Objects have to earn the right to exist. We make so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary. Stuff that will soon be cluttering your home and then end up in a landfill.
This is not a product that deserves to exist. It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
What makes this particularly objectionable is that it is from a design house that usually makes quality garments. And then they stoop to making this crap, slapping their designer label on it and then exploit ghastly people who don't know any better to waste tons of money on it.
Exactly my reaction. I hate this. I hate that someone thought of it and that it exists. I have no idea if it will sell, but I was like "no way, that cannot be a real launch from Apple"
Im not sure if you have spent any time in Asia but they love to have little throwaway bags for their to go drinks so they stay cold - and they hang in the same way. This looks like the exact same thing but pop an iphone in it.
What I am curious about is whether women in France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S (where this product is going to be launched) don't use hand-bags? If not, do they hold the phones in their hands or keep it in their pockets? In India or the middle-east, I've never seen women carry their phones in anything but their hand-bags / clutches.
Yes, you're right. People in Asia do like to use small bags for their phones or lipsticks. But those little bags are usually really cute or nicely designed, not like this one. Collaborate with Issey Miyake? Seriously?
To some degree, but junk is junk even if it says Issey Miyake on it. But at the price they are asking I'd insist on higher quality materials. Not this junk.
It is like those horrible Louis Vuitton plastic bags. Yes they are expensive and probably better made than most plastic bags, but they are mass produced plastic bags. You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.
(The only reason I know about Issey Miyake is because years ago I happened to buy a couple of handmade linen suits while visiting Japan. And only later discovered that these suits were "a big deal" when some fashion people I shared an office with saw me wear them as "casual office clothes". To me they were comfortable linen suits that were obviously hand dyed. And they weren't even that expensive)
> You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.
You're making the subjective value judgement that a synthetic material is "junk", without qualifying it as such. A textile that is less expensive to manufacture, or is synthetic, does not automatically qualify as "junk". Look at technical fabrics such as GoreTex as a highly functional example, or any avant-garde techwear from brands like ACRONYM which usually last quite a long time and have some artistic merit within the fashion world.
It's OK to not like synthetic materials. It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design.
Gore Tex is a good example of a material that, on its own, doesn't actually work as well as the marketing would have you believe. For instance it stops breathing when it gets wet. And then the whole rationale is gone. It means your perspiration condenses on the inside and then you become wet and cold. Most gore-tex jackets will not even work for my bicycle commute since it rains all the time here. Much less riding my bike in the forests or mountains.
Technical garments are not just down to what materials are used, but how the garment is designed to manage moisture and heat, and how you combine it with other garments and reconfigure it as needed.
I spend a lot of time outside in anything from heavy rain to -25C cold. Often in stormy conditions. I often engage in prolonged physical activity, which means I perspirate a lot. Often followed by rests. If you do not dress properly, so you can manage moisture and heat, best case is that your jacket will start to smell like a homeless dog. Worst case, you freeze to death (yes, that happens when tourists don't know how clothes work).
If there is any miracle material it is wool. No synthetic material even comes close. But then again, that's not an outer layer. It's what you wear for the inner and middle layers. And it does that job unreasonably well.
Couldn't agree more about Gore tex. It's mostly marketing genius.
On the surface it does what it says, in practice it won't work as you expect it.
In the end it's kind of useless, especially considering the price.
But the marketing is so well done, that people swear by it, even though for the supposed purpose of the garment, there are far better and cheaper solutions.
It’s much more efficient to wear the densest layers closer to your body, because that’s less volume to keep warm. Most people wear wool, synthetic, or a down coat underneath the goretex.
Try doing the opposite and see it how it works. Puffy outside the goretex. This only works on very cold weather. If it’s raining it’s too warm.
Mark Twight tried to popularize this idea but it never gained popularity despite how efficient it is
Perhaps it works if you are not physically active. But it is quite the opposite of what people do in cold regions.
The inner layers are usually the most important ones. The inner layer needs to do two things: transport moisture away from the skin and maintain a continuous layer of air close to the skin for insulation. It also needs to reduce skin contact points if you perspirate a lot.
Wearing dense layers close to your body would interfere with moisture management and heat distribution.
If you look at how Norwegian soldiers have dressed for winter exercises over the last 100 or so years, the inner layers will usually be a string/mesh undergarment. This holds a continuous layer of still air against the skin while minimizing fabric contact points. The holes allow sweat vapor to escape to the next layer, which then handles the transport of moisture. The second layer is usually a somewhat dense weave, relatively thin wool layer. Synthetics lose their insulating ability when they get wet/moist. Followed by a looser knit, thicker wool sweater. With a wind- and water proof uniform jacket as the outermost layer. This essentially creates two layers of air separated by a moisture transport layer.
The mesh garments were traditionally made of cotton, which is usually not a material you want next to skin, but it works in mesh form. Non-mesh cotton garments are terrible next to your skin because they get wet and then lose their insulating properties and stick to skin drawing off heat. If you sweat and then keep still for a while you will get cold and it feels wet and miserable. Wool doesn't have this problem as it keeps insulating even when wet. (Roughly the same cotton mesh garment, from the same manufacturer, that I wore in the military, was also worn by Tenzing and Hillary during their ascent to Mt. Everest in 1953).
You can get pretty good mesh garments today made from wool that also cover your arms. This is kind of the secret trick to staying warm and dry in polar conditions.
The configuration I wear most days is just light, thin, loose merino wool inner layer, thin, dense wool second layer and then a hard-shell. I started wearing this because I commute to work on my bike all year round, and I needed something that manages moisture, keeps me warm and doesn't smell. When it gets colder I add a cotton shirt or a loose knit sweater.
If it gets really cold (below -25) I usually drop the third layer and wear a down jacket (the kind climbers use on expeditions), but this has no vents so it doesn't work if it is warmer than -25C -- it gets too hot. If it drops below -30C I add a wool sweater. (The down jacket is overkill for where I live, so I use it perhaps 2-3 times per year)
I couldn’t get past your first sentence. The person that promoting dense-first layers is probably the most influential and famous Alpinist ice/rock/mountain climbers to have ever lived. The man is known for doing his research.
And yet, this isn’t what what people in polar regions do. Nor is it how professionals are taught to dress in cold climates.
Reinhold Messner believes in yetis. Linus Pauling thought you could cure a cold with vitamin C and shot coffee up his ass. Clever people believe in dumb shit too sometimes.
Perhaps you should read the manual for how armies that operate polar regions dress? Or perhaps get some first hand experience before you insist?
I don't think you have chosen the correct physical model for insulation. Insulation is about thermal resistance, not minimizing mass.
Your body is continuously producing heat. What matters for staying warm is how fast you lose that heat, not how much “extra fabric” you have to warm up. The thermal mass of clothing is tiny compared to the thermal mass of your body so it isn't numerically relevant. The limiting factor is heat loss to the environment.
In clothing insulation comes from dead air space and preventing convection and conduction. Down jackets are warm because they trap a large amount of air in place and create a very gradual temperature gradient. That is, it spreads the temperature drop out over a thick, fluffy layer, so the inner surface stays close to skin temperature and the outer surface closer to ambient. The result is a much lower heat flux for the same inside–outside temperature difference. (A better mental model of this is that you have two boundary layers separated by a gradient that keeps ΔT low at each boundary layer. We know that heat flux is linearly proportional to ΔT)
Of course, clothing adds another dimension of complexity that is critical for comfort and survival: it has to deal with how your body actively regulates temperature: by perspiration. That is: you have to manage moisture too. And quite possibly a lot of it if you are active.
Wet fabric has higher thermal conductivity. Worse still, if it is dense and gets stuck to your skin you get very efficient direct heat transfer. The thing we want to avoid.
Think about why it is important to have a good thermal paste layer between CPU and heatsink. Now imagine you place the heatsink on a 0.1mm layer of aerogel. Do you think the latter configuration will cool the CPU efficiently?
When metabolic heat production drops that wet, conductive layer becomes a heat sink and you chill rapidly. In cold environments this can happen fast and be lethal.
I have a long-sleeved polypropylene shirt from the 1980s that I still wear for hiking. It's not scratchy, never smells, keeps me warm, dries quick. It was probably made by a Switzerland company, they knew how to make good quality clothing.
GoreTex is highly functional but it doesn't last long & it isn't repairable. These are trade-offs that may be worthwhile for certain innovative, highly-functional use-cases (like water proofing) but are very rarely worthwhile for average use-cases.
With very few exceptions, the majority of synthetic materials commonly used in clothing come with these trade-offs. "Junk" being a slang term for things that get thrown away seems appropriate in this case (short-lived, non-repairable material).
> have some artistic merit within the fashion world
> It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design
While I do feel strongly that art for its own sake is oft undervalued & has enormous merit, this is ultimately off-topic in a thread that kicked off on the topic of quality, function & the (undeniable) fact that we produce too many things. These are separate qualifiers to "artistic merit".
Fashion being ephemeral is in fact the point here (it should be less ephemeral, independent of what your views on art are).
GoreTex is a bad example - it's gonna delaminate after a year or so of heavy use and is pretty much impossible to repair after that. Which also undercuts ACRONYM's messaging about their GoreTex products being some kind of like, buy-it-for-life rainjacket.
Issey Miyake's "Pleats Please" line has always been made out of synthetics. It was an intentional choice due to the character of polyester as a fabric, like it's ability to hold the pleats while still being machine washable.
The MA-1 "works" under a relatively narrow set of conditions that I don't see most days. I tried. It is a miserable garment for how and where I live.
I'm not saying synthetic materials are always bad. I own a few jackets in synthetic materials that are good, but I have gone through a lot that are rubbish. For jackets it is more about the technical design than the exact material. I have had lots of expensive jackets that just don't work for my use cases. And a few that do. It is trial and error since I have no idea why some jackets just don't work.
I live in a place where it rains heavily, and in the winter it is often cold, and I spend a lot of time outside being physically active. This means that the challenge is to find jackets that can deal with heavy rain, cold, physical abrasion, and perhaps most important of all: moisture management.
If you spend a lot of time being physically active outside in all kinds of bad weather, you tend to start caring a lot about what materials you wear. Best case for sub-par garments: they start to smell. Worst case: you freeze because your clothes can't manage moisture.
But for what is more or less a glorified sock, at that price I am not buying a piece of plastic. I'd expect more pleasant natural materials.
I haven't tried it so I wouldn't know. But I'll have a look. Thanks for the tip!
As I mentioned, I've gone through a lot of jackets in order to try to find a model that consistently works and it is slightly baffling. I have a long discontinued 20 year old Bergans (https://www.bergans.com/) jacket in a horrific puke green color that works really well, but it is ugly as sin. (It is almost painful to look at :-))
It is one of the few jackets I own that combine good resistance to heavy rain with an ability to vent moisture really well, so it doesn't get clammy. It also traps heat really well so I have worn it in ~ -15C with just two relatively thin merino wool layers. Most of the other jackets I've tried tend to build up condensation when I ride in heavy rain. Which is pretty common weather where I live.
Synthetic materials vary by many orders of magnitude in quality depending on the purity, molecular weights, antioxidant packages, processing conditions, etc
MA-1s are inner lined with a 100% cotton/wool mix. The outer is nylon because synthetic fabrics are generally good for waterproofing (waterproofing is always a trade-off of quality over function) & also just because bombers are generally nylon, but a big part of their construction is using quality non-synthetic fabrics wherever they can to ensure overall quality.
Hadn't heard Issey Miyake mentioned in over a decade. He was an important designer in the 1980s, and died in 2022. Known for running completed garments through a pleating machine.
Looking at that thing, the overall impression is "a phone so big and heavy it needs its own shoulder bag?"
What do you mean? Nylon and polyester can be extremely durable, that’s always been their appeal. A knitted pocket is very likely to be a BIFL item even moreso than typical cotton or wool fabrics unless they’re specifically designed to be hard wearing, like canvas. That and the fact that it’s designed to fit any size and model of phone means it’s likely to be significantly less wasteful than putting your phone in a high end leather case that will age out when you upgrade.
Apple is clearly trying to experiment with more textile elements on its products, like with the Apple Watch band and FineWoven/tech woven cases to move away from using environmentally damaging leather and cheap feeling silicon. Stuff like this, sold in small lots, is how you test out whether people are into it before trying to work it into a product meant to sell to hundreds of millions of people.
I'd object to the notion of a free market. Free and fair markets don't actually exist in the way we like to think. Pretty much every kind of business I've been involved in has different strata of rules for different players.
Try to set up a HFT business. Or try to do anything interesting in telecom. Once you have cleared the capital and regulatory hurdles what kills you is that you need special relationships.
In this case, I doubt this product would become a success without the two brand names behind it, and completely astronomical amounts of financial might. They will sell literal tons of these even if people ultimately find out that they are junk. On its own, this is a bargain bin-liner.
You hate on Louis Vuitton but have you ever tried one? Have you looked at all the designs they have? I think LV is better than Hermes bags with that horrendous closure they have on the Birkin and other bags. LV has cool colorful designs also in their ready to wear. You might object to the branding but the bags work very well and are designed well in terms of how easy it is to get stuff in and out and if you don't throw it around the canvas can last a long time. Hermes might have nice Pogo leather and so on but that doesn't mean that closure is worth the hassle IMO.
Also IDK what to think about the iPhone Pocket. It LOOKS like a hassle to get stuff in and out of it but if they have somehow managed to make it easy, maybe it's well designed. If not then I agree with you the product is probably garbage.
They hate on Louis Vuitton plastic bags, not Louis Vuitton in general, and they are entirely right to do so. It's the same with their perfumes, keychains, wallets and most other small accessories. All products which are far too expensive for what they are but remain reachable by the average person to capitalise on people who want the brand but can't afford the "real" products.
Buying entry level products from luxury brands is hard to justify. At their price point, you can generally get a far better equivalent product from a brand with less appeal. It's especially true with Louis Vuitton where the brand's cachet has been severely diluted by how many people own their bags.
Other random LV fact: Louis Vuitton was a lock maker, and the locks he made were advertised as “unpickable” (more advertising than reality, sadly.) He even had Houdini try to pick one. No, this has nothing to do with TFA, but I like locks.
>It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%))
Polyamids like Nylon are some of the highest quality and most durable fabrics in the world, with some of the best material characteristics fabrics can have.
Given the constraints of the product and looking at it from an engineering standpoint, these are the materials you want for a product like this. Flexible, durable and resistant to weather. I do not see what other materials you would use to achieve a better quality product.
That said, it is of course a stupid fashion accessories. The world is full of them.
You're right, of course, but I don't think blame rests solely on the individual consumer here... I guess it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, wherein Apple makes $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because they know people will line up to buy it, and people will line up to buy $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because Apple made them.
And people have brand loyalty to Apple stuff because quality, or design, or something... but for a product like this, which to me is prima facie a ridiculous, impractical, high-priced, fast-fashion item, you know that the marketers are cashing in on that brand loyalty almost exclusively (in the absence of any intrinsic value).
Half-baked thoughts, I'm sure people have written properly about this. But the conclusion I leap to is that marketing people are the great Satan here. Fuck those guys.
Pretty sure the profit margin for these bags is 10x at least. Way better (and simpler) that dealing with expensive computer/phone hardware and it supply chain, even if their pricing is ridiculously expensive.
Marketing guys just know and exploit a very well known human weakness. It's annoying because it's Apple, but everyone has been doing this forever.
Non-standardized phone chargers? USB-C and its patent hell? HDMI and its licensing? There's plenty of examples for creating wasteful items without them being fashion ones.
The materials themselves probably cost no more than a few tens of cents, so all the cost is going to be the in the manufacturing process. The knitting pattern does look somewhat advanced, so I guess it would require a relatively high spec knitting machine. I suspect what would drive up cost is a combination of throughput and somewhat that you need an expensive knitting machine. Since this is a high volume item that will probably bring down the average cost by quite a bit.
I would guess somewhere in the region of $2 to $5 per pocket to mass produce these? Anyone have a more qualified guess?
The tech industry is basically entirely run on Advertising. Google, Facebook, even Apple owe a huge chunk of their revenue to Ads.
Clearly Ads work. You cannot blame the individual who has been brainwashed, addicted to buying things, by the hyper-capitalist advertising mega-monopolies around us. They are victims too.
I don't disagree and that's factually correct. I'm not sure about calling someone who can spend $200 in an iPhone bag a victim, though.
Plus that kind of wasteful consumerism is only seen in certain developed countries in the world, while the brainwashing happens globally. So corporations are evil but a little individual accountability wouldn't harm.
> It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
It is impossible for Apple to innovate. It's way too much work to compete with BYD/Tesla on real things like Electric Cars.
It's a LOT easier just to extract money from idiots who pay top dollar for 'fashion'. They will market this as the Balenciaga of phone bags, to differentiate it from the $2 phone bags that will appear on Temu next week (or they are already there; Apple is slowly catching up after a few years).
Meanwhile this looks like this sort of man-purse that in my corner of the world is referred to as something that loosely translates to "quiver of righteousness".
Poland and the original wording is "kołczan prawilności".
The "righteousness" in question is a calque from the Russian adjective "правильный", meaning "correct, right, proper" and originates from prison slang. I believe the equivalent English term is "Original Gangster".
The term is of course used in jest in reference to how man-purses, out of all things, are normalized among people associating themselves with street culture, especially that my understanding is that those items were initially just fanny packs worn differently.
Us iPhone 13 Mini holdouts need to get a little louder. It feels like I find more and more on the internet every month -- I'm pretty sure there're far more than just "dozens of us" who want a reasonably-sized phone.
It does initially look like a stupid and Insanely Facile fashion statement, I agree, but I think the iPod sock v2 could be one of the most practical and cleverly designed products Apple has ever released.
It's clearly intended to be used as bait for phone snatchers. That iPhone dangling loose a foot below your arm in free air is just too tempting… no thief can resist. But, then! You start swinging that motherf*cker, and your iPhone becomes a deadly weapon before any potential thief has time to think.
Third parties are sure to fill the market with the most obvious additions, e.g. metal spikes, studs, mildly poison-laced hooks. I assume there will also be training courses scheduled in Apple Stores around the world to clarify this accessory's purpose — not to mention, to teach proper technique and the ethical considerations of when to stop striking with the iPhone Pocket to avoid manslaughter charges in your region.
This is a move by Apple to subtly promote armed, deceptive martial arts as self-defence. To promote the Bushido spirit as a practical coping mechanism in these stressful times, and to empower its users in everyday situations. I for one think it's Insanely Great, and right on that bold frontier of innovation and Thinking Different that Apple built its reputation on.
Nope. See this article in the Economist, "Grand Theft Global".[1]
What happens to the stolen phones? They're shipped in bulk to Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, there to be taken apart, reset, repaired, parts replaced, and resold to people in China who can't afford new phones.
The amusing thing is that the phones were probably originally built in Shenzhen.
Me too, I still have my iPhone SE, I was hoping they would bring back some smaller version of the iPhone + Touch ID, I refuse to upgrade just because of the lack of Touch ID
The camera is what finally pried my SE out of my hands, replaced by a 17 Pro. Hate it. Heavy, no more Touch ID, forced into iOS 26. Even the button placement drives me bananas. The amount of times I accidentally take a screenshot because I’m trying to adjust volume...
Still have my SE. When I pick it up, it’s striking just how much better it feels.
I KNOW RIGHT?!? why would they move the left-side buttons down!? (It’s actually probably because otherwise they’d be hard to reach in these huge phones with our tiny hands but boy did the change mess with my muscle memory to find the buttons).
I’m still on the 1st gen SE from 2016. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the iPhone Pocket was, in fact, not an iPhone that fits in your pocket.
Looking at replacing my SE with a keitai supplemented with an Android emulator
It’s totally shot lol. I’ve had the battery replaced it once already, and frankly it didn’t make too much of a difference. The battery always shows 1%, even if it has 50% charge left in actuality, and I never know when it’s going to die. I don’t really use my phone enough for this to be a problem but it’s annoying. I blame Apple for shipping heavier and heavier versions of iOS that demand more and more power for no discernible reason (Liquid Glass being the latest example).
I don't want to look at my iPhone every time I need to unlock it, for example, when I am riding my motorbike, the helmet would block my face. This isn't a problem when I use Touch ID because I can use fingerless gloves. Another case is when I need to discreetly check my phone for a moment, like when I am in a meeting or a dinner.
I don't have anything against Face Id, BUT I just don't see why they eliminate the sensor and remove the option.
I used to think the same thing. And ya TouchID is handy sometimes over FaceID. But FaceID overall between the two if one has to choose is superior. If you haven't lived with it daily yet, I wouldn't let that stop you from getting a 13 mini. It helps a lot too with longevity, less to break. You are obviously one of us, those that keep their phones for a very long time. It never needs wiped off, it's incredibly consistent. The durability feature starts to matter when you're using something this many years. Not trying to change your mind, just share a perspective as I do understand where you're coming from for sure. You're not exactly wrong.
FaceID works a very few angles with glasses. Won’t work if my glasses have been exposed to rain (it rains like 70% of the year where I live). Struggle to work with face masks and glasses. I have to hold the phone at eye level to unlock it (ie: can’t unlock it discretely). If I’m lying in bed and the phone is lying in front of me, I can just tap to unlock with TouchID, but need to shuffle it around and raise my face for FaceID.
I rolled back to TouchID after a few months, it was intolerable.
I have an impression this gets worse the more correction your glasses have.
It's worse than motor memory (no thought required) gesture, because it requires a more expensive non-motor-memory physical movement that depends on context of the human. Face ID requires moving and orienting phone close enough for the Face ID sensor to capture a 3D image of face and moving eyes for attention, so it's a function of both phone and human position.
TouchID is context free: grab phone and touch button in fixed position. By the time the phone has turned to facing the user, it is already unlocked.
I love TouchID and can’t stand FaceID. But the home button is terrible. It’s just too hard to be used comfortable, and I end up hang that floating software button instead.
Rather than a standalone phone, I'd love a small companion iPhone that uses the same number liked the Apple watch. Just a pocket-sized phone with a camera and the ability to use iPhone apps that I could take places where I don't want or need the full slab-sized behemoth.
Since it’s clearly April 1st inside the reality distortion field, I’m disappointed there are no throwback designs sized for the mini and se at the bottom of the page.
(As an aside, I swear by pants from the Issey Miyake Homme Plissé collection. Since investing in some pairs about 10 years ago, I have hardly worn anything else—no other pants match their comfort. The iPhone Pocket is of course ridiculous anyway.)
The pants cost around 500 bucks? I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I usually buy cheap clothes and mend them and ten years for a pair of pants isn't unusual for me. I probably haven't spent $500 dollars on clothes in a year ever in my entire life (except maybe the year I bought a suit for getting married).
I guess I'm just genuinely curious how you found yourself in the position of even contemplating $500 for pants.
> but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
It depends on how much you earn. I don’t mind spending tens of thousands on Loro Piana cashmere because it’s really nice, but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial.
Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
A few years ago I too would’ve considered $500 for pants to be absurd, at this point I just go to a tailor and pay slightly more than that but save tons of time in the long term and always have perfect fitting pants. The time savings alone are tremendous, after getting a pair fitted properly I can just order new ones whenever I need without having to spend hours going through shops looking for the right pair of pants.
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.
Not that those people aren't here, but I don't think they are the average. I think the average person here is an un/under-employed tech enthusiast who dreams of startups but spends his time here instead of actually working to make it happen. I'm not in that group by the way, I stopped dreaming about startups 10 years ago.
Bored developers are probably another large fraction.
You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech.
I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it.
My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
> My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
Are you talking like one-off niche utilities/services that another busy person would happily pay a small amount to solve an immediate problem with and don't necessarily require a ton of backend scaling/maintenance, or subscription type stuff? When you say "many", is that >100?
So far the most profitable category has been sites which simplify some government processes, e.g. helping you fill a form or even just basically selling a PDF version of a form that a government only provides on paper (with a nice web UI to help you easily fill it).
Little scaling or maintenance, I can host everything on a single dedicated server but have a few so I don’t have to worry about things breaking.
Most of the work is just locating these niches, but honestly it’s easy to find at least one a week even if I’m being lazy. If I was really trying very hard I’d probably be at 1000+ sites right now.
One simple example would be helping people change their name in the UK with a deed poll, which basically amounts to a pdf saying “hey my name is now [enter name here]”. I didn’t do this particular one even though I probably should, I found out about it pretty early on and I was (wrongly!) dissuaded by the competition.
Edit: I specifically should not have been dissuaded by the competition because it’d take an hour or two to build a decent website with the necessary information, and despite the competition there’s a decent chance my page would start ranking pretty well within a couple of years. I’ll probably do this one tomorrow.
Heh, this is a nearly identical idea to what I've been considering trying in the past week, since I have some experience with the PDF spec and Acroforms from my time working on a commercial PDF SDK, and I personally have both struggled and watched people struggle with certain forms. Also seems like a straightforward value prop.
It's nice to hear that it's a viable niche and you're doing well with it! Thanks for sharing
Do it! The best part here is that the work you do will be super reusable and you can easily crank out a new website every day if you feel like it.
It’s important to be patient though, I’ve had websites not earn a cent for the first year and grow to tens of thousands a year with zero intervention from me.
In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin.
I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)
I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.
Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental.
Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money.
News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism.
FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
Sorry for jumping on this off-topic but I'm a junior engineer hoping to build out some of those small online businesses but I've been a bit unsure of how to go about it. When you say small online businesses do you mean like micro-SaaS kind of things? Or like tangible items? Sorry, just curious :)
Micro-SaaS and digital products. Just figure out a good stack to work with for billing and try to crank out one little thing a week that will be useful to someone.
One of my best projects just sells some pdf files you can submit to the government to achieve a thing you would usually unnecessarily hire a lawyer for.
Another in a similar vein simply offers an easy-to-fill PDF version of a government form that does not exist online, and a nice HTML interface that will help you mostly automatically fill it.
Most of these took less than a day to build and take next to no maintenance. Both of the above earn more than $100k annually.
Just make sure your customers can get in touch with you very easily so you don’t end up with broken websites running on autopilot charging customers for broken stuff, I made that mistake once and ended up having to call a bunch of people to apologise when I discovered what had been happening.
It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago.
Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%)
Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too.
Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
>the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
I've been donating 5-10% of my income to GiveWell[1] and their top charities like GiveDirectly[2] and the Against Malaria Foundation[3] for nearly a decade at this point and I think their track record has been fantastic. Effect altruism only gets shady when longtermists get involved and start speculating on the moral worth of lives in some distant future. If you focus on human beings alive today, effective altruists (and development economists) have done a great job identifying how to make your charitable donations go the farthest in reducing suffering.
> I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough?
It's better to think of pretax money as just not existing. The effect of /everyone/ paying taxes is different from the effect of only you paying taxes, since your buying power is somewhat determined by how much you have relative to everyone else.
Well not really, I do my grocery shopping a few minutes away in Monaco where nobody pays taxes. I could move less than a kilometre and save loads of money, despite the outrageous real estate costs.
I just kind of like where I am now so don’t care enough to do that, and at least try to assume that the government does a relatively good job of directing my donation to good causes.
Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on.
Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend...
A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world.
A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful.
It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires.
We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
Whataboutism isn’t going to solve the problem of inequality. Compare me to many others and you can say the same things as I said to GP, however there’s a clear difference that isn’t very subtle between me buying a compact car and GP buying a few pairs of those pants for the same cost.
There’s this argument that people make that goes something like, “the wealthy give their fair share why sour they pay more than a lot income person and get called out for not giving more?” I don’t believe that’s their fair share, is why I ask them to give way more. Do you think a person who starts 100 businesses is working harder than a single mom with a few kids? Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees? These are some of the questions I have they could be relevant.
Like I said, I don’t want to bore anyone, it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia. I’m certainly not going to convince anyone, I’m no good at arguing and my arguments tend to be rough and full of holes, but at least I’m not a millionaire claiming I couldn’t or shouldn’t do more because I’m a special hard worker who deserves every penny.
I’m definitely not working particularly hard, but for what it’s worth my work has saved and will continue to save vast amounts of time for ordinary people. I’m not sure that how hard a person works is the right metric to use.
> it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia
A few years ago I used to live in hostels, sometimes hoping that my (then few) websites would get one or two payments to cover my expenses for the next day so I wouldn’t have to go without food. I’d like to think that I’m not suddenly particularly out of touch.
>my work has saved and will continue to save vast amounts of time for ordinary people.
I have my doubts.
>A few years ago I used to live in hostels, sometimes hoping that my (then few) websites would get one or two payments to cover my expenses for the next day so I wouldn’t have to go without food. I’d like to think that I’m not suddenly particularly out of touch.
Consider that living in hostels and going hungry while maintaining multiple web services is maybe outside of the common man's experience. The priorities of someone stuck in the former situation, and the resources generally available to someone in the latter, usually don't overlap. Grocery shopping in Monaco and calling your taxes "donations" doesn't help matters.
I say this as someone who is, by many measures, out-of-touch himself: weird know weird. A measure of self-consciousness is healthy.
Finally, for efficiency's sake:
>Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money.
You probably misunderstand my perspective on the matter.
>Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much?
Oh, the possibilities are endless (even if the ability to vet is not; so, don't).
Talk to people, find out their pain points, make their day.
OR
Your employees (or the people who automation has saved from being your employee).
OR
Invest in that neighborhood people tell you not to go to.
Just starter suggestions. Note that they're not merely aimed at making you feel good for being a good little philanthropist; in the long run, they make it safer to run your mouth off however you like.
gifting sums of money to someone to solve their problems can significantly complicate relationships, have you tried it? Unless theyre a close intimate that is genuinely able to accept a gift you'll end up with someone who feels indebted to you or the opposite, sees you as a bank account or a fallback for next time they're in need. I've seen it between parents and children, between friends, between strangers, debt complicates things. That's what I like about money, it's used to settle debt so you don't owe anything to anyone.
And people hate it when somebody buys a run down building in a poor neighborhood and "invests" in it because now you're making it unaffordable
Edit: I'll give you "pay your employees more", that's a fairly uncomplicated way to distribute windfall wealth, but now you've just passed the buck to them! ;)
Most people react poorly to the word hypocrite so ChatGPT found[1] some other choice phrases for people that are well off that complain about the better off.
> Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees?
You appear to live in the US. Ask yourself why those in the US deserve the lions share of world wealth? You seem to be complaining about others while not looking at yourself.
Disclosure: I'm well off for a New Zealander but I'm earning less than the median wage my cohort receives in NYC. Taxes total around 45% of my income.
Edit: 1/3 of US households earn over $150k. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/09/17/one-third-of... - It isn't that uncommon in the US but that amount is rather uncommon in most of the rest of the world. I've just been to New Orleans so I saw one poorer part of the US recently so I have some point of comparison.
Do something about it then. Start by learning to make arguments that aren't so poor you yourself think they're rough and full of holes. Get involved in politics, activism, or campaigning. Vote. Convince others to vote in the same manner you do.
This is such a broken take. Jealousy is so ugly. It's like you expect those doing better than you to Harrison Bergeron themselves for your sake.
I'm sorry you're unhappy with your lot in life. Maybe work hard and do better, rather than expecting others to pretend like they're not doing well to appease your feelings.
I’m doing fine, others aren’t doing as well, I guess you see it as jealousy and in fact I’m just disgusted by my fellow man that they can hoard while others starve.
> I’m just disgusted by my fellow man that they can hoard while others starve.
Despite popular belief the economy is not a zero sum game where every dollar someone makes comes at anothers expense. In reality, every dollar a wealthy person spends becomes some other person's livelihood.
It is only unproductive idle capital that should be considered "hoarding", and that IS a bit of a sin in my book. As is wealth invested in rent seeking rather than productive activity.
> I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants.
TIL it's unethical to spend a lot of money on clothes. It's not like the sub-thread's OP was spending $10k on a pair of <Insert crazy designer brand name> pants that actually have more form than function. It's a $500 pair of pants. God forbid people spend money on their own preference for their own comfort.
Pragmatically, capitalism brought in more good than bad. Are we arguing that we would've been better off if the world had gone the way of the soviet/pre-80s China way of life?
The irony is the majority of people on here are the ones screaming "tax the rich" at Mamdani's acceptance speech, but then are the same ones upvoting this guy, his 10M net worth and defending him being rich.
To make it even more confusing I’m a rich guy cheering for people like Mamdani.
I pay lots of taxes, probably in top 0.1% of the world on a % basis. I don’t have to, I’m not a US or French citizen so I could easily just choose to relocate a couple of minutes away and pay essentially no taxes.
If I did choose to stop paying taxes, I’d do so in order to donate a similar amount of my income to some charity. I’m just not sold on that being so much more efficient to be worth the hassle. OTOH, it’d definitely greatly improve my philanthropy credentials which would very much be worth it to some for purely selfish personal reasons.
> at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial
this is probably just regular bragging, right?
now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops!
thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
"I buy more $10,000 cardigans than you buy Hanes undershirts" is kinda the definition of bragging. What a weird ass corner of the internet where it's just assumed everybody earns $millions. Like, lol, no outside SV, London, and NYC, that's truly exceptional. Like, the average CEO in the US doesn't even clear $1 million (according to Google's AI search results).
You can construct a philosophical argument that value is all relative without having to casually drop anecdata demonstrating that you personally spend many hundreds of times more on an everyday object than is typical without consideration.
Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
"I have spent more than $500 dollars on pants before, because I'm lucky to be in a position where for me these things are a matter of taste and whim, rather than budget, and don't really affect my finances too much whether I do or don't buy them."
I don't think I have to explain to you how the gap between what you said, and what I wrote above, is what is causing offense here. You likely deserve 100% of your success, but its just common sense to obscure the specifics of it if you are way out of band in relative terms.
Its like saying: "You know, I never really get ill" at the cancer ward. Sure, its true, but read the room.
Well, after all it’s HN and this is the kind of content that attracts much of the users. I’d certainly be more careful with that wording on a website that caters to a very different audience, but it’s not long ago when indiehackers posts of people “bragging” about their successes were consistently at the top of the front page.
Not convinced I misread the room, especially considering the upvotes.
> don't really affect my finances too much whether I do or don't buy them
Isn't this the same brag as before?
I can't tell how this is different than throwing some numbers in the mix, the person relating their personal experience expresses they have fuck-it-bucks either way
Not naming numbers is precisely the point, because you obfuscate the reality of the size of the gap, which in the end is what everything is about. The gap creates the offense. Everybody knows there's rich people, but being confronted by exactly how rich, to the detail of a number, is the offensive part (if done by that rich person without any clear reason).
I'm not sure why people keep piling up to pretend this is such a normal thing, this is literally why people don't discuss salaries despite it technically being in their own interest: specifics ground the fuzzy notion of inequality into reality like nothing else.
The offensive post inflates the perceived inequality from "500$ pants is too much for pants" to "10k means nothing to me" while my version leaves the specifics outside of the conversation. In my version, the person could put the level of "too expensive for pants" at 1k, still an order of magnitude lower than the offensive post.
Finally, I acknowledge that this is a privileged position to be in explicitly, because that signals that you are aware that this is an exceptional situation to be in (which I'm not sure the offensive post author is aware of, even now).
You could have omitted "but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial." and come across more matter-of-fact than brag. IMO.
No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
Also later tried to briefly establish the fact that had I been offered such products a couple of years ago, I too would’ve found the pricing completely ridiculous.
I've had a similar journey to yours, albeit on a smaller scale. I used to think that buying jeans that cost over $40 was outrageous, but more recently I learned the value of buying nice raw denim jeans that can cost upwards of $300-400. They last way longer and look so cool after years of wear. With a little maintenance they can be permanent additions to your wardrobe.
> I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
Aw, Mark; that's not it, pal. His last paragraph about tailored clothing captures the thought well without throwing around dollar amounts or brand names. But thanks for trying to defend your capitalist masters like a good little right-winger!
In the UK for intance there's only about 20,000 people who earn over a million yearly, and I'd bet a decent amount of those are C-suite or purely through capital gains...
There's some weird online effect where people assume everyone they talk to on the internet makes essentially the same exact amount of money they do.
I've noticed this most in a forum for a country I used to live in where foreigners would come in and post "What's an affordable hotel/restaurant/bar/travel experience".
Uh, I have no idea what "affordable" means to you!?
Occasionally I read the local subreddit /r/monaco, and see posts like “how much should my weekly food budget be?” with no further information included.
In a place where “normal” genuinely ranges between a couple of euros at McDonald’s and 500+ euros a day in fancy restaurants (easily 1000+ if you drink wine) it always feels like a particularly outrageous question.
There are many places in the world where that’s not a very unreasonable question, but this certainly isn’t it.
