense, this article’s $3000/mo bill is well below 1.0 FTE/month at U.S. pricing, so it’s not interesting to Heroku to address. I’m not defending this pricing lens, but it’s why their pricing is so high: if you aren’t switching to Heroku to layoff at least 1-2 FTE of salary per billing period, or using Heroku to replace a competitor’s equivalent replacement thereof, Heroku’s value assigned to you as a customer is net negative and they’d rather you went elsewhere. They can’t slam the door shut on the small fry, or else the unicorns would start up elsewhere, but they can set the pricing in FTE-terms and VCs will pay it for their moonshots without breaking a sweat.
This looks decent for what it is. I feel like there are umpteen solutions for easy self-hosted compute (and tbh even a plain Linux VM isn't too bad to manage). The main reason to use a PAAS provider is a managed database with built-in backups.
Its the flexibility and power of Kubernetes that I think is incredible. Scaling to multiple nodes is trivial, if your entire data plane is blown away, the recovery is trivial.
You can also self host almost any open source service without any fuss, and perform internal networking with telepresence. (For example, if you want to run an internal metabase that is not available on public internet, you can just run `telepresence connect`, and then visit the private instance at metabase.svc.cluster.local).
Canine tries to leverage all the best practices and pre-existing tools that are already out there.
But agreed, business critical databases probably shouldn't belong on Kubernetes.
Fully agreed - our recommendation is to /not/ run your prod Postgres db yourself, but use one of the many great dedicated options out there - Crunchy Data, Neon, Supabase, or AWS RDS..!
It really depends upon how much data you have. If its enough to just dump then go crazy. If it isn't its a bit more trouble.
Regardless, you're going to have a much easier time developing your app if your datastore access latency is submillisecond rather than tens of milliseconds.
You're running at a pretty small scale if running your database locally for sub-milisecond latency is practical. The database solution provided by the DBA team in a data center is going to have about the same latency as RDS or equivalent. Typical intra-datacenter network latency alone is going to be 1-3ms.
They were talking about using things like Supabase, not just RDS.
Also, "small scale" means different things to different people. Given the full topic at hand, I would call it "nano scale". Depending upon your specific schema, you can serve tens of thousands of queries per second with a single server on modern hardware, which is way more than enough for the vast majority of workloads.
> $50 for a dyno with 1 GB of ram in 2025 is robbery
AWS isn't much better honestly.. $50/month gets you an m7a.medium which is 1 vCPU (not core) and 4GB of RAM. Yes that's more memory but any wonder why AWS is making money hand-over-fist..
Not sure if it's an apples-to-apples comparison with Heroku's $50 Standard-2X dyno, but an Amazon Lightsail instance with 1GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs is $7/month.
AWS certainly also does daylight robbery. In the AWS model the normal virtual servers are overpriced, but not super overpriced.
Where they get you is all the ancillary shit, you buy some database/backup/storage/managed service/whatever, and it is priced in dollars per boogaloo, you also have to pay water tax on top, and of course if you use more than the provisioned amount of hafnias the excess ones cost 10x as much.
Most customers have no idea how little compute they are actually buying with those services.
That is assuming you need that 1 core 24/7, you can get 2 core / 8gb for $43, this will most likely fit 90% of workloads (steady traffic with spikes, or 9-5 cadence).
If you reserve that instance you can get it for 40% cheaper, or get 4 cores instead.
Yes it's more expensive than OVH but you also get everything AWS to offer.
This, plus as a backup plan going from Heroku to AWS wouldn't necessarily solve the problem, at least with our infra. When us-east-1 went down this week so did Heroku for us.
You're not confused--AWS either gets custom chips without it, or they disable the SMT. I'm not sure which. Here's where AWS talks about it: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/m7a/
> One of the major differences between M7a instances and the previous generations of instances, such as M6a instances, is their vCPU to physical processor core mapping. Every vCPU on a M7a instance is a physical CPU core. This means there is no Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). By contrast, every vCPU on prior generations such as M6a instances is a thread of a CPU core.
My wild guess is they're disabling it. For Intel instance families they loudly praise their custom Intel processors, but this page does not contain the word "custom" anywhere.
Heroku is the Vercel of Rails: people will pay a fortune for it simply because it works. This has always been their business model, so it’s not really a new development. There’s little competition since the demand isn’t explosive and the margin is thin, so you end up with stagnation
You'd be surprised. There are very few because it takes a lot more work to build reliable systems across mid-market cloud providers (flakey APIs, missing functionality, etc). Plus you need to know the idiosyncrasies of all the various frameworks + build systems.
That said, they are emerging. I'm actually working on a drop-in Vercel competitor at https://www.sherpa.sh. We're 70% lower cost by running on EU based CDN and dedicated servers (Hetzner, etc). But we had to build the relationships to solve all the above challenges first.
I am not sure what's there to license. The hard and expensive part is in the labor to keep everything running. You are paying to make DevSecOps Somebody Else's Problem. You are paying for A Solution. You are not paying for software. There are plenty of Heroku clones mentioned in this thread.
I know you mean this sarcastically but I actually 100% agree with this particular on the steak point. Especially with beef prices at all time record highs and restaurant inflation being out of control post pandemic. It takes so much of the enjoyment out of things for me if I feel i'm being ripped off left and right.
What you're missing here is that companies happily pay the premium to Heroku because it lets them focus on building the product and generating business rather than wasting precious engineering time managing infra.
By the time the product is a success and reaches a scale where it becomes cost prohibitive, they have enough resources to expand or migrate away anyway.
I suppose for solo devs it might be cheaper to setup a box for fun, but even then, I would argue that not everyone enjoys doing devops and prefers spending their time elsewhere.
Maybe what bothers people so much is more of the fact that when Heroku first came out, it was much harder to do what that platform does. In the past 20 years or so, there has been a ton of improvement in the tools available. What could’ve taken you three full-time employees can probably be done with 20% of someone’s time after the initial set up which also isn’t that hard. So, it seems like instead of charging like 50X the cost of the servers themselves, maybe Heroku could be charging 10X. But it seems like salesforce probably just bought Heroku as a cash-generating machine. They probably figure they have a lot more to lose in cutting the bills of their old customers who don’t want to migrate anything, then they could gain from attracting new customers who aren’t already locked in.
Honestly, reading these threads it sounds to me like a lot of people are still launching new projects on Heroku. I wouldn’t have guessed that was true before reading this.
This argument doesn't work with such commoditized software. It's more like comparing an oil change for $100 plus an hour of research and a short drive against a convenient oil change right next door for $2,500.
Nobody is forced to go to the expensive one. If they are still in business then enough people apparently consider it a reasonable deal. You might not, but others do. Whether I'm being downvoted or not.
Not the best comment but I agree with the sentiment. I fear far too often, people complain about price when there are competitors/other cheaper options that could be used with a little more effort. If people cared so much then they should just use the alternative.
No one gets hurt if someone else chooses to waste their money on Heroku so why are people complaining? Of course it applies in cases where there aren't a lot of competitors but there are literally hundreds of different of different options for deploying applications and at least a dozen of them are just as reliable and cheaper than Heroku.
I'm hurt because a service I'm using is based on Heroku. I'm on the "unlimited" plan but they have backtracked on that and now say I'm too big for them...
The problem with Heroku's pricing is that it's set high enough that I no longer use it and neither does anyone else I know. I suspect they either pivoted to a different target market than me, which would be inconvenient but I'd be okay with it, or killed off their own growth potential by trying to extract revenue, which I would find sad.
I’m pretty sure their target market is people who have already built something kind of complex on there and don’t have the time/money budget to do a big migration. In that way, they know their customers are stuck but can afford the current prices, so keeping pricing static or gradually increasing makes sense.
It's just trendy to bash cloud and praise on-premises in 2025. In a few years that will turn around. Then in another few years it will turn around again.
I remain convinced VR gaming is niche because despite these companies being willing to drop boatloads of money on all kinds of things they for some reason never decided to just allocate a few billion to create a handful of true AAA games and jumpstart the industry. I think even just 3 proper games with several hundred mil budgets and VR gaming might be in an entirely different space than it is now.
Facebook made a very expensive new Batman game in VR, there's also Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed, a ton of other high budget games like Red Matter.
It just isn't taking off. In my experience even though VR is unique and amazing, it's not that much better than playing those games flat screen. I tend to spend most of my time in Beat Saber.
Expensive in the context of other VR games sure. I couldn't find any official numbers but i'm sure it pales in comparison to dozens of other games that came out this year.
Also i'm not sure what these single player relatively short playtime/runtime games accomplish as you buy it play it in less than a week and are done. What I would like to see is the large scale infinitely playable MMO type game done on VR with at least at 250M budget.
I think this is extremely doubtful. The reality remains that it's impossible to make a first person or even third person VR game with free movement, because of fundamental limitations in how human brains process movement. Having your eyes tell you are moving but your muscles and inner ear tell you that you are not makes you extremely sick very quickly, and technology can't actually fix this. The better and more immersive the visual illusion of movement, the worse the movement sickness you'll experience.
And without free movement, you can't build any of the mainstream game genres. You can't build and get people excited in a Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed or Fortnite or Elden Ring or Zelda where movement works like Riven, the sequel to Myst. Valve actually tried with the first Half-Life game in a decade, and even that didn't work.
Add to this massive gameplay limitation the second massive issue that you can't get a mass audience to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a peripheral without which they can't play your 70-80 dollar game.
> Valve actually tried with the first Half-Life game in a decade, and even that didn't work.
