You may think this price is ridiculous, but iPhones are slowly dying for two to four generaltions already. The only people still on iPhone are the ones who consider it too hard to switch to Android (low IT skills), or the ones who feel some fan-like loyalty. The price matches that perfectly, exploiting the weak and stupid.
PS: Why do I call fans stupid? The company isn't 1% as loyal to you as you are to them. If you still continue to be loyal, it can't be a smart decision.
Eric Schmidt has said he uses an iPhone. Elon Musk uses an iPhone 7. Mark Zuckerburg uses a MacBook Air. Travis Kalnick uses an iPhone. Most people who I know that work as engineers at Google and Facebook in the US use iPhones. But sure, they are weak and stupid and you are enlightened.
The iPhone 7 which released last year is more powerful than the Galaxy S8. Android phones lag embarrassingly behind in terms of CPU performance, disk write speeds, and software updates. If those things don't matter to you, I suppose you could get an Android phone for the AMOLED screen(though the new iPhone is reportedly going to have that too) or customization.
But to say that the only reason people buy iPhones is because they're stupid is embarrassing, really. I mean Apple weren't the company that have customers refusing to give back a phone which literally catches on fire.
A) You don't know what an engineer is, obviously. So your examples had exactly zero impact. lol.
B) The Galaxy S4 with Android 2.2 is more powerful than the iPhone 7.
C) There are two reasons. Both may apply to you, though. Reality is really hard to accept, I know.
D) Macbooks are really good. That doesn't give any additional points to the iPhone, though. I use one myself and am happy with it. It is well designed and combines strong features from both Enterprise and Opensource world.
A) I am an engineer, and at my previous company almost every engineer (9/10) had an iPhone. You should also know better than to insinuate that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Eric Schmidt aren't engineers, considering the companies they've created.
B) Citation needed.
C) What are the two reasons, specifically?
The biggest argument I hear about using Android is that it's customizable, but I would argue that 99% of people, engineers or not, wouldn't customize their phone enough to matter. I would much rather get an iPhone because, even disregarding or accepting the customizability argument, iPhones are less intrusive on your life (I don't want Google to know where I am at all times or know my phone habits), and get updates and work years after they are released. Those two objective reasons alone are enough to warrant me buying an iPhone.
Look. Think about a guy. He stands behind a horse. The horse kicks him in the face. For most people this would hurt. But he doesn't process that feedback. How do you explain to him that it's a bad idea to get close to that horse from its back side?
If you can show me a strategy, maybe I can explain to you why iPhones are badly designed. it should be obvious by using it.
Examples:
a) you get a notification that you have a new mail, whatsapp message or similar. You open the app. Only then the App is able to actually start downloading the content. This is an example of Apps not really being able to work in the background. 80% of what you want to do with a computer you can't do with an iPhone.
b) The keyboard has no features to write more quickly, e.g. by swiping. Also the suggestions aren't learning from your input. This means each interaction is very painful instead of being done quickly.
c) Click on a Youtube link in FB or Twitter. It will not open the Youtube App, but it will open an app internal browser. From there you can manually redirect to the browser and only then you can open it in Youtube. There is no real event mechanism, or it isn't opened to App developers.
d) The costumizability results in you being protected by default, because App developers already have more freedom to provide sane defaults. Even if you never use customizibility yourself, you already gain from it.
Have you used iOS or are you making assumptions based on what you think you know? If it was obvious why iOS was badly designed then I wouldn't have to ask.
a) It depends on how the app works but in general you are right. But this is to save data, especially in cases where there are a lot of images. Some apps do download the content when it receives the notification as well.
b) Are you suggesting typing is that much more difficult than swiping on a keyboard? Even if that were the case, you can download a keyboard from the App Store that allows you to use a swiping motion on the keyboard.
c) That's more Facebook or Twitter's fault for not handling the same events as the built in browser, not the failing of the OS.
d) That doesn't make sense. You're protected because app developers have the freedom to provide sane defaults? What about the bad actors that don't provide sane defaults or add malware? I'd rather trust the OS to enforce sane defaults than trust the app developer to, because at least the people that make the OS are generally competent, whereas app developers are more likely to not be.
a) Then push notification itself has a JSON data structure, if you need to prefetch more than that (movies, e-books) a silent push will start a background process specifically designed to do just that.
b) Custom keyboards are a thing for at least three generations of iOS
c) It's entirely possible to open an application from a webpage
d) pure horse shit. In iOS you could prevent applications from reading your contacts from the get go. Until recently permissions were an all or nothing thing in Android. Trusting app developers to respect your or other app developers interests is like trusting a crack head with your credit card. Poor battery life was one of the direct results. It's really no mystery why Google is slowly moving to the iOS side of permissions and background processes.
Really good argument. Thanks for not totally dropping the idea of a reasonable discussion, just because someone said "God is dead", ehm, I mean "iPhone is bad".
Actually I believe there will be another popularity spike and Apple will be a profitable company for another 20 years. But that doesn't mean iPhone's not dying. If you are that big, you can have both together.
Personal theory of mine, based on watching th tech market for 10 years (no claim to being an expert):
You are growing if you are funded and have great ideas that you can validate to be the top of the game. This is what the first iPhone and iPod did.
You are the constant leader when you provide top notch quality for a high but affordable price. That's what the Macbook does. Without an iPod like great idea you won't be able to beat that market leadership. They shouldn't expect growth with that product line, but they are really save.
And then there are losers. They may be anywhere in the market, based on previous successes and failures, but they are objectively worse than the competition and more expensive for about the same quality. This is where the iPhone stands. It lacks engineering wise so badly, it's not possible to overcome the hurdles without a complete rewrite. But the market is satisfied already. A complete rewrite is a high risk to stay on top in a stagnating market. Not worth it. The better strategy is to drain engineering costs and instead focus on marketing completely. That's what you can see with the iPhone happening. Each generation is worse than the previous, and mostly the hype and ownership-prestige is what keeps people coming back again and again. Putting money from engineering into marketing/sales will actually boost your profits for some time.
But marketing alone can't keep you on top forever. At some point the difference between fantasy and actual product will be so big that most people can't avoid the truth anymore. Then you will become the next Nokia.
Btw. I think Apple as a company still has a lot of opportunities. But the iPhone branch is dying. Hope I could explain why and why I believe that we will even see popularity rise in the next few years. Still engineering savy people have already switched away from iPhone. 100% sure about that part. For business reasons I needed to buy an ipHone 6s, and for powerusers it's a pain in the A, with no technical chance to make up the difference.
PS: Why do I call fans stupid? The company isn't 1% as loyal to you as you are to them. If you still continue to be loyal, it can't be a smart decision.