Less than $10M with the mortgage, my income will hit $5M this year pre-tax for the first time (almost half of that goes to the government)
Valuing my vast and eclectic empire of small websites earning between $1k and $300k per year is tricky because it’d presumably be tremendously hard to sell them all at once. Of course some reasonable multiple would arrive at some much higher number than my bank account+physical assets.
Different strokes for different folks. I'm a fashion lover but a fan of cheap cars, and I could equally say something similar about people who drive new luxury cars when there's plenty of reliable functionality to be had under $10k. There's a lot of craftsmanship that goes into nice clothes, and you can get way more expensive than $500. And fashion is a form of art in a way. What makes a painting worth thousands of dollars?
For clothes as a rule of thumb if you're not interested in doing a lot of research, items made in Portugal or Japan are more often than not priced fine enough, yes you'll pay some markup for a designer, but on average should last if you look after them.
I never knew what a difference good pants can make. I usually just bought my pants from H&M/other retailers or Amazon. I usually bought what I considered good value pants for like $30-80. I then, out of curiosity, bought pants that were 2-4 times as expensive (~$150) and it really made a difference. I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
- A button that just "clicks". Most pants I usually owned had a traditional pants button. Those more expensive ones had buttons that just "clicked". Away goes the worry about a button falling off while you are on the go.
- Pockets with hidden zippers: My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
There are more "features" but those are the important ones. The most important feature is just the material that is used. I barely feel it. Also the company that makes those pants makes other things as well. I ordered a lot of cloths by now and the amazing thing is that everything they make fits me perfectly. I don't know how they do it… When I usually buy pants I have to try on like 10 pants to find one that fits. Even if I pick the "correct" size.
Never heard of them. I'm always interested in a good value. I rarely buy the cheapest or the most expensive item, so if Rhone is decent then I may give them a try. Thanks for the tip!
> I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
I managed to get the same experience for free by losing weight.
I lost around ~9-11 kilos over the last year and a half and went two sizes down in pants (went from european size 50 to size 46, with a few more kilos to lose until i can wear 44).
It's incredibly nice to be able to pick pretty much any pair of pants/jeans my size and have it fit pretty much perfectly.
> My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
I had one with these as well, although probably not of the same quality, and I always feared the zip scratching the screen of my phone when putting it in my pocket.
$500 for something you might wear for a decade straight? A brand-new pair of Levis at JC Penny is gonna run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
But also, quality has diminishing returns in basically every category. At the low end, it's extremely efficient to improve the quality of your product and charge a bit more. At the high end, you can't make any more inexpensive moves to set yourself apart, so you use higher end materials, fabrication methods, and workers.
> $500 for something [...] run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
To be honest, I did abandoned school as quickly as I could and my math skills aren't that of my peers, but 5x times as much is pretty "much more expensive" for most people out there, not sure how someone can say else with a straight face. $100 vs $500 would easily be a "Can I eat properly the entire month?" decision for a lot of the population.
When I go into the store four years ago, Levi jeans are $100. Yet even Macy's website shows them for $60 now?
Maybe there was some significant quality degradation. They recently added elastic fibers to like their entire khaki shorts line, which makes them dramatically less durable. I bet they did the same here.
There are cheaper and more expensive skus for Levi's.
If you're seeing 501s that are $30 and 501s that are $100 I can promise you there's $70 of difference between them, having shopped at WalMart and at flagship stores on 5th Ave - basically every "trusted" brand in a big box store is cutting every corner possible to be there and either the product suffers for it or the people are exploited in making it. Fast, cheap or good: pick 1 and a half.
Lenovo also strictly follows this strategy. All new laptops are marked up 200% on release date, but don't worry, code THINK_${CURRENT_MONTH} will reduce it down to market price. I think their goal is to make the user feel scarity/time pressure via the coupons.
It's a few hundred bucks. If you're in the category of buying luxury pants, this is not much money. I really do not care how affordable it is for people making minimum wage, and am obviously not talking about their perspective.
I can wear a $40 pair of jeans that I really like and keep buying for its style and durability and invest the $460 remaining dollars and in 10 years I would have about $1200
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I don't think Steve Jobs went shopping for pants. Nor do many of the people who buy this sort of garment. They either have an assistant who buys things for them, whose goal is to keep them happy and not blow a predetermined budget, or they go to a store and sit in a nice suite where a personal shopper suggests things to them. In either scenario the price of individual items probably don't even get a mention.
Steve was a notoriously picky shopper and obsessed with details. In the biography it says they went without a dishwasher or something in his house for half a year because he could never be satisfied with the geometry or finishing. So his billionaire wife washed dishes by hand.
I don't doubt it, but I don't think Steve was out there browsing at Lowe's either. You can be very picky and still not shop the way the rest of us shop.
Palo Alto has its own reality distortion field that makes billionaires pretend they're 1950s middle class families, so he probably did shop at Ace Hardware.
They save you from buying 10 pairs at $100. They not only are durable, including not fraying, etc., but keep their form and color, and they have a beautiful form and color to begin with. You get what you pay for (if you buy the right $500 pants).
Someone outside IT might say, why pay for a Macbook when you can buy a $100 Chromebook? Why use Vim or Emacs when you can use Notepad/TextEdit (though those all cost the same!).
Someone in IT will probably say "why pay for a Macbook, which is a toy, without even real MS Office, when you can buy a chinese configuralble laptop for same price that will have 256gb of RAM and a 5090"
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money
Maybe he's amortizing them.
He says they've lasted ten years, so that's $50/year.
I once paid $1000 for some sneakers. I’m still regularly wearing them 7 years later. I’ve bought $50/$100 and they never last that long. It was an insane purchase at the time, done in a moment of jet lagged madness when my shoes fell apart in an airport. But over time it’s turned out to be a great investment. Smart, comfortable, well made.
Do you wear them like $50 shoes or like $1000 dollar shoes? I run around 18 miles a week on trails and I doubt your $1000 dollar sneakers would last ten years with that usage pattern.
When you run 18 miles a week you should measure the lifetime of your shoes by mileage rather than time. I think 600 miles is about right for a pair of running shoes. It's just that some people run 600 miles in a year, others run that in ten years.
I'm sure that if you got super high quality durable running shoes, and only used them for running, you'd get some good milage out of them before the shoes either wore out or wore through.
I play tennis regularly and only go through a pair of shoes maybe once a year or every 18 months. I always pay extra for a higher quality and more durable pair because they last. I only use the shoes for tennis - I put them on when I enter the court and take them off when I end my session. The shoes probably run me $180-200 but totally worth it if they can last me 100+ hours.
The maximum durability running shoes are $150-$200. No amount more than that will give you more durability and assuredly almost all $1000 shoes won’t last as long as $200 Asics Superblasts
One sad thing is that I am allergic to plastics and leathers and so my choice of shoes is drastically limited. The shoes I can wear aren't great for running and wear out in about 3-6 months, but I usually just keep running on them for about a year, until my toes start sticking out.
I do have a pair of $250 leather riding boots that have lasted me many years so far and I'm pretty sure will last that long, but they also require cleaning and polishing a few times a year....
I'm happy to pay $$$$ for something that lasts but my exerience is some of the most expensive things I've bought, well known luxury brand names, had the lowest quality.
In my younger years, I really did believe that cost correlated with longevity, but as I've gotten older, I'm finding that most of the very affordable things I've purchased, including shoes and pants and jackets, have lasted 15+ years. So I no longer believe that paying a thousand dollars for an item of clothing is going to yield a material benefit in terms of longevity -- I think some of it is just marketing, but there are also other elements of comfort and fit. I'm just not very discerning.
You're often much better off buying 10x of the thing than a thing that is 10x the cost; if it's a wear item, not wearing it all the time will greatly extend its lifespan.
Almost all clothes is destroyed by the washer and the dryer, not by wearing.
My understanding with Common Projects, is that if you are looking to spend $400 on a blank sneaker, they set the standard and have the most brand awareness, but now there are plenty of smaller brands making virtually identical sneakers with better materials and/or construction for the same price or less.
Like with anything else, buying Common Projects you are paying for the brand (the subtle gold lettering on the side of their shoes).
I got a pair of Common Projects Chelsea boots maybe 10 years ago now. I still have them, they're good shoes. I wore them all the time for the first year I got them. They don't make it into my rotation much now these days though. My most worn shoes now are: Guidi PL2, 11 by BBSxSalomon Bamba 2 high, Rick Owens "Vans", Rick Owens "Dunks", CCP Prosthetic Tornados, and Visvim Christo slides. Everything except the Bamba 2 highs is a replica and cost under $400.
Don't rule out until you've tried it. High end clothing (not just brand name, but real advanced stuff) is pretty amazing in how it makes you feel. I'm inclined to spend on anything I interact with, and clothes is pretty big interaction.
I wonder if there's an "ignorance is bliss" effect here that makes trying it not worth it for the average person. Think about it - to my knowledge, almost everyone spends ~0 seconds per day thinking about the comfort of their pants. But once you try something that feels as (allegedly?) supreme and heavenly as what you describe, you can't go back - you'll always feel that difference from now on, and now wearing something that you previously never paid any thought to would feel distinctly less comfortable. Kind of similar to how audiophiles train themselves to perceive the tiniest of flaws in the music they listen to and spend thousands of dollars to rectify those flaws, while everyone else keep ignorantly enjoying the flawed sound, not even being aware of the difference.
Sure, but you need to have a certain level of wealth before even considering it. $500 is a ridiculous sum for a pair of trousers. I've had €80 or €120 Levi's at one point when I had a bit more expendable income but they only lasted me two years. I'm back on affordable jeans now (when outside, when inside it's pajama pants all the way lmao), I think they're €30 or so.
I'm sure the branded ones are "better" but is it to scale with the price? Are Levi's 4x as good as cheap ones? Are these Steve Jobs ones 16x as good?
This is kind of getting into the weeds a little bit but for me and a lot of others luxury items can be fun to own. You can get an affinity for certain designers style, whether it's Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga. The items are ridiculously expensive sometimes but it's kind of a tough line to balance because the fact that they cost so much make them more special. So how cheap should they be before they don't feel as special anymore? Is it all a bit irrational? I guess. There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give. Some people can spend all their income on luxury items rather than other discretionary items because it's the most fun to them.
> There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give.
Counterpoint: that is exactly what someone who charges $500 for a $5 pair of pants would want you to think. If you boil it down far enough, the principles you are describing are just inequality and luxury marketing.
While that is definitely at play there is a deep rooted instinct in humanity to show status and to have something that is worth a lot. It goes beyond just marketing, which is why it "works" economically. I think the luxury market serves a certain type of mindset that has been there since ancient egypt even. It would be nice to have a society where status didn't pay a role but there hasn't been a social movement that has crystallized what that would look like.
I also think as a sidenote there is a difference between luxury and fashion. Fashion is about creativity and self expression, and for a long time, the luxury market was sort of the defacto place for creeativity rather than the cheaper labels that had more 'standard' clothing, at least where I live. That has changed a bit in the past decade though. I like both fashion and luxury, but I am conflicted about it too. For example in the luxury fashion world there is a thing called 'grails', which are essentially items that are difficult to get but are considered very cool looking in some way and so they become grails. A lot of people like the feeling of chasing and finally acquiring grails, so that's one aspect of it.
I got excited until I saw they cost $600? Once in a while I'm reminded we exist in very different universes. Still trying to justify splurging on common projects 2 years later.
in my experience as a tech guy who got into fashion and then after several years went back to not caring: Sneakers are the product category with the least differentiation in value-for-money between the high end (especially designer, but also not-designer-but-still-expensive like common projects) both in terms of aesthetics and quality/durability. You're paying $300 more for a 10% better product. Jeans, outerwear, knits, boots, you can more easily justify that cost
As a tech guy who found an interest in design and ancillary fields recently, I am curious to know more. I assume leather, merino wool, cashmere do provide extra value. But other than that I have no knowledge. Eg why would 500 pants be better?
Material is not just about quality, but rarity or uniqueness. For example, japanese denim can get very expensive in part because it's very low volume. For dress pants, it might be a particularly interesting fabric.
A lot of more expensive pants also have interesting designs or proportions that are very unique or hard to find elsewhere. There is a lot of cool stuff you can get for under $500 USD though, that is still pretty expensive.
I have 2 pairs of pants that cost over $500. Both of them use technical fabrics (Schoeller Dryskin and Stotz EtaProof), have complex patterns (asymmetrical, articulated, etc.), lots of hardware (Riri zippers, magnetic pocket closures, Cobrax snaps), and can be ordered in custom sizing. They also have no text / logos anywhere on the pants. One pair is garment dyed as a complete unit after sewing to give a unique effect that's more interesting and has more "depth" compared to a flat, consistent color.
I am wondering what you call consumption that feeds $499 designer margins on polyester like that, while so many people can barely afford to scrape by day to day.
Income inequality is a phrase that pathologizes what appears to be a universal truth. In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not. What would be interesting is a single counterexample of sustained "income equality."
That said, our current degree of inequality and the particular way it is distributed seems to be unusual and remarkable. But pointing to someone having a hard time is, IMO, not a critique of that.
>Income inequality is a phrase that pathologizes what appears to be a universal truth. In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not. What would be interesting is a single counterexample of sustained "income equality."
There's actually tons of data. Almost every western country has a much better "Gini Coefficient" than the US.
> The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 100, where 0 represents perfect equality (everyone has the same income). Meanwhile, an index of 100 implies perfect inequality (one person has all the income, and everyone else has no income).
What country has the lowest Gini coeffecient value? Slovakia consistently tops the list.
Who is the richest person in Slovakia? A reclusive billionaire named Ivan Chrenko.
> In Slovakia, 980 000 people were at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion in 2024
In Slovakia, more than 980 000 people, i.e. approximately every sixth resident, faced poverty or social exclusion in 2024. Both the share and the number of people at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion increased year-on-year. Poverty indicators in Slovakia have been gradually deteriorating since 2020. On the positive side, the situation improved in 2 out of the 8 SR regions in 2024 and remained unchanged in one. At the same time, more than 20% of the population continued to face poverty in 3 SR regions.
Of course the US is terrible and getting worse by this measure. My point is that nobody is great (the universal truth) - but I grant you that some are worse than others.
In my view, inequality of all kinds is not an enemy to be defeated, it's a disease to be treated, knowing that it can never go fully away. It seems that most would rather treat it as a fact of life and do nothing while it runs out of control, or a heinous evil that must be eliminated. Neither seem like a practical approach.
> In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not.
citation needed. inequality was very low for thousands of years. not just "in the forest" but even with pretty large settlements.
Yes, yes ... It's the same as it ever was, only so much more so!
Beyond just critiquing the disparity here, I feel like the psychology that treats capital in such a frivolous way, shifting it about already privileged pockets of society, rather than apply it to any sort of material good is rather abhorrent. That's just my take.
I had a coworker who lost a lot of weight and showed up at work one day wearing new clothes and looking sharp. The pants were from Costco. I have since gone and bought a few pairs of pants from them. They feel fairly high quality, made of sturdy and comfortable materials, and are wife-approved. And of course they are very inexpensive.
I'm sure expensive pants have their benefits but no matter how much money I have, I will always baby expensive things, and it's very inconvenient to baby clothes (e.g. must be dry cleaned, can't use a washer or dryer, can't risk getting stains on it). There are good reasons why dads gets their clothes from Costco.
This sort of pricing isn’t unusual even for no-name brands.
Yes, you can get arguably nicer tailored cotton trousers at this price point. You will probably end up paying significantly more getting similar pleated trousers made by a decent tailor though.
Better off the peg? I don’t know, these are a fairly unique product, With a quick look Google isn’t finding any particularly similar products at any price point.
I have some friends in this space, even with margins like this it’s not an easy business to survive in. Those that do are generally doing something special, unless they’re really big names which Issey Miyake isn’t.
I'm pretty confident the answer on both counts would be "no".
(This teminds me of a show I once saw where various design students were given the task to design things. Philippe Starck was the judge. One of the students made a iPhone cover and Starck almost blew a gasket. I don't remember exactly what he said when he saw it. But he pointed out that the iPhone itself was a beautiful design so defacing it with an ugly piece of plastic was just a horrific waste of resources.
He also said something about objects having to deserve to exist -- though that was probably in a talk he gave at some point. Where he pointed out that his famous Alessi sitrus press was a good example of a pointless object that shouldn't exist. At least it looked good, but it was a pretty poor sitrus press).
Since Steve's famous turtle neck was from Issey Miyake and he wanted everyone at Apple to wear an Issey Miyake vest as a uniform [1], I think he might have been into this. This is also the man who launched the iPod sock.
I get the sentiment but was this actually some big launch announcement? When I look at the store online, you have to dig a bit just to even find the product.
It's a joke even before looking at the price. "3D-knitted" WTF is that? Isn't all knitting in "3D"?
It's a crappy handbag, and it's just for a phone.
It looks like they had to use models to advertise it because they couldn't use "everyday people" in "everyday situations" to advertise because it looks like it would be garbage in that scenario.
Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
> Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
They've been flirting with it for a while, remember they made a $17,000 solid gold variant of the first gen Apple Watch (which is no longer supported lol), and today they sell luxury Hermès edition watches at a 2-3x premium over the regular titanium models.
Lmao yeah I checked the domain after that. Cannot believe a person seriously wrote that. Inspired by the concept of a piece of cloth is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Sometimes I think they’re messing with us. This is more ridiculous than that monitor stand from a few years ago
No, you just aren’t familiar with the term. It has a specific meaning in the context. It’s this: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361 and it’s well known to customers familiar with the popular Issey Miyake label (which does something like $85 million in sales)
In tech we also use common words or phrases to trademark new ideas. It's not ridiculous or unusual. But it may be unfamiliar to you if you are not interested in fashion (common in these parts, as apparent in this thread) and fashion topics are easy targets for technical brothers.
You linked to something called “a piece of clothing” styled as A-POC.
The article referred to ‘the concept of “a piece of cloth”’
I’m not sure they are the same thing at all. If you are going to invoke a piece of artwork wouldn’t you get the name right and reference it directly? Wouldn’t you also use the base concept that makes the art interesting instead of 3d knitting as well? Would you reference that it is specifically tied to the completely different pleated clothing line instead of A-POC?
see my other reply. "cloth" is the correct one. and no I wouldn't use the original A-POC for a phone case (no one wants a piece of rigid fabric for a phone case). the construction has more to do with A-POC as it is made from one piece of material without seams while the pleated line has seams and is pleated. if you're curious you can see m.a+ for another spin on "one piece of material", where even shoes are made with one cut of leather
The MOMA project seems not to be rigid fabric, but it is clear that the description there is not exactly canonical.
In any case the press release was worded so weirdly that it seems inevitable that only superfans would make the connection to a piece of art from the 90s, and the rest of us would just make fun of 'the concept of "a piece of cloth"'
Ah ok thank you for the explanation, that’s actually super cool. At first it sounded like some ridiculous and unrelatable modern art stuff. Makes a lot more sense now.
A–POC (A Piece of Clothing) and a piece of cloth communicate different ideas to most people. The MoMA article showed how the press release could have been written to be clear to anyone interested. And tech people should consider this in their writing.
"Cloth" is the correct one, sorry for not reading the link closely. I chose to share that one because of the illustrative photo, but they are incorrect in calling it "piece of clothing"
A–POC (A Piece of Cloth) and a piece of cloth communicate different ideas to most people. The Met article showed how the press release could have been written to be clear to anyone interested.
but this product isn't for most people, it's for Issey Miyake's customer base. That's why this is buried as a newsroom update and the marketing is elsewhere rather than the apple.com front page
It's not translated from Japanese, it's originally in English. "A-POC" for "A Piece of Cloth". It refers to garments sewn from a single cut of a ream of cloth. It was translated into Japanese as 一枚の布 which isn't any more meaningful, but the original trademark is in English.
edit: What are you disagreeing with? That's what I'm referring to. The Issey Miyake trademark, which the label uses as "A-POC" as an English acronym, and translates into Japanese only to explain it to the domestic market rather than as the trademark itself. I linked that MoMa article elsewhere in this thread
Sure but the way his company translates "a piece of cloth" into Japanese has the same literal meaning. There's nothing more meaningful, it has the same exact meaning. My opinion is that it's chosen to be deliberately simplistic - what could be simpler or less expressive than a piece of fabric with fashion - because it highlights how much innovation in craft and resulting form results from the simple description taken as actually an extreme constraint: nothing but a single piece of cloth. And then when you perhaps think about it more, or see some of the work, you realize the complex ingenuity of it, in stark contrast to the simplicity of the phrase itself. That contrast enhances the impact by highlighting the gap between the humble description and the complexity of the result which nonetheless remains faithful to that simplicity.
A more illustrative term might be more easily understandable, at the cost of elegance (in simplicity and constraint) and surprise (from your underestimation of the work based on its name). The term is branding.
BTW another reference is Maurizio Amadei's "One Piece" work. Here's an installation/artwork he did that makes it easy to understand: https://lucentement.com/blogs/journal/m-a-by-maurizio-amadei... He also has many products labeled "One Piece [X]" such as "One Piece Wallet" or "One Piece Boot", where they are made from a single piece of leather (never cut into multiple pieces) and with a minimal number of seams. He chooses a similarly simple term, "One Piece", with enigmatic effect.
That use of quote marks is Japanese. It's used for emphasis, it gives the thing in quote marks an air of specialness like it's a fancy philosophical concept.
>Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
Apple has been dealing in luxury fashion goods since at least the early 2000s.
You think they made computers look like that, with a circular mouse, because it was better? You think putting the charging port on the bottom of yet another mouse was about sharp product focus?
Apple sells what it does because it's a Lifestyle Brand.
You seem more eager to shit on this aspect of it than to understand something you’re unfamiliar with. Not that you need to become familiar with something you’re uninterested in, especially with luxury market products, but since you’re here talking about it and this isn't "Hater News"…
It does have higher production cost but the price of this item is priced for it being designed by Issey Miyake (not Apple) and sold as a luxury fashion item. If you want a cheaper strap they sell that too.
Inspired by the concept of "a piece of cloth", we give you this "3d-knitted" piece of cloth to put your phone in. It's kind of difficult to actually get a phone into and out of, and it looks a bit ridiculous, but don't worry, it's only $160 (unless you want the long strap).
Like, if you were doing this as an April Fools joke post, what would you even change?
I get what you’re saying, to you it feels ridiculous. But the thing is, these are professional designers that have put out a product. The product page shows their professional language and it doesn’t work for all people.
But I guarantee you that they thought long and hard on this, and have very good reasons for each and every aspect of the product. It is not half assed work. I don’t see a reason to take it as a joke.
It is entirely possible that professional designers with their professional language put out a garbage product after thinking long and hard about every aspect.
Kind of like those fashions where the model wears some kind of artistic interpretation of a yellow flower when really they look like they're wearing more of an art installation than functional clothing?
Awww... I was so much hoping for an iPhone that will fit into my pocket. The 1st iPhone SE was the perfect form factor. But no, Apple's phones just had to grow and grow and grow like cancer ...
In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
> they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I loved the iPhone SE and small phones generally, but at the same time I realize Apple's not failing at anything. They're giving the market the size people actually want. The smaller phones don't sell nearly as well. Most people prefer a bigger phone even if carrying it is less convenient.
I've just accepted my phone will be bulky now, so I double down and attach a magnetic wallet to it, and carry it in my hand or jacket pocket or bag rather than my pants pocket like I used to. During meetings it lies on the table rather then in my pants pocket. C'est la vie.
Maybe there's room in the world for a device people want, even if it's not the device the majority want? I mean I know Apple is just a small startup company with only a $4 trillion valuation, but maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
I don't get this logic. Putting aside that to get 33 different models you would come up with 5-6 different form factors, each of them on a distinct point in the tradeoff scale, why do you think that something is only worth doing if it can be put on an uniform supply-demand curve?
Apple made nearly $190 billion last year selling just iPhones.
If you think it costs more than $5 billion to design a phone and set up a production line, you are wildly off base. That’s the kind of money companies spend to build silicon fabs or release half a dozen new car models, not consumer products made by a contract manufacturer.
...you do know that Apple produces its own silicon, and probably uses about an entire TSMC fab's worth of capacity? In the end, the money to build that fab is coming from Apple.
Apple isn't making average consumer products with average contract manufacturers.
If Apple didn't run such a closed ecosystem, other hardware vendors would step in and be happy to sell a form factor that 3% of the market uses.
I keep trying to use Andriod to get more choice on form factor, but one thing always brings me back to an iPhone: texting incompatibility. Apple has me locked into their ecosystem because I can't get a decent quality video texted to me.
As an Apple fan since the 90s who remembers how Microsoft abused its market dominance for decades, it's particularly ironic that Apple continues to use this technique against other companies.
There is a wide variety of form factors available in the android ecosystem. Whether or not they fit your definition of "decent" just depends on how much you prioritize size:
Foldables get this job done well. My (OG) Pixel Fold is a great size & aspect ratio while folded, easy to use one-handed, but has a giant screen when you open it up. The newer Pixel Folds and the other foldables on the market have all grown the screen vertically but they're still more compact than most flagships.
I wouldn't. I personally think iOS kind of sucks, and I only keep using it because Android developers don't support devices long enough for me. Third party developers would be as much a mess as they are in the Android world and at that point I'd rather have a phone with a good OS.
> I can't get a decent quality video texted to me.
It seems this gap has significantly closed, assuming both sides have RCS support. I've got a number of decent quality videos sent through RCS from friends through RCS.
Apple developed iMessage to work around the problems with SMS and MMS, as well as decrease load on carrier networks. There is no closed ecosystem, you can still receive messages and videos from iPhone users, just at the quality your hardware and software can support.
Google later decided to come up with a completely different implementation called RCS to deal with the same problems. Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android or licensing it, they instead tried to pressure Apple with a public advertising campaign to adopt what is frankly an inferior solution that doesn't even have reliable end-to-end encryption.
Your complaint is basically that you bought a Toyota and it does not have BMW's laser headlights that adjust brightness and angle automatically. You still have headlights, you just didn't spend the money to get the good ones.
Yes because Google offered nothing of value in return. Like in my example, nothing stops Toyota from offering enough money to license BMW's laser headlights.
Google tried the same thing Apple did long before RCS when it made Hangouts the default SMS app for Android. Conversations could be upgraded from SMS to Google's internet-based chat protocol if the other person had an account; it was even available for iPhones, but it couldn't be an SMS client.
Lets be honest, Hangouts (which of the three versions) was a crappy chat app that they wanted to boost the usage of. It wasn't intended to be a functional SMS replacement.
> just at the quality your hardware and software can support.
I assure you, Android phones have been able to render video of far higher quality than what Apple devices would send to them through MMS.
iMessage is a cloud ecosystem. I cannot install iMessage on my Android device.
> Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android
Apple has been free to release this app at any time. There is nothing Google is doing that prevents it from being made. The only people preventing this app from existing are the people at Apple.
> Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android or licensing it
This seems like an unfair take - Apple is on record using iMessage specifically to deteriorate the experience between Android and iOS users. I don't see them working with Google to bring iMessage to Android.
Not to mention the SE (variant of the 4 I think?) was way more popular. Dismissing the whole concept just because one implementation at one time was a relative flop (and as you point out, that's still a lot of sales).
Also, they're happy to have Pro and non-Pro SKUs etc., just averse to smaller for reason.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to launch the iPhone mini during Covid, offer it 2 years, and say no one wants them.
The haters dismiss the SE point by saying it was the price, not size. But it does prove that no one avoids phones due to being "too small".
The size increase is because of cost optimization. Where it's wrong is that everything else meant for humans comes in small, medium, and large. Phones? Just large and XL.
Good, in some ways. But do people want to pay higher prices for these iPhones to cover the costs that have to be amortized over a lower volume of devices?
What people like me wanted was an iPhone 13 mini that's a bit thicker so it can have a bit more battery capacity. And with the 120 Hz PWM nausea fixed.
The iPhone Air has worse battery life. And it has a larger screen. And it's worse to handle one-handed. Coming from the 13 mini, it's not an improvement.
I bought an Air, coming from a 13 mini, and I largely agree with you on all those points except the battery life. I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying the Air has bad battery life, which maybe it does compared to the 17 or 17 Pro etc, but the past week I've been test driving it it has more than all day battery life for me. My 13 mini needed a recharge in the middle of the day (battery was worn down to about 83%).
Otherwise, yeah, you're right. I'm pretty sure I'm going to return it this week before my 14 days are up.
The one thing I don’t see criticized enough is the lack of a SIM card slot in international models. I understand they physically couldn’t fit it in, but I bet it's a deal breaker for everybody who has no experience with CDMA phones, so basically everybody outside of North America.
> it's a deal breaker for everybody who has no experience with CDMA phones, so basically everybody outside of North America.
Huh? CDMA is long dead, and the technical capabilities of physical and e-SIMs are identical. SIM = Subscriber Identity Module, all it does is encode your identity.
As far as I know, CDMA, compared to GSM, didn't have a SIM card equivalent. The identity information was baked into the handset and if you wanted to move your number from one phone into another, you had to get in touch with your carrier.
eSIM reintroduces this problem. Those who experienced it 20-odd years ago with CDMA may feel like home. But elsewhere, where it's always been a norm to have the easily transferable physical SIM card, it might be viewed as too much of a hassle.
My wife didn't have international data with the carrier she had previously. When we traveled out of the country at first she was thinking she wouldn't care and would just get by with wifi. After a couple of days she changed her mind and wanted to have some kind of service. It was extremely simple to find a provider through the hotel WiFi, prepay for a week of service, download the SIM to the phone, and boom she was back to having service. Manged to get it all done at breakfast.
So long as the carrier is simple to get an eSIM it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Its trivial to transfer an eSIM on Android assuming both devices are still functional. Its pretty easy to load an eSIM, compared to having to somehow call the phone company and have them manually enter the IMEI or whatever from back in the day. The only somewhat pain point is when your old device is smashed and you don't have any internet. In that case, having a physical SIM is better, I agree.
I bought a Pro Max for myself and an Air for my wife, who had a Mini before.
The Air is DAMN SMALL. You really should try holding it. Yes the 2D dimensions are as large as a normal modern phone but it’s hardly there otherwise. It’s a good compromise.
> Yes the 2D dimensions are as large as a normal modern phone but it’s hardly there otherwise.
The 2D dimensions are literally the only thing I care about. I'm going to barely notice the weight difference. The actual thickness is a lie with the giant camera hump.
What I do care about is whether I can operate it single-handedly: I want my thumb to reach the top of the screen (so I can drag down the notification bar and click nav stuff) while the bottom of the phone is resting on my pinky. I could easily do that on my Galaxy S III Mini, it was comfortable with my Moto G 2, it was just about doable with my Nokia 6.1 - and it is impossible with my Pixel 7. At no point did I I actively look for a larger phone: going for a larger model has always been an unavoidable compromise.
It's entirely about the 2D space in terms of being able to easily hold it in one hand and reach the whole screen, as well as other things like how it fits into pockets. I have large hands and an iPhone 13 mini, and it still feels too big for me to use comfortably with one hand.
I'm curious how well it is selling. Early on there was a lot of enthusiasm, but I haven't heard much since. I don't know if I'd want a phone with less battery life, but my understanding is the Air's battery is actually not much smaller than last year's pro?
> Foxconn has reportedly dismantled all but one and a half of its production lines for the iPhone Air , and all production is expected to be stopped at the end of the month
Ouch! That sounds pretty bad, indeed.
I was originally a little interested in the Air because I wanted to downsize from my previous 15 Pro Max. I ultimately decided that the Air was only thinner, and still big in the dimensions I wanted it to be smaller in.
Neither is Samsung's similar Galaxy Edge apparently, to the extent that the product line may have already been cancelled after just one generation. Both companies probably should have sat on that idea until they could offset the physically smaller batteries with the much denser silicon-carbon technology.
The battery is actually fine, better than the iPhone 16’s. The single camera and the pricing are the main problem, along with assorted minority showstoppers like single speaker and large size. It’s also not that much lighter, actually heavier than previous iPhones like the 12. People who are fine with a single camera and want less weight can also get the 16e for a much lower price, and then at least get stereo speakers. Add to that the very strong offering of the iPhone 17 this year.
I think it's possible this is a good summary explanation, but isn't this a bit like saying "We only make shirts in medium because it's what the majority wants."
I would switch from Android to Apple if this fixed this problem.
Come to think of it, the only reason I switched from Android to Apple was because the 12 Mini wasn't massive and was actually a decent phone. If I have to get a massive phone again, I might as well go back to Android.
All big. 5 the same size category, barely different.
Then they push a tiny-tiny device, the watch. Inbetween? Empty desert.
They do not do things smartly but by force. Like the omission of physical home button, notch, no jack, clud first, and a lot of other things forced on us. Some decide to live with, or even adapt the love of it, despite never ever asked for it. Using the force like Darth Vader.
They used to make the "mini" but that's because Jobs had taste and it's what he, specifically, wanted in his pocket. Now Jobs is gone and... no more mini.
But I'll keep my iPhone 13 mini going as long as I can.
I own an iPhone 16 pro, but I’m constantly thinking about switching to an iPhone 13 mini with an aftermarket battery conversion to make it last all day. The only thing that holds me back is that I can’t easily convert it to USBC.
My battery is on its last legs, and I was going to pick up an iFixit one at some point and do the swap, but I believe theirs is the OEM configuration/capacity. Is there another option for an actual higher capacity battery?
It doesn't seem like Repart do direct to consumer sales; I'll look around and see if I can find somewhere reputable to buy that in Canada.
Based on this reddit thread, it doesn't seem that there's really a consensus around whether these purported supersized after market batteries are the real deal:
They made it, it didn't sell well. Last I checked zero Android manufacturers were still creating high quality small phones (<5.5"). The Android community has resorted to petitions like https://smallandroidphone.com
Some people definitely want it, but when not even one Android manufacturer will create a model when they can get 100% market share, it looks like there isn't enough demand.
You've hit the nail on the head. There are still some manufacturers that make small phones, and some that make high quality phones, but zero that make high quality small phones. Apple used to be our last respite, now we have nothing.
We don’t know. If having such a phone keeps someone in the Apple ecosystem that may be more valuable. All their services they’re always pitching. People with iPhones are more likely to buy iPads and Macs.
Maybe the get tired of the tiny screen or want a better camera and move up in a few years.
The value of a customer over a longer time horizon, perhaps 10 years, may be better if you let them buy the phone you make $250 on instead of $450.
He’s maximizing value for the quarter. That so often steers companies wrong.
Tim Cook told people they should sell their shares if they wanted Apple to abandon environmental sustainability policies. And he identified accessibility as a similar issue.[1]
Yes, the point I was trying to make is that companies can get away with not being maximally profitable. There's nothing legally stopping Apple from accepting a slightly lower profit margin on the 5% of sales volume that might go to smaller iPhones if they would offer them. But it might brighten the day for millions of customers.
That's trailing PE. A standard response to that observation would be that the market is forward looking. So I try to stick to forward PE when discussing price. 200 is still insane in any case, it's an order of magnitude higher than, for example, GOOG.
I'm all for that when it comes to things like accessibility technology that allows people to do things they otherwise couldn't. But screen sizes? You can use a larger screen, you just prefer a smaller one.
What “the market wants” is a maximally addictive device. It’s a really low bar even if highly profitable. Bigger screens make it more exciting and addictive.
Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
My guess would be that all those people that wanted small phones had an iPhone SE and now all their data is locked into Apple's walled garden and that's why they will begrudgingly buy a larger phone, even though they would have preferred a smaller one.
In short: Apple can get away with ignoring what those customers want.
I mean, I would assume most folks who liked the SE still have one. The SE 3 just stopped production this year and should have several years of software updates left (the SE 1 just ended software support this year, 7 years after it was discontinued.
Not hard only when you know exactly what you need to do already on both sides.
There is zero chance I could convince any of my in-laws to switch away from iOS. Data isn't what they care about. It's all about blue bubbles and a decade of familiarity with iOS (and it's irrelevant that the UX between Android and iOS have drifted to be so similar).
It couldn't be easier to export or import your data, connect and disconnect your accounts, etc. I'd like the angry hackers who are down voting me to explain which barriers exactly Apple puts against data portability.
I don't understand why you're brining up your in-laws in your response if they don't care about data.
Then you should use a different solution to solve your problem, which you can easily find. Unless your main interest is having a problem to complain about. In that case, you've already found the solution.
(I actually appreciate you doing a Kagi search for me, btw. I've heard great things about Kagi, and it would've been great if something came up there that didn't on DDG or Google.)
My whole digital life other than my iPhone works very well! Never better, really. Been Linux-exclusive for years after switching after the release of Windows 10.
Just a real pity that iOS doesn't provide something as simple as a proper export feature. A kicker is that the Photos app does allow you to "Export Unmodified Original" for multiple photos or even whole albums. But you can't do this to everything in Photos (what used to be called the camera roll). There's no "select all" button to work around this.