Half Life Alyx is still considered to be one of the best VR games ever made and one that is still consistently recommended to new users even years after release. IMO people buy hardware because of the exclusive content. If a standard game console came out and it only had one AAA game on it, I probably wouldn't bother buying it. But if there were 3-4 games that looked really interesting it starts to look more worth the investment. Playing VR games takes a lot of committment (time / physical space / $$$) so the payoff has to be worth it or you'll lose people. With the huge amount of money spent on R&D for new hardware I think it's a valid argument to say that maybe funding content would have been a better investment in terms of ensuring platform growth.
Also, side note but not every game requires free motion. Plenty of hits had no movement or teleport etc. A lot of these were completely new (sub-)genres that didn't exist or hit the same as they would in a traditional pancake game. Plus lots of kids seem unaffected by free movement (maybe as high as 50% of users by my rough estimate).
Those games literally exist now. Almost all new VR games use free movement not teleportation. It is frustrating that you seem to be talking confidently when your knowledge is 5 years out of date.
10 years out of date. Free motion has been the norm for indie games since HTC vive. The bigger studios kept using teleportation because that was the "best practice" gamers got their VR legs and preferred free motion.
Maybe a really high budget VR shooter game could be successful, I don’t know.
I played some VR sword-fighting games and they were bad in a way that AAA budgets would not fix. Stuff like an attack animation being pre-scripted feels incredibly goofy in VR.
I think this is a general problem. VR worlds need to be more dynamic than typical games. AAA games tend to have higher quality assets, but arranged in a more restrictive and scripted configuration. More innovative indie work is needed to work out what the language of VR should be (it is a bit weird compared to the past because stuff like Quake was innovative, AAA-equivalent for the era, but also small and independent enough to be innovative).
Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal? Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras.
Doubt most people want it as thin as possible. This is just the phone industry running out of ideas and trying to tell people what they actually need.
There's not much left to "fix" on mobile phones, and no real important features to add. Lacking that, they need something to sell the phones with, so they're going for these strange "improvements". It needs to be something that has some wow factor so they can lead with. This seems to somehow work on normal people so they'll keep doing these "improvements".
I expect in the future they'll pull this trick again, moving bits of the phone upwards towards camera, and create a second notch from half way down, where the phone will get even thinner, and they'll sell that.
I can think of quite a few things to fix just they are extraordinarily difficult engineering problems versus 10-20% improvements on existing features or random tweaks:
- novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone
- front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset
- dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage
- way more ram (100gb+) and processing power for powerful local llm and other ai
- significant reduction in thickness and weight. like this air with no bump but also under 100 grams
- maybe some stuff with projectors
This. I don't want a very thin phone — I want one that fits in my pocket smoothly, and the bump ruins that. Give me a thicker phone, with a bigger battery and rounded edges like the original iPhone.
You know, I forgot my razor and was on vacation in a very touristy place which only had expensive, "luxury" brands of everything just to pump up the price. So I got stuck buying one of those Mach 4's. I have to say, it was actually a very nice shave. I'm usually a total skeptic and this is obviously Mad did a great job with this commercial, but there is something to be said for that product. I haven't bothered paying the higher price for it in general, but I do kinda miss it.
Interesting! I hadn’t seen that Mad TV ad before. It’s quite reminiscent of this one from The Late Show on Australian TV in 1992. I can totally see people having a similar idea from the same blade escalation process.
No one would buy it (by Apple standards) because no one is asking for an over half pound phone. I bet a 17 Pro with a flat back that was all battery would approach a pound.
This is not true. None of the Apple cases (or third party cases) give a flush finish to the entire phone. They just add a new, bigger, larger bump below the camera bump which lets the phone basically lie flat. It does not make it easier to smoothly fit into a pocket or anything like that, and the phone is still wobbly while placed face-up on a surface.
Note that hidden front cameras have been available for a while - for example, the Samsung Z Fold 3 (2021). There are some engineering tradeoffs involved with light transmission and image quality that maybe Apple doesn't find favorable.
Interestingly Chinese manufacturers seem to be the main adopters of this tech. For example, the article below has Samsung, Xiaomi, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo (actually, this may just be due to there being many more large Chinese phone manufacturers in general.)
https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/under-display-camera-phones/
Basically nobody cares about front camera performance since its never stellar and always over-ironed digital meh, especially compared to look of display that's constantly in-your-face. The photos taken with it are never taken for highest picture quality, rather just catching a person being somewhere.
The motivations of Apple to keep things as they are for so long, despite strong criticism from all over is one of business mysteries. A little middle finger to its user one may say, not big enough to stir things too much, just a bit.
At some point you run into physics limitations with the camera though. Cameras are a weird bit of tech. In almost all other areas of tech, as we get more advanced, things get smaller - the opposite is true of camera sensors, they get better the larger they are. More light, less noise, better/more pleasing bokeh, etc. Same is true for lenses as well, and as the sensors get bigger, the lenses also must get bigger.
I love the idea behind the pro phone and going all out on cameras, but practically I want the air more. I wish it had an ultrawide, but it is what it is - I have and frequently carry around an actual camera with me most places I go where I'd want to take photos.
We had flush cameras the last time in the iPhone SE 2016. That camera was good enough for my modest needs. It's just that Apple has a different opinion.
People who routinely take photos in social situations. Camera phones don't have features that appeal to professionals, they do things that appeal to casual photographers.
Pro photographers aren't professionals because they have expensive cameras, it's because they get paid to deliver professional results. A phone camera can be the most usable camera for a result because it's smaller and fits in more places.
Though the camera isn't even the most important equipment, that's lenses/lighting (plus stabilizers, studio backdrops, etc.)
They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and your phone is usually with you. In any case, some professional photographers actually prefer shooting on their phone even for planned, high-profile shoots—perhaps they like its convenience, or that its unassuming nature puts subjects at ease. Or perhaps they find it creatively freeing to be burdened down by only minimal gear.
Yeah, idk. That seems like an awful idea to me. I’m not sure why she would shoot with an iPhone for such a job unless she got paid by Apple. Some practical reasons:
- Such an important moment is something you often wanna blow up in a large/hi-res print.
- An ultrawide lens is suboptimal for portraits and usually makes the face look puffy from the perspective.
- Unless you know the exact color & aesthetic for the cover you want to preserve the raw capture for changes in post to match the vibe.
While I can certainly appreciate the casual and intimate vibe she’s going for, as a pro she could have brought any decent camera with a portrait lens and keeping the shoots equally short without compromising quality and adding risk for the poor layout person who has to work with it later.
I consider myself a hobby photographer, and I love having a phone camera. I can then have the tele glass on for entire hike/session, and do landscapes on the phone. Currently, 2 weeks in, I didn't even touch the landscape glass in it's case.
> novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone - front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset - dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage
The thing you are looking for is meta lenses, not the company. They could cover the entire back-face of the phone and provide some pretty incredible capabilities. We are not there yet, but I'd expect to see them in the next 20 years.
I was going to come in with a set of reasons why these wouldn't sell, but... I think they could! Air quality fits neatly into Apple's health push, though I could see them making that a Watch feature rather than a phone feature (since your phone lives in your pocket, and quality sensors need time for the readings to stabilize). 3D imaging and synthetic refocusing both have a wow factor that would be easy to get people excited about. The only one I'm unsure of is multi-spectrum imaging; while I suspect pretty much anyone on this forum would jump at that, I don't have a good idea of whether the general population would get excited about temperature data. At the very least, it'd be handy for some kitchen tasks where you need a surface temperature.
> Novel radios that enable true Starlink connection in your pocket for gigabit internet globally
Satellite comms gets very close to face melting tech quite quickly, so I would prefer not to have that in a mobile device....
I would like a light field camera. I've seen some research about using and array of 1mm2 cameras (basically the smallest omnivision module) and one decent module to make a synthetic high res camera. Takes a huge amount of GPU power to get not very interesting results though.
Man, the Oneplus 8 I believe had an 'xray' camera that was super cool, until people realized you could use it to 'see through clothes', and so it was disabled. I have to imagine cool camera tech is being held back to some degree by that still today.
Why do you need a gigabit connectivity on the phone? Aside question: can you tell the difference between 4K and 8K video on the phone without actually checking?
I want a phone that fits in my hand. Will have to leave the iPhone world in a few years when the 13 mini dies, but from what I can tell android is just as bad.
Took the plunge from an SE 2020 to a 16, and it is noticeable how it is hard to hold in one hand. I could see a world were a foldable iphone would mean a narrower device.
I got a 16 (mostly because of the USB-C) and returned it before the 30day return period was over. It was a noticeable downgrade compared to my SE 2022.
Currently trying to get a solid postmarketOS setup so I can switch back to Linux before the SE goes out of support. Apple really doesn't offer an upgrade path from this device.
My hope is that when the mini is end of auooort that I’ll just stop carrying a phone and will end up not wasting so much time on the internet. It could be a good thing!
I am thinking of trying one of the vertically folding phones with a keyboard case. It reminds me of a BlackBerry. The keyboard means the small square outer screen is a lot more usable by itself.
iPhones have had iMessage over satellite since I think the 15? I've used it when camping. It's pretty neat!
Features I want: ask siri for the things I look up and it works. "When did the baby fall asleep" instead of opening Nanit. "How many more intervals in this workout" instead of opening TrainerRoad. "What is my next meeting" instead of opening Outlook. This was the promise of the new Siri and it just has yet to really come true.
What needs to be better about screens outdoor? iPhones have had nicely readable screens in bright sunlight for a long time now, including compatibility with sunglasses. Though it would be nice to see this in all other phones too.
