Apple iPhone - my love affair turned toxic and why I won’t be upgrading – sorry Apple shareholders!

Last night Apple issued a profit warning, citing two major factors a massive gap in predicted sales in China versus reality and a steep decline in upgrades in other markets.

So why aren’t we upgrading – we don’t like the newer products!

I’m a massive Apple fan, a few experiences with Android (an HTC – that left me with PSTD) with work phones sent me running back but although for a long while on contract I was always slow to upgrade simply because I never liked the new models, after the 5 and 5S they just kept getting bigger. My provider desperately tried to upgrade me to a 6 and eventually the SE came along. When my SE broke under insurance they offered me a brand new 7 and after much arguing they agreed to let me have a refurbished second-hand SE as a replacement. When that developed battery issues after upgrading OS I voided my warrantees and did a DiY fix with cheap off-the-internet components.

I’m not a status phone user and from the 6 and beyond the iPhones just got too big for my handbag/hands and seemed less robust. Whilst I stuck to the 5 SE my husband tried the 6 and the 7 with numerous shattered screens and eventually, he too downgraded to an SE. I stuck with Apple through awful OS upgrades such as 12.0 which rendered personal hotspot unavailable leaving me unable to work for weeks on the move.

The tragic tale of SE hoarding

When Apple launched their new iPhone in September, the husband was desperate to see what it was like, he is a bit of a status phone and gadget owner, the type of person who had the latest phone (or even had a phone) before the majority; he had an imported iPad v1.0 before they were even available in the UK. When the announcement came, he tweeted:

·       “Meh, so what to do if you prefer the Apple ecosystem but don’t want to carry a massive bendy fragile TV set around with you? #iphone #ripiphonese”

Ignoring the ridiculously high price tag it was yet again a phone further and further from what we wanted. Disliking android only slightly less than I do he spent an hour searching for potential Android alternatives before pitifully whimpering “what will I do if my phone breaks?”… 5 minutes later he’d hatched a cunning plan he would buy up now deprecated SE stock to keep him going until Apple saw sense… and it would be free because we could use the John Lewis wedding vouchers we’d be meaning to spend on a suitable commemoration of the day so it would be “zero” cost. I wasn’t entirely convinced that an out-of-manufacture 3 year old phone model was what our generous guests had had in mind… but this was an emergency!

So on to the John Lewis website and grabbed a nice black SE into the basket, whilst typing in the ridiculously long voucher codes to pay… uh oh…. the status turned to stock running low, and when hit “buy”… “out of stock”… ARGHHHH… it seemed everyone else had had the same idea. So plan B, he repeated the process with the Gold SE, and again the status turned low, at this point he ditched the voucher codes and paid real cash – AND WE WON – we got it! Meanwhile I was checking other sites and the same phenomena was happening – seeing the new product was triggering a run on the deprecated SE. Within a few hours even the Rose Gold SE was out of stock (a glittery pinky colour that only a 9 year girl or avid mumsnet reader would be seen dead with).

It’s not just me

A few weeks later I saw this tweet from Citrix’s flamboyant personality CTO, Christian Reilly casually declaring he was ditching Apple phones.

·       “FFS. Dropped my iPhone again. Despite it being in a case, the feckin screen has disintegrated. After 10 years of iPhones, I’m done with it. Switching to my new Samsung S9 Note from tomorrow. Be seeing you, Apple.”

If you haven’t come across Christian, he’s the ultimate, high-profile social media tweet bunny voice of Citrix and the EUC/cloud ecosystem; like Anneka Rice if something interesting is going on he’s helicoptered in for a selfie demoing the smartest techie’s AR/VR futures, smoozing with the Citrix sponsored Red Bull Racing team, running the conference Karaoke. i.e. he is really influential and high-profile.

His reasons for leaving focussed on dropping the phone too much and broken screens. When guys like this declare they are leaving Apple for Samsung, others rethink their choices too.

Final Thoughts

Hang-on am I mad? I’ve been giving my business to a product line where despite spending thousands on product but also insurance etc I have a sometimes flaky OS, am prepared to desperately home repair and buy colours I detest…. Apple had something but my loyalty is frankly bordering on insanity and my patience gone.

So China, no doubt that’s more complicated (Trump and trade wars?) but perhaps all those Chinese folks without that legacy nostalgia and rose-gold-tinted spectacles are just approaching the product of today without the emotion, laughing at the silly price tags and saying…

·       “嗯, 如果你更喜欢苹果生态系统, 但不想随身携带一台巨大的弯弯曲曲的脆弱电视机, 该怎么办呢？#iphone #ripiphonese"

i.e. (“Meh, so what to do if you prefer the Apple ecosystem but don’t want to carry a massive bendy fragile TV set around with you? #iphone #ripiphonese”)

Forbes summarised it for me – what folks really want is an iPhone SE2; but I don’t think we want it any more, as yet another afterthought…. I think that mainstream SE base are tired of being remembered only when the latest product stalls… a lot of us want to be excited and upgrade rather than fighting for old stock on the John Lewis website… Apple probably have very few lives left now with even my patience worn thin … so if anyone has an SE Android replacement for the iPhone SE for the ultimate Andorid-a-phobe – shoot away!