I have to retreat my statement then a little bit, in that it's easy to get your data out of Apple, with the exception of Linux. But Linux is usually the exception for any kind of user convenience stuff, and Linux users know what they're getting themselves into.
The point is, that since Apple is providing dedicated tools both for Mac and for Windows to get your photos off your phone, I don't think it's fair to accuse them of trying to lock in people to their devices.
Same with other stuff like bookmarks, passwords, etc.
> Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
Large and small companies sell smaller Android phones.
It's very difficult to find something around 140 grams and 140x80 even giving them some slack about the thickness. The Samsung S25 [1] is about there but I currently still use an A40 [2] because of the size and weight. I'd give away a couple of cm of height. A zero bezel 120mm phone would be ok. 120 grams are a dream.
Your weight requirements are more restrictive than your size requirements. GSMArena's phone finder found foldable or rugged phones which satisfied size but not weight. And Unihertz phones appear well known where small phones are discussed but are not in GSMArena's database for some reason. The Unihertz Jelly Star satisfied your requirements. But the screen is smaller than the 1st iPhone's even.
The problem is Apple's monopoly on devices that run iOS. In an alternate reality, Apple licensed out iOS, and alternative designs could flourish. The Android ecosystem still has keyboard phones a la Blackberry. Caterpillar makes an Android phone with a FLIR camera. It's a gimmick, unless you work somewhere where it's not.
In this alternate history, there's a tiny design firm out of Carmel, south of Cupertino, doing bespoke runs of an iPhone 4 with A18s and eSIM capability and they're always sold out.
That happened with the Mac in the mid 90s and Apple closed the deals immediately when the clones started to sell well, because they were better machines than the ones Apple sold. If Apple didn't stop the clones they would be a software company by now and we'd probably have a PC market with 90% of Mac compatible machines and 10% of Windows PCs + Linux.
In this alternate history, who would have invested the billions of dollars in developing the processor line all the way up through the A18 if it's not available as a market differentiator?
Why, P.A. Semiconductor, of course! Yeah I'm just making shit up in my alternate history, but even in our reality there are several SoC manufacturers; Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Rockchip, Allwinner. There are a lot of things out there if just want to run Android on a thing. Even more if I'm just trying to run Doom.
I want an SE4 with touch ID and a 4 inch screen and an A18 processor in it, not the monstrosity that is the 16e. If things were more open; what I really want to see is what we almost get to see with Kickstarter. If I could find one million people to do a first run who're willing to pay $750 for a first run edition, just to simply break even, and then make money off subsequent runs as demand does or does not exist.
Five of these are race-to-the-bottom business models. One is use-the-legal-system-to-retain-your-customers. The last two don't make cell phone class parts, and probably wouldn't be interested in the margins.
I mention this to make a point -- the quality of the A18 that you (reasonably) want in a smaller, niche-market phone isn't a coincidence, it's a consequence of the designer being able to justify the investment because it acts as a market differentiator. PASemi would never have been able to do that on its own, any more than MediaTek has -- customers have no brand faithfulness to cell phone processor manufacturers, so as long as the OEM can freely move between them the distinction must be on price, at the cost of performance. There are upsides to the more open market you imagine in your alternate history, but it would come with the downside of the high end of the market being less developed, and flat out worse, due to less segmentation being possible.
Qualcomm and Apple processors have similar performance.
Most customers have no brand faithfulness to desktop processor manufacturers. Why would this stagnate phone processor development when it did not stagnate desktop processor development?
Can Apple lock-in those people who definitely want small phones by some prepaid arrangements which the users can't back out? That would be market working. Is there a reason why they don't do this?
It's not that they can't. They want to make money. When given the choice between making more money and less money, they'll generally choose more. They think making a smaller device would make less money. The sales numbers for previous attempts back this up. There's an enormous fixed cost for developing a new model, and it's not worthwhile unless that results in enough additional sales. There's demand, for sure, but how much? They think not enough, and I suspect they know what they're doing here.
That's a weird take. Large screens aren't primarily more "addictive", they're primarily more productive. They work as a better e-reader, a better text editor, better for watching a movie on a plane, better for reading maps, I could go on and on. (And if a company were incentivized to truly make an "addicting" phone, it would be Meta that would benefit from the social media ads, or TikTok. Not Apple.)
Large manufacturers can make them. But there isn't enough demand to make them profitable enough. It's not a question of whether they "want to pay for it", it's just simple economics. They're businesses, not charities. I like small phones, but I understand manufacturers are doing what's economically rational given market preferences and I don't blame them for it.
There are studies that show that engagement with smartphones is higher when the screen is larger. Seems like Apple's been doing their homework.
> However, a follow-up phantom model analysis using 10,000 bootstrap samples at 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals revealed that the overall magnitude of the hedonic path (i.e., LS→PAQ→AT→IU; B=0.14, SE=0.06, p<0.01) was larger than that of the utilitarian path (i.e., LS→PC→PEOU→PU→IU; B=0.07, SE=0.03, p<0.01) even though participants were given a task-oriented, rather than entertainment-oriented (e.g., gaming, movie watching), assignment during the experiment. This implies that users are likely to put greater emphasis on the affective dimension of the technology than on its utilitarian dimension, despite the practical, purposeful nature of the assigned task. Given that user affect (e.g., positive or negative feelings) toward a technology is typically attributed as the central characteristic of the technology (regardless of the accuracy of the attribution),55 the practical implication of this finding is that smartphone manufacturers ought to take full advantage of the positive effects of the large screen on PAQ when designing their products. However, the more challenging design implication is that the optimal level of screen size that does not jeopardize the anywhere–anytime mobility of smartphones should first be identified, since screen size cannot be indefinitely increased in the mobile context. Thus, the remaining question to be addressed in future research is the optimal size of the mobile screen.
But why are we needing a phone to be productive? And they were already a distraction from the world around us when they fit in a single hand.
I know I'm probably abnormal, but my phone is a phone first, camera second, and "work" device fifth.
As a society, our boundaries around communication and instant contact to anyone have collapsed. Now if you don't respond to a message within a few minutes, you get multiple follow ups. If you don't pick up the phone when a friend calls you, they don't leave a message, they text, then call again, then text again.
We've gone from being able to leave the house, and no one can contact us for a few hours, to no matter where we are people are trying to contact us. So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
Being able to instantly communicate via photo and video makes a lot of people’s lives easier. For example, getting quotes for a house repair to save on travel time and energy getting estimates, showing before and after pictures to document performed work, and myriad more examples.
If someone is contacting you too much, that’s a problem solved by asking them not to harass you, not by putting limits on the device for everyone else.
And somehow you inferred that because one person doesn’t need their phone to be productive in that way, that they want to limit everyone?
I use my phone for web browsing 99% of the time. I don’t need it to have AI processors or loads of brand new tech. I want it to be cheap, functional, and expendable. So I definitely question whether a phone needs to be super “productive” in that sense too. But people who want their aircraft carrier phones that don’t fit in their pockets and cost over $1000 can have that too.
There is a number of small Android phones, so apparently there is demand in that niche, and smaller companies can address it and make money.
But this is because Google is a software / service company, so it keeps Android open.
Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. They have a relatively narrow lineup of devices which they support for a very long time, compared to Android devices. So Apple are not interested in fringe markets; they go for the well-off mainstream mostly.
An Apple Watch with a cellular connection, paired with Airpods, fulfills some of the role of a small iPhone - you can make calls, listen to music, and even do some light texting if Siri likes your accent.
I love my apple watch but I can safely say i've never done any of the above with it. It's too much of a pain to switch the bluetooth headphones to it and the screen is too small to do much actual computing with it. The fitness aspects are totally worth the money, though.
That's not a compelling argument when the same chart also shows the iPhone SE 2022 lagging behind iPhone SE 2020, even though they have identical form factors.
When the SE2022 came out, most people preferring smaller iPhones were already using either an SE or a mini, and the SE2022 didn’t offer much compelling reasons to upgrade from an SE2020. The SE2020, on the other hand, launched before the first mini, and after four years of waiting since the SE1.
Small phones (to an extent) are less expensive than larger phones to manufacture.
The thought that "Small phones are only more popular because they're less expensive" seems to willfully ignore that the phones are less expensive because their inputs are less expensive, because they're smaller.
I wonder about the idea that they're less expensive. True in terms of materials, but possibly not true if the smaller production run means you can't offset the capital costs of manufacturing the parts.
That's fair. I suspect that as phones get more "premium" the margin from a small phone shrinks faster than a larger phone.
HTC has been making cheap (very cheap) and small phones for the discount market. Foldables exist in the premium space, but the price tags appear to bake in a higher margin for a device that won't sell the same volume.
And in Germany, the iPhone 16e 128GB in white currently sells for €537 at "Netto Marken-Discount", a supermarket chain famous for its low price. "Marken-Discount" = "brand name rebates"
I don't think they even set out to make a small phone with the SE, they set out to make a cheap phone. They achieved that by reusing older generation iPhone tooling which just happened to be smaller, as was the style at the time. When they refreshed the SE line it too got larger as it graduated to using later generation tooling.
I don’t know what they set out to do, but the marketing material specifically emphasized the compact form factor. (I’m reluctant to call it “small”, because the iPhone 5 didn’t seem small to me at the time.)
I bought :( Loved the thing, but yeah batter life wasn't the best. Also noticed that app developers would sometimes not take into account the smaller viewport on the Mini, and so app views would sometimes look too squished or out of place. That 's a minor grouse though compared to the subpar batter life.
The iPhone sales figures where probably a disappointment, for Apple. Had it been released by any other company it would have been viewed as a huge success. The sales numbers are just pretty poor, for an iPhone.
I think Apple has such high expectation to sales figures that even if a smaller iPhone comes in, even as the 10th best selling phone, that's maybe only 5% of all iPhone sales. Massively successful as a phone, millions of people bought it, but to Apple, the SE is a side hustle at best.
My daughters friends made fun of my iPhone SE3, they had never seen a phone that small.
We don’t have the iPhone 17e, so for now there’s no way to tell if they will do this every year or what.
Similarly people have called the 16e as a replacement for the SE line, but that’s a cost assessment not one based of form factor. It could be most people bought the SE because it was cheap, but without two different form factors at identical prices there’s no way to tell.
It’s a replacement in the sense that they discontinued the SE when they introduced the 16e. I agree that it’s not a very close replacement in practical terms, but that’s also why the designation changed.
Regarding the 17e, the supply chain rumor mill keeps mentioning it, so it definitely seems to be a thing.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
Are they, though?
In my experience the smaller phones are almost always substantially worse products: they have several gigabytes less RAM, usually half the storage of the alternatives, often lack features like wireless charging, have a slower CPU, have a worse camera, and in general are made using cheaper materials.
We don't know what the market wants, because the market was never able to make a fair choice. It wasn't "big phone vs small phone", it was "big full-featured phone vs shitty watered-down small phone" - no wonder people "chose" for the big phones.
That’s not completely correct. In particular, the mini resolution corresponds to the Display Zoom options on current iPhones, so applications are still expected to support them, not to mention that iOS will support the mini models for 2-3 more years to come.
In addition, the outer screen of next year’s iPhone Fold will be shorter than the mini, so applications really need to be flexible here.
I don't understand anything of what you're saying. But I do know that it was quite noticeable that most applications expect a bigger screen on small iPhones. Most UI elements are either too small and hard to use, or taking away too much space feom elsewhere.
There's nothing you can do with scaling here, if apps are made for big screens. It is a feedback loop. It would require a whole new ecosystem to break out by now. Impossible.
They might technically support them, but no one tests them properly and they’re certainly not a good user experience. I’ve personally made apps where I have never tested them on such zoom levels if I’m perfectly honest.
Considering the sheer ramp up for manufacturing at the scale of iphone sales, and how unpopular tiny phones are, it’s completely understandable they’re not interested in catering to the < 1% of users they’d gain by making a small phone. You have to remember lost sales only truely include people who literally leave the platform or never upgrade again instead of just grumbling and buying the new phone anyway.
What ramp up? It's been less than a year since they discontinued the SE 2022.
Apple could have kept improving the CPU and camera and not much else and would have had a steady stream of income from those of us who want to use our actual pockets (not a weird swaddle) to carry our phones.
The iPhone SE accounted for 5-12% of the market, depending on year. The iPhone mini accounted for about 5%. Let's conservatively call it 13%.
Apple had iPhone revenue of $205bn in 2022. The average smaller iPhone is about .5-.67 the cost of a flagship model.
So fuzzy math, but .13 * .5 * 205000000000 = a $1.3bn market for iPhones you can use with one hand.
Thats nothing to sneeze at. Way more of a market than something like a Magic Trackpad.
Apple is making like 100bn a quarter. 102.4bn last quarter to be exact. 1.3bn in a whole year is indeed something for apple to sneeze at.
And the ramp up is to design and organise manufacture of a whole new phone line. They also would likely have received a hit in sales in general if they didn’t upgrade the design as people would feel insulted and also it would stick out like an ignored pig in the lineup, which isn’t good for apples brand either.
The truth is, you’d likely make the same decision if you were CEO, especially if you have to justify it to shareholders.
If Apple produced an Iphone SE with battery life that lasted, by making it a little thicker, then people would buy it IMO. The problem with the small phones is they arecreated on the premise that they should be crappy phones.
Of course everyone has a different version of what they consider crappy but bad battery life has got to be at the top of most people's crap-o-meter
iPhone 13 Mini was as you say. In every way as good as the full size iPhone but small. I hear it was quite an engineering challenge. I love the thing. The people of earth did not buy it.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy to launch the iPhone mini during Covid, offer it 2 years, and say no one wants them. Especially when the SE proved people have no aversion to a normal sized phone meant for human hands.
Is it too big as a phone/SMS device? Yes. But as long as it's smaller than an equivalent digital camera or handheld gaming device or portable GPS it's still appropriately sized for how I mostly use it.
Life with modern large smartphones gets a lot easier if you just give up on the one handed use paradigm. I use my devices during the day mostly hands free via where I can for passive stuff like setting timers or listening to podcasts, or controlled via my smart watch. I’m only pulling out my actual phone because I want to use an app, type a whole ass email, or google something in a web browser. I accept I just use two hands for that and then put it away again. If anything it keeps me from picking it up unless I want to use it properly, which isn’t such a bad thing.
It’s not just one-handed use, but also pocketability and lower weight, which just feels nice. I have no trouble using apps. The iPhone mini still has a few years of life left, so I’m not in a hurry to change.
Depends what you're using it for. Typing? I agree, it's not, although I'd argue the original wasn't either, but other people thought the original was too small.
However as a camera? With the new camera button position it works pretty fine with just one hand. As a thing you tap and while it's in a mount? Also an appropriate size for one handed use.
The bigger phones have that feature where you can make the keyboard move a bit to one side of the phone for one handed typing too, not sure a lot of people know about that.
I suspect the iPhone Mini didn't sell well for reasons beyond people generally preferring larger phones, and suspect it might sell better today.
The biggest issue is that it was introduced in 2020 when many people were in lockdowns. A phone's portability was not as important, and people mainly using their phone at home on the couch likely preferred large screens more than usual.
The second issue is that the screens used slow pulse width modulation for dimming and could appear flickery for some users.
Finally, battery life was uncompetitive. Sony Xperia Compact models introduced years earlier had larger batteries. My guess is accepting a tiny bit more thickness would solve this problem.
This is solving an entirely different problem than you imagine. This is solving the problem of “no one can tell I use an iPhone when it’s in my purse/pocket”. This is a conspicuous bag that loudly announces “I’m carrying an iPhone”. That’s what it’s for.
Also, can you actually not fit a phone in your pocket? I can fit the biggest iPhone in my pocket just fine in all of my pants. Conversely my wife cannot, but that’s because women’s pockets are vestigial. She couldn’t fit the 3GS in most of her pockets either.
The price is incredible. Many phones on the market are cheaper than this accessory. Maybe the true market need is “people don't know how much disposable income I'm willing to throw at nonsense”.
Reminds me of the threads here regarding fake diamonds. How they don’t understand why people would buy a real diamond when a fake one is so much cheaper. Or how proud they are of having a fake diamond that cost them a nickel. I swear there are lots of people here who are legit autistic.
I was with you until you started sledging/misdiagnosing people with autism. A bit insulting to insinuate autistic people couldn’t see the value in one side of this argument to be honest.
But I agree with you on the diamond front. I may not be interested in diamonds personally, but it’s a similar parallel - people shouldn’t be confused that may humans would care about the story behind a special item and not just the materials within it, yet some people can’t understand it.
I'm not sure I follow but I'd never but a real, likely ‘blood’ diamond. I'd happily pay for the lab ones because it's cool man-made science. AFAIK I'm not on the spectrum.
I've bought plenty of nonsense, but this is some fabric to hold your phone. Come on…
Have you heard of earrings? They’re just some metal to put on your ears.
There’s nothing about this product outside of any other product that riles people up except for the fact that it’s made by a company that collabed with apple.
I've bought a former partner very expensive earrings cheaper than this bag. What is riling people, I think, it's that we're being crunched by inflation and dwindling purchasing power, but here's a mass-market company putting out a bloatedly expensive accessory. Of course Prada is still out there, but most people aren't exposed to their product lines and pricing. I'd be just as pissed if McDonalds starts selling gold leaf burgers.
95% of products in the world are just as unnecessary as this one. It’s literally just a random a phone bag of which there are literally many products made by other companies that are MORE expensive than this one. HN just sees apple + pretentious and starts frothing at the mouth.
It’s very easy to just not buy it, sheesh. Touch grass people.
Oh, I get it, I've worked fashion retail at H&M. The nonsense designer collections would sell out fast, even though it's a) still H&M and b) made in the same sweatshops. People like status items. But come on, this is some thread wrapped around a phone. Even Kanye's idiotic shoes had a better price-to-value ratio.
In materials maybe. However with shoes there are a thousand other shoes just like it I could buy. This is a reasonably unique product - if you wanted a knitted phone sling of this precise design, there’s no alternatives, so the analogy doesn’t hold exactly.
> I can fit the biggest iPhone in my pocket just fine in all of my pants
New pro max fits perfectly fine in all my dressier trousers, it is rather big for some joggers though. Especially with Cuccinelli joggers it’s hard to get the phone to reliably stay in the pocket because they’re just not deep enough, so the top of the phone sticks through the opening.
The very easy solution to this has been to just buy joggers with reasonably sized pockets, Lululemon does not have this problem for example.
Anecdotally, just this past month I had a pair of good quality jeans from J. Crew wear out and tear at the pocket due to friction from my iPhone 13 Pro Max. The jeans are fairly lightly used.
I would love a smaller phone that doesn't kill my pants...
Not to be flippant but next time don’t buy the Max. I don’t know how to reconcile “I wish my phone were smaller” with “I buy the biggest phone”.
Apple is doubtless doing the same kind of “they say they want this but they buy that” calculation that automobile manufacturers are doing. “People say they want fuel efficient cars but they actually buy SUVs And giant trucks.”
Absolutely. But then Apple is correct in believing that “I want a small screen” is not actually the deciding factor. There are probably a bunch of people out there who would like a device with a smaller screen but it’s actually #6 on the list of priorities, below battery life, performance, screen quality, storage, and iMessage.
In this case I was gifted the Max; I didn't buy it myself. The next phone I purchase will probably be an iPhone 16 or 16e as those are the smallest "new" phones.
I'm typing this on an iPhone SE 2022 (the last one with a home button). I'm done with iPhone as soon as I am no longer able to use this model. I don't like the new, oversized pieces of junk, and I also like the home button as opposed to the new Face ID/swipe up workflow.
For people that have good visual acuity, the smaller screen is ideal; it's such high resolution that you can fit a lot of things in a small area. For people that turn the font size up to 600, the bigger screen is obviously ideal, but nobody really wants to have to hold something that is bigger if they don't need it for the screen size. That's the market I fit in and Apple has abandoned at market, along with all common sense (re: liquid glass, the recent Apple/Google Gemini deal, etc.).
I wish the iPhone 12/13 mini had been a few mm thicker for a bigger battery, and had been in the Pro class of devices. As it stands they didn't have a good enough battery to last a day, and most people interested in smaller devices had probably just picked up the new SE that was released just half a year earlier.
I believe the issue is that with Jobs gone, Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job. Instead of developing their own UI paradigm for small screens, they keep copying from Google Pixel both the UI ideas and the screen size. And now that they ran out of useful ideas, they turned everything transparent. Why make the iPhone look more like Apple Vision when people so obviously hate the latter? [1]
My prediction is that the age of AI and LLM assistance will make tiny devices the norm. Like those AI pins. Like Siri inside AirPods. Like Meta's AR glasses. But it seems that Apple is losing the race here. They lost their edge when it comes to developing new user interface paradigms.
>Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job
Honestly id say this is a mix of both Jobs and Ive being gone.
Now under the operational maximalist that is Tim Cook, they just revert to old designs every few years and call it revolutionary. See: edges on the iPhone. First, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary!
All the while stripping actual functionality out of the devices and removing useful features like headphone jacks. There hasn't been real product innovation at Apple in over a decade.
The most important thing Jobs did (and he mentioned this) is to say No to great ideas. Like this, like iPhone Air, like Apple Vision Pro, etc.. Apple without Jobs is now much like it was before Jobs in the 90s, only this time it has a lot more momentum than it had before. Still though Apple is back to throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
As someone who's spent a while playing with one (that I didn't buy) and who hasn't picked it up off the shelf in months:
I don't think most users were returning it because they hated the UI or even the device in the usual sense. (There are certainly issues I could detail, but they don't feel like the core problem).
The core problem is just that it just doesn't really....accomplish anything.
Once you get past treating it like an expensive Google Cardboard ("neat tech demo") - it's very hard to figure out what the point of the thing is. What problem does this actually solve for you/what thing is it actually better to use this for than other existing solutions.
Extremely high price tag with no "killer app"/function that makes anyone who tries it "get it" quickly and want one, is a pretty impossible sell.
Phones have grown, but people are the same size as ever. It's as if the industry has collectively forgotten what ergonomics is. It's especially frustrating for me as someone who is a comparatively compact person and who still considers the phone a secondary device mostly for use outside.
The choice in the form of the iPhone mini that sold by millions but is somehow still considered a failed product by Apple, yeah. And nothing comparable in the Android world, where all manufacturers pretty much move in lockstep.
The choice has happened over many years. Incrementally consumers were offered the choice of the same size phone or larger, and they kept choosing larger.
If the smaller iPhones and Android phones of 10+ years ago had continued to sell well as larger models were introduced alongside them, they'd still be selling phones that size today.
I wonder what percentage of people who complain about not being able to buy smaller phones actually ever bought the smaller phones when they were available. Are these people carrying 3rd gen iPhone SEs right now? I suspect no.
It’s not as if Apple dislikes money. If they believed the market for small phones was large enough, they’d still be selling small phones.
I was still using my iPhone 13 mini until last week when I bought an Air. As a city dweller without a car, I'm constantly in situations where I'm carrying something in one hand and need to pull out my phone for something. Now with this huge form factor I can't comfortably do that. For example, I was traveling internationally and was carrying my duffel bag in one hand and needed to get information out of the Airbnb app on my phone, and I almost dropped it. The mini would have been (and was always) fine in these circumstances.
The Air doesn't even fit in my jeans comfortably, I have to carry it in my jacket now (what do I do in summer?). I'm considering returning it and switching back to my mini until it just can't run anymore.
Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone. I paid more for a worse spec'd phone (Air vs 17), solely hoping it would be easier to use as a mobile, out in the world device. It's not. If they launched the same exact mini with a processor bump at $1k or more I'd be fine paying it.
> Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone.
The reality is that “I want a small phone” for most seems to mean “I would prefer that the phone is small but this is actually the least important factor for my purchase decision”. The set of people who bought the mini was quite small, estimated around 3% of sales.
You didn’t even buy the smallest phone. You got seduced by the thin phone but the 17 and 17 pro are both physically smaller devices corner to corner and would fit in your pocket better.
For sure, I admit I'm an outsider in most of my life choices, including retail decisions. But for about 13 years there I was able to purchase phones that worked one handed before the market completely shifted away from that.
I purchased the phone that was the lightest, thinking that maybe it's thinness would make it nice to hold in one hand (it does), but it's still too big. And so back it goes for my 13 mini until that thing can't hold on any longer.
I was still on my iPhone 12 mini until about a month ago. I was ready to buy an iPhone 16 Mini on launch day if it existed. My wife was on her iPhone 13 mini until about a week ago, and would have bought an iPhone 17 Mini if that was on offering instead of the iPhone Air. Apple's continued refusal to offer a newer Mini, combined with the iOS 26 bug & accessibility nightmare, got us to switch. We now each carry a Sunbeam F1 Pro.
The people who complain about wanting phones to be smaller are like me. We don't buy phones that often. Manufacturers will never cater to us, because I didn't replace my Pixel 2 XL until this year.
I can never compete with the market that replaces their phone every year. Nobody can. They are the ones that keep buying giant phones.
>It’s not as if Apple dislikes money. If they believed the market for small phones was large enough, they’d still be selling small phones.
Apple, like almost every business that size, only does things that are profitable enough. It's not enough to sell 1 million phones for a good profit, they try to avoid doing that.
> It's not enough to sell 1 million phones for a good profit
This is true but also not the entire story. Apple also has to consider:
* How many of that million would we sell anyway in a non-mini version?
* What will the margin be on these relative to our other phones?
* How much of our engineering resources will be siphoned into creating yet another variant that we could use for other efforts or to make our flagship phones better?
* What’s the long term support cost for yet another variant?
I have sympathy for folks who want a small phone and legitimately would buy it if available. Unfortunately the set of people who will actually buy a smaller phone seems to be very small, which is why all the manufacturers have just stopped. Apple with their two sizes seems to be trying harder than most manufacturers.
You seem to have missed my point about manufacturers moving in lockstep.
Most people use a phone for at least two years. The way it happened in the 2010s, by the time someone is looking at buying a new one, all available phones on the market have already grown larger compared to their current one. So, they get sad and buy whatever is available.
Which is perhaps why Apple tried the iPhone Mini, to go back and see if they were missing a large market segment. Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale.
There isn't a grand conspiracy to make everyone sad with big phones they don't want.
> Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale.
This is the key thing. It’s not that no one wants it. But it’s a lot of engineering to produce another distinct hardware model and the market is tiny compared to the larger models.
They don't have 15 different Macbook chassis sizes. Most of those SKUs are swapping SoC and memory configurations on the same board and chassis design.
By that logic the iPhone 17 (base model) is at least 24 SKUs.
If for example the 15" MacBook Air ended up being less than 3% of Mac sales, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple killed it off.
But it somehow is enough to do that for things like the Mac Pro or the Mac Studio that are clearly niche products compared to the rest of the Mac lineup?
I'm not sure it's fair to compare cars to phones or other tech products. Phones are not very repairable these days, but even if you manage to keep a 15-year-old phone working, the unnecessarily ever-changing protocols, APIs, and standards will render it unusable for most practical purposes. So you're kinda forced to upgrade every now and then. A 15-year-old car though? It takes the same fuel and drives on the same roads as brand-new ones. And spare parts are most certainly still available.
The Mac Pro that famously gets very infrequent updates and is far behind the rest of the line on CPU generarion? I would not be at all surprised if Apple kills it off in the near future.
The comparison to cars is the market. A company makes products it wants to and that it thinks will pay back their investment, and that will be the most profitable choice among the choices of product they could make.
Sorry, you aren’t going to debate your way into Tim Cook choosing a less profitable product to make.
This isn't a pragmatic item though. It's a fashion item. Similar to when Apple made the real gold Apple Watch. It's not a statement on the broader market, it's Apple associating its brand name with high fashion and prestige. They've done this for many years.
Yep. If someone is looking for a more functional item similar to this, Fjallraven sells a "Greenland Pocket" which I used to solve the "too much phone" problem. (And, unsurprisingly, costs many times less while doing much more.)
(I'm not associated with Fjallraven, I just enjoy this bag and think it makes the functionality of the Apple Pocket look even more ludicrous in comparison.)
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Can any woman with a purse or man with a fanny pack chime in and let us know if they've ever thought about putting their phones in their bags before?
High twist wool, unlined, adds basically zero heat (“summer weight wool” is a term that may include all these qualities). Doesn’t even do much to block wind (but does block the sun, a bit!). Totally fine in that range. That’s before resorting to something like an unstructured linen jacket (ever seen Lawrence of Arabia? Those guys are wearing plenty of clothing in the heat, a linen jacket is nothing) or warm-weather cottons like a seersucker (I’ve not bothered with any of that for jackets, myself, as light wool does fine for me, though I have several other pieces in linen).
Hell I own sweaters that are totally comfortable up to about that point, and higher if there’s a breeze. It’s all about construction and fabric.
Is this supposed to dispute the claim? A man putting his phone in his fanny pack would also signify apple's phones are inconvenient to carry. Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
No, it's supposed to point out that there exists an entire set of people who have been putting their phones in bags for as long as phones have existed. We mostly don't hear from women here on HN thanks to old gender biases in tech.
> Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
Apple released a collaboration with a fashion brand.
i'm not sure i get the point here. at some point, i don't want to be carrying something by holding it in my hand. i might need to use my hand for something else. so I put the item down, or put it in a container that I bring with me (pocket, shoulder bag, etc). Are they 'admitting' that people move around with things and sometimes have more than one purpose for their hands during an outing?
Yes, I do this because when I'm using my bike to get into work as it often involves more than one set of clothes and swapping everything between different pockets is annoying so I have a big 'unipocket' fanny pack, my 6.7" phone is still cumbersome in there making digging out other items annoying. And when I'm wearing some pairs of pants and the phone isn't angled just right it will dig into my hip while walking up stairs until it's adjusted.
(and that's with a relatively budget android phone, smaller devices are a tiny niche of old less powerful devices that barely have support)
I have a fanny pack. I usually put my phone, a notebook, my wallet, some band-aids, and a couple diapers. Sometimes I add a charger if I think I'll need it. It's quite convenient, and I basically don't put anything in my pockets. Phone sits on its charger or in the bag, usually.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Marketing 101: Create a customer. Even if phones were small enough that there was no need for such a product, Apple's marketing team would convince you that you needed this product for [reasons].
Same... back in my day, people worked to reduce the size of mobile phones. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer small phones, which is why I still have an iPhone 12 mini.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I think it's an admission that consumers prefer phones that are large enough that they have become inconvenient to carry in a pocket.
Some people have never had pockets big enough to comfortably fit even a smaller smartphone and have been carrying them in bags this whole time.
Absolutely this. I was so excited for a second that they were re-branding and re-launching the mini. My 13 is getting long in the teeth, and won't be supported for OS updates in a few more years.
The worst part of this is the UI bloat that came along with it. Since there's no longer a need to consider smaller phones, everything got bigger and more padded also worsening the information density on larger phones.
I was also hoping it was a small phone announcement but it not being part of a keynote didn't give me high hopes.
I've been on Android since day 1 but I'm thinking about switching to iPhone. If they ever made foldable (clamshell style, not book style) phone I would buy it immediately. I just want a small phone.
Yes I could get an Android foldable that already exists but I like to stick with Pixels and they don't have one yet and I'm kinda of done with Pixels. They are crap quality.
I had a look for covers, and I could only find silicone (?) or plastic sleeves and the 'handbag straps'. I think / suppose a lot of people just have their phone in their hand or on a table all the time, so why make it pocket sized?
"But no, Apple's phones just had to grow and grow like cancer ..."
Larger screens are better for advertising
Maybe there are more eyeballs on mobile than on larger form factors
Mobile OS are, with few exceptions, exclusively corporate-controlled. The corporations controlling the OS are enagaged in advertising services
Might make sense for them to try to increase mobile use for more tasks. Perhaps increasing screen size will help
I still have an old iPhone 4. Is it still possible to jailbreak and install some old software for experimentation. I'm not interested in using it to access Apple servers. All computers I own access the web through a TLS forward proxy. I see no advertising
One of the subtext reasons is that women’s’ clothing lacks proper pockets for whatever sexist reason, so a pocket you wear on the outside can seem like a great idea.
Surely you're not suggesting that modern women's fashion is governed by some vestigial sexism and not actual desires and wants of consumers who are otherwise spoiled for choice when it comes to any other property of their garments, whether functionality, style, colouring, percent coverage of any and all body parts, etc.
The current form factors are what people are buying. Even the Apple design team is surprised. I think even iPhone Air sales aren’t as good as they projected
But I have kids, and am less willing to compromise on camera quality than I am size.
I’d pay the same price for a smaller phone if the camera specs (and ideally battery life—go ahead and make it a little thicker, they’re too thin anyway) were the same as the larger phones, but they’re not.
I bet those kinds of differences are what do it for a lot of folks. They’re like me and would prefer smaller, all else being equal—but all else is typically not equal, even compared to standard iPhones and not the ultra-high-end ones.
iPhones have always fit in my pockets. Even in different types of pants and different brands. This is already the case and I don't understand how the iPhone isn't already pocket sized.
If Google sold five million iPhones Mini it would be considered a smash hit. But because it's Apple it's considered a flop because of the ridiculous sales numbers of their other models.
There's one data point. I would bet, though, that Apple, Sony and Samsung have plenty more data points of devices that didn't move and thus they stop making smaller devices.
Yup, keep in mind the generally Western audience on HN is only a small minority of the total market, which is... hundreds of millions of people for the iphone alone.
This is the correct answer. I don't think anyone believes that Apple doesn't manufacture smaller phones out of spite? They are just not popular enough.
That must be why all those vacuum robots and smart TVs phone home to China. Because people really love appliances that spy on them. Good thing Samsung patched their fridges to add advertisements and spyware, because that's what their customers (in the US) were really waiting for.
Pixel 1 was the ideal phone. Not too large. Completely flat back. Screen didn't bulge above the sides so you could drop it without shattering the screen. Google's design has only gone downhill since then. (The pixel 5 looks pretty nice, but it seems to have the bulging glass and the beginnings of camera bumps)
I've been yelling into the void for smaller phones for ~15 years now. I get that I'm not the audience... I use a PC all day. I only use my phone for text communication, talking with my parents, maps, weather, and maybe a bit of web surfing while I'm waiting in line somewhere.
I see a lot of similarities between big cars and big phones: i.e. They're not really well suited to their most-common applications and there is also not much of another choice. The average person seems to just gobble it up without much thought though. Very strange from my perspective.
It's kind of hilarious to me when the tech world collides with the high-end fashion world. On the one hand, I get how absurd this seems from a tech perspective. On the other hand, dropping a couple hundred dollars on a fashion item that will be trendy for a season among a certain group... it's no different from any other high-end fashion accessory. It's just that the two worlds so rarely overlap.
The fashion world's biggest sellers are handbags and shoes, which are practical purchases and tend to feature pretty intricate design details. This is a Speedo for a phone, and it makes Apple's already over-the-top descriptions of its products sound even more absurd.
I don't like either of these two worlds. Yes, plenty of people will buy an expensive laptop/desktop that's only ever used to run benchmarks. If anything I could admire the $5K bag more if it's actually nicer than the cheaper ones, but a lot of the time it's not.
I’m so glad there are some people willing to pay over $200 for “a piece of cloth” which I assume is a translation issue but it sounds uninspired- who knew your inspiration for a bag could be the material that most bags are made of?
I especially like how it’s sized to fit almost any iPhone ever made. So not only are you getting a bag made of cloth, for over $200 it’s not even custom fitted!
Anyway, this product isn’t for me. I suppose enough other people will buy it.
Edit: I suppose the short version is under $200 but my sentiment hasn’t changed. Perhaps I’m even more cranky now that increasing the length of the strap costs $80. That’s the same level of rip-off that Apple charges for increased SSD storage on their Macs.
I bought my current phone for $94 brand new. It can communicate with other devices over the air through literal magic. It has 2.5 million tiny lights, each independently controlled to be any color I want. It knows where I am anywhere on the planet. Through it, I can access an essentially infinite pool of entertainment, hail life-saving emergency services, perform monetary transactions, acquire food, etc.
This piece of cloth is twice the price and it can't even make phone calls.
Literally not magic, but millions of patents and innovations that we understand down to the quantum level.
That's why the Romans could never make huge advances, they didn't understand the fundamentals. They knew using coal to make swords gave them better, harder edges, but they found it by raw accident, not knowing that the iron and carbon were combining atomically.
This is like complaining about the $400 Hermès band. The "iPhone Pocket" is obviously a luxury item from a high end designer, of course it's going to be expensive.
With this you don’t even get the designer in the name.