Other than that I agree. Especially camera bumps are annoying to me, I would prefer a phone thick enough to make the bump disappear, that would then automatically solve the battery life issue as well.
> Batteries that charge fast. Batteries that can support 2-3 days of use. Lighter batteries.
Battery chemistry isn't there yet. Frankly, we are lucky enough phones don't set themselves ablaze every day - it only takes minuscule errors and you get a Galaxy Note.
> Thinner camera.
Hard to beat physics and if you ask me, "AI" slop is already being overused on cameras to hide the fact that good picture quality requires sensor area and distance for the optics.
> Satellite connectivity.
We're already beginning to see that with Starlink LTE.
You can see the logical conclusion to this phenomenon with vacuum cleaners. Pointless little buttons and switches that don't do much, labels and fancy names for things that any vacuum can do, and aesthetics that prioritize a futuristic form over function.
> There's not much left to "fix" on mobile phones, and no real important features to add.
I'm happy with my iPhone, but it still has a week or so shorter battery life than even a relatively cheap Nokia phone and with all that available space I know something it could be used for.
3d holographic displays, IR keyboards, powerful local llm (so more powerful), Silent-Speech Interface (SSI), more powerful cameras (better than mirrorless cameras, 3d, multi focal length in one image etc).
3d UIs don't work, every attempt has failed to reach mass adoption
IR keyboards lack haptic feedback
Aside from enhancedprivacy, a desire to drain your battery, a lack of recurring revenue for local phone LLMs, and functioning when network is inaccessible, what would a local LLM do that a network-enabled feature couldn't?
There is ample room to extend, but it costs money or the designers are in a bubble or they are afraid to innovate. The worst is that they now copied Pixel's ugly island :DDDDD. Oh dear god. At least it doesn’t look like some brutalist artist’s fever dream, just like we've seen it on the Pixel phones.
I don't have the impression people care about the weight of phones. Premium phones have metal and glass cases, and in the non-premium market the thing that matters is price.
What matters to me is how comfortable it is to hold and use with one hand. Large and thin phones tend to be bad in that aspect.
Niche, but (true) satellite communication. If i understand correctly what we have in the pixel 9/10 is not nearly as useful as having a garmin, never mind the fact that it works basically in europe and US only
the thin phone is supposedly first step toward the iPhold foldable. they will probably slam 2 iphone air sandwiched together for the fold so this is the first step i guess
Here's my hot take: A small metal loop for tying a wrist strap to.
All other cameras have wrist straps as a safety feature. From flimsy ribbons on the smallest (smartphone-sized) to padded leather on the largest. They were common on feature phones too.
But smartphone makers want people to drop their phones, so people would have to buy new ones, I suppose.
You could get a case with a wrist loop, you say? Not on any of Apple's cases, anyway.
I agree with you, you're still going to put it in a fat case to protect the camera.
Personally, I think thin is just "omg look at my engineering". blah blah.
I found the (expensive!) bullstrap case to be helpful - thin and slippery enough to slide out of a pocket easily, well engineered to protect the camera.
But really, I think the iphone 13 mini was the most useful/practical application of apple's engineering.
I think a mini-sized 3-camera bulge phone would be great.
Never once used a case in 12+ yrs of iphone ownership and only cracked a screen once. Think there are a lot of people out there like me. Many people are way too anal about an every day utilitarian device.
Yeah I'll never understand how anyone can use an iPhone without it being in a case, it's just not practical or comfortable to hold without a case adding grip.
Surely its obvious - grip and protection. Fairly well established that they're slippy, and dropping them means gouges being taken out of the frame, or if you're really unlucky, cracked glass.
Pixel 9 is so extremely slippery that one can't help but think they designed it to need a case. I never bought a case prior to Pixel 9 but the thing is like a wet bar of soap.
Yeah when my last phone case broke I tried carrying it nude and that was what immediately struck me. So I bought some adhesive rubber knurl stickers for the edges but they wouldn't stay on because my Pixel 7 has a curved edge - would probably work well on a phone with a flat edge.
I stuck on a MagSafe metal sticker thing on the back and that little bit of greebling makes me feel a bit better holding it.
I'd say approximately once a year. I have been using a case with my current one (a 15 Pro), but didn't with any of my previous ones, back to the iPhone 3G. I've broken one screen.
> that is wild. are you just very clumsy? i drop mine maybe once a year.
"Wild" seems like a stretch. I feel like it shouldn't be too hard to believe that some people drop their phones occasionally, and it's a reasonable concern when it's likely to be with you everywhere you go.
Hearing someone drops their phone on average 50 times more often than i do i find wild. Good points in the other comments though as I have never used cases on phones before so i'm likely subconsciously more careful with them. Also typically in slim fit jeans pockets which are nearly impossible to accidentally drop out of.
Once I was getting off my jeans to do the Royal Squat and they decided to barf my phone. It fell like from 30 cm high, hit the ground exactly on the corner. Screen cracked edge to edge.
Not sure. I rarely fall when climbing rocks, so I’m not a total butterfingers. I often take out my phone to use as a flashlight, angle mirror etc and leave it balanced precarious places. Never had a phone break in probably hundreds of ground falls (always using a case). Since it’s never broken, I don’t expend effort to prevent it from falling.
Edit: sibling comment is correct, sketchy pockets of athletic shorts are a major offender. Actually it bothers me way more when my car keys fall out of those.
It sounds crazy, but it turns out the finish on the phone makes a huge difference.
I never used a case until I got a Galaxy S9; that phone was like a greased eel. Went from dropping my phone zero times in 8 years to 5 times in one week.
The case is part of the utilitarianism. I need to attach my phone to a bike mount. I use a Peak Design case that has a locking attachment point in the centre to securely fasten the phone onto the handlebars.
I would gladly ditch the case if Apple had a strong mounting system integrated into the phone (MagSafe has nowhere near the resistance to shear forces sufficient to hold a phone over bumps on a bike.)
I suppose I am looking for the phone equivalent of a camera thumbscrew mount. If Apple iterated on MagSafe to include an actual mechanical fixture as part of the attachment, I would buy that phone right away so I can avoid using these crappy pieces of rubber/plastic that degrade so much more quickly in appearance than the phone frame rails.
Same, I get random “raw dogging it” comments from strangers much more often than I drop my phone even since having kids. Ironically via raw dogging it.
I bought a new pixel, bought a case that had slow shipping. Only a week, what could go wrong? I dropped it flat on the screen on a tile floor.
Cases are dirt cheap, if you're paying over $30 for one you're probably overpaying. The expected value of a screen repair, not only the cost but your time makes it a no-brainer.
I think you might be an outlier. My own anecdote is that literally everyone I know who doesn't use a case (albeit a small number of people) has cracked their phone at some point while I've known them.
Survivorship bias /s How do you know it wouldn't have survived without case? I drop my phone on nearly daily basis and since 2007 only cracked one iPhone screen.
Very true, actually, you're right! But given that my screen has cracked once while I was using a case, I can't imagine it would be better without a case.
I did do cosmetic damage to the non-screen parts of some phones while not using a case, though.
I'm convinced that "area" where screen breaks without a case, but doesn't break with a case is very narrow. In my mind, the main reasons to have a case: personalize, rugged cases for appropriate environment (car shops, construction sites), improve grip in certain "phone shape" + hand size combinations.
> I did do cosmetic damage to the non-screen parts of some phones while not using a case, though.
I wonder if some of this is also a generational thing? I'm in my mid-late-40s and grew up in a world where electronics were pretty fragile (and water basically was a death sentence). Heck, even getting DOA hardware wasn't so uncommon as to be surprising when it happened.
The idea of letting my phone drop unprotected (or getting it wet like I see some people do) is horrible.
You did forget one big use case for cases: money laundering. There's no way all the physical stores and kiosks that only sell cases are actually making money...
Well, I'm in my mid-30s, if it helps. I remember my first 5 phones would split into multiple pieces with sim always being ejected when dropped. They still would work after put back together, tho.
It's really more "I got extended warranty, and I'm not afraid to use". I live in LA, so I'm never too far from the nearest store I can replace mine. All data important backed up. Dropping a phone for me will result at most in a minor-to-medium annoyance.
I only fear of getting the phone too wet because battery disconnect is practically impossible today.
Because if the case gets damaged you can easily replace it.
People would still put a case on a bulky phone to protect resale or trade in value.
A super thin phone doesn't require a super bulky case, it requires just as much case as a person would normally use, resulting in a smaller overall profile.
I'd probably still go pro because I care more about the camera than the size.
I don’t get the idea of putting glass on the back of this phone. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have metal there so there are less things to crack?
I think the reality is that your phone will always encounter something that can damage it (unless it's made out of diamond), and a case lets you easily replace the damaged part.
Just subjectively, I remember having a super scratched iPod and it just felt kind of ratty every time you looked at it. Meanwhile, a phone in a leather case gets kind of a patina that improves with age. It is kind of sad though, I got a really pretty blue iPhone and you wouldn't even know it because it's completely covered by a case.
I'd rather see phones that aren't perfectly flat but instead have proper built-in mounting things. Give me some screw holes to attach a set of 4 bumpers to the corners, and a camera mount thread hole in the bottom.
Honestly, it sounds really compelling to me. I do a lot of stuff outside - search and rescue, climbing, etc, and I need a rugged case for that, but having a thin, light phone when I'm at home or doing something with less chance to damage the phone is pretty nice, so thin phone + case is the best of both worlds.
> I agree with you, you're still going to put it in a fat case to protect the camera.
