zlacker

>>miles+(OP)
Apple needs to be very careful that they don’t erode the things that most differentiate them from their competition.

>>tailsp+14
Agree. But I believe Apple thinks they also need to move harder into "services" and, I suppose, now ads. I think Apple recognizes that the high-margin hardware business is not not sustainable. Especially as everyone who would want an iPhone already owns one. Apple needs to grow somewhere.

>>JKCalh+qn
Everyone that owns an iPhone cycles them out every 2-3 years. It’s a perpetual cash cow.

>>bergen+WF
I stopped cycling when they removed headphone jack. Back to the Android.

>>TheLoa+gl1
Likewise. I wonder if we'll ever see them restore the headphone jack on the SE models simply because there's a good 10-20% chunk of the market who won't buy a phone without one.

A Mini-chassis-based SE with a headphone jack and a touchID home button would be a day 0 buy for me -- I wouldn't even wait for reviews.

Unfortunately I think Apple's treating the headphone jack (on iOS devices) like USB-A, not like the SD card slot or the HDMI port (on the Mac) -- the backlash hasn't been strong enough for them to backtrack.

Of course, that leaves me trapped in the failed evolutionary path of my touchID, small-sized, headphone-jacked 2016 iPhone SE that's losing iOS support this fall. The Zenfone 9 has me intrigued as a modern SoC with solid cellular band coverage and most of the features I want. But it's still bigger than I'd like.