Plus, I can see spending money for things that are nicer or specially designed. There is a huge quality difference between a Loungefly bag made out of synthetic material and a Coach bag of leather (or even Louis Vuitton, although that is a big step up in price). But this iPhone bag isn’t that- 3D knitting isn’t even that special, you could just as easily put a cheap Android phone in this bag, and I don’t think it’s going to be any more durable than a moderately priced crossbody or small purse.
Any tech focused social media site (or tech subcommunity on one) are having a fieldday poking fun and/or expressing how baffled they are.
In the tech world, this is a laughable proposition to most people even at $22.90 (though an order of magnitude more palatable at that price).
In the fast fashion world, this is pretty typical pricing for a seasonal trendy item with a "premium" brand/designer attached. Of course, that's predicated on the trend actually taking off, which isn't guaranteed. But all this social media activity around it in the tech circles is certainly boosting it's visibility to people in the fast fashion world that have iphones, which - going out on a limb here - wouldn't surprise me if it were a not-insignificant number.
Besides, at this price point vs what it is and what it costs to manufacture, even if it "flops" it's unlikely to be a big expense to write off.
Whether or not this tarnishes the Apple brand by shear ridiculousness of it remains to be seen, but Apple's general strategy in the post-Jobs era seems to be "Enshittify, just not as much/fast as everyone else and people wont want to leave even if they complain because we're still not as bas as everyone else"
At this point, you may as well get a powerpack for a mini and put it in one of these slings, you could have a crazy powerful machine in your "sock-et" sling thing here...
When the iPhone Air was just another huge phone...but thinner...smh. Apple should put up some page to check interest level in a smaller phone, and with enough interest, go manufacture it. If it is more expensive because economies of scale don't work out, but they create one that is small yet powerful, that's what I would buy at premium, because apparently compactness is a luxury.
And they say you can “create your own personalized color combination”. This is just literally just the pairing of the phone color and whatever color you pick for the bag. Who calls this a customized color combination?!
You're right. Fashion is about trends. Being in love with Apple products, especially without considering the need, usefulness or cost, does seem to be a trend.
Hacker news is probably not Apple's core audience for this product.
I recently saw in Southeast Asia everybody had their phone with a strap going around their neck. Which is why Apple made a first party case recently that does this. Apple's making products to cater towards international trends. People paying a lot of money for a fabric product is not unheard of, simply take a walk around the nicer mall in your area with multi-thousand dollar handbags as a demonstration.
Apple is a tech company. Their last two tech products (Vision Pro and iPhone Air) were colossal and unexpected failures. The industry is holding it's breath.
We already know Apple can manufacture lifestyle products and market fashion to fashionable people - that's not the issue. We're starting to turn the corner on Apple's true desire to stop competing. They can't innovate like they used to with the iPad and the Apple Watch; the "new" Apple products today are expensive alternatives to superior products. Apple's most-lucrative investments are turning out to be the App Store and iCloud, software investments that have nothing to do with their hardware quality. So we're now in the awkward position of getting precisely zero innovative hardware and tons of useless and expensive bric-a-brak like iPhone Pockets and iPad laptop-cases to convince people the ecosystem doesn't need to compete to be fun.
On the one hand, yes, I am not the target audience for this in the same way I would ignore the Apple CPAP machine. On the other hand, this is setting a new low for Apple that hadn't been challenged since the polishing cloth debacle. Nothing here is innovative and it seems to confirm the industry's broader suspicion that Apple's business model is bankrupt.
People don't need to carry wallets anymore. No cash, no physical plastic credit card. It's little surprise that the purse will trend smaller as people need to carry less and less inside it.
Apple is hitting a revenue growth plateau, which means the time has come to expand into adjacent categories. In a world where people put their phones into purses, why not the purse? And at a Apple-brand price point to match?
Yeah, most Americans don't understand how ubiquitous this is in Asia. I doubt this will catch on in America because of how unsafe the cities are. I would never wear this in New York but I definitely would in Tokyo
Wow, that article is wild! Talk about "aged like milk." I'm not saying iPhone Pocket will be a hit as big as AirPods, but it goes to show how unimaginative early reactions can be.
Apple should experience the same surge of collective excitement everyone felt when they first saw the headline "iPhone Pocket," followed by the crushing disappointment of discovering it's just a grocery bag for your iPhone.
This makes me wonder how strong this thing is because on first sight it just asks for being cut by a random thug. Same goes for this strap thing they introduced.
I thought I won't be seeing anything else more ridiculous this decade regarding phones than people talking on speaker and holding them like piece of pie and here we are. There's no practicality whatsoever - I'd rather buy a strong case, probably that would cover both screen and cameras and a good urban backpack where I can put other stuff like physical wallet and a bottle of water, some charging cable.
It's more a gadget sold as a status symbol - bit like some cases had that small rounded window for apple logo.
I was out with my young coworkers and was absolutely baffled to see a bunch of them with slings for their phones. That was the only time I’d heard of such a thing until now. I kinda thought I’d drunkenly hallucinated it.
I was just talking to my wife about this, literally 5 minutes ago. I just moved from the 13 mini to the Air and am hating that it doesn't comfortably fit in my jeans, to the point where I might go return it today. My young cousin was wearing her iPhone on a cross body sling, and I was commenting that we've gotten to the point where the phones are so big that you need bags or extra things to carry it comfortably.
To a contemporary person their smartphone is probably the single most functionally important object they carry with them. People have always modified their clothes around common items, and then those modifications become subject to fashion trends and then eventually tradition themselves. Think like briefcases and wallets, but also japanese inro, european snuffboxes, decorative scabbards, etc.
This is more like an ancient and near universal practice being applied to a modern tool, rather than a totally new thing in itself.
For sure, I had that thought as well, that clothing is evolving alongside the things people are needing to carry.
But, for me, it does seem like we're going in a functionally poorer direction. Just a few years ago I could have a computer I could fit in my pocket. I can't buy that anymore. The fact that people are selling modifications to these devices (cross body slings, cases with those weird pop up things on the back so you can hold it one handed) to me means we've missed the mark on design. For more than a decade we had a great one handed computer that'd disappear into my pocket. No longer.
I’m still clinging to my 3rd gen SE. My daughter had one too, but was forced to get a new phone recently because she had destroyed the old one. Got talked into a 13 mini and now I never stop hearing about how much of a pain in the ass FaceID is compared to TouchID. When Apple finally takes my button away I’ll probably go to android.
Note: the other thing I like about the SE is it was comparatively cheap. I will never get close to spending $1000 on a phone. Apple doesn’t want me anymore.
You would think pants manufacturers would cotton on and start making decent phone pockets.
I wear jeans a lot and the back pockets are dangerous for phones, and the front pockets are uncomfortable when sitting if there's a phone in them. I want a phone pocket on the outside of the leg that's big enough for a phone but not too bulky/puffy.
For those surprised by the cost, this is an Issey Miyake product, and the price is in-line with that. It's no different than the $800+ Hermes leather Apple Watch straps.
Honestly… was having a conversation with my aunt about this last week. Knitting, crocheting, and quilting are all high-skill activities and no one charges enough for it.
I used to joke that I made some of the most expensive socks in the world: 20 hours per pair, and I’m a run-of-the-mill IT ops person in western Europe - do the math.
I have decided to up the cost by taking up fleece processing and hand spinning. Even on the wheel, it takes another twenty hours to clean, comb, and spin enough wool for a pair of socks.
If I were doing this for income, I’d definitely get faster at all the steps.
As I pick up more of the steps in making clothes, it’s mind-boggling how cheap even “luxury” clothes like the 500 EUR pants discussed above, much less my sturdy midrange jeans (Tom Tailor, 60 EUR, pockets that hold an iPhone 13 mini, even in a ladies’ cut), are.
Yep, lots of people doing knowledge work vastly underestimate the material cost, effort and skill associated with artisan goods. On one hand I blame modern manufacturing which justifies this ignorance somewhat but on the other hand I die a little inside when I hear about people willing to fork over large sums to something better advertised.
Though it's worth mentioning that some people are jumping into hand crafted stuff as a business first, cranking out subpar cookie cutter designs and while not terribly expensive and still a minority it's worth making sure you support people who care about the craft first. A category to watch out for is minimal leather wallets, while quality leather and correct thread selection practically guarantee the wallet will last, the care put into making it determines how enjoyable it will be to use.
The vast majority of people making handcrafted do not charge enough for their items. If they did, nobody could afford them. Most items are priced based on the cost of the material with little consideration to the time to make them. I have a friend that is a very skilled knitter, but for large items like blankets and sweaters, there are weeks of effort involved. When broken down, "kids in Chinese factories" make more per hour.
The great thing is that this type of person will tell you they are not in it for the money. As long as they can "buy more string" with the proceeds (or whatever their materials are), they are quite happy.
I don't think this is the answer you think it is. Every person that I know that knits or crochets is not doing it to make money, or even when selling items are not charging because they think that's all someone will pay. They do it because they like doing it. If they were doing it to make money, then the fun and relaxing nature of it is lost. If you've ever been to or around a stich-n-bitch, you'd understand. It's cheaper than a therapist. Plus, there's usually wine and baked goods. I'm in Texas, so it's not like the items knitted are used for more than 2 weeks out of the year. That doesn't stop them. To blame it on the "what people will pay" is grossly not understanding.
My friend made a rule that no new yarn could be bought until the same amount of yarn from existing inventory is used first. An entire closet was dedicated to said inventory. Receiving yarn as a gift does not count.
Ha, I bet the muggers/phone thieves will have a field day.
I find it interesting that anybody is that surprised. Remember, this is the company that overcharges for SSDs (no they're not magical super SSDs that only Apple can make)/extra ram.
They charged $1000 for a monitor stand that's pretty much just a thin block of aluminium.
Its just a stiff translation of a marketing term. If you look up 一枚の布, you'll see a bunch of Miyake's clothes, where the whole gimmick is that they have no seams. A better translation probably would have been "inspired by the concept of seamless design"
Emphasizing a central concept/theme is common with Japanese brands, restaurants, events, etc. The translation is often slightly peculiar.
For example the Osaka Expo theme is "Designing Future Society for Our Lives". Or the retail store f.k.a. Tokyu Hands says, "Our concept is 'Create your own life in your own way with what is available within reach.'"
You can ask a traditional crafts person in most the world to make you a custom one with traditional patterns and it would be significantly better. Then they can feed their family for a least a week.
Apple isn't the only one who can make a giant sock!
Apple wants to charge $150 for this sock. My premium fair-trade version, woven using traditional indigenous practices from sustainably-grown biodegradable materials, blessed via an aboriginal ritual, complete with an autographed certificate of authenticity from a rural craftsperson who subsequently follows you on social media, will cost $200. Joke's on Apple.
I think the discussion is missing the real purpose of this (and which can't be achieved by other vendors) which is to normalize carrying your phone in a way that it's recording without your holding it in your hand to make it obvious that you're recording.
Nah I'll give them credit for that one, the dual knit band is what the Vision Pro should have shipped with in the first place. The original designs were the baffling ones, you had to choose between a fancy knitted band without any top support, or a cheap band with top support, but now you get the best of both in one. Which you really want for such a heavy headset.
I don't think it's baffling; the original band was just Apple making the same kind of fumble that Coke made with New Coke: they assumed that because something is well-received in quick one-time demos, that means that people will also like it over longer exposures.
If you don't know the backstory: New Coke had a sweeter formula than Coke Classic. And, as the original "Pepsi challenge" [1975] demonstrated a decade prior to New Coke [1985], people tend to prefer a sweeter drink when they're only being given a 15ml sip of it. New Coke's initial user testing was essentially a "New Coke challenge" — giving people 15ml sips of Coke Classic vs New Coke — and this led them to believe that this sweeter formula would be popular. But as demonstrated by later attempted replications of the "Pepsi challenge", the preference for sweeter drinks goes away when people get a full mouthful of the beverage; let alone when they're handed a full glass to drink as they please. It never seemingly occurred to Coke to do another round of "full-scale" testing, with testers being given full glasses of New Coke to drink (perhaps with ice; perhaps with food; perhaps chilled, perhaps warm... etc), before green-lighting the formula for production.
Same thing seemed to happen to Apple with the Vision Pro's original band. You don't tend to notice the strain of headset's weight pressing down onto your face at first; it only becomes apparent after ~10-15 minutes of use. It was likely that both their user-testing sessions, and their shareholder demo sessions, were short. (The final retail demo they walk you through is certainly short!)
You wouldn't think that this could be true of the Vision Pro, because it was a very-clearly dogfooded product: Apple made this thing first-and-foremost for Apple engineers, to allow their hardware design teams to work remotely during COVID. (That's why they shipped a "Pro" SKU first; the "Pro" SKU was what they needed.) Many of those same engineers were likely wearing prototypes of the Vision Pro to design later revisions of the Vision Pro.
My guess, though, is that early revisions didn't have all of visionOS (especially the computer-interaction parts) finished yet; and therefore, the Vision Pro was, at the time, really just serving as a peripheral for viewing of spatially-AR-embedded 3D objects (i.e. their hardware prototypes). The workflow likely looked like: edit and collaborate in a CAD program, with the headset off; save their changes; push the 3D model to the headset; pop the headset on; check out their changes ("do a walk around" of the object); take the headset back off; and go back to editing/collaborating on their computer.
Obviously, the original band would have worked just fine for that workflow!
It sucks that most people don’t see the pocket as the perfect overlap between fashion and tech. It’s the ideal Issey Miyake bag, it’s just something tech people won’t get.
That and the design misattributions. Even going in blind, if you actually read the Newsroom post and find the Store page, you can figure out that this isn’t even an Apple product. It’s an ISSEY MIYAKE product. If you end up finding any of the Vogue articles, it says right in the article that this was a design project initiated by and done within ISSEY MIYAKE by an ISSEY MIYAKE team, with some input from Apple employees they (proactively) approached and talked to.
I’m sure a lot of people get it, but “this is kinda neat” makes for less of a HN comment than [insert an elaborate rant on how ridiculous it is to charge markups for fashion stuff]
It sucks that most people don't see that Apple totally stole this (iPhone Pocket) after it became trendy. I bought it as a gift last year. It was very trendy then. I forgot the store's name. Just like apps, Apple steals fashion ideas.
I found the reddit ManyBaggers recently and there is a cottage industry of high-end bags that seem incredibly made for the price that are in no way luxury products.
I always have a little chuckle when I see people holding a tiny delicate smartphone in a massive fat case to protect it from the damage it will inevitably take in normal use. I always think that it would have been better if they had just made the phone itself a little tougher!
I'm not a native speaker, I tried googling and translating and still did not get what "ablative" means. Do you mind explaining like I'm 5 what does it mean please..
> Ablation (Latin: ablatio – removal) is the removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosive processes, or by other means. Examples of ablative materials[clarification needed] are described below, including spacecraft material for ascent and atmospheric reentry, ice and snow in glaciology, biological tissues in medicine and passive fire protection materials.
The poster is saying that a case can wear out and be replaced without damage to the phone. You can let the case take all the damage, then get a new one. But if you let a phone take all the damage (even if it's a tougher phone), you can't remove that damage.
It's good to have a choice. I know I'm going to drop my phone from time to time, and sometimes it will be onto a hard surface, so I always get a case. I once managed to shatter the back glass while it was in a case, not sure how I managed that. Other people may be less clumsy, or more tolerant of living with damage, or more willing to pay for insurance or replacements.
It's also nice to be able to choose a texture. In my latest iteration, I got Apple's techwoven case, and I really like the feel compared to the usual silicone stuff, or bare metal. The texture also makes it easier to grip so maybe I'll drop it less. I can hope.
I haven't had a screen break in almost a decade now. I do buy flagship phones. So I don't think we need to make glass anymore thicker. But I also use screen protectors, and I had maybe 1 break in the last 10 years.
Back when Steve Jobs was at Next, Apple released the Duo Dock. Instead of plugging your laptop into a docking station, you put it in a slot like a giant 3.5" floppy. It was different, sure, but I still don't know what design problem it solved.
It shouldn't be legal to sell products under the name of a dead person (at the very least in cases where there's a strong chance buyers are given the impression that the person had something to do with production of the product).
> a collaboration between ISSEY MIYAKE and Apple
Issey Miyake died 3 years ago. He has not participated in this "collaboration".
I added a qualifier because these exist (see also pretty much every Japanese company), though if such a hypothetical law were implemented I'd honestly see no major moral gain in protecting the creation of new names like those either. If Strauss had decided to name his company something other than his own name it wouldn't have altered the quality of the product.
But no, those aren't comparable here because people today don't believe Henry designed the latest F150
[1] [Issey Miyake] was also inspired by fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet's use of geometric calculations and "a single piece of beautiful cloth".
The apple release chose some poor wording / translation in it's description 'Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”', but that part actually makes _some_ sense in the context of Miyake's designs. I make no such claim about the product as a whole...
Phone thefts where I live (London, UK) are at an all time high. If ever a product was needed to self identify as a target this has to be it. "See this expensive iPod Sock? It's holding my expensive iPhone"...
Almost no one who actually uses one has ever been bothered by the charging port on the bottom.
If for some reason they ignore the low battery warning that occurs days before it runs out of power and it actually dies, 2 minutes on the charger will provide enough charge to get through the rest of their day.
Yet it still continually comes up. You ever wonder why? It's because "Almost no one who actually uses one" is incredibly dismissive of the people who do have a problem with it. It's like being disabled, like blind people or wheelchair users, or foreign language support. In this case, it's neurodivergent people. It's "you're holding it wrong", it's Apple shuffling things under the bed and pretending they don't exist, just buy their shiny new thing and your problems go away. And consumers supporting them in that while Tim Cook laughs all the way to the bank.
Yeah, no one you know has that problem. For the people for whom it's a problem, it's a problem! You can dismiss them and say well they shouldn't be like that, or that they're being crazy, but at the end of the day, even after you've called them crazy and don't care about them, they're still them, and they still have to deal with a mouse that doesn't work for them. They still have to deal with the problem. Severe untreated ADHD means poor time management, low executive function, and zero impulse control. This means waiting until right when the project is due to start working on it, this means emotionally the user is panicking, so having to sit still and let it charge is physically painful.
Yes, neurotypicals don't have this issue. Good for them! Apple isn't the problem user's therapist, that user can't access healthcare anyway, and it's their problem, not yours.
The charging point on the bottom of the mouse is fine.
The people shocked by this are the same people who still believe Apple can sell a normal sized phone but isn’t doing so possibly just to piss us off. The thing is there are millions and millions of suckers out there who will suck these Sock™s and Pocket™s up in possibly dozens - some for the colours and some for the mere satisfaction of getting to pay Apple. If you venture across iForums and iSubs you will slowly start seeing comments about these fabric things are already curing haemorrhoids and insomnia, in anticipation (even before shipping starts).
Oh my... I'm just left wondering if Apple releasing a giant sock for your phone equals to the proverbial moment of your taxi driver giving you advice on stocks to buy.
I take the pants that have insufficient pockets to a tailor, and ask them to extend the depth of the phone pocket. You can even ask them to do the extension in phone size if you want to restrict its movement in your pocket. On average I've needed about a 3" extension which both restricts lateral phone movement, and also carries it low enough on my thigh that the phone doesn't pinch into my hip when I sit down.
$30 or so later you'll have an integrated Pholster and don't have to carry another thing around with you. For $200 you should be able to update all the pants you have that lack a proper pocket. This is also an incredibly easy thing to sew yourself, by hand, while you watch TV. $30 for a tailor to do the first pair to give you a template to follow, $50 at a craft store will get you some decent scissors, needle, thread, and a yard of whatever material you like. You'll butcher the first pair of pants, but the second, will be better and the third will be perfect.
I do not use Apple products so I do not have an opinion about them.
One thing I know is that they are z making beast. The fact that they could sell a monitor stand for ~1000 € and wheels for something I do not remember for I think 200 €, and now this, means that they are genuises.
This does look like a gag to me too, but 3D knitting technology is interesting. I have a pair of carbon-plate marathon race shoes made with 3D knitting. They're very light and very comfortable, with stretch in some axes and stiffness in others as needed, no seams but form-fit around my foot in compound curves.
Instead of making the thing out of 2D pieces of fabric, even stretchy knit fabric, and sewing those planar shapes together into something 3D, they made this as one continuous knit object that adds and drops stitches to give it shape without seams. The machines and programs that manipulate the yarn and partial garments, tying knots at crazy speeds to create something 3-dimensional out of something 1-dimensional, are just astonishing. Equally astonishing is the fact that with two sticks and their hands, it's not that challenging for a human knitter to do the same. I think that "knit a sock" is one of the most challenging tasks to give a humanoid robot.
They bought a bunch of 3D knitting machines to make Vision Pro headstraps, and since that isn't selling I guess they're using the excess capacity to make iPhone socks.
I don't want to kink shame anyone, but I'd be concerned about getting all of that fuzzy caught in someone's throat. Unless I missed the version made of silk.
Issey Miyake was the most interesting high end clothing designer, many of his high fashion designs didn’t sync with any trends from other fashion designers, they were instead highly sculptural and informed by art rather than design.
He was interested in fashion enabled by technology, and there is the long standing connection between him and Steve Jobs.
It is okay to dismiss high fashion brands that don’t suit your needs, this is a niche thing that doesn’t appeal to everyone. It makes sense as a part of the Apple product portfolio that is fashion conscious.
The next product Apple will unveil will be an iPhone case made of human fingernails from those who have tried to climb this K-shaped economic ladder and failed. It'll be a steal at only $500 a pop.
The problem is not that ordinary clothes pockets aren't "designed to fit any iPhone". The problem is many iPhones no longer fit inside many pockets.
For now at least, Apple is still selling to people who wear clothes, and their devices are becoming less compatible with those clothes. This is what a "workaround" or "kludge" looks like in the non-software world, and the consumer gets to pay for it to boot.
This pattern repeats itself in "high" fashion quite a lot. Simple, ridiculous things that are relatively trivial to make, yet massively expensive due to hype/brand/fomo. I guess it wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it, but it also shows how people don't value craftsmanship so much as status symbols.
Show them two identical products, one from Apple, one from Auntie down the street, and they'll pick Apple and tell you the other is inferior.
I'm sure theirs is better than anything I could make myself in all sorts of little ways. I'm just not sure it would be $140 better.
On the other hand, if I did make one for myself (which I won't - one purse is enough) it would probably have a 2-color brioche stitch or something like that for more visual interest.
1. It gets the camera out of your pocket, which could give your ai assistant more context about what you're doing.
2. The high price tag helps get the word out (e.g. this thread) and invites third parties to compete with cheaper and more practical versions. This makes sense if Apple's goal is #1
Same company makes a Jelly Max, which is a larger volume than an iPhone, but about 2cm shorter in height and 1cm shorter in width than what I think is the smallest-screen iPhone currently for sale (16e).
Pretty much every other Apple product has appeal to every demographic: young, older, professional, student, all walks of life - as long as you can afford it.
This product has a very narrow and limited target customer base.
I’m not going to walk into the office with my fuchsia Apple sock around my shoulders.
The thrill I had clicking on this link, thinking I was about to see the next evolution of the iPhone mini, an even smaller, minimalist iPhone, only to discover it's just a completely useless novelty product.
Amazing that Apple would prominently highlight a product made with 3D knitting, as I’ve just gotten in to machine knitting as a hobby after buying an old Brother KH-910 on eBay and modding with with an AYAB (all yarns are beautiful)[1] open hardware/software knitting machine board from the AYAB discord. I just got a second needle bed for my knitting machine (KR-850 ribber) so I can do double bed jacquard knitting and other more advanced stuff.
But this has also led me down the rabbit hole learning about industrial machine knitting and 3d “wholegarment” knitting, invented by Masahiro Shima first in the 1960’s for autonomous glove knitting and later for entire full size garments in the 1990’s. [2,3,4] That’s what Apple is using in this product (now two companies offer 3D knitting machines according to Wikipedia). In traditional machine knitting you still have to make multiple flat sections and stitch them together, but in 3D Wholegarment knitting the machine is capable of knitting an entire complex garment, bag, utility item, whatever all in one go fully autonomously. Shima Seiki invented a new kind of knitting needle and expanded the system from two needle beds to four to enable the most advanced form of Wholegarment knitting. What I find fascinating about this technology is that it makes it possible to run a garment manufacturing business which is almost fully autonomous, eliminating the need for often poorly treated overseas labor [5], and potentially simplifying business operations dramatically.
The piece linked in [2] talks to an Italian knitting company that was able to keep manufacturing domestic thanks to these machines, and this helps explain how Apple can offer these bags as made in Japan in these volumes. I daydream about getting a used Mach2x and parking it somewhere to make it run 24/7 to make warm garments for the homeless around the Bay Area, perhaps with a low volume boutique fashion brand which helps pay for it. Anyway they’re really neat machines and this has been my little autistic hyperfocus lately, I thought I would share!
I think apple is short on some cash and they are trying to get some quick money. The issue is now you will see this ugly looking “case” all over the streets and especially among women, it might be the next Stanley cup all over again.
The is the ultimate Rincewind accessory - you can put a half-brick in it and wallop people, without having to take off one of your socks. In a pinch you can even just wallop people with your phone, if no bricks are to hand.
> I already have a pocket for my phone, it’s my.. pocket.
As Steve Jobs intended.
(Like, really. I think the original "one more thing" presentation was also so powerful became he could just casually pull some next-gen tech out of his pocket)
given Apple's track record in the past, this is the first indicator that there will soon be an annual line of iPhones that will not fit in these slings
If this is released on April Fools' I would just gig and skip it as a joke. If it is not then I would just think Apple is a stupid money grabbing machine just like EA
This is gonna launch first in Taipei (among other stores) and looks a lot like the bags people use to carry their boba tea in here. It's a bit expensive for a drink bag though.
I do wish they sold a double-side magsafe that you can put on your shirt/jacket so I can just clip my iPhone on my chest. Pro Max is too big for my pockets.
They expect me to walk around with my phone in a long sock? A fannypack even looks more appealing.. also, isn’t this a sign that phones are getting too big?
Aww. I was hoping for a super mini flip or foldable low-power minimalist iPhone, but it's another weird Apple hipster fashion accessory. Very disappointing.
here i am replying from my iphone air. My favorite iphone to date, by far. I “downgraded” from a 16 pro. Phone feels like a feather. Fits so nicely into my cross body bag as well!
hilarious seeing so many folk here turning their nose up at spending so much on an accessory from a well known designer brand. Apple devices could be considered by many (particularly outside of Californian circles) as of the same ilk.
Like many, I was disappointed this wasn't a new iPhone mini.
$30 for a pack of six iPod socks always seemed like a horrible value to me in the mid-2000s. I'm not denying they were fun and whimsical, but as cases, they didn't protect your iPod or allow you to use it while inside them. It felt like a rip-off two decades ago, and these are 30-46 times more expensive per-sock.
I know Apple does things like this to position themselves as a luxury brand and as a shareholder I still do not buy the idea stunts like these are what's best for the company. At best, a small segment of the target demographic will see this as a curiosity at the cost of further damage to Apple's reputation. People will see this as further proof Apple is more concerned with products and services which rip off their customers and developers, as opposed to providing real value.
I will be the first to welcome Apple bringing back some semblance of fun and whimsy into their product line-up, and this is not the way to do it.
The long strap version is too short on that model. Purse straps hang to hip level for a reason. Hanging at the hip makes reaching in substantially more ergonomic.
Also lmao at the photo of the little bag strapped to the other larger bag. Yo dawg, I heard you like bags.
Also they're super ugly. But I guess that's "subjective".
Meanwhile, can I have multi-message selection back in (iPad) Mail? Whoever decided to axe that feature apparently has a spam-free inbox.
This company has become such a joke. Maybe Apple should start being concerned about building computers that Just Work well again rather than continuing to flounder after Cook's obsession with bad fashion.
I suppose the underlying message here is that, if you can no longer innovate, shill overpriced purses instead.
Quote: “ Inspired by the concept of ‘a piece of cloth.’” Is this some kind of joke? If it were April 1st I’d assume the whole article is meant for comedic effect.
I genuinely find it hilarious that everyone has such a strong opinion about a random accessory. Seriously, who cares? Why is it that any company could make any random thing an everyone shrugs their shoulders and either likes it or ignores it but when apple makes something everyone’s knickers get in a twist?
Why do y’all care so much about something you’d just walk past and ignore in literally any other scenario?
Hope. For better or worse tech nerds (me included) maintain a hopeful optimism that Apple will make good products.
For the longest time they were the only tech company that really cared about design, and most people don't encounter good or thoughtful design or ever really see behind the scenes or think about design and designers.
Jony Ive and Steve Jobs really glorified design I think rightly in many ways, and elevated what industrial design could be in technology and engineering companies that historically had treated design as something you paid an external agency to do.
Most people don't know Dieter Rams or Donald Norman, tech people maybe know Edward Tufte. Loads of people know Jony Ive.
Unfortunately the only good ideas Apple have had this decade are the M-series processors, which are fantastic. Their software and hardware are otherwise lacking, across all categories.
So, when Apple releases _anything_ people hope it's (a return to) good, of all the consumer product makers I think Apple has the highest level of goodwill, people are excited and hopeful that the next thing they release will be great, and are disappointed when it isn't.
This predisposes that people are currently on average disappointed with apple products - which is just so far from the truth I don’t know where to start. Sure, a small percentage of tech nerds like us might be, but we are so far from the norm.
My pension. When "jokes" like this hit the frontpage of HN, I am reminded that every dollar I put into my 401k will never see the light of day. The FTC should be mauling Apple for resting on anticompetitive laurels, but instead they're letting them grow fat and become a high-risk business. If you're not filing for retirement tomorrow, you should be considering the consequences this will have when you turn 65. Letting Apple fuck off and manufacture high-margin designer is terrible for America in the long-term.
The economy is not as simple as "don't buy the product then" at Apple's scale. Look at how John Deere transitioned from a blue-chip brand to an Oracle-level scourge on humanity. I don't want Apple to head down that same road, but we might be too late to save them at this point.
I’m sorry but you can’t expect me to take you seriously if your position is a small collab with a Japanese design studio to make an iphone accessory is a sign of them tanking the economy…
This is yet another sign of the K Shaped economy. While I am homeless through no fault of my own, people can buy a $200 sweater pocket for their iphone.
I’m not trying to be glib here, but this genuinely looks like something a satirical blog might post.
I’m not a product or UI/UX designer but when you have to design a new, ridiculous way to carry a phone your company’s manufacturing and selling, I’d have thought that’s your sign to focus on making it less awkward to carry. “Think different”, indeed.
Didn't we turn the clocks back recently? Maybe someone just gave it too big a push... oh god, so it's only April 2025? I don't want to go through all that again.
"Crafted in Japan, iPhone Pocket features a singular 3D-knitted construction that is the result of research and development carried out at ISSEY MIYAKE."
How would a 2d knitted construction look like? Lmfao.
As silly a product as this is, the fact that it made it to the front page of Hacker News makes it a bigger deal than it actually is.
It's not like it's sitting on Apple's frontpage. It's not some major product announcement. To get to the `/newsroom` page where the product was listed, you have to literally scroll to the bottom of https://apple.com and click a tiny link.
I will however comment on the price and utter lack of functionality. This product is utter garbage--a total niche for art goblins (said lovingly).
I don't have an iPhone and will not get one at least until Google kills ReVanced, nor would I ever get a sock for my phone but wow, I fully expect this to be hit. Not only in this collaboration, it will spawn a thousand copies as well.
Everything about this is perfect. The Japanese origin, the idea, high tech manufacturing (single cloth, 3d knitted, whatever), the cheap material, the timing... I am in awe. The kind of shock and awe that militaries aim to deliver.
Apple has ingested a million tiny current trends of craftsmanship, story telling, accessorizing, ground them into this magnificent triumph of corporate capitalism. This is why commies never even stood a chance.
Or a 2000 euro Hermes Apple Watch with bracelet, but it comes with special wallpaper you don’t get if you just buy the strap or 1000 euro bracelet separately
The strap and bracelet are both really nice though, do recommend if you aren’t very price sensitive.
I was excited when I saw the headline -- I thought Apple had finally brought back a smaller iPhone, like the Mini.
But nope. It's just an ugly phone purse.
Look, it's bad enough that the much-hyped Vision Pro didn't take off (1), and the much-hyped iPhone Air didn't take off (2), and default Apple apps will soon have ads (3), and the latest MacOS is full of issues that would have been caught if they did any QA on it before release (4)... but Tim Apple is also throwing bribes at Trump every chance he gets (5)...
Irredentist pro-war language, Tim Cook? I am so done with Apple. They knew what they did when they chose the words; they certainly spent thousands of hours deliberating them.
This is Lebensraum with Chinese Characteristics.
> "The term is often used to avoid invoking sensitivities over the political status of Taiwan.[16] Contrastingly, it has been used in reference to Chinese irredentism in nationalist contexts, such as the notion that China should reclaim its "lost territories" to create a Greater China.[17][18]"
With respect, this topic is of immense interest and significance to a large number of us on HN. The many engaged and enthusiastic responses attest to that.
Is it off-topic to talk about the adversarial role of tech companies in a potential war, one that would be devastating to many of us? About the entanglements of their supply chains? Have I truly, in your judgement, derailed this thread away from curious discussion? Because, this subthread looks to me comparatively thoughtful (if mildly heated), while the more narrowly-construed topic of discussion is a polyester fashion accessory.
To paraphrase Anakin Skywalker: "from my point of view, it's the iPhone Pocket that's generic and uncurious".
It's obviously off topic and obviously nationalistic flamebait. Those are the high-order bits here. Adding provocations like "lebensraum" makes it even more of an obvious call.
> Have I truly, in your judgement, derailed this thread away from curious discussion?
For sure. A subthread like this usually has a lot of activation energy because the (off) topic is sensational and divisive, but that's not the same thing as curious conversation. Supplanting less sensational/divisive topics with more sensational/divisive ones is the essence of the "generic tangent", which HN's guidelines ask users to avoid for good reason.
If the OP isn't so interesting, the solution is to find other threads that are interesting, not turn this one into a flamewar (or potential flamewar) about something else.
It's a large step up from "it's used for job postings in (or closely working with) mainland China", to "it's featured in Apple product announcements targeting a global audience of millions".
Has it been used in an Apple product announcement before? My search is imperfect, but I actually can't find an example (on their /newsroom subdomain).
As recently as two months ago, with the Airphone announcement, they weren't doing this:
2020 - "First, I want to recognize Apple’s family in Greater China. Though the rate of infections has dramatically declined, we know COVID-19’s effects are still being strongly felt. I want to express my deep gratitude to our team in China for their determination and spirit. As of today, all of our stores in Greater China have reopened."
2024 - "Today, Apple has 57 stores in Greater China, with thousands of team members delivering exceptional service and creating magical experiences for customers."
It's not a "loose geographical region". It's usually denotes precisely the PRC (People's Republic of China, including mainland China and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao) together with the ROC (Republic of China, usually known as Taiwan).
> Just like how they removed all the gay dating apps in China yesterday (by request of the government of course).
Those apps have always been illegal in China. Of course, one could say Apple should not operate in China (and this is perhaps true), but they cannot both operate there and break the law.
Apple could choose to give the users of their devices freedom to run whatever operating systems and programs they choose. Then they could truthfully say that there is no way for them to control what people do with their devices once they leave the Apple store. If you put yourself in control of such things because it is profitable, you ought to take responsibility for the consequences.
It's not really about outsmarting them. Authoritarian systems of control rely on centralization. If you create an ecosystem where end users have lots of agency, of course most of them will go the path of least resistance, but the few who are willing to put in the effort to resist still can. Google and Apple tightening their grip over their respective mobile ecosystems is a very potent lever for authoritarian governments to pull.
They don’t rely on them. They successfully use them. In the Soviet Union every one horse village with unpaved roads had a commissar. No internet, no telegraph, no newspaper, no electricity but they held control just the same. Central control makes it convenient for them, but it isn’t the difference between them existing and not existing.
In a way. Basically yes any totalitarian regime will want to create a system where the people in charge have total control over everyone and everything. But my point is that Stalin was able to exert control over all parts of the Soviet Union without the internet, Facebook, WhatsApp, backdoored E2E messaging systems, email and email spying, parallel construction, etc.
The comment I was replying to is not wrong exactly but the better way to phrase that is that any unrelated but centralized system can and probably will be co-opted by a totalitarian regime and in the long run only helps the oppressor and not the oppressed.
Surely there’s a difference between hardware being a locked down appliance and… well, a more generic computation device.
I think the argument is that Apple or even any company that makes Android phones could choose to have an open bootloader (and maybe some driver stuff) and normally that wouldn’t really offend any government, while also giving the users more freedoms.
Otherwise, what’s next, PCs that only run Windows and only allow Edge as the browser and force the telemetry on?
Chinese people lives are getting better and they largely are on the same page. Meanwhile the US has DEI in the govt while the govt says DEI is bad. Minority authoritarian rule in the US with the Senate.