The Apple cases aren't flat on the back. They have a rim around the camera bump (and they create a rim around the front of the phone, too). The rear rim is slightly taller than the lens bezels (not sure if I used the right word there), so they don't touch the surface the phone rests on. I place my phone+case on the desk face-down because the camera bump and the wobble it creates when resting the phone back down triggers some minor irritation for me. The slight rim around the front of the phone keeps the screen from touching the surface. All of this would be nicer if the phone were flat across the back.
The metal case and toughened glass mean I don't really need the case most the time. I once dropped an older model onto a concrete floor such that it landed on a corner, shattering the screen, so I'm more risk averse with them now.
I've only broken the iPhone camera once in more than a decade of using iPhones. And that's when I was in IKEA and a box of unassembled furniture fell onto it.
If you really want protection, the screen is still more fragile than the camera.
I’d go with the 5S - the 5 with the first 64-bit phone CPU and some other improvements (especially TouchID). In black, of course. (I think I still have one somewhere.)
I'm going to preorder one because I want a light phone and a large screen. This will be the lightest iPhone in years while also having a bigger screen than most. I dropped from the Pro Max to the Pro last year because I was tired of how much it hurt when I dropped my phone on my face.
I don't have much call for most of the camera system, and my battery life on my Pro is just fine. I have plenty of chargers typically, and for emergencies or times I know I'm going to be out I could potentially get the battery pack.
I basically never use cases on my iPhone, and at most will maybe use an ultra-thin one or some sort of structure adhered to the plateau just to make it flat across so as to not rock on a table.
> I dropped from the Pro Max to the Pro last year because I was tired of how much it hurt when I dropped my phone on my face.
Now this, good people, is a real use case. If it seems like an edge case to you, I guarantee Apple’s design and product people know of — and optimize for — use cases much more rare.
I'd rather optimize my $20 running shorts around my $1000 phone than the other way around tbh. No phone is comfortable in the pocket when running though, I used to use an arm strap and more recently just take the watch.
I carry two phones on me and if I run with just my SE it is comfortable enough to run with
But its not about optimisation it's about freedom. I don't enjoy having to baby around a lumbering 6 inch phone. I want my phone to optimise around me being able to not worrying about a brick sagging in my shorts.
The horizontal rear waistband zipper pocket on Patagonia Strider Pro running shorts genuinely makes my phone not noticeable at all during runs, unlike any other shorts I’ve tried. My experience is limited to smaller phones (6S, 12 Mini) without any cases, though.
It also hurts when I drop the iPad mini on my face. In fact, I was considering getting a Pro Max to replace both a iPhone Pro and iPad mini combo but figured it might too big of a compromise.
I wonder if anyone has successfully gone down this path.
>> I dropped from the Pro Max to the Pro last year because I was tired of how much it hurt when I dropped my phone on my face.
I never had this issue with my phone but it was a big reason for moving from an iPad to a Kindle for reading in bed... Dropping an iPad on my face (or even chest) == ouch.
Laying in bed/couch with the phone over your face and arms outstretched. Eventually your arms get tired or a muscle twitches and you drop the phone on your face.
I read or do a crossword in bed as part of my go to sleep ritual. Sometimes it slips out my hand though usually it just hits my chin or chest. I can easily see how it falls on someone's face though.
Samsung galaxy s2 was a super small super thin phone, 15 years ago almost, which still had user replaceable battery, microsd, 3.5mm, gps, and everything most people would expect smartphone to have.
We then spent a decade making phones 0.2" bigger each generation as if that's an advancement - I.e. As if we couldn't have made them big in the first place (all the while removing physical features).
Then we started making them thin again, as if we couldn't have made them thin before.
It makes me think of cars - VW golf used to be a small car, then it kept growing... So they released Polo... Which kept growing so they made lupo... But each year my entire life they have ads like "6 inches bigger than before" or "10cm more legroom than competition", as if there haven't been small and large cars before.
Grumble Grumble, seen it all before, kids get off my lawn :-)
I agree to an extent. Most phones back then had no water protection. They also didn't last long so most people carried extra batteries which sucks. Honestly, I'd welcome the whole non replaceable battery if I could completely submerge my phone in water. Maybe when they get rid of the charging port.
You can submerge recent iPhones completely in water for few years now. Every year I make some quite fun and surprisingly looking underwater pictures with mine, that's just fine afterwards given I'm still able to write this comment on it.
Pseudo-scientifically, it always seemed that worked to dissipate impact kinetic energy - I dropped my s2 and s5 a million times and picked up the parts with no damage. The more modern phones don't fall apart, they just crack :-(
It's about the size and even more importantly the weight. I like small, light phones (I currently have the iphone 13 mini). I want something small that I can slip into my pocket and it's not this brick bouncing around as take a walk.
Although, I'm not a big phone user though, mainly use it when I'm outside of the house. In the house, I'll just use my laptop.
Apple offering is underwhelming to say the least and way too expensive for my use case.
I want to go Android anyway, I'm too disillusioned with Apple currently, I'm tired of dealing with their predatory behavior.
But there aren't a lot of decent options there as well but at least you can get it much cheaper, so that's something, I guess.
Previously Apple was the provider of hardware which made the right compromise to allow specific/focused use case, they called it "taste" in a sea of nonsense with bullshit "features".
But now it feels like Apple has joined in on the nonsense and is actually leading the pack; which is why the price feels bad.
If you are going to make the same crap as everyone else with the same set of bad compromises, I'm not going to overpay for it.
I think this is why Apple "AI" got so much backlash. If they didn't make it or at least market it as heavily as they, did it would have been fine, but it was just the same crap as everyone else, just worse and more expensive.
They could have released the exact same phone, just shaving a 100 dollar and have been acclaimed and made more money that way I believe.
> Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal?
It’s light and the thinness is just fun. I’m not putting a case on it. And I really don’t understand why a phone needs to sit flat on a table—if anything, the angle is a plus.
It’s only 12 grams lighter than my iPhone XS. And it’s 20 grams heavier than my Pixel 4a. For a product called “air”, It doesn’t even succeed at being light-weight.
Of course, the iPhone 5 weighed significantly less than either of those! The iPhone Air has a larger screen than all three of those. I don't see what your comparison has to do with anything. The Air is a light phone relative to its screen size. It is also an incredibly thin phone.
I'm probably not getting one, but I don't see the point of comparing it to physically smaller phones.
> Sony Xperia Z2 - 2014 - 172mm x 266mm x 6.4 mm - 439g
Again, not nearly the same screen size, so weight is irrelevant. But also, 439g? Wow! If that number wasn’t completely wrong, that would be impressive.
Did an LLM hallucinate those specs that you quoted? I honestly don’t know how the thickness and weight you quoted could be that far off if you did the research yourself.
But, even if you were right, which you don’t seem to be, it’s all moot. No one is cross-shopping a 2014 phone to a 2025 phone. But even if they were, the real numbers speak for themselves.
It's a 6.5" screen. Weight alone isn't the metric. It's weight to screen size ratio. People like bigger screens it seems as evident by phone screens keep getting bigger and bigger.
At least for me something so thin feels better with a bit of heft. And if you read the article the idea was to use any space saved for the battery. Seems pretty slick
It’s just less. Less means it hits the ground softer when I drop it. Less means I’m less pissed off when I lose my AirPods and have to hold my phone up to my ear. Less means little moments of delight over how this engineered slab of minerals can do these things.
Do you remember the ad for the first MacBook Air? Even if you didn’t connect with it, can you recognise how someone else might?
The commenter was specifically asked why they might be interested. They responded reasonably and in good faith. _You_ went wild and viewed it as any attack of some sort.
If anything is off it’s your belligerent anti-fandom. You are coming off as on tilt. Over someone else’s preferences in phones of all things.
Really? I was literally calling out a "company" and an individual jumped in and I responded to that and now you are jumping in the middle and trying to teach me how I should see it? Is Apple attachment this strong around here? It just doesn't make sense to me. Is it some kind of cultural aspect of something? (And I respectfully want to make it clear here that these are rhetorical questions, I didn't really mean to ask them, and I do not hate you or that other HNer, it's just feels/felt weird).
> can you not appreciate how such cloying fandom (or apparent fandom) can kind of be, in a way, almost nauseating for someone and just move on?
No, I really can't.
I'm not into most sports. That doesn't make those games' fans nauseous. They've found something they love. I don't get their particular attachment. But that doesn't make it dumb, must less disgusting--I can empathise with their joy because I, too, have found things which delight me.
I can articulate, respectfully, why I think their games are dumb. But I can also recognise that's a subjective opinion about aesthetics.
> I can empathise with their joy because I, too, have found things which delight me.
Yes, yes! Yes, dear JumpCrisscross I do believe in that. People singing really badly but happily is one of those things, people wearing clothes that looks absolutely horrible in them (as per me) but they are happy and love it and that makes me strangely actually happy. These are just few examples. But someone being Apple is not one of that and I am also respectful about it - I try tone down criticism, I try sarcasm, hell in most cases I try not to directly respond to such people.
> I can articulate, respectfully, why I think their games are dumb.
No, imho, you can't. When you call/consider something "dumb", it is just being called dumb - no matter how syrupy and respectful articulation that has. But that's just me. I won't call a sports dumb, but if you feel like it, you sure can with whatever articulation you prefer. You keep your sense of aesthetics and let me have mine.
What I don't understand is: I did not even respond to you, and I was just criticising the company. I was not being abusive, and I was definitely not being disrespectful to you, but you still jumped into it and just started this argument. Why? Is that just pure ego? And now you can't let go?
You went ahead and confronted me, and I replied back using that "nauseous" phrase because you took umbrage at something which was directed at a damn corporation and not at you in any way—unless criticism of Apple directly hurts you.