The US is a brutal dictatorship all the time.
China thankfully has a govt that is on the same page as the people.
Country with social credit, LLMs that have a seizure at "Tiananment square", Winnie the Pooh and Taiwan, Great firewall, cultural genocide of Uyghurs is a country where "lives are getting better" while US is a brutal dictatorship, my fucking sides.
Is that so? I have not surveyed the Chinese, but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas of communism have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
> I have not surveyed the Chinese but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
Ask other dictatorships while you're at it. Systems so great one wonders why stupid democracies haven't adopted the model still.
You're weasling your way out of the core point. I'm in no way advocating for such ideas. Quite the opposite. I'm just saying unless you have data about this you shouldn't rely on your instincts. There are many nuances around this and economic prosperity can mask huge other issues.
> Ask other dictatorships while you're at it.
In fact, I have observed immigrants from certain failed states that you refer to as "dictatorships." In many cases they say they hate their government yet they vote for mostly the same policies when they are given the chance to do so in the West, so again, even surveying them directly with a lazy question "do you like the government in country X" won't get you to the spirit of the answer.
To wit, you also just fell for the common fallacy of assuming dictatorship is the opposite of democracy. They are much more alike than you'd think. Democracy isn't liberty.
Would they? Unlikely, given iPhone creates a lot of jobs there. But if iPhone becomes the de facto devices for Chinese citizens to access illegal content then the chance is none-zero.
(And of course they can make Linux illegal too. It's just harder to enforce than making iPhone illegal.)
Can you give me the source of where brazil made linux illegal? I am sorry but I tried to search and the only references I could find were of brazil banning twitter/X for some reason.
I am genuinely curious how someone can decide linux to be illegal. How would the ban even work out?
Brazil has what is known as the Felca law, which requires providers of app stores and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification and to provide secure auditable APIs that meet government standards for doing the same. Presumably, specific distros like Red Hat can go through a government approval process in order to be legal to distribute in Brazil, but without such certification and without providing such system-level APIs, a random distro like Debian will be illegal to distribute in Brazil.
It's delusional to think the default OS would be replaced by anyone more than a few percent of niche users.
It's your desire to have open OS just say so. Doesn't really tie into avoiding oppression by communism. The Chinese need to solve that problem at its root.
People on HN thinking Apple should get into some kind of dick waving contest with an authoritarian government that rules over 1/6th of the global population and that supplies the labor to build their products and the materials in those products by implementing your guy’s pet issues is the height of fucking delusion.
At least try to pretend like you guys are thinking about situations in the real world.
The iPhone is a Chinese product. China ultimately controls whether or not the iPhone exists. No place else on earth can manufacture 20,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7/365.
Making two hundred million devices of the iPhone’s complexity and quality is not a trivial matter, and takes tens of thousands of skilled (and experienced) workers. Almost all of those people are Chinese, in China, subject to Chinese law. Apple cannot meaningfully fight Chinese law.
“sit comfortably” is a big stretch here. I imagine it must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
> must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
Yes, he will just have to comfort himself by crying into his pillow made of solid gold bars on his California King-size bed made of a solid block of hundred dollar bills. Poor Tim Apple — the real victim here.
In seriousness, even if he feels (and is right!) that there was nothing Apple could do better, nothing stops him from resigning, and then publicly stating that he didn’t want to be a part of a company that had to collaborate with a brutal and inhumane government. He just would rather acquire more billions for some reason.
This is why, as a gay man, I give people a look when they ask why I still rant about gay rights "even though you guys have marriage and stuff now".
It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
Most hetero people will never (thankfully) know that pitted feeling of having to check your surroundings and environment every single day when you simply want to hold your partners hand, chat to a coworker, book a hotel reservation, or book a night out to celebrate.
Every single macro outcome like this only demoralizes gay people just wanting to wake up and not think about anything other than the stresses and excitement of the day ahead.
If anyone reads this and you think it sounds dramatic, it’s not. It’s a reality, and Tim Cook knows that..he should do better.
Untrue and defeatist. Tim Cook does influence Chinese policy, you can't pretend he's the victim here:
EU: Tim Cook will *leave your economic zone* if you fraudulently label him as a monopolist, okay? If your government doesn't change, Apple won't bless your economy.
China: There's just nothing we could do. When they asked to backdoor iCloud we couldn't make any demands from them. They constantly demand authoritarian control and *never* let us say a single word. We're being abused, someone help us!
I am a straight man and I feel like some communities just become scape-goats
We have this us vs them mentality which some people use to collect power and influence at the costs of them
Ultimately I think that it is a very foolish thing because I think that as long as nobody bothers on my freedom etc., I should be in literally nobody's business bothering their freedom
> It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
I agree 100% with this message.
But one thing I have problem with (on the straight side of things) is that I have seen occasionally some extremely feminist comments which do try to impeach or try to have this very fundamental skewed problem that man are ALL the problem and its all man's fault etc. and I have seen the same in masculinity cultures as well and I feel like both of them are just radicalizing people to seize power and influence or sell courses or feel better about themselves.
I think that we sometimes forget that people are people and we should treat others with the same courtesy and kindness that we expect to be treated with, I guess. maybe we sometimes don't treat them that way or didn't treat them that way and I guess we should just apologize or try not to do that ever again. Mistakes happen but as long as we still have a mindset similar to doing good, I feel like things would be hopeful.
I didn't know that tim cook was gay and here is one message from wikipedia I want to quote
> In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff.[85] On October 30, Cook publicly came out as gay in an editorial for Bloomberg Business, saying, "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."[86] While it had been reported in early 2011 that Cook was gay,[87][88] at the time, Cook tried to keep his personal life private
I feel like Tim Cook should be a man of his words and try to actually help the community he is proud to be in but I am sure that investors might not be happy but that just goes on to show that maybe even some CEO's could be puppets of shareholders and can be forced to do things solely for profit where their heart might not lie.
I think that another point is that shareholders can also be puppets of CEO's in the case of Elon musk 1 Trillion $ deal shows that imo
I feel like we live in the times where morality can be side-lined for profit and be celebrated. The whole idea why even people can be puppets of each other could be because they get profits and power and influence because of it (basically money most of the times)
But what power do those CEO's have if they can't stand for what they think is right or educate themselves on these matters.
"No" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The things he could do would be very painful, maybe a Pyrrhic victory. Maybe they're worth it if the alternative is aiding an abetting authoritarian regime. I'm not casting judgment, just presenting the options. Which do actually exist.
There is no middle ground. Mentioning "Greater China" isn't neutral. It's precisely the idea of considering "Greater China" as neutral that is de facto siding with the PRC.
No, this is Apple being confident that the USA will drop Taiwan and that this and that siding with China is the "responsible" thing to do.
Last October, 17 Office Management Specialists (OMSs) from posts across broader China convened at U.S. Consulate General Shanghai for the third annual Greater China Office Management Specialist Workshop. Participants included OMSs from Embassy Beijing and consulates across mainland China, as well as colleagues from Consulate General Hong Kong and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Taipei. The workshop’s theme, Reenergizing Your Why, provided participants with a forum to discuss common goals, motivations, challenges and benefits of their career paths.
There are approximately 50 Protestant denominations, including Anglican, Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church of Christ in China, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, and Seventh-day Adventists. The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong recognizes the pope and maintains links to the Vatican; the Bishop of Hong Kong and his retired predecessor are the only Catholic cardinals in greater China.
The ROC also believes in one china, including one day resuming sovereignty of the mainland, no? I don't see any obvious indicator of the concept as siding with the PRC.
> The ROC also believes in one china, including one day resuming sovereignty of the mainland, no?
The ROC isn't a one-party state like the PRC and different parties in Taiwan have different positions on that. The KMT and other parties generally aligned with it mostly favor unification under the ROC (or a one-country, two-systems end state), the DPP and parties aligned with it tend to favor both Taiwanese nationalism and independent statehood. The DPP currently holds the Presidency and the KMT has the larges legislative bloc, so...?
I'd rather we drop the pretense or expectations that corporations have anything but one goal. That will help us direct our energy to where it can actually be productive.
If the marketplace demands better corporate stewardship, and people vote with their wallet, and companies decides to change then great, but the corporate ship is only ever getting steered in one direction and it's not for noble reasons.
Because what you consider moral issues are actually just issue prominent in media.
And yes, I want my business to be prudent in earning money. Doing harm to people is not effective or prudent. Getting in political name callings is also not prudent.
Nothing pro war about it. Read history books instead of making assumptions. It is referring to the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau as a whole. It became popular with the rise of China. Try any business newspaper in the 90s. It is less relevant now as Hong Kong and Macau are now part of China.
It isn’t unlike Benelux, or Scandinavia, or Iberian, or Balkan, or Gulf countries.
When was the last time Greater Italy being used? Right.
From the book “The Concept of “Greater China”: Themes, Variations and Reservation”:
The world is suddenly talking about the emergence of “Greater China.” The term has appeared in the headlines of major newspapers and magazines, has been the topic of conferences sponsored by prominent think-tanks, and is now the theme of a special issue of the world's leading journal of Chinese affairs. It thus joins other phrases – “the new world order,” “the end of history,” “the Pacific Century” and the “clash of civilizations” – as part of the trendiest vocabulary used in discussions of contemporary global affairs.
Yeah I think you may have understood my point. If you don't like Greater Italy, replace it with Greater Netherlands, it's much more relevant today.
EDIT: it would be cool if you add "EDIT" when editing a comment or maybe think for moment before posting so that I don't reply to a different comment. Every time I reload the page I see a different comment, it's pretty funny honestly.
And I don’t understand your point. Greater China continues to be used today, like it’s been in the last 30 years. Who get to decide it’s relevant or not? UN?
My point is very simple: "Greater Nation" has been used countless times throughout history to describe irredentist movements. Given the political status between the PCR and the ROC, it's very reasonable to think that the term has negative connotations.
GP called the term “pro war”. That’s what I object. I thought it was very clear?
As for “negative connotations”, you are entitled to your opinion, but that isn’t commonly shared, judging from how often it’s being used. I’m sure there are people in Finland who don’t like being called Scandinavian, given their distinct culture and language compared to other Scandinavian countries. That doesn’t mean it is unreasonable for someone to call them that.
If you're referring to Pan-Scandinavism, there was never a serious proposal to conquer Finland. In fact, the opposite is true: Sweden sent soldiers to help Finland during World Wars I and II, making no attempt to annex the country. I have no idea how "Scandinavia" could possibly be compared to the many "Greater Nation" out there. Maybe you should take your own advice and read some history books as your example is fundamentally different.
The CCP has Apple hostage. Their products are (effectively) all made there.
China has more control over Apple than the US does, at present. They are, of course, in crash override priority mode trying to change that, but nowhere else on earth can manufacture (on average) 20,000 iPhones per hour, 24/7/365. (TBH it’s probably closer to 50k per hour in the months up to release day.)
The iPhone is a Chinese product, made by tens of thousands of Chinese people, on machines in China, subject to Chinese jurisdiction and law. That’s an uncomfortable fact for the US economy.
If Apple doesn’t do exactly what China wants them to do, the iPhone does not exist, and Apple as we know it today does not exist.
US government has FAR more control over Apple as a company. China only has control of the Chinese operations. The president is personally beefing with companies and buying stakes in them. The tariffs alone could have severely hurt Apple, but Apple bent over backwards to appease the president. The US government can simply request an app be removed and Apple and Google will do it worldwide.
China does not have that power over Apple. China can threaten Apple but they have already diversified their manufacturing to other countries so China does not have a strangle hold on the supply line.
Apple has to comply by Mainland rules. In addition to the supplychain that is slowly getting diversified, all Mainland customer data is handled by a co-owned (not sure %, or if it is 100% outsourced) datacenter in Guizhou.
"Pro-war" seems like an odd assertion here. They're recognizing the status quo in a reasonably neutral way, which seems anti-war to me.
It seems like you're advocating for Western powers to take a position, using either soft or hard power, on a war that already ended many decades ago. Sounds quite a bit like imperialism to me, and pretty far from being anti-war.
An anti-war position, at least from the perspective of a Westerner and Western companies, is more like, you guys lost, suck it up and stop asking us to intervene on your behalf.
Push back, as in this thread, can change which hierarchies are accepted and which aren't.
In particular, the use of "Greater China" normalizes corporate acquiescence to Beijing's explicitly revisionist policy preferences.
Taiwan is an independent nation. It isn't lost. And all free nations should intervene whenever the right to self-determination of another is threatened.
They've been using this term for years. It's nothing new and nothing unique to Apple.
Don't forget that the "we are the only legitimate Chinese government and we own it all" attitude is shared by both Chinese governments. The PRC claims Taiwan, but Taiwan claims all of China as well.
It is unfortunate that iPhones cannot be made anywhere else in the world. No other country has the right tooling, workforce, or skill set, at that volume.
China made a strategic decision to go deep there, and the rest of the world decided it was post-industrial
of the 193 members of the UN, only 12 (6%) recognize Taiwan as a country.
the Kuomintang lost the war. its effectively the same as if the confederacy retreated to the Florida keys and China maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity.
Why is UN recognition the metric here and not, like, idk the fact that Taiwan is a liberal democracy with the rule of law and freedom of speech and not a hypercapitalist dictatorship that disappears dissidents?
Neither are the real metric here. Taiwan is a US ally, China (mainland) is not, this is a US board. The reasoning goes backwards from that point.[1]
You have to be on the level of Israel’s aggression to lose the “liberal democracy” cover that most US allies get (or similar great titles).
[1] Enough to start a subthread with a very confident and polemic phrasing anyway. There are plenty who disagree with the OP here. I’m not saying that this place is an echo chamber on this point at all.
Your comment is the actual prowar propaganda though in my europeean eyes.
The US is worse than China in many aspects, from forever wars to climate over colonialism to fascism and support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide on over a hundred thousand civilians, - where is China geonociding hundreds a week right now? Yeah nowhere, but the US is doing that every decade.
Incredible to see this angle that 'the good guys' are bowing down to bad China in this context when you have so much poverty, political repression and lack of gay rights, abortion etc in many right wing states to straight up hyper right wing terrorism targeting vulnerable populations every year.
I feel like in geo-politics. No country can be good.
Personally, I feel like america still has (had) hope with zohran mamdani but after the recent american shutdown, I would consider democratic party to be an extension of republican party or not doing anything radical except bernie,aoc, zohran and some other people.
I feel like America could have a hope to swing whereas china doesn't imo.
although, I feel like what is happening is that people made (short term?) decisions earlier generations earlier which lead us to where we are today where any country over-all needs a radical change as both europe and america and a lot of other countries need to radicalize what they are doing to give hope to the youngsters
Personally I feel like we shouldn't care much about US or chinese products but rather the ideologies of the product creators if we are worried about things and I think this is one of the reasons I love open source so much.
Hope to swing? The US has killed many more people in wars of conquest than China in the last 50 years. So i really see both as problematic but the US is still much more violent geopolitically. Ie worse in my eyes, Israels latest genocide being a creszendo on an already horrible track record.
>The US is worse than China in many aspects, from forever wars to climate over colonialism to fascism and support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide on over a hundred thousand civilians.
My man, the US and China are more or less the exact same here with the exception of forever wars.
Climate? China pollutes like crazy, and so does the US.
Colonialism? Maybe not in the same vein but China does engage in actions to other nations, such as Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that could be classified as colonialism.
Fascism? Well yeah both countries are pretty much openly fascist right now.
Support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide of over a hundred thousand people? Yeah the US and China are both complicit there. In fact, in China, you're speaking about the regime itself, with context to the ongoing genocide of Uyghur people.
Yes its imperial logic so why arent you saying that to OP's bizzare US = peace and gay rights comment?
And the Uyghur repression is no genocide compared to Palestine thats complete US misinformation and frankly a sinister comparison - the US is much much more violent, again look at Palestine, before that literally 30+ wars for resources and markets with millions of civilians dead.
Im not naive about China but this US = beacon of human rights angle is frankly gross to me.
China has many problems but americans are literally worse and you wanting to boycut due to human rights, is this a joke?
How does that excuse China's pollution? They still chose to do that, no one forced them to. I do agree that other countries are guilty of China's pollution as well, but that certainly does not excuse China choice to do that pollution laundering for them.
It doesn’t. The right answer is that both China and the West suck and should have worked together to reduce consumption rather than accept the waste-surveillance capitalism system they both accelerated from 1970-present
It’s like trying to reduce prostitution, when society is demanding more sex, do you jail the prostitutes or the tricks?
If there’s no demand for sex workers then there’s no sex worker market. However if nobody is struggling to survive, then theres no supply.
You need to end the desire for consumption in order to eliminate authoritarianism
Right. So what was your point when you replied to a commenter saying the US and China are equally bad, pollution wise, with
> No the chinese people, most of whom do not have a ICE car, do not produce those carbon numbers
That sounds to me like you're saying that China is not as bad as the US, because the pollution in China comes in some part from laundered pollution from the US. If that's not the case, could you explain what you meant?
I really don't see that as a fair comparison. OP wasn't equating individual citizens, they were equating the nations as a whole. And China, as a state, definitely isn't akin to a slave being forced to do this dirty work.
Yeah i've looked into it and its bad still much much less violent than the over 100.000 civilians, kids and mothers killed in Palestine so whats up with this weird focus when you guys are littersally killing muslims by the thousands every other year with no remorse?
Do you condemn Israel? And if not - then what even is this concern of yours? Both are bad but Israel is much worse according to litterally all major NGOs.
Seriously do you condemn US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza too?
I didn't condemn or approve of anyone, I just answered your question. You're making a lot of assumptions.
You're focussing exclusively on violence. If Israel adopted China's Xinjiang methods they would:
1. Take direct administrative control over Gaza
2. Place any man even remotely linked to violence or Islam in a prison camp and use them as prison labour to produce products
3. Monitor all women and prevent them from having births
But, violence would go down. In Xinjiang the Muslim population is shrinking as the authorities prevent reproduction.
Following your logic you are saying you would find this less objectionable. Is that actually the case? I suspect not.
I write this to hopefully expand your view that more than one situation can be objectionable, that not everyone is American or Israeli and it is possible to analyze a situation on its own merits and say "huh that's bad".
China goes to great lengths to minimize actual violence, which minimizes attention, which lets them focus on shrinking the population of Uighurs. I doubt Israel could actually do this in Gaza, but I think it would be worse if they did.
So you don't condemn israels ethnic cleansing but are very worried about muslim minorities in China that are repressed?
I am totally on board condemning China, but you aren't with Israel and that says it all - and i don't believe you actually are concerned about this muslim minority if you aren't at least as horrified by Israeli actual warcrimes and an ongoing genocide.
They already monitor everyone, they already control all markets they dont just prevent births they kill kids in an ethnic cleansing according to experts at the ICC, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders and many others.
Again, unfathomable to me that you can list "they prevent births" as worse than murdering over 40.000 kids in a few years in Gaza and 100.000 civilians according to the newest numbers - that's by all measures worse than what China's doing and why every respectable NGO and expert groups are talking about Israel and not the Uyghurs at the moment.
Why are you not condemning Israels/US ethnic cleansing when i'm condemning chinas actions on multiple fronts?
Looks like you almost have this habit of explaining/talking about things 'as a European', particularly when bringing up USA in the context of international relations like now...
I guess it's OK — I'm European too, for example — but it does seem like you're doing it to imply that your views are somehow (at least relatively more) popular among, or representative of, well, Europeans. But now that we're making such massive generalisations, I'd claim that well-educated English-speaking Europeans are often likelier to be more familiar with the views and internal debates among Americans than those of many of their fellow Europeans, and that you're probably no exception.
As for your comment, had you not addressed it to 'you Americans', I'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a pretty standard-issue American Left (or 'Progressive') rant, perhaps somewhere from the younger and more identitarian part of that crowd, for example (despite some of the quasi-tankie undertones). While I'll admit that scoffing at things like pro-life policies and/or American poverty is certainly easier and more common throughout the political spectra in (Western) Europe, I'd say your cringe-inducing bothsidesism with USA and China falls closer to the crackpot left camp in Europe as well.
Europe contains multitudes, and undoubtedly for some but not all, up until now at least, it has been a bit too easy to comfortably observe and judge things for so long as a world-political bystander from under the US nuclear umbrella, typically further from the Russian border too — whether you were an insular French with casual contempt for all things 'Yankee', a German atomic-phobic pacifist (or worse, a far-right, Pro-Putin knuckle dragger) from that 'European powerhouse' heated with Russian non-renewables, or even a Swede from the world's leading moral superpower, or something like that, anyway... ;)
I sometimes wonder what the comments will look like here when China invades/blockades Taiwan, and I suspect they will look a lot like this. Lots of US whataboutism. Note that the OP doesn’t mention the US at all.
Objects have to earn the right to exist. We make so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary. Stuff that will soon be cluttering your home and then end up in a landfill.
This is not a product that deserves to exist. It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
What makes this particularly objectionable is that it is from a design house that usually makes quality garments. And then they stoop to making this crap, slapping their designer label on it and then exploit ghastly people who don't know any better to waste tons of money on it.
This is pissing on Issey Miyake's grave.
It's November, but I still had to make sure the date on the page wasn't April 1st.
Exactly my reaction. I hate this. I hate that someone thought of it and that it exists. I have no idea if it will sell, but I was like "no way, that cannot be a real launch from Apple"
Oh, it will sell! For the very reason it's $230 (remember the "I am Rich" app of olden days?).
I remember.
It's definitely a signal
Here there be sharks...
Like anything newly launched, this is a test product. Just be happy that Apple is keeping innovation and experimentation alive.
Yes, it’s a financial engineering and pricing test product.
I would much prefer them to test the technical product.
Or at least fix Xcode or SwiftUI bugs.
Okay, guess I can buy a sock.
If this is a "test product" from a multi-trillion dollar business, the American economy is perma-fucked.
I came here to say, how I wish it was an article from The Onion.
Im not sure if you have spent any time in Asia but they love to have little throwaway bags for their to go drinks so they stay cold - and they hang in the same way. This looks like the exact same thing but pop an iphone in it.
Wild waste of materials and design.
What I am curious about is whether women in France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S (where this product is going to be launched) don't use hand-bags? If not, do they hold the phones in their hands or keep it in their pockets? In India or the middle-east, I've never seen women carry their phones in anything but their hand-bags / clutches.
Parisian pickpockets gonna salivate over this.
Had the same thought too - it's like an advertisement to phone thieves, "Look I have an iPhone!".
Also, "look I have disposable income to buy unwanted goods". Like painting a large bullseye on your back.
The announcement has a photo of this tied to a handbag.
Yes, you're right. People in Asia do like to use small bags for their phones or lipsticks. But those little bags are usually really cute or nicely designed, not like this one. Collaborate with Issey Miyake? Seriously?
Are you familiar with Miyake's work? He did a lot of innovative design with synthetics, including the entire Pleats Please line.
To some degree, but junk is junk even if it says Issey Miyake on it. But at the price they are asking I'd insist on higher quality materials. Not this junk.
It is like those horrible Louis Vuitton plastic bags. Yes they are expensive and probably better made than most plastic bags, but they are mass produced plastic bags. You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.
(The only reason I know about Issey Miyake is because years ago I happened to buy a couple of handmade linen suits while visiting Japan. And only later discovered that these suits were "a big deal" when some fashion people I shared an office with saw me wear them as "casual office clothes". To me they were comfortable linen suits that were obviously hand dyed. And they weren't even that expensive)
> You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.
You're making the subjective value judgement that a synthetic material is "junk", without qualifying it as such. A textile that is less expensive to manufacture, or is synthetic, does not automatically qualify as "junk". Look at technical fabrics such as GoreTex as a highly functional example, or any avant-garde techwear from brands like ACRONYM which usually last quite a long time and have some artistic merit within the fashion world.
It's OK to not like synthetic materials. It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design.
Gore Tex is a good example of a material that, on its own, doesn't actually work as well as the marketing would have you believe. For instance it stops breathing when it gets wet. And then the whole rationale is gone. It means your perspiration condenses on the inside and then you become wet and cold. Most gore-tex jackets will not even work for my bicycle commute since it rains all the time here. Much less riding my bike in the forests or mountains.
Technical garments are not just down to what materials are used, but how the garment is designed to manage moisture and heat, and how you combine it with other garments and reconfigure it as needed.
I spend a lot of time outside in anything from heavy rain to -25C cold. Often in stormy conditions. I often engage in prolonged physical activity, which means I perspirate a lot. Often followed by rests. If you do not dress properly, so you can manage moisture and heat, best case is that your jacket will start to smell like a homeless dog. Worst case, you freeze to death (yes, that happens when tourists don't know how clothes work).
If there is any miracle material it is wool. No synthetic material even comes close. But then again, that's not an outer layer. It's what you wear for the inner and middle layers. And it does that job unreasonably well.
Couldn't agree more about Gore tex. It's mostly marketing genius. On the surface it does what it says, in practice it won't work as you expect it. In the end it's kind of useless, especially considering the price. But the marketing is so well done, that people swear by it, even though for the supposed purpose of the garment, there are far better and cheaper solutions.
It’s much more efficient to wear the densest layers closer to your body, because that’s less volume to keep warm. Most people wear wool, synthetic, or a down coat underneath the goretex.
Try doing the opposite and see it how it works. Puffy outside the goretex. This only works on very cold weather. If it’s raining it’s too warm.
Mark Twight tried to popularize this idea but it never gained popularity despite how efficient it is
Perhaps it works if you are not physically active. But it is quite the opposite of what people do in cold regions.
The inner layers are usually the most important ones. The inner layer needs to do two things: transport moisture away from the skin and maintain a continuous layer of air close to the skin for insulation. It also needs to reduce skin contact points if you perspirate a lot.
Wearing dense layers close to your body would interfere with moisture management and heat distribution.
If you look at how Norwegian soldiers have dressed for winter exercises over the last 100 or so years, the inner layers will usually be a string/mesh undergarment. This holds a continuous layer of still air against the skin while minimizing fabric contact points. The holes allow sweat vapor to escape to the next layer, which then handles the transport of moisture. The second layer is usually a somewhat dense weave, relatively thin wool layer. Synthetics lose their insulating ability when they get wet/moist. Followed by a looser knit, thicker wool sweater. With a wind- and water proof uniform jacket as the outermost layer. This essentially creates two layers of air separated by a moisture transport layer.
The mesh garments were traditionally made of cotton, which is usually not a material you want next to skin, but it works in mesh form. Non-mesh cotton garments are terrible next to your skin because they get wet and then lose their insulating properties and stick to skin drawing off heat. If you sweat and then keep still for a while you will get cold and it feels wet and miserable. Wool doesn't have this problem as it keeps insulating even when wet. (Roughly the same cotton mesh garment, from the same manufacturer, that I wore in the military, was also worn by Tenzing and Hillary during their ascent to Mt. Everest in 1953).
You can get pretty good mesh garments today made from wool that also cover your arms. This is kind of the secret trick to staying warm and dry in polar conditions.
The configuration I wear most days is just light, thin, loose merino wool inner layer, thin, dense wool second layer and then a hard-shell. I started wearing this because I commute to work on my bike all year round, and I needed something that manages moisture, keeps me warm and doesn't smell. When it gets colder I add a cotton shirt or a loose knit sweater.
If it gets really cold (below -25) I usually drop the third layer and wear a down jacket (the kind climbers use on expeditions), but this has no vents so it doesn't work if it is warmer than -25C -- it gets too hot. If it drops below -30C I add a wool sweater. (The down jacket is overkill for where I live, so I use it perhaps 2-3 times per year)
I couldn’t get past your first sentence. The person that promoting dense-first layers is probably the most influential and famous Alpinist ice/rock/mountain climbers to have ever lived. The man is known for doing his research.
And yet, this isn’t what what people in polar regions do. Nor is it how professionals are taught to dress in cold climates.
Reinhold Messner believes in yetis. Linus Pauling thought you could cure a cold with vitamin C and shot coffee up his ass. Clever people believe in dumb shit too sometimes.
Perhaps you should read the manual for how armies that operate polar regions dress? Or perhaps get some first hand experience before you insist?
Physics is not on your side. You need more energy to heat up a larger thermal mass. Dense layers closer to the bodies core reduces the total volume.
I don't think you have chosen the correct physical model for insulation. Insulation is about thermal resistance, not minimizing mass.
Your body is continuously producing heat. What matters for staying warm is how fast you lose that heat, not how much “extra fabric” you have to warm up. The thermal mass of clothing is tiny compared to the thermal mass of your body so it isn't numerically relevant. The limiting factor is heat loss to the environment.
In clothing insulation comes from dead air space and preventing convection and conduction. Down jackets are warm because they trap a large amount of air in place and create a very gradual temperature gradient. That is, it spreads the temperature drop out over a thick, fluffy layer, so the inner surface stays close to skin temperature and the outer surface closer to ambient. The result is a much lower heat flux for the same inside–outside temperature difference. (A better mental model of this is that you have two boundary layers separated by a gradient that keeps ΔT low at each boundary layer. We know that heat flux is linearly proportional to ΔT)
Of course, clothing adds another dimension of complexity that is critical for comfort and survival: it has to deal with how your body actively regulates temperature: by perspiration. That is: you have to manage moisture too. And quite possibly a lot of it if you are active.
Wet fabric has higher thermal conductivity. Worse still, if it is dense and gets stuck to your skin you get very efficient direct heat transfer. The thing we want to avoid.
Think about why it is important to have a good thermal paste layer between CPU and heatsink. Now imagine you place the heatsink on a 0.1mm layer of aerogel. Do you think the latter configuration will cool the CPU efficiently?
When metabolic heat production drops that wet, conductive layer becomes a heat sink and you chill rapidly. In cold environments this can happen fast and be lethal.
I have a long-sleeved polypropylene shirt from the 1980s that I still wear for hiking. It's not scratchy, never smells, keeps me warm, dries quick. It was probably made by a Switzerland company, they knew how to make good quality clothing.
GoreTex is highly functional but it doesn't last long & it isn't repairable. These are trade-offs that may be worthwhile for certain innovative, highly-functional use-cases (like water proofing) but are very rarely worthwhile for average use-cases.
With very few exceptions, the majority of synthetic materials commonly used in clothing come with these trade-offs. "Junk" being a slang term for things that get thrown away seems appropriate in this case (short-lived, non-repairable material).
> have some artistic merit within the fashion world
> It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design
While I do feel strongly that art for its own sake is oft undervalued & has enormous merit, this is ultimately off-topic in a thread that kicked off on the topic of quality, function & the (undeniable) fact that we produce too many things. These are separate qualifiers to "artistic merit".
Fashion being ephemeral is in fact the point here (it should be less ephemeral, independent of what your views on art are).
GoreTex is a bad example - it's gonna delaminate after a year or so of heavy use and is pretty much impossible to repair after that. Which also undercuts ACRONYM's messaging about their GoreTex products being some kind of like, buy-it-for-life rainjacket.
Polyester is plastic. I assume quality would be something that doesn't graft to your skin in a fire.
Are you commonly burned in a fire?
Issey Miyake's "Pleats Please" line has always been made out of synthetics. It was an intentional choice due to the character of polyester as a fabric, like it's ability to hold the pleats while still being machine washable.
https://asufidmmuseum.asu.edu/learn/articles/issey-miyake-pl...
Synthetic fabrics are perfectly capable of being high quality. Buzz Rickson aren't making their MA-1s out of junk.
The MA-1 "works" under a relatively narrow set of conditions that I don't see most days. I tried. It is a miserable garment for how and where I live.
I'm not saying synthetic materials are always bad. I own a few jackets in synthetic materials that are good, but I have gone through a lot that are rubbish. For jackets it is more about the technical design than the exact material. I have had lots of expensive jackets that just don't work for my use cases. And a few that do. It is trial and error since I have no idea why some jackets just don't work.
I live in a place where it rains heavily, and in the winter it is often cold, and I spend a lot of time outside being physically active. This means that the challenge is to find jackets that can deal with heavy rain, cold, physical abrasion, and perhaps most important of all: moisture management.
If you spend a lot of time being physically active outside in all kinds of bad weather, you tend to start caring a lot about what materials you wear. Best case for sub-par garments: they start to smell. Worst case: you freeze because your clothes can't manage moisture.
But for what is more or less a glorified sock, at that price I am not buying a piece of plastic. I'd expect more pleasant natural materials.
What do you think of the new futurelite material from The Northface? I think it is great, I love it for both my winter jackets and my light hoodies.
I haven't tried it so I wouldn't know. But I'll have a look. Thanks for the tip!
As I mentioned, I've gone through a lot of jackets in order to try to find a model that consistently works and it is slightly baffling. I have a long discontinued 20 year old Bergans (https://www.bergans.com/) jacket in a horrific puke green color that works really well, but it is ugly as sin. (It is almost painful to look at :-))
It is one of the few jackets I own that combine good resistance to heavy rain with an ability to vent moisture really well, so it doesn't get clammy. It also traps heat really well so I have worn it in ~ -15C with just two relatively thin merino wool layers. Most of the other jackets I've tried tend to build up condensation when I ride in heavy rain. Which is pretty common weather where I live.
Synthetic materials vary by many orders of magnitude in quality depending on the purity, molecular weights, antioxidant packages, processing conditions, etc
There is a difference between a bad material, and a good material chosen for the wrong task.
MA-1s are inner lined with a 100% cotton/wool mix. The outer is nylon because synthetic fabrics are generally good for waterproofing (waterproofing is always a trade-off of quality over function) & also just because bombers are generally nylon, but a big part of their construction is using quality non-synthetic fabrics wherever they can to ensure overall quality.
I think nylon was probably also chosen for the MA-1 because of it's light weight and flexibility over the leather jackets it replaced for pilots.
Except microplastics rub off and penetrate the skin barrier.
Hadn't heard Issey Miyake mentioned in over a decade. He was an important designer in the 1980s, and died in 2022. Known for running completed garments through a pleating machine.
Looking at that thing, the overall impression is "a phone so big and heavy it needs its own shoulder bag?"
What do you mean? Nylon and polyester can be extremely durable, that’s always been their appeal. A knitted pocket is very likely to be a BIFL item even moreso than typical cotton or wool fabrics unless they’re specifically designed to be hard wearing, like canvas. That and the fact that it’s designed to fit any size and model of phone means it’s likely to be significantly less wasteful than putting your phone in a high end leather case that will age out when you upgrade.
Apple is clearly trying to experiment with more textile elements on its products, like with the Apple Watch band and FineWoven/tech woven cases to move away from using environmentally damaging leather and cheap feeling silicon. Stuff like this, sold in small lots, is how you test out whether people are into it before trying to work it into a product meant to sell to hundreds of millions of people.
There are at least two graves I can think of that this is pissing on.
> It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
The primary use case is to show off that you can afford useless pretentious crap. It fulfils this role perfectly well.
When you put it like that I can find no fault with your argument :-)
> Objects have to earn the right to exist.
Yes, and that is what a free market is for
I don’t understand this either but you and I are obviously not the target market
I'd object to the notion of a free market. Free and fair markets don't actually exist in the way we like to think. Pretty much every kind of business I've been involved in has different strata of rules for different players.
Try to set up a HFT business. Or try to do anything interesting in telecom. Once you have cleared the capital and regulatory hurdles what kills you is that you need special relationships.
In this case, I doubt this product would become a success without the two brand names behind it, and completely astronomical amounts of financial might. They will sell literal tons of these even if people ultimately find out that they are junk. On its own, this is a bargain bin-liner.
You hate on Louis Vuitton but have you ever tried one? Have you looked at all the designs they have? I think LV is better than Hermes bags with that horrendous closure they have on the Birkin and other bags. LV has cool colorful designs also in their ready to wear. You might object to the branding but the bags work very well and are designed well in terms of how easy it is to get stuff in and out and if you don't throw it around the canvas can last a long time. Hermes might have nice Pogo leather and so on but that doesn't mean that closure is worth the hassle IMO.
Also IDK what to think about the iPhone Pocket. It LOOKS like a hassle to get stuff in and out of it but if they have somehow managed to make it easy, maybe it's well designed. If not then I agree with you the product is probably garbage.
They hate on Louis Vuitton plastic bags, not Louis Vuitton in general, and they are entirely right to do so. It's the same with their perfumes, keychains, wallets and most other small accessories. All products which are far too expensive for what they are but remain reachable by the average person to capitalise on people who want the brand but can't afford the "real" products.
Buying entry level products from luxury brands is hard to justify. At their price point, you can generally get a far better equivalent product from a brand with less appeal. It's especially true with Louis Vuitton where the brand's cachet has been severely diluted by how many people own their bags.
Other random LV fact: Louis Vuitton was a lock maker, and the locks he made were advertised as “unpickable” (more advertising than reality, sadly.) He even had Houdini try to pick one. No, this has nothing to do with TFA, but I like locks.