Heck, I did not even mention you, and there is a reason for that—because I was not responding to you. I literally directed my disappointment towards the company—literally. Why, then?
Do you still not recognise that you ought to just move on? And if that doesn't do it for you, then downvote, flag (that comment is already flagged), report, and then move on. Why do you have to pick an issue with me about it? Is it even worth it? Or do you want to have the last word? Is that it? Do you have something in mind that you want to hear?
Flat doesn't seem best to you?
Next best for me would be a symmetrical bump.
But the asymmetrical bump (I think) all iPhones have seems the worst of all alternatives. This results in that bad restaurant table wobble feeling.
Right. I am sure flatness would have Revolutionary™ had Apple decided to make it rather flat (of course with the "First Time Again In An iPhone™" tag).
Even more annoyingly, the bump is non-uniform with lens extruding even further from the entire bump. I have been annoyed by this design ever since they started with it. The last phone the design of which brought joy for me was my OnePlus 3T - thin and light. It also had the camera bump though which I would gladly sacrifice even if it meant a lower quality camera. On the other hand, I suppose they could just insert a thicker battery and make the whole phone a bit thicker but remove the bump.
I currently have a 14 pro. I use a MagSafe wallet with it (holds three cards). This allows me a not crazy, but fairly uniform, thick single object I have to grab when I leave the…anywhere. While this might not work for everyone, it works great for me.
I’m potentially considering the air because wasted z-axis space the camera bump creates, I’d use with a MagSafe wallet again, so it wouldn’t be wasted for me. I like that the built in battery is likely sufficient for a day of my use, but can be easily extended with the MagSafe battery on days where I know I’ll be using more juice, e.g. when traveling. None of these things are unique to the air; instead the overall thickness which results from my usage is the differentiator, from which I think I might derive value.
I'm not an apple user, not into their design choices... but if i had a choice, i'd much prefer a phone as thick as the camera with a 3x the battery capacity.
I'd even go with a millimeter or two thicker to have the backplate attached by screws and the battery easily user replacable after a few years.
Several brands have released an ultra thin version of their phone, followed by a foldable version of their phone. One phone depth is good for just about everyone, but you can't double that up, you'd get a phone that's too bulky for modern tastes.
It stands to reason the iFold/iPaper/iSheet/whatever Apple will call it is drawing closer now that Samsung and several Chinese brands have pretty much solved the design for Apple.
I bought a 14 Pro when it came out and returned it for a 13 mini because it was too heavy.
They switched the frame from stainless steel to titanium the next year which made the Pro phones noticeably lighter. And now this year the Pros are aluminum like the non-Pros have been for years, which is also pretty light.
The 3 big camera sensors certainly don't help with the weight either, but the good news is they did seem to recognize they were getting to heavy with the 14 Pro.
The idea of an iPhone still as a status symbol in 2025 seems strange to me. I understood it in 2008. They are so commonplace and also not really that expensive where it is a financial flex like some watch that cost 10k+ or something.
“Sixty-three percent of adults said they would cover a hypothetical $400 emergency expense exclusively using cash or its equivalent, unchanged from 2022 and 2023 but down from a high of 68 percent in 2021.”
Hardly anyone in the US pays full price for the iPhone up front. They either use 0% carrier financing - usually with offsetting credits - or through Apple.
I don’t understand what that survey question is supposed to be indicating. I have lots of disposable income, and by default I spend using a credit card.
US net worth at the 25th percentile is >$20k, it’s not the case that 32% of people literally don’t have the wealth to afford a $400 expense.
Suppose that you have an emergency expense that costs $400. Based on your current financial situation, how would you pay for this expense?
If you would use more than one method to cover this expense, please select all that apply.
a. Put it on my credit card and pay it off in full at the next statement
b. Put it on my credit card and pay it off over time
c. With the money currently in my checking/savings account or with cash
d. Using money from a bank loan or line of credit
e. By borrowing from a friend or family member
f. Using a payday loan, deposit advance, or overdraft
g. By selling something
h. I wouldn’t be able to pay for the expense right now
There sure are a lot of comments in this thread pulling out all sorts of random and arbitrary statistics that have no connection with what is actually being discussed here. I’m finding that very strange, frankly.
The people monthly payment plans target are not able to afford the thing because they bought 30 other things on monthly payment plans in the past year and can't keep track of all the monthly payments they're owing until it's too late. That's the intent and why they're so popular now. It's why DoorDash is getting in on the action, so people will buy a Taco Bell delivery with a tempting price tag of only $4 at the time of purchase, multiple times a week for months until you owe hundreds of dollars.
Regardless of who they target, I'm taking free financing any day of the week. It's like credit cards which I've received huge value from, and I've never carried a balance in over 30 years of use.
> They are so commonplace and also not really that expensive where it is a financial flex like some watch that cost 10k+ or something.
I definitely agree about them being just about the most banal stupid toy you could spend the money on, but it's still a lot of money to a lot of people despite the cost of basic necessities making it not the huge amount that it used to be. I cringe at paying over $450, considering that every new model of phone since like 2015 hasn't really done anything worth significantly more money.
It's just a proxy for people to complain about the price. People will complain about a few hundred dollars in a phone price differences, even though it will be the one product they use more than anything else they own. And then not blink spending a couple extra grand on some car features/performance they use rarely or spend a thousand dollars a year on lattes.
I think it's -mostly- an age thing, and you simply matured out of it. For the most part.
I say that because I feel similarly, but my out of college coworkers rib me for not having an iPhone. One even commented he'd probably never text me in real life, to which I of course replied that I'd never want him to text me in real life.
They are between 1000 to 1500 USD over here in EU. Pretty much only very well off people are buying current gen iPhones. Many people have older models. We also don't have any Apple lock-in culture, so there is much less incentive to go out of your way to get iPhone specifically.
Genuine question - maybe I'm too in my own bubble but it seems like iPhone just completely dominates the market and is viewed as the "default" phone, which to me implies status quo, not luxury.
The Pro is still seen by some as a "flex" by some, visibly having all three lenses. The Air is likely just a more visible flex, thus it will probably sell well.
I'm an Australian in my 40's almost everyone in my immediate circle (family, friends, work-peers) has an Android, at least in my world iPhone is a minority.
I grew up with Nokia phones all I want out of my phone is something cheap and rugged with a decent battery life.
> I'm an Australian in my 40's almost everyone in my immediate circle (family, friends, work-peers) has an Android, at least in my world iPhone is a minority.
It's very particular to your group I think as I am in the same country, similar age, and yet it's the complete opposite for me.
But none of us care because it's not the US and nobody is using some phone exclusive messaging service enough to care about what phone anyone else is using.
There are many things that are expensive that are nevertheless not particularly seen as “status symbols”, in the sense of commonly used to publicly display one’s status/wealth/whatever.
I replaced my old iPhone XR with a brand new 16 this year, not because anything was wrong with it (even the battery was OK), but I wanted to see what the changes brought.
I was quite surprised that other than the much better battery, USB-C, and much better camera, and sometimes faster speed, the old one was holding up quite well.
You can get an old iPhone XR for 100 EURish, in decent condition. I really have no idea what model year iPhone's others have.
Americans don't earn the minimum wage. You're talking about less than 1/2 of 1% of the working population. It's a nearly worthless metric (other than as a political reference to how long it has been since the minimum wage has been increased and how far behind the median it is).
it’s just another of the many many comments in this thread where people throw out statistics to make a point, but those statistics are typically detached from reality or not even focused on the main topic of the conversation.
I mean literally half the people I know under the age of 25 have iPhones in my country. How can it be a status symbol when it’s the default phone for most people?
In the end it's the same thing, but in many countries where iPhones are popular, it's more of the "anti status symbol" effect happening. An iPhone is not a status symbol anymore per se, however NOT having one is the thing that gives you a "lower" status.
I bought a new iPhone 13 for $200 a few months ago and I love it. It does everything I need by far. Newer iPhones take better pictures, yes, but the 13 is still no slouch in that regard.
I have my iPhone 13 Pro Max for 4 years now and the only problem I really have is storage and the battery.
I'm debating if I just replace the battery and let this run another year... since the iPhone X I haven't seen any major upgrades still that feel like they'll matter in my day-to-day life.
I'm still rocking a four year-old Note 20 Ultra. I bought it new the week after they announced the Note 21 Ultra when it was clear they were dropping expandable storage. So it's five year-old tech and I can't see any compelling reason to upgrade. It still looks practically new despite never using a case and dropping it dozens of times. It runs all the apps I use quite fast and there's nothing slow about it.
I keep looking at new flagship launches and I keep not seeing any new capability, feature or performance that would make a noticeable difference to me. I replaced the battery myself last year and generally keep the OS clean, not letting app cruft accrue. I'm not a luddite nor am I price sensitive. I remain ready and willing to buy a high-end flagship phone the moment it does anything new I actually care about. It still gets regular security updates even though a couple years ago Samsung stopped updating it to their latest customized version of Android. And despite looking, I still haven't seen any new Android OS or Samsung One UI feature that would matter to me. Bottom line: I don't think it's you or me, I think it's that phones are mature tech and unless you have a specific use case or it breaks, there's just not much reason to upgrade.
I haven't felt compelled to give up my S23 Ultra. The 10X lens is just too useful, and I enjoy the way they did the S-Pen. My previous S21 Ultra is still in use and still going strong.
Walmart on Straight Talk. $45/mo for unlimited data and 10gb hotspot usage.