Undoubtedly, Youtube/Tik-tok's "The Lock-Picking Lawyer" would make short shrift of their padlocks.
>It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%))
Polyamids like Nylon are some of the highest quality and most durable fabrics in the world, with some of the best material characteristics fabrics can have.
Given the constraints of the product and looking at it from an engineering standpoint, these are the materials you want for a product like this. Flexible, durable and resistant to weather. I do not see what other materials you would use to achieve a better quality product.
That said, it is of course a stupid fashion accessories. The world is full of them.
I've never seen a bag similar to this so from that perspective it's a bit innovative.
I am so very very far from the target market here though.
Reminds me of waterproof phone pouches.
> We BUY so much stuff. Most of it unnecessary.
Fixed it.
You're right, of course, but I don't think blame rests solely on the individual consumer here... I guess it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, wherein Apple makes $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because they know people will line up to buy it, and people will line up to buy $200 knitted iPhone scrotes because Apple made them.
And people have brand loyalty to Apple stuff because quality, or design, or something... but for a product like this, which to me is prima facie a ridiculous, impractical, high-priced, fast-fashion item, you know that the marketers are cashing in on that brand loyalty almost exclusively (in the absence of any intrinsic value).
Half-baked thoughts, I'm sure people have written properly about this. But the conclusion I leap to is that marketing people are the great Satan here. Fuck those guys.
Pretty sure the profit margin for these bags is 10x at least. Way better (and simpler) that dealing with expensive computer/phone hardware and it supply chain, even if their pricing is ridiculously expensive.
Marketing guys just know and exploit a very well known human weakness. It's annoying because it's Apple, but everyone has been doing this forever.
Non-standardized phone chargers? USB-C and its patent hell? HDMI and its licensing? There's plenty of examples for creating wasteful items without them being fashion ones.
Oh it is going to be a more than 10x profit.
The materials themselves probably cost no more than a few tens of cents, so all the cost is going to be the in the manufacturing process. The knitting pattern does look somewhat advanced, so I guess it would require a relatively high spec knitting machine. I suspect what would drive up cost is a combination of throughput and somewhat that you need an expensive knitting machine. Since this is a high volume item that will probably bring down the average cost by quite a bit.
I would guess somewhere in the region of $2 to $5 per pocket to mass produce these? Anyone have a more qualified guess?
This is the perfect example of a product nobody asked for, but someone brilliantly decided to create waste with.
The tech industry is basically entirely run on Advertising. Google, Facebook, even Apple owe a huge chunk of their revenue to Ads.
Clearly Ads work. You cannot blame the individual who has been brainwashed, addicted to buying things, by the hyper-capitalist advertising mega-monopolies around us. They are victims too.
I don't disagree and that's factually correct. I'm not sure about calling someone who can spend $200 in an iPhone bag a victim, though.
Plus that kind of wasteful consumerism is only seen in certain developed countries in the world, while the brainwashing happens globally. So corporations are evil but a little individual accountability wouldn't harm.
Beatifully said and you are right. I will get mine on Temu.
and then exploit ghastly people who don't know any better to waste tons of money on it.
It's attempting to be a Veblen Good.
First thing I my mind went to was the iPod Socks. I still have my old ipods in them... Only me? Ok :|
To be fair a lot of garments from Issey Miyake are made from similar material.
I see you haven't seen designer collabs from ikea and target then.
But… but… it’s a 3D-knitted construction!
None of that matters, Apple drones will buy it.
>It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
It solves the problem of "how do I flaunt the fact I carry an iPhone to everyone around me"
It's a conversation piece and way to flaunt your wealth and status by uncovering a iPhone 17 Pro Max S+ Duo XTX from it when asked.
> It is not made from quality materials ( Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)). It is not innovative. It is questionable whether it solves its primary use case particularly well.
It is impossible for Apple to innovate. It's way too much work to compete with BYD/Tesla on real things like Electric Cars.
It's a LOT easier just to extract money from idiots who pay top dollar for 'fashion'. They will market this as the Balenciaga of phone bags, to differentiate it from the $2 phone bags that will appear on Temu next week (or they are already there; Apple is slowly catching up after a few years).
I got excited for a moment, thought it was a new line of iPhone Mini -- you know, the actual handheld iPhones. I still use my 13 Mini.
This was the biggest letdown of clicking a link since my last Rickroll in the early 2000's
Me too! I thought it was an announcement for an iPhone that actually fit in your pocket! The phones are too damned big!
No No, your pockets are too small
-Apple
(See "you're holding it wrong" for an historical reference)
Officially we couldn't expect a non-Apple pocket to be compatible with an Apple phone.
I had the same excitement: "A pocket sized iPhone!? Yes!"
Has there even been a decently-sized phone since the Sony Compacts? And the iPhone minis of course.
Flips? I don’t feel like buying one but those look like they fit pockets easily.
They fit your pockets, but they're just as bad in the hand as any large phone is.
They're horrendously expensive and un-repairable. That rules it out for me, personally.
Exactly what I thought!
And instead of making a practical phone that would fit my pocket, we get this stupid, overpriced sock. What a joke.
It's also only compatible with iPhone 8 and above, according to the product page.
I'm replying to this on a 16 Pro (not Max) and it's a perfectly portable size imo
The Maxes are really huge tho
5.3 inch is still much more pocket size than 6.3
I just find it annoying to have larger one in my pocket, 5.3 feels ok or annoys much less.
Even if sometimes I would like to have bit bigger screen - I would rather optimize for comfort while holding phone in pocket’
Same.
Meanwhile this looks like this sort of man-purse that in my corner of the world is referred to as something that loosely translates to "quiver of righteousness".
It’s about 4x the price of a man purse, even a brand-name like Nike.
lol! What corner is that?
Poland and the original wording is "kołczan prawilności".
The "righteousness" in question is a calque from the Russian adjective "правильный", meaning "correct, right, proper" and originates from prison slang. I believe the equivalent English term is "Original Gangster".
The term is of course used in jest in reference to how man-purses, out of all things, are normalized among people associating themselves with street culture, especially that my understanding is that those items were initially just fanny packs worn differently.
Fanny packs: so uncool! Man-purses (or “murses” in my corner of the world): so righteous!
Us iPhone 13 Mini holdouts need to get a little louder. It feels like I find more and more on the internet every month -- I'm pretty sure there're far more than just "dozens of us" who want a reasonably-sized phone.
You too?!? Where can we congregate. Apart from no Live Translation for AirPods 13mini has everything you want. In a tiny form factor.
Indeed, how exciting a phone would be that fit in... you know... bear with me... your pants' pocket you already have... lol
How are they going to sell you $1500 issei MIYAKE pants with custom-sized pockets.
Not just you with this. Was hoping they brought back the mini instead we got iPod sock version 2.
It does initially look like a stupid and Insanely Facile fashion statement, I agree, but I think the iPod sock v2 could be one of the most practical and cleverly designed products Apple has ever released.
It's clearly intended to be used as bait for phone snatchers. That iPhone dangling loose a foot below your arm in free air is just too tempting… no thief can resist. But, then! You start swinging that motherf*cker, and your iPhone becomes a deadly weapon before any potential thief has time to think.
Third parties are sure to fill the market with the most obvious additions, e.g. metal spikes, studs, mildly poison-laced hooks. I assume there will also be training courses scheduled in Apple Stores around the world to clarify this accessory's purpose — not to mention, to teach proper technique and the ethical considerations of when to stop striking with the iPhone Pocket to avoid manslaughter charges in your region.
This is a move by Apple to subtly promote armed, deceptive martial arts as self-defence. To promote the Bushido spirit as a practical coping mechanism in these stressful times, and to empower its users in everyday situations. I for one think it's Insanely Great, and right on that bold frontier of innovation and Thinking Different that Apple built its reputation on.
> phone snatchers
largely don't exist because you can't do anything with the phone without the owner's password to reset it
Nope. See this article in the Economist, "Grand Theft Global".[1]
What happens to the stolen phones? They're shipped in bulk to Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, there to be taken apart, reset, repaired, parts replaced, and resold to people in China who can't afford new phones.
The amusing thing is that the phones were probably originally built in Shenzhen.
[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/08/21/britain-leads-t...
me when i havent left my home country
Let the memes begin!
Me too, I still have my iPhone SE, I was hoping they would bring back some smaller version of the iPhone + Touch ID, I refuse to upgrade just because of the lack of Touch ID
The camera is what finally pried my SE out of my hands, replaced by a 17 Pro. Hate it. Heavy, no more Touch ID, forced into iOS 26. Even the button placement drives me bananas. The amount of times I accidentally take a screenshot because I’m trying to adjust volume...
Still have my SE. When I pick it up, it’s striking just how much better it feels.
I KNOW RIGHT?!? why would they move the left-side buttons down!? (It’s actually probably because otherwise they’d be hard to reach in these huge phones with our tiny hands but boy did the change mess with my muscle memory to find the buttons).
Yeah, I'm on a 3rd gen SE and hoping when it finally dies there will be some sort of similar option.
Not hating on people who do, but I just do not use my phone enough to justify the hassle of having a freakin' cinder block in my pocket.
I’m still on the 1st gen SE from 2016. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the iPhone Pocket was, in fact, not an iPhone that fits in your pocket.
Looking at replacing my SE with a keitai supplemented with an Android emulator
That's some impressive battery longevity.
It’s totally shot lol. I’ve had the battery replaced it once already, and frankly it didn’t make too much of a difference. The battery always shows 1%, even if it has 50% charge left in actuality, and I never know when it’s going to die. I don’t really use my phone enough for this to be a problem but it’s annoying. I blame Apple for shipping heavier and heavier versions of iOS that demand more and more power for no discernible reason (Liquid Glass being the latest example).
Out of curiosity, what makes you attached to Touch ID? Face ID is one of my favorite things about my SE to mini upgrade.
I don't want to look at my iPhone every time I need to unlock it, for example, when I am riding my motorbike, the helmet would block my face. This isn't a problem when I use Touch ID because I can use fingerless gloves. Another case is when I need to discreetly check my phone for a moment, like when I am in a meeting or a dinner.
I don't have anything against Face Id, BUT I just don't see why they eliminate the sensor and remove the option.
I used to think the same thing. And ya TouchID is handy sometimes over FaceID. But FaceID overall between the two if one has to choose is superior. If you haven't lived with it daily yet, I wouldn't let that stop you from getting a 13 mini. It helps a lot too with longevity, less to break. You are obviously one of us, those that keep their phones for a very long time. It never needs wiped off, it's incredibly consistent. The durability feature starts to matter when you're using something this many years. Not trying to change your mind, just share a perspective as I do understand where you're coming from for sure. You're not exactly wrong.
Makes sense. Thanks. :)
FaceID works a very few angles with glasses. Won’t work if my glasses have been exposed to rain (it rains like 70% of the year where I live). Struggle to work with face masks and glasses. I have to hold the phone at eye level to unlock it (ie: can’t unlock it discretely). If I’m lying in bed and the phone is lying in front of me, I can just tap to unlock with TouchID, but need to shuffle it around and raise my face for FaceID.
I rolled back to TouchID after a few months, it was intolerable.
I have an impression this gets worse the more correction your glasses have.
Huh. I've got pretty bad eyesight (so I've got noticeable corrective lenses) and I can't say I've noticed any of the issues you mention.
I actually had to disable some FaceID stuff because it was too easy to get to the Home Screen when I wanted to just look at the clock.
Speed of unlock and minimal distraction via one motor memory gesture.
I prefer face id because of speed of unlock via 0 motor memory gestures tbh.
> 0 motor memory gestures
It's worse than motor memory (no thought required) gesture, because it requires a more expensive non-motor-memory physical movement that depends on context of the human. Face ID requires moving and orienting phone close enough for the Face ID sensor to capture a 3D image of face and moving eyes for attention, so it's a function of both phone and human position.
TouchID is context free: grab phone and touch button in fixed position. By the time the phone has turned to facing the user, it is already unlocked.
Touch ID is much faster than Face ID.
I like having a tactile home button.
I love TouchID and can’t stand FaceID. But the home button is terrible. It’s just too hard to be used comfortable, and I end up hang that floating software button instead.
The iPhone hasn’t had a “real” home button since the iPhone 7 in 2016. It’s a static touch pad with haptic feedback.
Haptic feedback is tactile.
Not very. Try touch typing on a touchscreen keyboard with haptic feedback
Haptic and tactile mean related to touch.
I happen to still use an iPhone from 2016 as my daily driver.
My iPhone 13 mini broke last week and I was pleasantly surprised that AppleCare replaced it. "4 more years!"
I got my 13 mini battery replaced the other day, instead of upgrading.
No regrets, and saved $1800.
Why did you save $1800?
A new iPhone is $2000 here, a battery replacement for my current one cost ~$200.
Rather than a standalone phone, I'd love a small companion iPhone that uses the same number liked the Apple watch. Just a pocket-sized phone with a camera and the ability to use iPhone apps that I could take places where I don't want or need the full slab-sized behemoth.
Yeah I was imagining it being more like the "Game Boy Pocket"
I got rickrolled by Claude last year if it makes you feel any better.
Since it’s clearly April 1st inside the reality distortion field, I’m disappointed there are no throwback designs sized for the mini and se at the bottom of the page.
[dead]
Just some trivia (and an aside):
The collaboration is with Issey Miyake. Steve Jobs black turtlenecks was Issey Miyakes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2022/08/10/heres-...
(As an aside, I swear by pants from the Issey Miyake Homme Plissé collection. Since investing in some pairs about 10 years ago, I have hardly worn anything else—no other pants match their comfort. The iPhone Pocket is of course ridiculous anyway.)
The pants cost around 500 bucks? I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I usually buy cheap clothes and mend them and ten years for a pair of pants isn't unusual for me. I probably haven't spent $500 dollars on clothes in a year ever in my entire life (except maybe the year I bought a suit for getting married).
I guess I'm just genuinely curious how you found yourself in the position of even contemplating $500 for pants.
> but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
It depends on how much you earn. I don’t mind spending tens of thousands on Loro Piana cashmere because it’s really nice, but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial.
Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
A few years ago I too would’ve considered $500 for pants to be absurd, at this point I just go to a tailor and pay slightly more than that but save tons of time in the long term and always have perfect fitting pants. The time savings alone are tremendous, after getting a pair fitted properly I can just order new ones whenever I need without having to spend hours going through shops looking for the right pair of pants.
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.
Not that those people aren't here, but I don't think they are the average. I think the average person here is an un/under-employed tech enthusiast who dreams of startups but spends his time here instead of actually working to make it happen. I'm not in that group by the way, I stopped dreaming about startups 10 years ago.
Bored developers are probably another large fraction.
You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech.
I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it.
My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
$1M/year in big tech is like director level? That's not "industry leading" but there aren't that many of them.
Senior manager can hit $1m depending on division and/or a little bit of stock appreciation.
Most people don't work for big tech. Most people who work for big tech don't make so much. And not most plumbers.
Many people under estimate their skills and luck.
> My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.
Are you talking like one-off niche utilities/services that another busy person would happily pay a small amount to solve an immediate problem with and don't necessarily require a ton of backend scaling/maintenance, or subscription type stuff? When you say "many", is that >100?
100+ sites, most took less than a day to build.
So far the most profitable category has been sites which simplify some government processes, e.g. helping you fill a form or even just basically selling a PDF version of a form that a government only provides on paper (with a nice web UI to help you easily fill it).
Little scaling or maintenance, I can host everything on a single dedicated server but have a few so I don’t have to worry about things breaking.
Most of the work is just locating these niches, but honestly it’s easy to find at least one a week even if I’m being lazy. If I was really trying very hard I’d probably be at 1000+ sites right now.
One simple example would be helping people change their name in the UK with a deed poll, which basically amounts to a pdf saying “hey my name is now [enter name here]”. I didn’t do this particular one even though I probably should, I found out about it pretty early on and I was (wrongly!) dissuaded by the competition.
Edit: I specifically should not have been dissuaded by the competition because it’d take an hour or two to build a decent website with the necessary information, and despite the competition there’s a decent chance my page would start ranking pretty well within a couple of years. I’ll probably do this one tomorrow.
Heh, this is a nearly identical idea to what I've been considering trying in the past week, since I have some experience with the PDF spec and Acroforms from my time working on a commercial PDF SDK, and I personally have both struggled and watched people struggle with certain forms. Also seems like a straightforward value prop.
It's nice to hear that it's a viable niche and you're doing well with it! Thanks for sharing
Do it! The best part here is that the work you do will be super reusable and you can easily crank out a new website every day if you feel like it.
It’s important to be patient though, I’ve had websites not earn a cent for the first year and grow to tens of thousands a year with zero intervention from me.
In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin.
I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)
I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
I agree.
It's interesting how in Norway, Sweden, and Finland people's tax returns are public information and it seems to work out just fine.
> you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin
Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?
Thankfully this username was related to a post I created this account to comment on, not me personally :)
Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.
This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit.
Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental.
Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money.
News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism.
FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
Sorry for jumping on this off-topic but I'm a junior engineer hoping to build out some of those small online businesses but I've been a bit unsure of how to go about it. When you say small online businesses do you mean like micro-SaaS kind of things? Or like tangible items? Sorry, just curious :)
Micro-SaaS and digital products. Just figure out a good stack to work with for billing and try to crank out one little thing a week that will be useful to someone.
One of my best projects just sells some pdf files you can submit to the government to achieve a thing you would usually unnecessarily hire a lawyer for.
Another in a similar vein simply offers an easy-to-fill PDF version of a government form that does not exist online, and a nice HTML interface that will help you mostly automatically fill it.
Most of these took less than a day to build and take next to no maintenance. Both of the above earn more than $100k annually.
Just make sure your customers can get in touch with you very easily so you don’t end up with broken websites running on autopilot charging customers for broken stuff, I made that mistake once and ended up having to call a bunch of people to apologise when I discovered what had been happening.
It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago.
Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%)
Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too.
Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
>the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
I've been donating 5-10% of my income to GiveWell[1] and their top charities like GiveDirectly[2] and the Against Malaria Foundation[3] for nearly a decade at this point and I think their track record has been fantastic. Effect altruism only gets shady when longtermists get involved and start speculating on the moral worth of lives in some distant future. If you focus on human beings alive today, effective altruists (and development economists) have done a great job identifying how to make your charitable donations go the farthest in reducing suffering.
[1] https://www.givewell.org/
[2] https://www.givedirectly.org/
[3] https://www.againstmalaria.com/
> I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough?
It's better to think of pretax money as just not existing. The effect of /everyone/ paying taxes is different from the effect of only you paying taxes, since your buying power is somewhat determined by how much you have relative to everyone else.
Well not really, I do my grocery shopping a few minutes away in Monaco where nobody pays taxes. I could move less than a kilometre and save loads of money, despite the outrageous real estate costs.
I just kind of like where I am now so don’t care enough to do that, and at least try to assume that the government does a relatively good job of directing my donation to good causes.
Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on.
Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend...
A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world.
A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful.
It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires.
We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
Whataboutism isn’t going to solve the problem of inequality. Compare me to many others and you can say the same things as I said to GP, however there’s a clear difference that isn’t very subtle between me buying a compact car and GP buying a few pairs of those pants for the same cost.
There’s this argument that people make that goes something like, “the wealthy give their fair share why sour they pay more than a lot income person and get called out for not giving more?” I don’t believe that’s their fair share, is why I ask them to give way more. Do you think a person who starts 100 businesses is working harder than a single mom with a few kids? Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees? These are some of the questions I have they could be relevant.
Like I said, I don’t want to bore anyone, it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia. I’m certainly not going to convince anyone, I’m no good at arguing and my arguments tend to be rough and full of holes, but at least I’m not a millionaire claiming I couldn’t or shouldn’t do more because I’m a special hard worker who deserves every penny.
I’m definitely not working particularly hard, but for what it’s worth my work has saved and will continue to save vast amounts of time for ordinary people. I’m not sure that how hard a person works is the right metric to use.
> it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia
A few years ago I used to live in hostels, sometimes hoping that my (then few) websites would get one or two payments to cover my expenses for the next day so I wouldn’t have to go without food. I’d like to think that I’m not suddenly particularly out of touch.
>my work has saved and will continue to save vast amounts of time for ordinary people.
I have my doubts.
>A few years ago I used to live in hostels, sometimes hoping that my (then few) websites would get one or two payments to cover my expenses for the next day so I wouldn’t have to go without food. I’d like to think that I’m not suddenly particularly out of touch.
Consider that living in hostels and going hungry while maintaining multiple web services is maybe outside of the common man's experience. The priorities of someone stuck in the former situation, and the resources generally available to someone in the latter, usually don't overlap. Grocery shopping in Monaco and calling your taxes "donations" doesn't help matters.
I say this as someone who is, by many measures, out-of-touch himself: weird know weird. A measure of self-consciousness is healthy.
Finally, for efficiency's sake:
>Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money.
You probably misunderstand my perspective on the matter.
>Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much?
Oh, the possibilities are endless (even if the ability to vet is not; so, don't).
Talk to people, find out their pain points, make their day.
OR
Your employees (or the people who automation has saved from being your employee).
OR
Invest in that neighborhood people tell you not to go to.
Just starter suggestions. Note that they're not merely aimed at making you feel good for being a good little philanthropist; in the long run, they make it safer to run your mouth off however you like.
gifting sums of money to someone to solve their problems can significantly complicate relationships, have you tried it? Unless theyre a close intimate that is genuinely able to accept a gift you'll end up with someone who feels indebted to you or the opposite, sees you as a bank account or a fallback for next time they're in need. I've seen it between parents and children, between friends, between strangers, debt complicates things. That's what I like about money, it's used to settle debt so you don't owe anything to anyone.
And people hate it when somebody buys a run down building in a poor neighborhood and "invests" in it because now you're making it unaffordable
Edit: I'll give you "pay your employees more", that's a fairly uncomplicated way to distribute windfall wealth, but now you've just passed the buck to them! ;)
You've gone off on some other tangents.
Most people react poorly to the word hypocrite so ChatGPT found[1] some other choice phrases for people that are well off that complain about the better off.
> Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees?
You appear to live in the US. Ask yourself why those in the US deserve the lions share of world wealth? You seem to be complaining about others while not looking at yourself.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69141a5497948191a2d349e803d343c8
Disclosure: I'm well off for a New Zealander but I'm earning less than the median wage my cohort receives in NYC. Taxes total around 45% of my income.
Edit: 1/3 of US households earn over $150k. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/09/17/one-third-of... - It isn't that uncommon in the US but that amount is rather uncommon in most of the rest of the world. I've just been to New Orleans so I saw one poorer part of the US recently so I have some point of comparison.
Do something about it then. Start by learning to make arguments that aren't so poor you yourself think they're rough and full of holes. Get involved in politics, activism, or campaigning. Vote. Convince others to vote in the same manner you do.
Money is not distributed to whomsoever works the hardest, weird axiom.
A good start might be taking 9500 euros a next time you need pants and donate to a local food bank, then buy 500 euro pants instead!
Maybe you could even retire and open a food bank or a childcare facility locally, which might not be possible for you but who knows.
If I were wealthy i would open a childcare facility that was free for anyone who lives in my town for emergency care 24/7.
This is such a broken take. Jealousy is so ugly. It's like you expect those doing better than you to Harrison Bergeron themselves for your sake.
I'm sorry you're unhappy with your lot in life. Maybe work hard and do better, rather than expecting others to pretend like they're not doing well to appease your feelings.
I’m doing fine, others aren’t doing as well, I guess you see it as jealousy and in fact I’m just disgusted by my fellow man that they can hoard while others starve.
> I’m just disgusted by my fellow man that they can hoard while others starve.
Despite popular belief the economy is not a zero sum game where every dollar someone makes comes at anothers expense. In reality, every dollar a wealthy person spends becomes some other person's livelihood.
It is only unproductive idle capital that should be considered "hoarding", and that IS a bit of a sin in my book. As is wealth invested in rent seeking rather than productive activity.
I'm sitting here trying to figure out why you haven't sent 90% of your income to the poor people in Sudan.
I will when I can afford pants that cost ten grand, for now I just try to do what I can in my local community.
Sure you will, bud. I believe you.
> I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants.
TIL it's unethical to spend a lot of money on clothes. It's not like the sub-thread's OP was spending $10k on a pair of <Insert crazy designer brand name> pants that actually have more form than function. It's a $500 pair of pants. God forbid people spend money on their own preference for their own comfort.
Pragmatically, capitalism brought in more good than bad. Are we arguing that we would've been better off if the world had gone the way of the soviet/pre-80s China way of life?
He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.
The irony is the majority of people on here are the ones screaming "tax the rich" at Mamdani's acceptance speech, but then are the same ones upvoting this guy, his 10M net worth and defending him being rich.
The world is a very confusing place these days.
To make it even more confusing I’m a rich guy cheering for people like Mamdani.
I pay lots of taxes, probably in top 0.1% of the world on a % basis. I don’t have to, I’m not a US or French citizen so I could easily just choose to relocate a couple of minutes away and pay essentially no taxes.
If I did choose to stop paying taxes, I’d do so in order to donate a similar amount of my income to some charity. I’m just not sold on that being so much more efficient to be worth the hassle. OTOH, it’d definitely greatly improve my philanthropy credentials which would very much be worth it to some for purely selfish personal reasons.
> at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial
this is probably just regular bragging, right?
now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops!
thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
I'm just a lowly peon and don't make anywhere near that kind of money, but I do NOT consider that bragging in this context.
"I buy more $10,000 cardigans than you buy Hanes undershirts" is kinda the definition of bragging. What a weird ass corner of the internet where it's just assumed everybody earns $millions. Like, lol, no outside SV, London, and NYC, that's truly exceptional. Like, the average CEO in the US doesn't even clear $1 million (according to Google's AI search results).
> "I buy more $10,000 cardigans than you buy Hanes undershirts" is kinda the definition of bragging.
Except that's not what they wrote / how they framed it.
Perhaps that's just how you perceived it. I think that speaks more about you, than it does about them.
You can construct a philosophical argument that value is all relative without having to casually drop anecdata demonstrating that you personally spend many hundreds of times more on an everyday object than is typical without consideration.
Simmel managed it ok. [1]
[1] https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Simmel/Simmel_1900.html
Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
"I have spent more than $500 dollars on pants before, because I'm lucky to be in a position where for me these things are a matter of taste and whim, rather than budget, and don't really affect my finances too much whether I do or don't buy them."
I don't think I have to explain to you how the gap between what you said, and what I wrote above, is what is causing offense here. You likely deserve 100% of your success, but its just common sense to obscure the specifics of it if you are way out of band in relative terms.
Its like saying: "You know, I never really get ill" at the cancer ward. Sure, its true, but read the room.
Well, after all it’s HN and this is the kind of content that attracts much of the users. I’d certainly be more careful with that wording on a website that caters to a very different audience, but it’s not long ago when indiehackers posts of people “bragging” about their successes were consistently at the top of the front page.
Not convinced I misread the room, especially considering the upvotes.
"you can lead a horse to water"
> don't really affect my finances too much whether I do or don't buy them
Isn't this the same brag as before?
I can't tell how this is different than throwing some numbers in the mix, the person relating their personal experience expresses they have fuck-it-bucks either way
Not naming numbers is precisely the point, because you obfuscate the reality of the size of the gap, which in the end is what everything is about. The gap creates the offense. Everybody knows there's rich people, but being confronted by exactly how rich, to the detail of a number, is the offensive part (if done by that rich person without any clear reason).
I'm not sure why people keep piling up to pretend this is such a normal thing, this is literally why people don't discuss salaries despite it technically being in their own interest: specifics ground the fuzzy notion of inequality into reality like nothing else.
The offensive post inflates the perceived inequality from "500$ pants is too much for pants" to "10k means nothing to me" while my version leaves the specifics outside of the conversation. In my version, the person could put the level of "too expensive for pants" at 1k, still an order of magnitude lower than the offensive post.
Finally, I acknowledge that this is a privileged position to be in explicitly, because that signals that you are aware that this is an exceptional situation to be in (which I'm not sure the offensive post author is aware of, even now).
Thanks for elaborating your perspective, I wouldn't have thought of it that way
You could have omitted "but at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial." and come across more matter-of-fact than brag. IMO.
Sure, you could just omit that entire sentence, no? Retains readability but avoids unnecessary specifics.
I think without that sentence it fails to communicate the absurdity of trying to figure out a generic answer to whether or not something is worth it.
With a total rewrite I could certainly have communicated that point in a much more clinical manner. I just don’t see the point.
No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
Also later tried to briefly establish the fact that had I been offered such products a couple of years ago, I too would’ve found the pricing completely ridiculous.
I've had a similar journey to yours, albeit on a smaller scale. I used to think that buying jeans that cost over $40 was outrageous, but more recently I learned the value of buying nice raw denim jeans that can cost upwards of $300-400. They last way longer and look so cool after years of wear. With a little maintenance they can be permanent additions to your wardrobe.
> I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
Aw, Mark; that's not it, pal. His last paragraph about tailored clothing captures the thought well without throwing around dollar amounts or brand names. But thanks for trying to defend your capitalist masters like a good little right-winger!
Nope, he's stating how he feels about something.
> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.
Are you sure about that?
I would be surprised if it was much above the US salary average, considering the global audience of HN.
I could be totally wrong!
However, at the very least I think we can agree that it’s a site chock-full of aspiring multimillionaires.
In the UK for intance there's only about 20,000 people who earn over a million yearly, and I'd bet a decent amount of those are C-suite or purely through capital gains...
There's some weird online effect where people assume everyone they talk to on the internet makes essentially the same exact amount of money they do.
I've noticed this most in a forum for a country I used to live in where foreigners would come in and post "What's an affordable hotel/restaurant/bar/travel experience".
Uh, I have no idea what "affordable" means to you!?
Occasionally I read the local subreddit /r/monaco, and see posts like “how much should my weekly food budget be?” with no further information included.
In a place where “normal” genuinely ranges between a couple of euros at McDonald’s and 500+ euros a day in fancy restaurants (easily 1000+ if you drink wine) it always feels like a particularly outrageous question.
There are many places in the world where that’s not a very unreasonable question, but this certainly isn’t it.
What is your NW?
Less than $10M with the mortgage, my income will hit $5M this year pre-tax for the first time (almost half of that goes to the government)
Valuing my vast and eclectic empire of small websites earning between $1k and $300k per year is tricky because it’d presumably be tremendously hard to sell them all at once. Of course some reasonable multiple would arrive at some much higher number than my bank account+physical assets.
Different strokes for different folks. I'm a fashion lover but a fan of cheap cars, and I could equally say something similar about people who drive new luxury cars when there's plenty of reliable functionality to be had under $10k. There's a lot of craftsmanship that goes into nice clothes, and you can get way more expensive than $500. And fashion is a form of art in a way. What makes a painting worth thousands of dollars?
I always have a hard time telling is it craftsmanship and superior materials or marketing
For clothes as a rule of thumb if you're not interested in doing a lot of research, items made in Portugal or Japan are more often than not priced fine enough, yes you'll pay some markup for a designer, but on average should last if you look after them.
I never knew what a difference good pants can make. I usually just bought my pants from H&M/other retailers or Amazon. I usually bought what I considered good value pants for like $30-80. I then, out of curiosity, bought pants that were 2-4 times as expensive (~$150) and it really made a difference. I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
- A button that just "clicks". Most pants I usually owned had a traditional pants button. Those more expensive ones had buttons that just "clicked". Away goes the worry about a button falling off while you are on the go. - Pockets with hidden zippers: My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
There are more "features" but those are the important ones. The most important feature is just the material that is used. I barely feel it. Also the company that makes those pants makes other things as well. I ordered a lot of cloths by now and the amazing thing is that everything they make fits me perfectly. I don't know how they do it… When I usually buy pants I have to try on like 10 pants to find one that fits. Even if I pick the "correct" size.
Alright, after that lead-in, you really need to tell us what the pants are.
It might be a well known brand to many folks – I am not sure since I am new in the US. My pants are all from Rhone Apparel.
Never heard of them. I'm always interested in a good value. I rarely buy the cheapest or the most expensive item, so if Rhone is decent then I may give them a try. Thanks for the tip!
They are also in some stores (Bloomingdale if you want to check them out in person… but as I said: They usually fit haha)
Rhone is pretty good, Lulu ABC are also nice.
> I never really liked the pants I had… they never fit right… they felt very uncomfortable. The new pants I got about 2 years ago (the more expensive ones) were very very different. Very comfy. They also had a lot of nice features that I never knew I needed but that I now want by default…
I managed to get the same experience for free by losing weight.
I lost around ~9-11 kilos over the last year and a half and went two sizes down in pants (went from european size 50 to size 46, with a few more kilos to lose until i can wear 44).
It's incredibly nice to be able to pick pretty much any pair of pants/jeans my size and have it fit pretty much perfectly.
The pants I wear are still usually either from OVS (https://www.ovs.it) or from Doppelganger (https://www.doppelganger.it/it/uomo/abbigliamento/pantaloni....) but they fit me almost perfectly.
> My pants have pockets and in those pockets are smaller pockets with a zipper. Perfect to store things that are small and easily lost.
I had one with these as well, although probably not of the same quality, and I always feared the zip scratching the screen of my phone when putting it in my pocket.
You are comparing cheap pants to average pants. Expensive pants are >$500 but they don't add much value over average pants.
I prefer not wearing pants.
$500 for something you might wear for a decade straight? A brand-new pair of Levis at JC Penny is gonna run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
But also, quality has diminishing returns in basically every category. At the low end, it's extremely efficient to improve the quality of your product and charge a bit more. At the high end, you can't make any more inexpensive moves to set yourself apart, so you use higher end materials, fabrication methods, and workers.
> $500 for something [...] run you like $90 anyways. It's not that much more expensive.
To be honest, I did abandoned school as quickly as I could and my math skills aren't that of my peers, but 5x times as much is pretty "much more expensive" for most people out there, not sure how someone can say else with a straight face. $100 vs $500 would easily be a "Can I eat properly the entire month?" decision for a lot of the population.
Wrong comparison.
The right comparison is "For people who can spend $500 on a pair of pants, what is the financial difference between $100 and $500?"
For most of that subpopulation, not much.
> A brand-new pair of Levis at JC Penny is gonna run you like $90 anyways
I'm seeing a range of around $33 to $60 at the moment, with other brands dipping under $30.
https://www.jcpenney.com/g/men/jeans?id=cat100250010
When I go into the store four years ago, Levi jeans are $100. Yet even Macy's website shows them for $60 now?
Maybe there was some significant quality degradation. They recently added elastic fibers to like their entire khaki shorts line, which makes them dramatically less durable. I bet they did the same here.
There are cheaper and more expensive skus for Levi's.
If you're seeing 501s that are $30 and 501s that are $100 I can promise you there's $70 of difference between them, having shopped at WalMart and at flagship stores on 5th Ave - basically every "trusted" brand in a big box store is cutting every corner possible to be there and either the product suffers for it or the people are exploited in making it. Fast, cheap or good: pick 1 and a half.
Every pair on that page is ~$70, but some are on sale. I overassumed a little on inflation for them, I guess.
It's part of their pricing strategy. There's always a sale. Consumers think they're getting $70 pants for $40 instead of thinking they got $40 pants.
Ron Johnson of Apple Store fame famously tried to change this when he became JCP's CEO and...barely lasted a year!
Lenovo also strictly follows this strategy. All new laptops are marked up 200% on release date, but don't worry, code THINK_${CURRENT_MONTH} will reduce it down to market price. I think their goal is to make the user feel scarity/time pressure via the coupons.
Right, but that's not available on every pair of pants 100% of the time, so the price is the price, not the sale price.
What in Silicon Valley salary is this statement?
Median weekly salary is 1159 according to BLS. That’s 7% of weekly salary vs 43% of weekly salary.
I think it's implied that one would need to buy the cheap pants several times to match the lifespan of the expensive pants.
It's a few hundred bucks. If you're in the category of buying luxury pants, this is not much money. I really do not care how affordable it is for people making minimum wage, and am obviously not talking about their perspective.
Yes you were, when you brought (fake) JC Penney prices in for comparison.
Nope, I was pointing out that even the cheapo jeans are still pretty expensive.
Also, stop being weird and antagonistic - they weren't "fake", it's called a "mistake" you brick.
HN is full of very wealthy people, I don’t think pointing this out is that useful. It’s pretty obvious who the target audience is there.
I can wear a $40 pair of jeans that I really like and keep buying for its style and durability and invest the $460 remaining dollars and in 10 years I would have about $1200
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.