I don't know if it's one of those things where you get "unlimited" data but you get X amount of data until they throttle it. I'm usually near trusted wi-fi and I've never run into it.
Can't see the specs for the iPhone Air but it looks much larger than my SE 2022. I wish they would bring that form factor back. Obviously not as powerful as bigger iPhones so not useful for posing purposes.
So I don't get this. Yes, my N=1 experience, but: I don't put my phone in a case, and only use a screen protector. I have a Pixel 8 (arguably one of the more notoriously ridiculous camera bumps), but have of course had other phones with camera bumps before this. I am generally careful with my phone, but of course I've dropped it, knocked it off a table onto the floor, etc. But I've never ever scratched the camera. Have I just been lucky, or are they harder to scratch than one would expect?
It doesn’t always have to be status. Apple is very good at withholding features from low end models to ensure everyone has that one thing they want that makes them go for the pro variant.
Umm most people buy them for the hardware. On paper my 16e sounds really good but is crap compared to the 17 pros cameras plus photonic engine. Apple gimps software in non pros. I don't take alot of pics so I don't really care for the pro. Id rather get an old DSLR.
If you just want a camera get a mirrorless. They're smaller than DSLRs and easier to adapt lenses to. If you don't care about lenses Fujifilm cameras are probably the most fun to use.
(But if you use it rarely it's better to just rent one, and then you can get a really nice one.)
Taking a peek at the research: “While flat-optics cameras have transitioned from theoretical concepts to high-fidelity laboratory prototypes, significant interdisciplinary R&D—spanning nanofabrication, materials science, computational imaging, and systems integration—is required to realize commercial flat camera modules for next-generation smartphones.
Recent breakthroughs have produced multilayer metalenses only ~0.5 mm thick that can focus unpolarized broadband light across several discrete wavelengths.
Dual-Pixel Coded Aperture (CADS): End-to-end learned amplitude masks on dual-pixel sensors have shown >1.5 dB PSNR gains in all-in-focus images and 5–6% depth accuracy improvements in DSLR, endoscope, and dermoscope prototypes.
Color-Coded Aperture Imaging: Single-lens, single-frame depth sensing via color-coded apertures has been demonstrated on DSLR and preliminary smartphone modules with depth map extraction sufficient for basic AR and portrait modes.”
There's nowhere to go with phones than thinner if you aren't doing folding. Thinness has practical value but past a certain point, probably not very much.
Marketing will create hype and desire and the feeling of exclusiveness. Those will lead to sales.
Not every big change is an actual innovation. A lot if just engineering sales via these methods, which aren't very different than fashion, jewelry, or luxury cars.
I might get one because I'm always a bit forced to follow the curve and can't afford to look 'backwards' or 'old fashioned' to stakeholders in the workplace, people in my life, etc who's good side I need to stay on who believe in the above dynamic.
I'm told that was the reason, which is a shame because I would continue to buy the "mini" version if they kept making them. Sadly the only dimension Apple seems interested in reducing is the thickness.
Ben Thompson (Stratechery) has been documenting for almost a decade that the biggest driver of new phone sales in China is a new form factor.
I’m sure that might be the same in other markets where an iPhone is a status symbol. It’s definitely not one in the US where 60% of phone buyers have iPhones.
> I’m sure that might be the same in other markets where an iPhone is a status symbol. It’s definitely not one in the US where 60% of phone buyers have iPhones.
It can still be a status symbol to have the newest phone. That’s imo the only reason for changing camera alignments between generations. So people (who know & care) can see that you have the newest model.
Apple basically forced US carriers to get their act together when they shipped the iPhone 14 series as eSIM-only domestically. Sounds like the rest of the world is about to get kicked into gear.
The major carriers perhaps, but support among the MVNOs isn't universal. Number sharing support for smart watch usage is almost non-existent among the MVNOs in Australia.
Eg. ALDI (yes, the German supermarket chain run a MVNO in Australia), have been saying esim support in the future since 2021.
China Unicom was also the launch carrier for iPhone when it came out in 2007-8. It was the only carrier to support GMS channels similar to the ones in the west (China Mobile didn't, these days Apple supports chinese cell phone channels on both carriers with the same chip).
That's a great piece of marketing straight out of Apple's Big Number Book of Important Numbers, but _who the fuck cares_ ?
Aside from a tiny amount of nerds needing post hoc rationalisation as to why they blew $1500 on a gimmick, absolutely nobody will go looking for a phone and consider grams/mm² as an important measure.
The thinness makes it easier to grip around the phone laterally. Think of it like having a slightly smaller basketball, which more people would be able to palm. Easier for holding, easier for one-handed typing.
I feel like I must be one of these people because even a regular iPhone from the past 5 years is way too thin to comfortably hold. When something is much wider than it is thick, not aligning it perfectly in your hand puts pressure on it diagonally and sends it spiraling to the ground.
I noticed in one of their videos, where the subject is picking up the Air off a table, it looks like it could be hard for a wide-fingered person to pick up.
The good thing about the bump is that it should make it easier to pick up the phone from a desk.
The size and weight of the phone does look tempting, but its battery life is a deal breaker for me. I'm pretty sure there's no way its built-in speakers could possibly match those in the Pro models, which is also very important to me.
>"Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras."
I have this recurring vision of what could have been if we never lost Steve before the industry went whole hog in on the camera bump fad. It goes something like this:
SCENE: Steve Jobs' office on the eve of the iPhone 7 release
"Hey Steve here's the new prototype for iPhone 7, we think you're going to love it!"
Steve picks up the phone, fumbles it around for a moment, flips it over, and runs his index finger over the camera bump
"You're fired. Now, you" points to another engineer "Get rid of the bump."
And just like that, we were saved from this nightmare. Alas, the world is shit now and no one cares about anything anymore. But I can say without question he would have never allowed it.
A wedge is such a natural solution. It tilts the screen forward slightly when it's flat, it could have sexy curved edges like the very first iPhone, it would match the aesthetics of the Air, and it would stand out compared to Android phones.
The main issue is weight distribution, although current designs are slightly top heavy anyway.
A less obvious issue is that people would tend to hold the screen vertically while taking photos, which would distort the visual plane of the lenses at the back.
I'm sure both of those could be solved, and a wedge would create something original, instead of the nth iteration of the same ugly wart aesthetic.
I think we'd need to see some sales figures for cases. The case I use on my 13 Pro (casetify) adds enough size that the bump is barely an issue -- there is maybe a 1mm edge around the actual camera bump. It's very nearly the ideal. I don't know how common this size case is, though -- common enough that a mainstream case company sells it, I guess.
I'll concede the point on the weight, although I bet it'd be more like 350g.
I doubt Apple would add drop-friendly materials in such an expansion of the phone so most people would be putting a case on top of the iPhone Brick, making it even thicker and heavier.
>I’d rather have the world with nice cameras on my phone than the one where the back is flat for aesthetic design reasons.
The argument is that you shouldn't need to pick one or the other. They got us used to the bump because it is cheaper and simpler for them to build. The same with literally everything now. No more striving for excellence, it's just "what can we normalize and force people to put up with so we don't have to fix the problem".
Right, iPhone engineers are just lazy. That is a much better explanation than them having to juggle tradeoffs between camera performance, weight, and feel in the hand.
The cheaper option for Apple would be to use smaller camera sensors with worse performance because that would reduce the depth needed for the sensor + lens.
The cameras are getting bigger because a decent segment of the customers want better performing cameras on their phone.
Either the whole phone would have to get thicker and heavier to accommodate, or you end up with a camera bump. And yes, some people would want that brick phone, but Apple seems to think it isn't a large market segment and the money they print from iPhone sales seems to point to them being decent at gauging that market.
Would it? Its just a hump. Where's this person's manager? What about the industrial design stage (where are the Ivy's who would massage that hump?)
The idea that you're hiring talented people and just firing them like this is not only obscenely anti-worker, its anti-social and a wonderful example of how we worship the worst people. This is someone with a pedigree, able to land an apple job, pass the interviews, work with a team, has mortgage/family/whatever, etc but he upset a sultan sitting on his silk pillow and now must be thrown out on the streets?
Oh and Apple's entire existance hinges on "HP and IBM were too full of fire-happy, stodgy, powerful men who wouldnt let youngin's with ideas flourish" then now Jobs becomes the HP/IBM he and Woz have decried all their careers? What a great way to send your talent off to competitors, scare your existing staff to never take chances, depressing hiring, build a toxic workplace, and send all these people to a startup where they might eat your lunch.
What's anti-worker here? A works for B while both A and B want it. The moment one of them doesn't want to anymore for any reason whatsoever, they close this agreement. What's the problem with that?
> Pedigree...streets
If that pedigree is such a high horse.. I'm sure they'd have no problem joining the company next door.
Have you just read Ayn Rand and experienced edgy libertarianism for the first time or something?
One of many problems with that is the power imbalance. Another is the wealth imbalance. Another is that the “company next door” might not be in a hiring cycle. Another is that your mortgage doesn’t stop and wait for you to get rehired. Another is that people aren’t emotionally indifferent interchangeable cogs and having your life upturned on a whim sucks. Another is that people have lives outside work and have to be able to plan for the future, things like arranged holidays, childcare, that depend on some medium term stability. Another is that people invest time and effort in learning one company’s internal systems and that’s one-sided.
If you can’t come up with half a dozen things wrong with that off the top of your head, you aren’t trying.
>This is someone with a pedigree, able to land an apple job, pass the interviews, work with a team, has mortgage/family/whatever, etc but he upset a sultan sitting on his silk pillow and now must be thrown out on the streets?
Rather, it would be about their values and vision not aligning with those of the company. The job shouldn't have happened to begin with.
Not that I like this kind of company mind you, but I do understand and see the appeal. The comparisons with a cult that are often drawn have a logic to them. But this whole scenario is also an exaggeration. Somewhat.
And yet Jobs set up Apple to become a trillion dollar company and HP is been relegated to the dustbin. Hell, all apples competition just copies apple these days for the most part.
Apple doesn't randomly fire people. In fact it's quite difficult to get fired for low performance from FAANG because they'd rather just lower your pay until you leave.
Lighter == better, thinner == cooler. Phones are essentially identical these days anyways, and choosing one over another is based on ever-minimizing differences. Now that you can't even install third-party apps easily on Android, this is more true than ever.
"Now"? Are you referring to the future developer signing requirements that won't begin until 2027 globally? It's trivially easy to sideload on Android right now:
1. Flip one switch in settings to enable sideloading
2. Download and open an APK
3. Flip one more switch (which you get automatically redirected to and it's highlighted at least on Samsung phones) the first time
installing from whichever app source (Chrome/FDroid/etc).
4. Click install
Other than step 1, the user is led through the process via prompts, and step 3 only has to be done once per source. i.e. the first time you install from FDroid, after that you just click install without any nags or scare screens.
As far as I remember the "enable sideloading" switch in settings has always been a thing, and the per source setting was added at least 5+ years ago.
Well even then it will be better than iOS which makes the user jump through absurd hoops like having to re-sign every 7 days plus another MacOS device (other than in Europe, but even there Apple still requires approval at the individual app level vs a developer account).
Third-party apps were the only thing that kept me in the Android ecosystem. With that going away there's no point anymore, I already own a MBP anyway, so the "choice" is even easier.
I largely agree, but when we hold phones it is generally by the side without the camera. That means that this phone will feel smaller in the hand, which could be a very effective marketing gimmick to upsell people from the base iPhone.
I literally almost got an injury from using my iPhone 12 Pro Max while laying on the side on the bed for the last few years -- it's too heavy. I had to do various therapies to stop feeling pain. It's almost 230g and I also have an Urban Armor Gear case that adds a little bit.
iPhone Air is at 165g. I'll get ~72% of the weight and be able to comfortably use the device without getting tired.
Some people will like the way it looks, have money, and don't care as much about overall performance/utility. Much in the same way a Rolex and Timex both tell time.
They’ve shrunk the phone so much that the bump is the computer + optics, strapped to a screen and battery.
The Air and Pro are essentially the same with a different skin. It’s a big deal imo as the phone itself is practically modular. It’s pretty brilliant as they can make the computer part in China and Taiwan and probably ship that unit to various locales for different form factors.
It's more about physics than hope. There's not much you can do with lenses miniaturization after a certain point (which we already reached). The result is more and more computational stuff, which Apple does somewhat gracefully, but still in a way that sets the iPhone photos apart from a camera, and not in a good way.
total phone volume is what determines how well the phone fits in your pocket. especially on women's pants with small pockets. a thin phone with a bump will fit better than a thicker phone.
the argument that the bump defeats the purpose of a thin phone is only true if you're trying to squeeze it through a narrow gap in a rigid object.
It should be a trend. I've been wearing a crossbody small bag (I guess you could call it a fanny pack, technically) for a long time now and ever since I've gotten a smartwatch I rarely need to take my phone out, so it lives in the bag instead of a bulge in my pants pocket. I wear the bag in the front so when I do need my phone it's just as quick to pull out of the bag as my pants pocket.
I wouldn't be surprised if discomfort from having a bulky phone in your pocket drives this.
I am also guilty of buying a bag (not this kind) for my phone because it's so much more comfortable (and makes my trousers last longer) to not have my phone in my pocket.
This was my first thought. My iPhone 15 Pro is fine and hopefully has much more life left in it, and I've gotten used to the size in general over the years, but I like to wear pants that are reasonably fitted and the "pocket bulge" outline of the phone still annoys me if I'm trying to deliberately look nice.
I'd believe this is an area where even a few millimeters of thickness makes a real difference in how much the phone in pocket stands out despite the overall footprint being larger? Will be curious to read once people get their hands on the things.
It exists because it is likely the first volley in a push to a foldable phone. It's the same thickness as one half of the foldable phones on the market.
I am personally interested because I have found iPhones to be offensively bulky for... 10+ years, and this has the potential to feel differently.
They sacrificed size for battery life, just like with the mini models, just in another dimension. Since the minis were cancelled I expect this model to undergo the same fate. Maybe it's just an experiment? Call it an A-B test.
I'm interested in it. I have an iPhone 11 and have been looking to update. I don't use a case. It looks pretty cool, I guess? Do you need more of a reason than that to have anything more than an iPhone 11, heh?
It weighs a lot less. My pinky hurts and 99% of my photos are selfies, so I’d rather have less mass than more camera; I’ll rent a Leica if I want truly excellent photographs. Also my purse is hella full all the time so every less millimeter of phone makes it easier to get stuff out of the pockets, get phone out of purse, etc. Also it’ll fit with less bulge into my side-thigh pockets and pull less on the waistband, which is handy for my skirts and leggings and undershorts that all that have that.
Perhaps being thinner allows for people to put their phone into an external case, the combined size which is approximately the bulk of the current generation.
No problem, the next iteration is a phone without a camera. And they will tell us that no one wants a camera oh his phone. And then they sell bluetooth cameras as extra.
it is the precipice of stupidity. making an ugly, mis-shaped phone and calling it thinner than ever. its fugly. just make the guts thinner and use the extra space for more battery. thats what everyone wants. but apple wont do it because they arent brave anymore. they arent brave enough to stick out
And now I wonder whether that’s genuine or not. I can imagine someone being truly excited about a folding phone (I have a friend like that), but of course I can imagine someone doing that to promote something. A folding phone, maybe.
Honestly with rumors of a folding iPhone coming out in 1-2 years it makes me wonder if the primary drive is to experiment with thinner production hardware so that a folding phone isn’t super thick.
Youtube is such a dominant and ubiquitous monopoly that it is almost easy to forget about it as a monopoly because there is so little competition to contrast against and to even remind you that there ought to be. I've wondered for years why it gets so little attention vs so many of the other tech giants that do have more competition.
YouTube has the highest monopoly tax in all of tech.
They take 45% of YouTube premium subscription revenue. That’s higher than the App Store (30%), Spotify (30%), and any other content marketplace on the internet.
I think they get a free pass for now because they allow creators to monetize with their own native ads within videos. If I had to guess, this may become a point of contention in the future…
The fact that we’ve accepted such ridiculously high profit margins from tech companies is simply due to their network effects monopolies, and the impossibility of competing with them.
Just look at any other marketplace business with more competition, like say a grocery store or any brick and mortar retail. Their net margins are often sub-5%. Physically shipping goods across the world is far more expensive than delivering video.
Only other monopolies, like Governments, can get away with charging 45% taxes. Having known a few Youtube employees and also a few federal government employees, I would say the low stress, low effort, low fear of layoffs, low work output expectations are...ahem...similar.
Youtubes profit margin isn't that high so it is pretty close to that, it took a long time for it to get profitable even with Google ads, unlike the digital stores that serves customers for basically nothing compared to how much revenue they bring in.
Twitch also takes around that much from streamers and they still aren't profitable since it costs more to serve the streams than they make.
Does Alphabet split out YT revenue numbers in the financial reports? The latest one listed the YT revenues, but I didn't see where the line item for YT costs was.
> Physically shipping goods across the world is far more expensive than delivering video.
Are you sure? It is a logistics issue, not a technology issue. Streaming video, near instantly, around the world, without any perceivable user-experience issues, infinite times, for infinite users is a massive-massive technology issue.
Amazon same day deliver was problably the most revolutionary thing that came to the domain, but otherwise shipping 1000 cars across the world, while impressive, is a pretty straight forward task. The technology that you need are ships and trucks. You can use a 1950s era technology to do that.
It's not shipping infinite times, the number of views (and hence, cost to stream) are proportional to the fees withheld. Whether 45% is too much, I can't say, don't think it can be determined apriori. It kinda does make sense to me that it would be more than the app store fees, but I also feel those app store fees are too high as well.
Bandwith isn't free for sure but at googles scale the costs are close to the cost you have copying data to your own NAS in your LAN. Multiple orders of magnitued below what AWS charges for bandwidth.
I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point. Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them. Youtube ad blocking was briefly not working for me recently and the volume of ads just while doing some chores which forced interrupting flow to go manually skip was astounding and enraging. It's like if I was at a quiet library and every 30 seconds someone randomly started screaming yet half the people have a reaction of "meh, doesn't bother me".
Most people don't use the internet at a whole - if you just stick to the 10 biggest apps/websites, the experience is acceptable without an adblocker.
As for YouTube, blocking their ads is basically a part-time job at this point. On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.
I hear this often. My experience is totally different. I've installed ublock origin and I'm using Vivaldi as my blink engine wrapper. I've never seen a YouTube ad since years. I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube.
They often release new "features" in a A/B fashion to a small percentage of users. It's most obvious with UI changes, where a portion of users will get a disfigured version of the site for a month, but it's probably true for their ad-blocking endeavors as well.
Is cinema mode new? Or did they change it somehow? Last I checked all it did was resize the video to take up most of the width of the browser. That was a pretty happy medium between "video for ants" and "take over my entire monitor in full screen mode"
I don't even think YouTube is anywhere near the worst advert offender.
My local newspaper website is stuffed full of adverts. Between a large picture, article heading and advert, you often don't see a signle line of new content above the fold on a 1080p screen.