I don't think Steve Jobs went shopping for pants. Nor do many of the people who buy this sort of garment. They either have an assistant who buys things for them, whose goal is to keep them happy and not blow a predetermined budget, or they go to a store and sit in a nice suite where a personal shopper suggests things to them. In either scenario the price of individual items probably don't even get a mention.
Steve was a notoriously picky shopper and obsessed with details. In the biography it says they went without a dishwasher or something in his house for half a year because he could never be satisfied with the geometry or finishing. So his billionaire wife washed dishes by hand.
I don't doubt it, but I don't think Steve was out there browsing at Lowe's either. You can be very picky and still not shop the way the rest of us shop.
Palo Alto has its own reality distortion field that makes billionaires pretend they're 1950s middle class families, so he probably did shop at Ace Hardware.
I believe the word for it is "rich".
They save you from buying 10 pairs at $100. They not only are durable, including not fraying, etc., but keep their form and color, and they have a beautiful form and color to begin with. You get what you pay for (if you buy the right $500 pants).
Someone outside IT might say, why pay for a Macbook when you can buy a $100 Chromebook? Why use Vim or Emacs when you can use Notepad/TextEdit (though those all cost the same!).
Someone in IT will probably say "why pay for a Macbook, which is a toy, without even real MS Office, when you can buy a chinese configuralble laptop for same price that will have 256gb of RAM and a 5090"
I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money
Maybe he's amortizing them.
He says they've lasted ten years, so that's $50/year.
If they last another ten, that's $25/year.
Oh, great. Now I've invented Pants-as-a-Service.
>Now I've invented Pants-as-a-Service.
If you forget to renew then the zipper stops working.
decent hand-sewn raw denim made in the EU/US jeans are minimum $500. and i'm talking non-designer. just fair wages and good materials.
I once paid $1000 for some sneakers. I’m still regularly wearing them 7 years later. I’ve bought $50/$100 and they never last that long. It was an insane purchase at the time, done in a moment of jet lagged madness when my shoes fell apart in an airport. But over time it’s turned out to be a great investment. Smart, comfortable, well made.
Do you wear them like $50 shoes or like $1000 dollar shoes? I run around 18 miles a week on trails and I doubt your $1000 dollar sneakers would last ten years with that usage pattern.
When you run 18 miles a week you should measure the lifetime of your shoes by mileage rather than time. I think 600 miles is about right for a pair of running shoes. It's just that some people run 600 miles in a year, others run that in ten years.
I'm sure that if you got super high quality durable running shoes, and only used them for running, you'd get some good milage out of them before the shoes either wore out or wore through.
I play tennis regularly and only go through a pair of shoes maybe once a year or every 18 months. I always pay extra for a higher quality and more durable pair because they last. I only use the shoes for tennis - I put them on when I enter the court and take them off when I end my session. The shoes probably run me $180-200 but totally worth it if they can last me 100+ hours.
The maximum durability running shoes are $150-$200. No amount more than that will give you more durability and assuredly almost all $1000 shoes won’t last as long as $200 Asics Superblasts
Xero offers 5000 mile sole warranty, and they cost even less
One sad thing is that I am allergic to plastics and leathers and so my choice of shoes is drastically limited. The shoes I can wear aren't great for running and wear out in about 3-6 months, but I usually just keep running on them for about a year, until my toes start sticking out.
what's the symptom of allergy? thick socks don't help?
I do have a pair of $250 leather riding boots that have lasted me many years so far and I'm pretty sure will last that long, but they also require cleaning and polishing a few times a year....
I'm happy to pay $$$$ for something that lasts but my exerience is some of the most expensive things I've bought, well known luxury brand names, had the lowest quality.
In my younger years, I really did believe that cost correlated with longevity, but as I've gotten older, I'm finding that most of the very affordable things I've purchased, including shoes and pants and jackets, have lasted 15+ years. So I no longer believe that paying a thousand dollars for an item of clothing is going to yield a material benefit in terms of longevity -- I think some of it is just marketing, but there are also other elements of comfort and fit. I'm just not very discerning.
You're often much better off buying 10x of the thing than a thing that is 10x the cost; if it's a wear item, not wearing it all the time will greatly extend its lifespan.
Almost all clothes is destroyed by the washer and the dryer, not by wearing.
The trick to longevity in things is to acquire skills in repairing.
As someone who is on the lookout for long-lasting durable products, what brand and model sneakers did you buy? How often do you wear these?
I've heard that Common Projects are pretty good at a $400 retail price point, but it sounds like you got something else.
My understanding with Common Projects, is that if you are looking to spend $400 on a blank sneaker, they set the standard and have the most brand awareness, but now there are plenty of smaller brands making virtually identical sneakers with better materials and/or construction for the same price or less.
Like with anything else, buying Common Projects you are paying for the brand (the subtle gold lettering on the side of their shoes).
I got a pair of Common Projects Chelsea boots maybe 10 years ago now. I still have them, they're good shoes. I wore them all the time for the first year I got them. They don't make it into my rotation much now these days though. My most worn shoes now are: Guidi PL2, 11 by BBSxSalomon Bamba 2 high, Rick Owens "Vans", Rick Owens "Dunks", CCP Prosthetic Tornados, and Visvim Christo slides. Everything except the Bamba 2 highs is a replica and cost under $400.
I got a pair of Santoni’s leahther sneakers in 2017, for about $500. I still have them and while they worn out a bit, they are still nice.
The most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. I remember describing them like “walking in clouds”.
Never bought any of them and all the other pairs I got from different brands in the $200-$400 bracket have been awfully disappointing
I have had $20 sneakers last that long. You don't need to pay $$$$ to have clothes last a long time, you just need to take care of your stuff.
Which? I struggle to find any sneakers that last more than a couple years, while also avoiding the big brands.
Don't rule out until you've tried it. High end clothing (not just brand name, but real advanced stuff) is pretty amazing in how it makes you feel. I'm inclined to spend on anything I interact with, and clothes is pretty big interaction.
I wonder if there's an "ignorance is bliss" effect here that makes trying it not worth it for the average person. Think about it - to my knowledge, almost everyone spends ~0 seconds per day thinking about the comfort of their pants. But once you try something that feels as (allegedly?) supreme and heavenly as what you describe, you can't go back - you'll always feel that difference from now on, and now wearing something that you previously never paid any thought to would feel distinctly less comfortable. Kind of similar to how audiophiles train themselves to perceive the tiniest of flaws in the music they listen to and spend thousands of dollars to rectify those flaws, while everyone else keep ignorantly enjoying the flawed sound, not even being aware of the difference.
I try my best to remain ignorant of these sorts of things. I prefer my bliss.
Sure, but you need to have a certain level of wealth before even considering it. $500 is a ridiculous sum for a pair of trousers. I've had €80 or €120 Levi's at one point when I had a bit more expendable income but they only lasted me two years. I'm back on affordable jeans now (when outside, when inside it's pajama pants all the way lmao), I think they're €30 or so.
I'm sure the branded ones are "better" but is it to scale with the price? Are Levi's 4x as good as cheap ones? Are these Steve Jobs ones 16x as good?
i don't think anyone is saying you should save up to buy $500 pants. you buy them if it's a rounding error of your bank statement
Yeah, that is wild. I can't imagine spending that kind of money on pants.
Gee... And I thought $5 spent at Starbucks was outrageous...
Pro-tip. You can buy them used for a significant discount to rrp.
statistically, inheritance
This is kind of getting into the weeds a little bit but for me and a lot of others luxury items can be fun to own. You can get an affinity for certain designers style, whether it's Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga. The items are ridiculously expensive sometimes but it's kind of a tough line to balance because the fact that they cost so much make them more special. So how cheap should they be before they don't feel as special anymore? Is it all a bit irrational? I guess. There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give. Some people can spend all their income on luxury items rather than other discretionary items because it's the most fun to them.
> There isn't a clear definitive defense for luxury items I think other than the feeling they can give.
Counterpoint: that is exactly what someone who charges $500 for a $5 pair of pants would want you to think. If you boil it down far enough, the principles you are describing are just inequality and luxury marketing.
While that is definitely at play there is a deep rooted instinct in humanity to show status and to have something that is worth a lot. It goes beyond just marketing, which is why it "works" economically. I think the luxury market serves a certain type of mindset that has been there since ancient egypt even. It would be nice to have a society where status didn't pay a role but there hasn't been a social movement that has crystallized what that would look like.
I also think as a sidenote there is a difference between luxury and fashion. Fashion is about creativity and self expression, and for a long time, the luxury market was sort of the defacto place for creeativity rather than the cheaper labels that had more 'standard' clothing, at least where I live. That has changed a bit in the past decade though. I like both fashion and luxury, but I am conflicted about it too. For example in the luxury fashion world there is a thing called 'grails', which are essentially items that are difficult to get but are considered very cool looking in some way and so they become grails. A lot of people like the feeling of chasing and finally acquiring grails, so that's one aspect of it.
I always liked this story because they seemed to connect person to person.
Sadly, Jobs died in 2011, and Miyake in 2022.
I guess you could call this a small homage, but it feels different in that their founders are gone and it's just corp to corp dealings now.
I got excited until I saw they cost $600? Once in a while I'm reminded we exist in very different universes. Still trying to justify splurging on common projects 2 years later.
in my experience as a tech guy who got into fashion and then after several years went back to not caring: Sneakers are the product category with the least differentiation in value-for-money between the high end (especially designer, but also not-designer-but-still-expensive like common projects) both in terms of aesthetics and quality/durability. You're paying $300 more for a 10% better product. Jeans, outerwear, knits, boots, you can more easily justify that cost
As a tech guy who found an interest in design and ancillary fields recently, I am curious to know more. I assume leather, merino wool, cashmere do provide extra value. But other than that I have no knowledge. Eg why would 500 pants be better?
Material and cut/design.
Material is not just about quality, but rarity or uniqueness. For example, japanese denim can get very expensive in part because it's very low volume. For dress pants, it might be a particularly interesting fabric.
A lot of more expensive pants also have interesting designs or proportions that are very unique or hard to find elsewhere. There is a lot of cool stuff you can get for under $500 USD though, that is still pretty expensive.
Some examples around that price range:
- https://stoffa.co/collections/trousers/products/lavender-woo...
- https://www.lemaire.fr/products/twisted-belted-pants-bl760-d...
- https://www.blueowl.us/collections/pure-blue-japan/products/...
I have 2 pairs of pants that cost over $500. Both of them use technical fabrics (Schoeller Dryskin and Stotz EtaProof), have complex patterns (asymmetrical, articulated, etc.), lots of hardware (Riri zippers, magnetic pocket closures, Cobrax snaps), and can be ordered in custom sizing. They also have no text / logos anywhere on the pants. One pair is garment dyed as a complete unit after sewing to give a unique effect that's more interesting and has more "depth" compared to a flat, consistent color.
I am wondering what you call consumption that feeds $499 designer margins on polyester like that, while so many people can barely afford to scrape by day to day.
Income inequality is a phrase that pathologizes what appears to be a universal truth. In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not. What would be interesting is a single counterexample of sustained "income equality."
That said, our current degree of inequality and the particular way it is distributed seems to be unusual and remarkable. But pointing to someone having a hard time is, IMO, not a critique of that.
>Income inequality is a phrase that pathologizes what appears to be a universal truth. In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not. What would be interesting is a single counterexample of sustained "income equality."
There's actually tons of data. Almost every western country has a much better "Gini Coefficient" than the US.
It isn't a universal truth. That's bullshit.
Says wikipedia:
> The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 100, where 0 represents perfect equality (everyone has the same income). Meanwhile, an index of 100 implies perfect inequality (one person has all the income, and everyone else has no income).
What country has the lowest Gini coeffecient value? Slovakia consistently tops the list.
Who is the richest person in Slovakia? A reclusive billionaire named Ivan Chrenko.
What about poverty? Per https://slovak.statistics.sk:
> In Slovakia, 980 000 people were at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion in 2024 In Slovakia, more than 980 000 people, i.e. approximately every sixth resident, faced poverty or social exclusion in 2024. Both the share and the number of people at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion increased year-on-year. Poverty indicators in Slovakia have been gradually deteriorating since 2020. On the positive side, the situation improved in 2 out of the 8 SR regions in 2024 and remained unchanged in one. At the same time, more than 20% of the population continued to face poverty in 3 SR regions.
Of course the US is terrible and getting worse by this measure. My point is that nobody is great (the universal truth) - but I grant you that some are worse than others.
In my view, inequality of all kinds is not an enemy to be defeated, it's a disease to be treated, knowing that it can never go fully away. It seems that most would rather treat it as a fact of life and do nothing while it runs out of control, or a heinous evil that must be eliminated. Neither seem like a practical approach.
> In all types of economic and political systems (after we left the forest, and probably while we were still in the forest), some people have been desperately poor while other people are not.
citation needed. inequality was very low for thousands of years. not just "in the forest" but even with pretty large settlements.
Yes, yes ... It's the same as it ever was, only so much more so!
Beyond just critiquing the disparity here, I feel like the psychology that treats capital in such a frivolous way, shifting it about already privileged pockets of society, rather than apply it to any sort of material good is rather abhorrent. That's just my take.
Have you tried Costco pants? They're pretty good.
I had a coworker who lost a lot of weight and showed up at work one day wearing new clothes and looking sharp. The pants were from Costco. I have since gone and bought a few pairs of pants from them. They feel fairly high quality, made of sturdy and comfortable materials, and are wife-approved. And of course they are very inexpensive.
I'm sure expensive pants have their benefits but no matter how much money I have, I will always baby expensive things, and it's very inconvenient to baby clothes (e.g. must be dry cleaned, can't use a washer or dryer, can't risk getting stains on it). There are good reasons why dads gets their clothes from Costco.
These ones, right?
https://us.isseymiyake.com/products/hp56-jf362
Big fan of the Homme Plisse stuff but I do wish it wasn’t polyester.
It is a nice way to wear essentially a fancy pair of joggers while people assume you’re being somewhat smart though.
The brushstroke pants look really attractive
I will look suspiciously at my Le Sel bottle after this collab.
Who cares, Steve would have hated to sell a sock for $200, really makes you think how much they pay the chinese for the iphone
Sorry but 500 eur for polyester pants? Not even cotton?
You misunderstand, it's 20EUR for the trousers; 480 for the name printed on them. (And why you even want a name/logo printed on them...)
Show me one Issey Miyake clothing item with a name/logo printed on it.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2025/11/introducing-ip...
Not clothing
Ok, maybe they don't; plenty do. 480 for the licence to tell people about it then.
Point is they're not 500-quality trousers, that's well into tailored cotton territory for a start, or you could buy better off the peg for much less.
This sort of pricing isn’t unusual even for no-name brands.
Yes, you can get arguably nicer tailored cotton trousers at this price point. You will probably end up paying significantly more getting similar pleated trousers made by a decent tailor though.
Better off the peg? I don’t know, these are a fairly unique product, With a quick look Google isn’t finding any particularly similar products at any price point.
I have some friends in this space, even with margins like this it’s not an easy business to survive in. Those that do are generally doing something special, unless they’re really big names which Issey Miyake isn’t.
2 euro for cheap jogging pants, 488 euro for a license to wear them in nice places.
I looked it up, and Issey Mikaye seems to have died in 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issey_Miyake
I wonder
... would jobs have approved?
... would issey miyake have approved?
I'm pretty confident the answer on both counts would be "no".
(This teminds me of a show I once saw where various design students were given the task to design things. Philippe Starck was the judge. One of the students made a iPhone cover and Starck almost blew a gasket. I don't remember exactly what he said when he saw it. But he pointed out that the iPhone itself was a beautiful design so defacing it with an ugly piece of plastic was just a horrific waste of resources.
He also said something about objects having to deserve to exist -- though that was probably in a talk he gave at some point. Where he pointed out that his famous Alessi sitrus press was a good example of a pointless object that shouldn't exist. At least it looked good, but it was a pretty poor sitrus press).
Since Steve's famous turtle neck was from Issey Miyake and he wanted everyone at Apple to wear an Issey Miyake vest as a uniform [1], I think he might have been into this. This is also the man who launched the iPod sock.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/10/1116769827/the-story-of-steve...
Had to double check the date here. This really is indistinguishable from an April 1 post.
I get the sentiment but was this actually some big launch announcement? When I look at the store online, you have to dig a bit just to even find the product.
It's embarassing enough that it exists as a product, regardless of the size of the announcement.
I checked the url a couple of times to make sure it really was legit... I was certain there'd be like 3 p's or a non visible character in there...
$149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.) plus tax. What a joke.
Most expensive sock ever.
They've invented the 'thneed' from "The Lorax"...
Excellent, I'll be repeating this.
Have you seen what the Olsen twins are charging for a sweater?!
It's a joke even before looking at the price. "3D-knitted" WTF is that? Isn't all knitting in "3D"?
It's a crappy handbag, and it's just for a phone.
It looks like they had to use models to advertise it because they couldn't use "everyday people" in "everyday situations" to advertise because it looks like it would be garbage in that scenario.
Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
> Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
They've been flirting with it for a while, remember they made a $17,000 solid gold variant of the first gen Apple Watch (which is no longer supported lol), and today they sell luxury Hermès edition watches at a 2-3x premium over the regular titanium models.
I got an Hermes (plastic?) strap as a gift and it’s way better than any other strap I’ve ever had. Plastic and steel still look brand new.
Is it worth 10-20X the price of a normal strap? No, but it’s called disposable income for a reason.
>they made a $17,000 solid gold variant of the first gen Apple Watch (which is no longer supported lol)
I don't think the kind of people to spend $17K on a digital watch care that it's no longer supported - it's pocket change for them
I think that's different. That's just premium flair for their product, whereas this is just a stupid fashion product.
Both products could be viewed both ways.
My favorite bit is right before that,
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”
I dunno, this was pretty good too
> The design of iPhone Pocket speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user
Like it's a pet or something
Apple must be trolling us at this point.
Also I cannot help but read this in the voice of Jony Ive.
Lmao yeah I checked the domain after that. Cannot believe a person seriously wrote that. Inspired by the concept of a piece of cloth is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Sometimes I think they’re messing with us. This is more ridiculous than that monitor stand from a few years ago
No, you just aren’t familiar with the term. It has a specific meaning in the context. It’s this: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361 and it’s well known to customers familiar with the popular Issey Miyake label (which does something like $85 million in sales)
In tech we also use common words or phrases to trademark new ideas. It's not ridiculous or unusual. But it may be unfamiliar to you if you are not interested in fashion (common in these parts, as apparent in this thread) and fashion topics are easy targets for technical brothers.
You linked to something called “a piece of clothing” styled as A-POC.
The article referred to ‘the concept of “a piece of cloth”’
I’m not sure they are the same thing at all. If you are going to invoke a piece of artwork wouldn’t you get the name right and reference it directly? Wouldn’t you also use the base concept that makes the art interesting instead of 3d knitting as well? Would you reference that it is specifically tied to the completely different pleated clothing line instead of A-POC?
see my other reply. "cloth" is the correct one. and no I wouldn't use the original A-POC for a phone case (no one wants a piece of rigid fabric for a phone case). the construction has more to do with A-POC as it is made from one piece of material without seams while the pleated line has seams and is pleated. if you're curious you can see m.a+ for another spin on "one piece of material", where even shoes are made with one cut of leather
Ah. I see.
The MOMA project seems not to be rigid fabric, but it is clear that the description there is not exactly canonical.
In any case the press release was worded so weirdly that it seems inevitable that only superfans would make the connection to a piece of art from the 90s, and the rest of us would just make fun of 'the concept of "a piece of cloth"'
Ah ok thank you for the explanation, that’s actually super cool. At first it sounded like some ridiculous and unrelatable modern art stuff. Makes a lot more sense now.
A–POC (A Piece of Clothing) and a piece of cloth communicate different ideas to most people. The MoMA article showed how the press release could have been written to be clear to anyone interested. And tech people should consider this in their writing.
"Cloth" is the correct one, sorry for not reading the link closely. I chose to share that one because of the illustrative photo, but they are incorrect in calling it "piece of clothing"
See: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/185792 and https://us.isseymiyake.com/pages/apocable?srsltid=AfmBOopZJL...
(You can also see an archival garment in the Met article that closely resembles the iPhone Pocket btw)
A–POC (A Piece of Cloth) and a piece of cloth communicate different ideas to most people. The Met article showed how the press release could have been written to be clear to anyone interested.
> concept of "a piece of cloth"
and
> a piece of cloth
communicate different ideas to most people
but this product isn't for most people, it's for Issey Miyake's customer base. That's why this is buried as a newsroom update and the marketing is elsewhere rather than the apple.com front page
It's translated from Japanese. It makes more sense there. Especially if you don't leave out the load-bearing quote marks.
It's not translated from Japanese, it's originally in English. "A-POC" for "A Piece of Cloth". It refers to garments sewn from a single cut of a ream of cloth. It was translated into Japanese as 一枚の布 which isn't any more meaningful, but the original trademark is in English.
edit: What are you disagreeing with? That's what I'm referring to. The Issey Miyake trademark, which the label uses as "A-POC" as an English acronym, and translates into Japanese only to explain it to the domestic market rather than as the trademark itself. I linked that MoMa article elsewhere in this thread
Well, no? This is A-POC it was inspired by: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361 and I'm pretty sure this is where that meaning you are referring to originated from.
Yes...
What I mean is: even though its true name is originally in English, Issey Miyake probably thought of it in Japanese, and it made more sense to him.
Sure but the way his company translates "a piece of cloth" into Japanese has the same literal meaning. There's nothing more meaningful, it has the same exact meaning. My opinion is that it's chosen to be deliberately simplistic - what could be simpler or less expressive than a piece of fabric with fashion - because it highlights how much innovation in craft and resulting form results from the simple description taken as actually an extreme constraint: nothing but a single piece of cloth. And then when you perhaps think about it more, or see some of the work, you realize the complex ingenuity of it, in stark contrast to the simplicity of the phrase itself. That contrast enhances the impact by highlighting the gap between the humble description and the complexity of the result which nonetheless remains faithful to that simplicity.
A more illustrative term might be more easily understandable, at the cost of elegance (in simplicity and constraint) and surprise (from your underestimation of the work based on its name). The term is branding.
BTW another reference is Maurizio Amadei's "One Piece" work. Here's an installation/artwork he did that makes it easy to understand: https://lucentement.com/blogs/journal/m-a-by-maurizio-amadei... He also has many products labeled "One Piece [X]" such as "One Piece Wallet" or "One Piece Boot", where they are made from a single piece of leather (never cut into multiple pieces) and with a minimal number of seams. He chooses a similarly simple term, "One Piece", with enigmatic effect.
The sentence structure 'inspired by the concept of "thing in quotation marks"' is what's translated.
> 「一枚の布」のコンセプトからインスピレーション
... isn't any more meaningful than the English, it is exactly "inspired by the concept of "thing in quotation marks"
I think this article was originally written in English anyway (only the English one credits an author, who is not Japanese)
That use of quote marks is Japanese. It's used for emphasis, it gives the thing in quote marks an air of specialness like it's a fancy philosophical concept.
It honestly reads like low effort engagement bait I'd expect to see on Twitter
>Is Apple expanding to the "luxury" fashion market?
Apple has been dealing in luxury fashion goods since at least the early 2000s.
You think they made computers look like that, with a circular mouse, because it was better? You think putting the charging port on the bottom of yet another mouse was about sharp product focus?
Apple sells what it does because it's a Lifestyle Brand.
Could be AI-knitted. They lost an opportunity right there.
It has a meaning as technical jargon in textiles https://www.uniqlo.com/eu/en/news/sp/topics/2022011301/ which was chosen as being similar to Issey Miyake’s piece of cloth construction: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100361
You seem more eager to shit on this aspect of it than to understand something you’re unfamiliar with. Not that you need to become familiar with something you’re uninterested in, especially with luxury market products, but since you’re here talking about it and this isn't "Hater News"…
It does have higher production cost but the price of this item is priced for it being designed by Issey Miyake (not Apple) and sold as a luxury fashion item. If you want a cheaper strap they sell that too.
They didn’t buy Beats by Dre for the sound quality.
I imagine that a lot of poor people will pay this, in order to try to show off as rich
I've been seeing the headline going around today and have been assuming all day that it's some trending joke post. Nope!
Really? Why? I think it fits right in. Apple products are heavily designed, and this is a fashion item that adds something.
Inspired by the concept of "a piece of cloth", we give you this "3d-knitted" piece of cloth to put your phone in. It's kind of difficult to actually get a phone into and out of, and it looks a bit ridiculous, but don't worry, it's only $160 (unless you want the long strap).
Like, if you were doing this as an April Fools joke post, what would you even change?
I get what you’re saying, to you it feels ridiculous. But the thing is, these are professional designers that have put out a product. The product page shows their professional language and it doesn’t work for all people.
But I guarantee you that they thought long and hard on this, and have very good reasons for each and every aspect of the product. It is not half assed work. I don’t see a reason to take it as a joke.
It is entirely possible that professional designers with their professional language put out a garbage product after thinking long and hard about every aspect.
That sounds very much like an appeal to authority...
Professional designers put out the Pontiac Aztec and the Apple puck mouse.
> But the thing is, these are professional designers that have put out a product.
Can't you say that about basically anything?
Homeopaths think long and hard about homeopathy, but that doesn’t make it a proper science.
The Emperor's New Piece of Cloth
Not GP, but it’s probably a personal thing.
I remember the iPod socks. Now make them bigger. Now stretch them out a bunch. Now make it look a little more like Borat’s speedo.
Now charge like 7x-10x what the iPod socks cost.
If the first place I had seen this was not a direct link to apple.com I too would’ve thought this was a complete joke.
Kind of like those fashions where the model wears some kind of artistic interpretation of a yellow flower when really they look like they're wearing more of an art installation than functional clothing?
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https://www.apple.com/shop/product/hs8p2zm/a/iphone-pocket-b...
https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/5f8efdba9b357099d70a9...
Suspiciously missing if the color shown in the press release, the one closely resembling the one Borat is using.
If you change the "Size" on the store page from "Long" to "Short", the yellow is there. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/hs8r2zm/a/iphone-pocket-b...
yeah, but i can't wear the short one.
You can, it's just a bit of a tight fit.
I like!
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Damn you! Can't unsee it now. ;)
I saw it too before clicking the second link!
lol I came here to post this too - perfect
https://images.macrumors.com/t/h94LDq8hcQZUYyGkE_wGSaDm1bE=/...
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/9mQnP0/s3/fiat-multipla-19...
Awww... I was so much hoping for an iPhone that will fit into my pocket. The 1st iPhone SE was the perfect form factor. But no, Apple's phones just had to grow and grow and grow like cancer ...
In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
> they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I loved the iPhone SE and small phones generally, but at the same time I realize Apple's not failing at anything. They're giving the market the size people actually want. The smaller phones don't sell nearly as well. Most people prefer a bigger phone even if carrying it is less convenient.
I've just accepted my phone will be bulky now, so I double down and attach a magnetic wallet to it, and carry it in my hand or jacket pocket or bag rather than my pants pocket like I used to. During meetings it lies on the table rather then in my pants pocket. C'est la vie.
Maybe there's room in the world for a device people want, even if it's not the device the majority want? I mean I know Apple is just a small startup company with only a $4 trillion valuation, but maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
If each iPhone model served only 3% of total iPhone users like the iPhone mini did, you'd end up with 33 iPhone models
I don't get this logic. Putting aside that to get 33 different models you would come up with 5-6 different form factors, each of them on a distinct point in the tradeoff scale, why do you think that something is only worth doing if it can be put on an uniform supply-demand curve?
What percent of the iPhone sales do you think it took to pay off the significant engineering and factory/tooling setup costs? I bet it's more than 3%.
Apple made nearly $190 billion last year selling just iPhones.
If you think it costs more than $5 billion to design a phone and set up a production line, you are wildly off base. That’s the kind of money companies spend to build silicon fabs or release half a dozen new car models, not consumer products made by a contract manufacturer.
Revenue is not profit!!! A good chunk of that is the cost of parts!
Apple's R&D expenses were $34B for 2025.
...you do know that Apple produces its own silicon, and probably uses about an entire TSMC fab's worth of capacity? In the end, the money to build that fab is coming from Apple.
Apple isn't making average consumer products with average contract manufacturers.
How much of those costs are already sunk regardless of the split in your product line?
If Apple didn't run such a closed ecosystem, other hardware vendors would step in and be happy to sell a form factor that 3% of the market uses.
I keep trying to use Andriod to get more choice on form factor, but one thing always brings me back to an iPhone: texting incompatibility. Apple has me locked into their ecosystem because I can't get a decent quality video texted to me.
As an Apple fan since the 90s who remembers how Microsoft abused its market dominance for decades, it's particularly ironic that Apple continues to use this technique against other companies.
> If Apple didn't run such a closed ecosystem, other hardware vendors would step in and be happy to sell a form factor that 3% of the market uses.
There aren't any decent small (less than 6") Android phones either.
There is a wide variety of form factors available in the android ecosystem. Whether or not they fit your definition of "decent" just depends on how much you prioritize size:
https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-flip7/
https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-max
I don't really count foldables but I hadn't seen the Jelly Max. I stand corrected, looks like a great phone.
Foldables get this job done well. My (OG) Pixel Fold is a great size & aspect ratio while folded, easy to use one-handed, but has a giant screen when you open it up. The newer Pixel Folds and the other foldables on the market have all grown the screen vertically but they're still more compact than most flagships.
I wouldn't. I personally think iOS kind of sucks, and I only keep using it because Android developers don't support devices long enough for me. Third party developers would be as much a mess as they are in the Android world and at that point I'd rather have a phone with a good OS.
> I can't get a decent quality video texted to me.
It seems this gap has significantly closed, assuming both sides have RCS support. I've got a number of decent quality videos sent through RCS from friends through RCS.
Apple developed iMessage to work around the problems with SMS and MMS, as well as decrease load on carrier networks. There is no closed ecosystem, you can still receive messages and videos from iPhone users, just at the quality your hardware and software can support.
Google later decided to come up with a completely different implementation called RCS to deal with the same problems. Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android or licensing it, they instead tried to pressure Apple with a public advertising campaign to adopt what is frankly an inferior solution that doesn't even have reliable end-to-end encryption.
Your complaint is basically that you bought a Toyota and it does not have BMW's laser headlights that adjust brightness and angle automatically. You still have headlights, you just didn't spend the money to get the good ones.
Apple's strategy to use iMessage for lock in is public record.[1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
Yes because Google offered nothing of value in return. Like in my example, nothing stops Toyota from offering enough money to license BMW's laser headlights.
It's a poor example because laser headlights don't have network effects.
Google tried the same thing Apple did long before RCS when it made Hangouts the default SMS app for Android. Conversations could be upgraded from SMS to Google's internet-based chat protocol if the other person had an account; it was even available for iPhones, but it couldn't be an SMS client.
Carriers didn't like it and Google caved.
Lets be honest, Hangouts (which of the three versions) was a crappy chat app that they wanted to boost the usage of. It wasn't intended to be a functional SMS replacement.
As a former regular user, I don't remember it being notably worse than any of the other options. It was definitely preferable to SMS.
Maybe there was some glaring flaw I'm not remembering, but Google certainly had the resources to make it more competitive if they'd wanted to.
> just at the quality your hardware and software can support.
I assure you, Android phones have been able to render video of far higher quality than what Apple devices would send to them through MMS.
iMessage is a cloud ecosystem. I cannot install iMessage on my Android device.
> Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android
Apple has been free to release this app at any time. There is nothing Google is doing that prevents it from being made. The only people preventing this app from existing are the people at Apple.
Does Apple allow non-Apple devices to send and receive messages from the iMessage network? Under any conditions?
> Rather than work with Apple on bringing an iMessage app to Android or licensing it
This seems like an unfair take - Apple is on record using iMessage specifically to deteriorate the experience between Android and iOS users. I don't see them working with Google to bring iMessage to Android.
3% was the iPhone 13 mini? It sold the least of the 4 relatively small phones Apple introduced in under 18 months.
How many Android phone models exist?
Not to mention the SE (variant of the 4 I think?) was way more popular. Dismissing the whole concept just because one implementation at one time was a relative flop (and as you point out, that's still a lot of sales).
Also, they're happy to have Pro and non-Pro SKUs etc., just averse to smaller for reason.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to launch the iPhone mini during Covid, offer it 2 years, and say no one wants them.
The haters dismiss the SE point by saying it was the price, not size. But it does prove that no one avoids phones due to being "too small".
The size increase is because of cost optimization. Where it's wrong is that everything else meant for humans comes in small, medium, and large. Phones? Just large and XL.
On the Samsung US store alone, currently 12 models (not counting renewed phones)
I bet the iphone mini still outsold several macbook skus
Good.
Good, in some ways. But do people want to pay higher prices for these iPhones to cover the costs that have to be amortized over a lower volume of devices?
I highly doubt it.
>maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
They tried that this year and called it iPhone Air
The iPhone Air was a turn in the wrong direction.
What people like me wanted was an iPhone 13 mini that's a bit thicker so it can have a bit more battery capacity. And with the 120 Hz PWM nausea fixed.
The iPhone Air has worse battery life. And it has a larger screen. And it's worse to handle one-handed. Coming from the 13 mini, it's not an improvement.
I bought an Air, coming from a 13 mini, and I largely agree with you on all those points except the battery life. I'm not sure why everyone keeps saying the Air has bad battery life, which maybe it does compared to the 17 or 17 Pro etc, but the past week I've been test driving it it has more than all day battery life for me. My 13 mini needed a recharge in the middle of the day (battery was worn down to about 83%).
Otherwise, yeah, you're right. I'm pretty sure I'm going to return it this week before my 14 days are up.
Totally agreed.
The one thing I don’t see criticized enough is the lack of a SIM card slot in international models. I understand they physically couldn’t fit it in, but I bet it's a deal breaker for everybody who has no experience with CDMA phones, so basically everybody outside of North America.
> it's a deal breaker for everybody who has no experience with CDMA phones, so basically everybody outside of North America.
Huh? CDMA is long dead, and the technical capabilities of physical and e-SIMs are identical. SIM = Subscriber Identity Module, all it does is encode your identity.
As far as I know, CDMA, compared to GSM, didn't have a SIM card equivalent. The identity information was baked into the handset and if you wanted to move your number from one phone into another, you had to get in touch with your carrier.
eSIM reintroduces this problem. Those who experienced it 20-odd years ago with CDMA may feel like home. But elsewhere, where it's always been a norm to have the easily transferable physical SIM card, it might be viewed as too much of a hassle.
Eh, I think it depends on the carrier.
My wife didn't have international data with the carrier she had previously. When we traveled out of the country at first she was thinking she wouldn't care and would just get by with wifi. After a couple of days she changed her mind and wanted to have some kind of service. It was extremely simple to find a provider through the hotel WiFi, prepay for a week of service, download the SIM to the phone, and boom she was back to having service. Manged to get it all done at breakfast.
So long as the carrier is simple to get an eSIM it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Its trivial to transfer an eSIM on Android assuming both devices are still functional. Its pretty easy to load an eSIM, compared to having to somehow call the phone company and have them manually enter the IMEI or whatever from back in the day. The only somewhat pain point is when your old device is smashed and you don't have any internet. In that case, having a physical SIM is better, I agree.
[dead]
I get you're referring to the profitability, but the iPhone Air is just thin, not small, which is where this conversation started.
I bought a Pro Max for myself and an Air for my wife, who had a Mini before.
The Air is DAMN SMALL. You really should try holding it. Yes the 2D dimensions are as large as a normal modern phone but it’s hardly there otherwise. It’s a good compromise.
I’d want it myself but I shoot ProRes Video.
The issue is the 2D footprint compared to older models like the iPhone SE and iPhone 13 Mini. The iPhone Air is still significantly larger.
> Yes the 2D dimensions are as large as a normal modern phone but it’s hardly there otherwise.
The 2D dimensions are literally the only thing I care about. I'm going to barely notice the weight difference. The actual thickness is a lie with the giant camera hump.
What I do care about is whether I can operate it single-handedly: I want my thumb to reach the top of the screen (so I can drag down the notification bar and click nav stuff) while the bottom of the phone is resting on my pinky. I could easily do that on my Galaxy S III Mini, it was comfortable with my Moto G 2, it was just about doable with my Nokia 6.1 - and it is impossible with my Pixel 7. At no point did I I actively look for a larger phone: going for a larger model has always been an unavoidable compromise.
It's entirely about the 2D space in terms of being able to easily hold it in one hand and reach the whole screen, as well as other things like how it fits into pockets. I have large hands and an iPhone 13 mini, and it still feels too big for me to use comfortably with one hand.
Based on sales of the air, it won’t be around in future years.
Right, forgot to mention it should also be somewhat practical.
I'm curious how well it is selling. Early on there was a lot of enthusiasm, but I haven't heard much since. I don't know if I'd want a phone with less battery life, but my understanding is the Air's battery is actually not much smaller than last year's pro?