I do not regularly visit such sites. I do unblock websites that I return to often.
> I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube.
90% of my YouTube use is on my smart TV. There's not really a straightforward way to block ads there. Used to be many years ago that a PiHole or similar would work, but they clued onto that years ago.
If it's a Google TV, there's an app you can sideload called SmartTube, which doesn't play ads and has SponsorBlock built-in. I went from often using my laptop just to play videos without being interrupted constantly, to actually enjoying using the TV app.
There’s a very simply way to avoid ads on YouTube tv — pay some money.
I spend less in nominal terms, let alone inflation terms, for my tv entertainment now than I did 20 year ago, even with Disney, Netflix, bbc, Paramount and YouTube subscriptions.
I have a Chromecast with Google TV, and it allows sideloading of APKs. I installed SmartTube which is a YouTube client that incorporates Adblocking and also SponsorBlock.
It periodically has issues loading videos when Google change something, but the app gets updated every time within a day.
> While YouTube Premium provides an ad-free experience for most content, promotional ads can sometimes appear for specific partnerships or limited-time offers. These promotions are often targeted based on various factors, including your location, viewing history, and account settings.
Consider yourself lucky. Some of their A/B tests seem to be designed to psychologically torment you with videos "buffering" for 10-60 seconds before they start playing, navigation taking 15+ seconds.
If that happens to you, this thread [1] is sometimes updated with manual workarounds that sometimes work:
>to be designed to psychologically torment you with videos "buffering" for 10-60
I don't mean this as an attack on you. I find it perplexing that this could be such a difficult thing. If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching? Consider a comparison to reading a book or watching a DVD. With the DVD you must stand up, walk to the DVD, remove the plastic wrap, turn on the DVD player place the DVD in the tray, wait for the tray to close, load the DVD, wait for the main menu to load, and finally press play to watch your movie. (potentially after navigating through settings to configure audio / subtitles / etc)
The DVD experience could obvious be _better_ (and if you don't care about picture quality you might be shocked how much more convenient a VHS tape is) but this hardly strikes me as any sort of real problem.
Youtube might actually be doing you an accidental favor here; it is the extreme reduction of friction which degrades your impulse control, and is part of what keeps you on the platform too long. By imposing an small but perceptible cost, they might actually keep from your zoning out and watching and instead intentionally watching only the videos you care the most about.
> If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching?
I won't know that until the video starts playing. I'm not watching a 90 minute movie here and I don't know if the video I'm about to play is the one I want. Spending a minute setting up a 90 minute movie is very different than spending a minute waiting for a video to load that I'm likely going to spend <30 seconds on.
Maybe I'm learning how to use certain software and I'm trying to find a video that demonstrates how to use a specific feature. In that case I might be clicking through 10+ videos to find the niche thing I'm looking for. If I was just vegging out on Youtube this wouldn't bother me nearly as much.
And don't forget that the time penalty doesn't only apply to the initial load, it would pause and fake-buffer every time I jumped around the video.
No ads but it's far worse than just annoying — for me. I get annoyed when a video buffers for 10 seconds due to a technical hiccup. Being made to wait for up to a minute with pretend-technical issues and mocking messages like "Why am I seeing this?" that try to convince me that they're not doing this on purpose is insulting and enraging.
I would gladly pay for an independent alternative but I will never pay for Youtube Premium on principle [1]. If these workarounds stop working I'll just use third party clients all the time, I already use SmartTube on TV.
[1] If I give you my money, I want you to respect me as a customer. Google will continue tracking me, abuse my personal information, and almost certainly re-introduce ads at some point in the future in pursuit of infinite growth. It's never going to be enough, the only winning move (with them) is not to play.
It doesn't stop there, it would also fake-buffer when you jumped to a different point in the video, it would be stuck in a broken transitional UI state for 10-30 seconds any time you navigated to a different page. Clearly they want people to get pissed off enough that they turn off the ad blocker, it's been getting worse over time.
I use the same setup, on Windows Linux and Android. It will break when they decide to roll out their aggressive anti-adblock measures more widely, currently they seem to be A/B testing and turning it on and off at random.
I'm surprised they haven't gone for the "refuse to serve the video stream for 20 seconds or however long the ad would take" card yet, although it's probably a matter of time.
You were just lucky, because YouTube uses A/B testing and does not roll out anti-adblock-measures to everyone simultaneously. This gives UBO some time to react.
I use uBlock Origin, plus I've configured my Firefox to open YouTube always in a dedicated container, that logs me out of any Google-related stuff as I never upvote or comment anyway. Browsing YouTube anonymously might have helped.
I have stopped ads in everywhere for YouTube and they haven't broke: Mobile revanced so far good new pipe it broke but I only use it for downloading videos. On Firefox I use ublock and it has never failed me. Then on tv I'm using smartube
This isn't really true. Firefox + uBlock origin works fine on the desktop and on mobile. You don't need to use the official YT app. (It is true thought that NewPipe is often broken).
> On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.
yeah, I often download things via yt-dlp to watch later and I'm encountering frequent failures that I assume are related to the whack-a-mole yt has been doing for the last two years or so.
NewPipe has been working for me as of late though, and I've not updated it in some time (although my use is infrequent)
I hate ads and avoid them, but haven’t had to install an ad blocker yet. I only really notice them when searching for recipes, and if I had to go through that multiple times a day I probably would get an ad blocker. I do pay for YouTube to avoid ads, and don’t watch much user generated content because it’s too ad-like imo.
I quit podcasts 3 years ago, because those ads made them become unlistenable just like terrestrial radio and I just can’t go back to that kind of listening experience. I started listening to audiobooks instead and don’t miss podcasts at all.
I think people are just hopelessly used to their lives being saturated with ads. On TV, on the Internet, on radio, on billboards, at restaurants, at the airport, at the gas station, in stores, out of stores, almost every surface that could have an ad on it either does now or will one day. This saturation has been so complete and normalized that people are blind to it.
It's a tragedy, when it comes to digital and specifically web literacy, but most people don't know they can.
I sat on calls with teachers at my previous job and they had no extensions installed. My own sister (a milennial) wasn't aware. Before that, I was at a place where devs could join UX interviews; it was even worse given the generational divide: older folks couldn't even tell when a link was obviously malicious.
We either install good browsers/extensions for our relatives, or let them be easy prey to the current state of affairs.
i took the route of only allowing myself the youtube search bar, everything else is not displayed. if i want to watch a video its because im seeking it out, i dont get fed anything.
hearing friends and family discuss youtube now, it sounds like they are being held prisoner. its snuck up on a lot of people, the slow push of shorts is what really made me realize youtube was becoming a major issue in my life, despite not seeing ads or anything.
> I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point
Mr Krabs voice: money!
No but seriously, if the FBI is telling you to use an ad blocker, use a fucking ad blocker.
My workplace doesn't allow ad blockers for security. Except ads are a MUCH bigger security concern and everyone knows it.
I'm so sick and tired of everyone playing dumb and acting like it's fine. No, it's not fine. Its not okay that Google is serving you a phishing ad that drains your bank account. They should be held liable. Why is everyone acting like their balls have been chopped off?
Do something about it. Minimum is run an aggressive ad blocker. MINIMUM!
It can't survive as the norm. That would cause the economics of sites to collapse. We have to accept that the people clicking on the ads (and sometimes getting scammed) are funding the sites for the rest of us. Like gatcha games are F2P because of whales.
Then let them collapse. It isn't the end of the world. And then we can see what was formerly unable to grow because it was stuck under their canopy not receiving enough light.
The fact that you don't just pay for YouTube Premium makes me think something is wrong with you. A Premium view gives much more money to the creator but I guess "just let me pay" is only relevant when you can't.
Are ad hominems back in vogue? (that is partially snide and partially serious. I feel like I've also/unconsciously been doing more of them recently.)
Regardless, your argument surrounding the insult was well worn 20 years ago. And so was the first response; why would I pay into some nebulous system where I don't know how much is really going to whom?
One of the nicer things about the hellscape that is the modern internet is the low-friction ability to pay creators directly.
...oh, I know why! Because if I pay Google, then Sundar pinky swears not to mercilessly track and monetize everything I do on youtube. \s
GP was simply mirroring the language of its parent post:
> Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them.
Which IMO is indeed way out of line.
Speaking for myself, no, nothings “wrong” with me. I watch YouTube enough that I consider it a valuable service. So do what you may think is insane: I pay for it. And it gives me no ads.
Netflix has gone to almost complete shit over the past few years. One of the things that really stood out as a strange choice for them considering their long term status as the "tech" innovator coming for media has been segmenting plans on resolution. I don't understand why they don't want to always put their best foot forward especially considering I assume bandwidth is always getting cheaper? And we seem upper bounded by 4k for the foreseeable future.
gpt-oss:20b crushed it on one of local llm test prompts to guess a country i am thinking of just by responding whether each guess is colder/warmer. I've had much larger local models struggle with it and get lost but this one nailed it and with speedy inference. progress on this stuff is boggling.
The 4090 was released coming up on 3 years and is currently going for about 25% over launch msrp USED. Buying gpu's is literally an appreciating asset. It is complete insanity and an infuriating situation for an average consumer.
I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely. It's clearly no longer a significant revenue source and they have thoroughly destroyed consumer goodwill over the past 5 years.
>I honestly don't know why nvidia didn't just suspend their consumer line entirely.
It's ~$12 billion a year with a high gross margin by the standards of every other hardware company. They want to make sure neither AMD nor Intel get that revenue they can invest into funding their own AI/ML efforts.