It doesn’t seem to be selling well: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/10/next-generation-iphone-...
> Foxconn has reportedly dismantled all but one and a half of its production lines for the iPhone Air , and all production is expected to be stopped at the end of the month
Ouch! That sounds pretty bad, indeed.
I was originally a little interested in the Air because I wanted to downsize from my previous 15 Pro Max. I ultimately decided that the Air was only thinner, and still big in the dimensions I wanted it to be smaller in.
Neither is Samsung's similar Galaxy Edge apparently, to the extent that the product line may have already been cancelled after just one generation. Both companies probably should have sat on that idea until they could offset the physically smaller batteries with the much denser silicon-carbon technology.
The battery is actually fine, better than the iPhone 16’s. The single camera and the pricing are the main problem, along with assorted minority showstoppers like single speaker and large size. It’s also not that much lighter, actually heavier than previous iPhones like the 12. People who are fine with a single camera and want less weight can also get the 16e for a much lower price, and then at least get stereo speakers. Add to that the very strong offering of the iPhone 17 this year.
It felt more like: keep the size, reduce the battery life
You missed the part where he said "make a device people want."
Ya got me there.
I think it's possible this is a good summary explanation, but isn't this a bit like saying "We only make shirts in medium because it's what the majority wants."
I would switch from Android to Apple if this fixed this problem.
Come to think of it, the only reason I switched from Android to Apple was because the 12 Mini wasn't massive and was actually a decent phone. If I have to get a massive phone again, I might as well go back to Android.
Same story for me, but with the 15 Pro. The Pixel 7 phones were huge so I just switched to my first iPhone.
They are making 5 different iPhone models of varying sizes, features, prices.
All big. 5 the same size category, barely different.
Then they push a tiny-tiny device, the watch. Inbetween? Empty desert.
They do not do things smartly but by force. Like the omission of physical home button, notch, no jack, clud first, and a lot of other things forced on us. Some decide to live with, or even adapt the love of it, despite never ever asked for it. Using the force like Darth Vader.
They used to make the "mini" but that's because Jobs had taste and it's what he, specifically, wanted in his pocket. Now Jobs is gone and... no more mini.
But I'll keep my iPhone 13 mini going as long as I can.
I own an iPhone 16 pro, but I’m constantly thinking about switching to an iPhone 13 mini with an aftermarket battery conversion to make it last all day. The only thing that holds me back is that I can’t easily convert it to USBC.
My battery is on its last legs, and I was going to pick up an iFixit one at some point and do the swap, but I believe theirs is the OEM configuration/capacity. Is there another option for an actual higher capacity battery?
https://irepart.com/products/iphone-13-mini-battery-replacem...
Original was 2406 mAh
Yes okay, I confirm that the part iFixit is offering is just the standard capacity (9.34Wh / 2.4Ah):
https://www.ifixit.com/en-ca/products/iphone-13-mini-battery
It doesn't seem like Repart do direct to consumer sales; I'll look around and see if I can find somewhere reputable to buy that in Canada.
Based on this reddit thread, it doesn't seem that there's really a consensus around whether these purported supersized after market batteries are the real deal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/iPhone13Mini/comments/1gap4yc/share...
They made it, it didn't sell well. Last I checked zero Android manufacturers were still creating high quality small phones (<5.5"). The Android community has resorted to petitions like https://smallandroidphone.com
Some people definitely want it, but when not even one Android manufacturer will create a model when they can get 100% market share, it looks like there isn't enough demand.
You've hit the nail on the head. There are still some manufacturers that make small phones, and some that make high quality phones, but zero that make high quality small phones. Apple used to be our last respite, now we have nothing.
Foldable phones sold well enough Samsung introduced their 7th generation this year.
Not in Tim Cook land. If a product is profitable that’s not good enough, it has to be very profitable.
A CEO that maximises for shareholder value? Shocking.
But is he?
We don’t know. If having such a phone keeps someone in the Apple ecosystem that may be more valuable. All their services they’re always pitching. People with iPhones are more likely to buy iPads and Macs.
Maybe the get tired of the tiny screen or want a better camera and move up in a few years.
The value of a customer over a longer time horizon, perhaps 10 years, may be better if you let them buy the phone you make $250 on instead of $450.
He’s maximizing value for the quarter. That so often steers companies wrong.
Shareholders would never ever be ok with a company not trying to be maximally profitable.
Tim Cook told people they should sell their shares if they wanted Apple to abandon environmental sustainability policies. And he identified accessibility as a similar issue.[1]
[1] https://www.macobserver.com/news/tim-cook-rejects-ncppr-poli...
That's why Tesla stock tanked as soon as the FT wrote that "$1.4bn appears to have gone astray." ;)
https://www.ft.com/content/62df8d8d-31f2-445e-bfa2-c171ac43d...
What's Tesla's forward PE? Close to 200? I don't think we can use them as an example of anything resembling a sane market.
Edit: Found a link to the article content, I gather that's basically the point you're making?
Yes, the point I was trying to make is that companies can get away with not being maximally profitable. There's nothing legally stopping Apple from accepting a slightly lower profit margin on the 5% of sales volume that might go to smaller iPhones if they would offer them. But it might brighten the day for millions of customers.
> What's Tesla's forward PE? Close to 200?
Nope, close to 300 actually…
That's trailing PE. A standard response to that observation would be that the market is forward looking. So I try to stick to forward PE when discussing price. 200 is still insane in any case, it's an order of magnitude higher than, for example, GOOG.
I'm all for that when it comes to things like accessibility technology that allows people to do things they otherwise couldn't. But screen sizes? You can use a larger screen, you just prefer a smaller one.
What “the market wants” is a maximally addictive device. It’s a really low bar even if highly profitable. Bigger screens make it more exciting and addictive.
Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
My guess would be that all those people that wanted small phones had an iPhone SE and now all their data is locked into Apple's walled garden and that's why they will begrudgingly buy a larger phone, even though they would have preferred a smaller one.
In short: Apple can get away with ignoring what those customers want.
I mean, I would assume most folks who liked the SE still have one. The SE 3 just stopped production this year and should have several years of software updates left (the SE 1 just ended software support this year, 7 years after it was discontinued.
The 3 is not really an SE. It's an iphone 8
When people say SE in the context of wanting skaller phones they generally mean SE 1, which has about the same form factor as iPhone 5.
Not hard to take your data anywhere you wish.
Not hard only when you know exactly what you need to do already on both sides.
There is zero chance I could convince any of my in-laws to switch away from iOS. Data isn't what they care about. It's all about blue bubbles and a decade of familiarity with iOS (and it's irrelevant that the UX between Android and iOS have drifted to be so similar).
It couldn't be easier to export or import your data, connect and disconnect your accounts, etc. I'd like the angry hackers who are down voting me to explain which barriers exactly Apple puts against data portability.
I don't understand why you're brining up your in-laws in your response if they don't care about data.
How can I so easily export my entire photo library from my iPhone?
Connect your phone and open Image Capture app. It's included in every version of MacOS.
I do not have a mac. Just an iPhone.
Then you should use a different solution to solve your problem, which you can easily find. Unless your main interest is having a problem to complain about. In that case, you've already found the solution.
I have searched. So far, the best solution I've found is setting up an Immich instance. Which is pretty preposterous, if you ask me.
First Kagi result:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120267
"Import to your Windows PC
1. Install the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store.
2. Connect your iPhone or iPad to your PC with a USB cable.
etc etc"
Linux. I do not own a Windows or macOS machine.
Ah, then I'll put you squarely into the category of people who enjoy things never working ;)
(I actually appreciate you doing a Kagi search for me, btw. I've heard great things about Kagi, and it would've been great if something came up there that didn't on DDG or Google.)
My whole digital life other than my iPhone works very well! Never better, really. Been Linux-exclusive for years after switching after the release of Windows 10.
Just a real pity that iOS doesn't provide something as simple as a proper export feature. A kicker is that the Photos app does allow you to "Export Unmodified Original" for multiple photos or even whole albums. But you can't do this to everything in Photos (what used to be called the camera roll). There's no "select all" button to work around this.
I have to retreat my statement then a little bit, in that it's easy to get your data out of Apple, with the exception of Linux. But Linux is usually the exception for any kind of user convenience stuff, and Linux users know what they're getting themselves into.
The point is, that since Apple is providing dedicated tools both for Mac and for Windows to get your photos off your phone, I don't think it's fair to accuse them of trying to lock in people to their devices.
Same with other stuff like bookmarks, passwords, etc.
Android still looks too ugly for me. It seems like I’ll always be missing WebOS while sticking with iOS.
> Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
Large and small companies sell smaller Android phones.
It's very difficult to find something around 140 grams and 140x80 even giving them some slack about the thickness. The Samsung S25 [1] is about there but I currently still use an A40 [2] because of the size and weight. I'd give away a couple of cm of height. A zero bezel 120mm phone would be ok. 120 grams are a dream.
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s25-13610.php
[2] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_a40-9642.php
Your weight requirements are more restrictive than your size requirements. GSMArena's phone finder found foldable or rugged phones which satisfied size but not weight. And Unihertz phones appear well known where small phones are discussed but are not in GSMArena's database for some reason. The Unihertz Jelly Star satisfied your requirements. But the screen is smaller than the 1st iPhone's even.
The problem is Apple's monopoly on devices that run iOS. In an alternate reality, Apple licensed out iOS, and alternative designs could flourish. The Android ecosystem still has keyboard phones a la Blackberry. Caterpillar makes an Android phone with a FLIR camera. It's a gimmick, unless you work somewhere where it's not.
In this alternate history, there's a tiny design firm out of Carmel, south of Cupertino, doing bespoke runs of an iPhone 4 with A18s and eSIM capability and they're always sold out.
That happened with the Mac in the mid 90s and Apple closed the deals immediately when the clones started to sell well, because they were better machines than the ones Apple sold. If Apple didn't stop the clones they would be a software company by now and we'd probably have a PC market with 90% of Mac compatible machines and 10% of Windows PCs + Linux.
The first link I googled about it is https://tedium.co/2025/09/02/apple-macintosh-clones-history/
> In this alternate history
In this alternate history, who would have invested the billions of dollars in developing the processor line all the way up through the A18 if it's not available as a market differentiator?
Why, P.A. Semiconductor, of course! Yeah I'm just making shit up in my alternate history, but even in our reality there are several SoC manufacturers; Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Rockchip, Allwinner. There are a lot of things out there if just want to run Android on a thing. Even more if I'm just trying to run Doom.
I want an SE4 with touch ID and a 4 inch screen and an A18 processor in it, not the monstrosity that is the 16e. If things were more open; what I really want to see is what we almost get to see with Kickstarter. If I could find one million people to do a first run who're willing to pay $750 for a first run edition, just to simply break even, and then make money off subsequent runs as demand does or does not exist.
> Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Rockchip, Allwinner
Five of these are race-to-the-bottom business models. One is use-the-legal-system-to-retain-your-customers. The last two don't make cell phone class parts, and probably wouldn't be interested in the margins.
I mention this to make a point -- the quality of the A18 that you (reasonably) want in a smaller, niche-market phone isn't a coincidence, it's a consequence of the designer being able to justify the investment because it acts as a market differentiator. PASemi would never have been able to do that on its own, any more than MediaTek has -- customers have no brand faithfulness to cell phone processor manufacturers, so as long as the OEM can freely move between them the distinction must be on price, at the cost of performance. There are upsides to the more open market you imagine in your alternate history, but it would come with the downside of the high end of the market being less developed, and flat out worse, due to less segmentation being possible.
Qualcomm and Apple processors have similar performance.
Most customers have no brand faithfulness to desktop processor manufacturers. Why would this stagnate phone processor development when it did not stagnate desktop processor development?
> Why would this stagnate phone processor development when it did not stagnate desktop processor development?
Hasn't it? See the impact the M1 family made.
> I'm just making shit up in my alternate history
Isn't that the whole point of alternate history?
Can Apple lock-in those people who definitely want small phones by some prepaid arrangements which the users can't back out? That would be market working. Is there a reason why they don't do this?
It's not that they can't. They want to make money. When given the choice between making more money and less money, they'll generally choose more. They think making a smaller device would make less money. The sales numbers for previous attempts back this up. There's an enormous fixed cost for developing a new model, and it's not worthwhile unless that results in enough additional sales. There's demand, for sure, but how much? They think not enough, and I suspect they know what they're doing here.
Can you write down the actual detailed argument?
Just opining that it’s weird can’t possibly be convincing against a consensus amongst all the large smartphone manufacturers.
That's a weird take. Large screens aren't primarily more "addictive", they're primarily more productive. They work as a better e-reader, a better text editor, better for watching a movie on a plane, better for reading maps, I could go on and on. (And if a company were incentivized to truly make an "addicting" phone, it would be Meta that would benefit from the social media ads, or TikTok. Not Apple.)
Large manufacturers can make them. But there isn't enough demand to make them profitable enough. It's not a question of whether they "want to pay for it", it's just simple economics. They're businesses, not charities. I like small phones, but I understand manufacturers are doing what's economically rational given market preferences and I don't blame them for it.
There are studies that show that engagement with smartphones is higher when the screen is larger. Seems like Apple's been doing their homework.
> However, a follow-up phantom model analysis using 10,000 bootstrap samples at 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals revealed that the overall magnitude of the hedonic path (i.e., LS→PAQ→AT→IU; B=0.14, SE=0.06, p<0.01) was larger than that of the utilitarian path (i.e., LS→PC→PEOU→PU→IU; B=0.07, SE=0.03, p<0.01) even though participants were given a task-oriented, rather than entertainment-oriented (e.g., gaming, movie watching), assignment during the experiment. This implies that users are likely to put greater emphasis on the affective dimension of the technology than on its utilitarian dimension, despite the practical, purposeful nature of the assigned task. Given that user affect (e.g., positive or negative feelings) toward a technology is typically attributed as the central characteristic of the technology (regardless of the accuracy of the attribution),55 the practical implication of this finding is that smartphone manufacturers ought to take full advantage of the positive effects of the large screen on PAQ when designing their products. However, the more challenging design implication is that the optimal level of screen size that does not jeopardize the anywhere–anytime mobility of smartphones should first be identified, since screen size cannot be indefinitely increased in the mobile context. Thus, the remaining question to be addressed in future research is the optimal size of the mobile screen.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4080862/
> they're primarily more productive.
But why are we needing a phone to be productive? And they were already a distraction from the world around us when they fit in a single hand.
I know I'm probably abnormal, but my phone is a phone first, camera second, and "work" device fifth.
As a society, our boundaries around communication and instant contact to anyone have collapsed. Now if you don't respond to a message within a few minutes, you get multiple follow ups. If you don't pick up the phone when a friend calls you, they don't leave a message, they text, then call again, then text again.
We've gone from being able to leave the house, and no one can contact us for a few hours, to no matter where we are people are trying to contact us. So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
Why do you need an iPhone for that? Wouldn’t any old phone work then?
Why do you need phones to not be productive?
Being able to instantly communicate via photo and video makes a lot of people’s lives easier. For example, getting quotes for a house repair to save on travel time and energy getting estimates, showing before and after pictures to document performed work, and myriad more examples.
If someone is contacting you too much, that’s a problem solved by asking them not to harass you, not by putting limits on the device for everyone else.
How did you translate “I want a smaller phone available” to “putting limits on the device for everyone else?”
I didn’t. I use a 13 mini, and will for as long as I can because it was the smallest phone that was sufficiently productive for me.
My response was to these statements:
> But why are we needing a phone to be productive?
> So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
And somehow you inferred that because one person doesn’t need their phone to be productive in that way, that they want to limit everyone?
I use my phone for web browsing 99% of the time. I don’t need it to have AI processors or loads of brand new tech. I want it to be cheap, functional, and expendable. So I definitely question whether a phone needs to be super “productive” in that sense too. But people who want their aircraft carrier phones that don’t fit in their pockets and cost over $1000 can have that too.
There is a number of small Android phones, so apparently there is demand in that niche, and smaller companies can address it and make money.
But this is because Google is a software / service company, so it keeps Android open.
Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. They have a relatively narrow lineup of devices which they support for a very long time, compared to Android devices. So Apple are not interested in fringe markets; they go for the well-off mainstream mostly.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
No - call it what it is. They are catering to the largest market segments and ignoring the smaller segments who desire smaller phones.
Reasoning as to why is another thing, but it doesn't negate the existence of the segment who does want one.
Much like there is a segment of the population who wants a brown diesel station wagon.
With wood paneling!
An Apple Watch with a cellular connection, paired with Airpods, fulfills some of the role of a small iPhone - you can make calls, listen to music, and even do some light texting if Siri likes your accent.
I love my apple watch but I can safely say i've never done any of the above with it. It's too much of a pain to switch the bluetooth headphones to it and the screen is too small to do much actual computing with it. The fitness aspects are totally worth the money, though.
No camera => not a phone replacement for most of the market
There is one, shame it’s 3%.
"iPhone 16e Sales Lag Behind SE Models"
Ooops ?
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/03/iphone-16e-sales-lag-be...
Looks like the market did like the SE size.
>Looks like the market did like the SE size.
That's not a compelling argument when the same chart also shows the iPhone SE 2022 lagging behind iPhone SE 2020, even though they have identical form factors.
Sure, but between the SE2020 and the SE2022 was the iPhone 12 line-up which included the 12 Mini
When the SE2022 came out, most people preferring smaller iPhones were already using either an SE or a mini, and the SE2022 didn’t offer much compelling reasons to upgrade from an SE2020. The SE2020, on the other hand, launched before the first mini, and after four years of waiting since the SE1.
Good point. Thx.
> Unsurprisingly, the primary reason identified for the iPhone 16e 's weaker debut is its higher launch price.
Adjusting for inflation, the SE (€479 in 2020) was €588 and the SE2 (€519 in 2022) was €567. The 16e is 699, a 25% increase.
Small phones (to an extent) are less expensive than larger phones to manufacture.
The thought that "Small phones are only more popular because they're less expensive" seems to willfully ignore that the phones are less expensive because their inputs are less expensive, because they're smaller.
I wonder about the idea that they're less expensive. True in terms of materials, but possibly not true if the smaller production run means you can't offset the capital costs of manufacturing the parts.
That's fair. I suspect that as phones get more "premium" the margin from a small phone shrinks faster than a larger phone.
HTC has been making cheap (very cheap) and small phones for the discount market. Foldables exist in the premium space, but the price tags appear to bake in a higher margin for a device that won't sell the same volume.
And in Germany, the iPhone 16e 128GB in white currently sells for €537 at "Netto Marken-Discount", a supermarket chain famous for its low price. "Marken-Discount" = "brand name rebates"
That is utterly worthless without knowing what the SE and SE2 were sold for in the same context. The 16e's MSRP in germany is 699.
IMO the e series is/could be used as an anchor to ratchet other phones higher in price.
I don't think they even set out to make a small phone with the SE, they set out to make a cheap phone. They achieved that by reusing older generation iPhone tooling which just happened to be smaller, as was the style at the time. When they refreshed the SE line it too got larger as it graduated to using later generation tooling.
I don’t know what they set out to do, but the marketing material specifically emphasized the compact form factor. (I’m reluctant to call it “small”, because the iPhone 5 didn’t seem small to me at the time.)
Yall forgetting they literally made an amazing iPhone Mini that no one bought
I bought :( Loved the thing, but yeah batter life wasn't the best. Also noticed that app developers would sometimes not take into account the smaller viewport on the Mini, and so app views would sometimes look too squished or out of place. That 's a minor grouse though compared to the subpar batter life.
While small iPhones don’t sell nearly as well as larger sizes, I suspect they are still a very profitable product as Apple keeps releasing them.
Not small like they used to be. Not like the original SE, nowhere even close. The options now are basically big, bigger and biggest.
The iPhone sales figures where probably a disappointment, for Apple. Had it been released by any other company it would have been viewed as a huge success. The sales numbers are just pretty poor, for an iPhone.
I think Apple has such high expectation to sales figures that even if a smaller iPhone comes in, even as the 10th best selling phone, that's maybe only 5% of all iPhone sales. Massively successful as a phone, millions of people bought it, but to Apple, the SE is a side hustle at best.
My daughters friends made fun of my iPhone SE3, they had never seen a phone that small.
Apple doesn’t have any small iPhone offering anymore since they discontinued the SE3.
Huh? They haven’t released a remotely small phone in years.
There was a 4 year gap between the iPhone SE1 and iPhone SE2, it’s been less than 4 years since the SE3.
It’s not clear if they decided to move just add E models to their lineup, or given up on SE models entirely.
It’s very clear that the “e” is a yearly model (that’s why it has a number) and has replaced the SE line.
We don’t have the iPhone 17e, so for now there’s no way to tell if they will do this every year or what.
Similarly people have called the 16e as a replacement for the SE line, but that’s a cost assessment not one based of form factor. It could be most people bought the SE because it was cheap, but without two different form factors at identical prices there’s no way to tell.
It’s a replacement in the sense that they discontinued the SE when they introduced the 16e. I agree that it’s not a very close replacement in practical terms, but that’s also why the designation changed.
Regarding the 17e, the supply chain rumor mill keeps mentioning it, so it definitely seems to be a thing.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
Are they, though?
In my experience the smaller phones are almost always substantially worse products: they have several gigabytes less RAM, usually half the storage of the alternatives, often lack features like wireless charging, have a slower CPU, have a worse camera, and in general are made using cheaper materials.
We don't know what the market wants, because the market was never able to make a fair choice. It wasn't "big phone vs small phone", it was "big full-featured phone vs shitty watered-down small phone" - no wonder people "chose" for the big phones.
Mind that there is also a feedback loop: applications only work correctly on bigger phone screens.
That’s not completely correct. In particular, the mini resolution corresponds to the Display Zoom options on current iPhones, so applications are still expected to support them, not to mention that iOS will support the mini models for 2-3 more years to come.
In addition, the outer screen of next year’s iPhone Fold will be shorter than the mini, so applications really need to be flexible here.
I don't understand anything of what you're saying. But I do know that it was quite noticeable that most applications expect a bigger screen on small iPhones. Most UI elements are either too small and hard to use, or taking away too much space feom elsewhere.
There's nothing you can do with scaling here, if apps are made for big screens. It is a feedback loop. It would require a whole new ecosystem to break out by now. Impossible.
They might technically support them, but no one tests them properly and they’re certainly not a good user experience. I’ve personally made apps where I have never tested them on such zoom levels if I’m perfectly honest.
It isn’t always great, but I haven’t encountered anything unusable yet. The SE1 is more of a problem nowadays.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
Some people clear still want those small phones, just not enough for Apple's profit margins.
Considering the sheer ramp up for manufacturing at the scale of iphone sales, and how unpopular tiny phones are, it’s completely understandable they’re not interested in catering to the < 1% of users they’d gain by making a small phone. You have to remember lost sales only truely include people who literally leave the platform or never upgrade again instead of just grumbling and buying the new phone anyway.
What ramp up? It's been less than a year since they discontinued the SE 2022.
Apple could have kept improving the CPU and camera and not much else and would have had a steady stream of income from those of us who want to use our actual pockets (not a weird swaddle) to carry our phones.
The iPhone SE accounted for 5-12% of the market, depending on year. The iPhone mini accounted for about 5%. Let's conservatively call it 13%.
Apple had iPhone revenue of $205bn in 2022. The average smaller iPhone is about .5-.67 the cost of a flagship model.
So fuzzy math, but .13 * .5 * 205000000000 = a $1.3bn market for iPhones you can use with one hand.
Thats nothing to sneeze at. Way more of a market than something like a Magic Trackpad.
Apple is making like 100bn a quarter. 102.4bn last quarter to be exact. 1.3bn in a whole year is indeed something for apple to sneeze at.
And the ramp up is to design and organise manufacture of a whole new phone line. They also would likely have received a hit in sales in general if they didn’t upgrade the design as people would feel insulted and also it would stick out like an ignored pig in the lineup, which isn’t good for apples brand either.
The truth is, you’d likely make the same decision if you were CEO, especially if you have to justify it to shareholders.
If Apple produced an Iphone SE with battery life that lasted, by making it a little thicker, then people would buy it IMO. The problem with the small phones is they arecreated on the premise that they should be crappy phones.
Of course everyone has a different version of what they consider crappy but bad battery life has got to be at the top of most people's crap-o-meter
iPhone 13 Mini was as you say. In every way as good as the full size iPhone but small. I hear it was quite an engineering challenge. I love the thing. The people of earth did not buy it.
People did buy it though. Apple sold a non-zero number of iPhone 13 Minis. They simply decided that number wasn’t big enough.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy to launch the iPhone mini during Covid, offer it 2 years, and say no one wants them. Especially when the SE proved people have no aversion to a normal sized phone meant for human hands.
I am clinging to mine in the vain hope they something similar gets built before it loses security updates.
Is it too big as a phone/SMS device? Yes. But as long as it's smaller than an equivalent digital camera or handheld gaming device or portable GPS it's still appropriately sized for how I mostly use it.
It’s not appropriately sized for one-handed use, unless you have large hands.
Life with modern large smartphones gets a lot easier if you just give up on the one handed use paradigm. I use my devices during the day mostly hands free via where I can for passive stuff like setting timers or listening to podcasts, or controlled via my smart watch. I’m only pulling out my actual phone because I want to use an app, type a whole ass email, or google something in a web browser. I accept I just use two hands for that and then put it away again. If anything it keeps me from picking it up unless I want to use it properly, which isn’t such a bad thing.
It’s not just one-handed use, but also pocketability and lower weight, which just feels nice. I have no trouble using apps. The iPhone mini still has a few years of life left, so I’m not in a hurry to change.
Depends what you're using it for. Typing? I agree, it's not, although I'd argue the original wasn't either, but other people thought the original was too small.
However as a camera? With the new camera button position it works pretty fine with just one hand. As a thing you tap and while it's in a mount? Also an appropriate size for one handed use.
The bigger phones have that feature where you can make the keyboard move a bit to one side of the phone for one handed typing too, not sure a lot of people know about that.
I suspect the iPhone Mini didn't sell well for reasons beyond people generally preferring larger phones, and suspect it might sell better today.
The biggest issue is that it was introduced in 2020 when many people were in lockdowns. A phone's portability was not as important, and people mainly using their phone at home on the couch likely preferred large screens more than usual.
The second issue is that the screens used slow pulse width modulation for dimming and could appear flickery for some users.
Finally, battery life was uncompetitive. Sony Xperia Compact models introduced years earlier had larger batteries. My guess is accepting a tiny bit more thickness would solve this problem.
Can’t really want a smaller modern iPhone if no one is selling it.
Foldables…
And yet, they sell, so people do want them.
This is solving an entirely different problem than you imagine. This is solving the problem of “no one can tell I use an iPhone when it’s in my purse/pocket”. This is a conspicuous bag that loudly announces “I’m carrying an iPhone”. That’s what it’s for.
Also, can you actually not fit a phone in your pocket? I can fit the biggest iPhone in my pocket just fine in all of my pants. Conversely my wife cannot, but that’s because women’s pockets are vestigial. She couldn’t fit the 3GS in most of her pockets either.
The price is incredible. Many phones on the market are cheaper than this accessory. Maybe the true market need is “people don't know how much disposable income I'm willing to throw at nonsense”.
Of course. Conspicuous consumption requires a high price. No one is impressed by the $15 cross-body bag you buy from Amazon.
It’s just fashion mate. There are handbag brands that start at $4,000 on the cheap end.
Reminds me of the threads here regarding fake diamonds. How they don’t understand why people would buy a real diamond when a fake one is so much cheaper. Or how proud they are of having a fake diamond that cost them a nickel. I swear there are lots of people here who are legit autistic.
I was with you until you started sledging/misdiagnosing people with autism. A bit insulting to insinuate autistic people couldn’t see the value in one side of this argument to be honest.
But I agree with you on the diamond front. I may not be interested in diamonds personally, but it’s a similar parallel - people shouldn’t be confused that may humans would care about the story behind a special item and not just the materials within it, yet some people can’t understand it.
I'm not sure I follow but I'd never but a real, likely ‘blood’ diamond. I'd happily pay for the lab ones because it's cool man-made science. AFAIK I'm not on the spectrum.
I've bought plenty of nonsense, but this is some fabric to hold your phone. Come on…
Have you heard of earrings? They’re just some metal to put on your ears.
There’s nothing about this product outside of any other product that riles people up except for the fact that it’s made by a company that collabed with apple.
I've bought a former partner very expensive earrings cheaper than this bag. What is riling people, I think, it's that we're being crunched by inflation and dwindling purchasing power, but here's a mass-market company putting out a bloatedly expensive accessory. Of course Prada is still out there, but most people aren't exposed to their product lines and pricing. I'd be just as pissed if McDonalds starts selling gold leaf burgers.
95% of products in the world are just as unnecessary as this one. It’s literally just a random a phone bag of which there are literally many products made by other companies that are MORE expensive than this one. HN just sees apple + pretentious and starts frothing at the mouth.
It’s very easy to just not buy it, sheesh. Touch grass people.
Yeah, and they serve the same purpose.
Yes, to be a stylish product that brings people joy.
“They didn’t spend their money irrationally the same way I’d spend it irrationally, therefore they’re wrong” - this entire thread
Oh, I get it, I've worked fashion retail at H&M. The nonsense designer collections would sell out fast, even though it's a) still H&M and b) made in the same sweatshops. People like status items. But come on, this is some thread wrapped around a phone. Even Kanye's idiotic shoes had a better price-to-value ratio.
In materials maybe. However with shoes there are a thousand other shoes just like it I could buy. This is a reasonably unique product - if you wanted a knitted phone sling of this precise design, there’s no alternatives, so the analogy doesn’t hold exactly.
> I can fit the biggest iPhone in my pocket just fine in all of my pants
New pro max fits perfectly fine in all my dressier trousers, it is rather big for some joggers though. Especially with Cuccinelli joggers it’s hard to get the phone to reliably stay in the pocket because they’re just not deep enough, so the top of the phone sticks through the opening.
The very easy solution to this has been to just buy joggers with reasonably sized pockets, Lululemon does not have this problem for example.
Anecdotally, just this past month I had a pair of good quality jeans from J. Crew wear out and tear at the pocket due to friction from my iPhone 13 Pro Max. The jeans are fairly lightly used.
I would love a smaller phone that doesn't kill my pants...
Are these super skinny jeans? I’m trying to visualize how a phone would tear your pocket.
Not particularly. It’s just a very big phone.
Not to be flippant but next time don’t buy the Max. I don’t know how to reconcile “I wish my phone were smaller” with “I buy the biggest phone”.
Apple is doubtless doing the same kind of “they say they want this but they buy that” calculation that automobile manufacturers are doing. “People say they want fuel efficient cars but they actually buy SUVs And giant trucks.”
> I don’t know how to reconcile “I wish my phone were smaller” with “I buy the biggest phone”.
Maybe "I want my battery life to be the longest available" dominates the decision.
Absolutely. But then Apple is correct in believing that “I want a small screen” is not actually the deciding factor. There are probably a bunch of people out there who would like a device with a smaller screen but it’s actually #6 on the list of priorities, below battery life, performance, screen quality, storage, and iMessage.
We're saying the same thing. The reconciliation method is a straightforward prioritization.
In this case I was gifted the Max; I didn't buy it myself. The next phone I purchase will probably be an iPhone 16 or 16e as those are the smallest "new" phones.
Don't listen to them, the Pro Max is the goat of iPhones. Buy a stronger pocket instead :-)
Literally this.
I'm typing this on an iPhone SE 2022 (the last one with a home button). I'm done with iPhone as soon as I am no longer able to use this model. I don't like the new, oversized pieces of junk, and I also like the home button as opposed to the new Face ID/swipe up workflow.
For people that have good visual acuity, the smaller screen is ideal; it's such high resolution that you can fit a lot of things in a small area. For people that turn the font size up to 600, the bigger screen is obviously ideal, but nobody really wants to have to hold something that is bigger if they don't need it for the screen size. That's the market I fit in and Apple has abandoned at market, along with all common sense (re: liquid glass, the recent Apple/Google Gemini deal, etc.).
I wish the iPhone 12/13 mini had been a few mm thicker for a bigger battery, and had been in the Pro class of devices. As it stands they didn't have a good enough battery to last a day, and most people interested in smaller devices had probably just picked up the new SE that was released just half a year earlier.
I believe the issue is that with Jobs gone, Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job. Instead of developing their own UI paradigm for small screens, they keep copying from Google Pixel both the UI ideas and the screen size. And now that they ran out of useful ideas, they turned everything transparent. Why make the iPhone look more like Apple Vision when people so obviously hate the latter? [1]
My prediction is that the age of AI and LLM assistance will make tiny devices the norm. Like those AI pins. Like Siri inside AirPods. Like Meta's AR glasses. But it seems that Apple is losing the race here. They lost their edge when it comes to developing new user interface paradigms.
EDIT: [1] Bloomberg claims 10-15% return rate, which would be massive: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-18/apple-... (for comparison, Galaxus reports 2% as normal for Smartphones and <5% for Meta's Quest)
>Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job
Honestly id say this is a mix of both Jobs and Ive being gone.
Now under the operational maximalist that is Tim Cook, they just revert to old designs every few years and call it revolutionary. See: edges on the iPhone. First, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary!
All the while stripping actual functionality out of the devices and removing useful features like headphone jacks. There hasn't been real product innovation at Apple in over a decade.
But I digress.
> There hasn't been real product innovation at Apple in over a decade.
Everyone says this but forgets that AirPods were released in 2016, Pros in 2020, and they're now the most popular headphones in the world
They also introduced what became the most popular watch in the world.
The most important thing Jobs did (and he mentioned this) is to say No to great ideas. Like this, like iPhone Air, like Apple Vision Pro, etc.. Apple without Jobs is now much like it was before Jobs in the 90s, only this time it has a lot more momentum than it had before. Still though Apple is back to throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
As someone who's spent a while playing with one (that I didn't buy) and who hasn't picked it up off the shelf in months:
I don't think most users were returning it because they hated the UI or even the device in the usual sense. (There are certainly issues I could detail, but they don't feel like the core problem).
The core problem is just that it just doesn't really....accomplish anything.
Once you get past treating it like an expensive Google Cardboard ("neat tech demo") - it's very hard to figure out what the point of the thing is. What problem does this actually solve for you/what thing is it actually better to use this for than other existing solutions.
Extremely high price tag with no "killer app"/function that makes anyone who tries it "get it" quickly and want one, is a pretty impossible sell.
> Why make the iPhone look more like Apple Vision when people so obviously hate the latter
They are normalizing Apple Vision look so it looks less weird when you switch.
Phones have grown, but people are the same size as ever. It's as if the industry has collectively forgotten what ergonomics is. It's especially frustrating for me as someone who is a comparatively compact person and who still considers the phone a secondary device mostly for use outside.
The industry has given consumers the choice, and they overwhelmingly prefer to spend their money on the larger phones.
The choice in the form of the iPhone mini that sold by millions but is somehow still considered a failed product by Apple, yeah. And nothing comparable in the Android world, where all manufacturers pretty much move in lockstep.
The choice has happened over many years. Incrementally consumers were offered the choice of the same size phone or larger, and they kept choosing larger.
If the smaller iPhones and Android phones of 10+ years ago had continued to sell well as larger models were introduced alongside them, they'd still be selling phones that size today.
I wonder what percentage of people who complain about not being able to buy smaller phones actually ever bought the smaller phones when they were available. Are these people carrying 3rd gen iPhone SEs right now? I suspect no.
It’s not as if Apple dislikes money. If they believed the market for small phones was large enough, they’d still be selling small phones.
I was still using my iPhone 13 mini until last week when I bought an Air. As a city dweller without a car, I'm constantly in situations where I'm carrying something in one hand and need to pull out my phone for something. Now with this huge form factor I can't comfortably do that. For example, I was traveling internationally and was carrying my duffel bag in one hand and needed to get information out of the Airbnb app on my phone, and I almost dropped it. The mini would have been (and was always) fine in these circumstances.
The Air doesn't even fit in my jeans comfortably, I have to carry it in my jacket now (what do I do in summer?). I'm considering returning it and switching back to my mini until it just can't run anymore.
Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone. I paid more for a worse spec'd phone (Air vs 17), solely hoping it would be easier to use as a mobile, out in the world device. It's not. If they launched the same exact mini with a processor bump at $1k or more I'd be fine paying it.
> Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone.
The reality is that “I want a small phone” for most seems to mean “I would prefer that the phone is small but this is actually the least important factor for my purchase decision”. The set of people who bought the mini was quite small, estimated around 3% of sales.
You didn’t even buy the smallest phone. You got seduced by the thin phone but the 17 and 17 pro are both physically smaller devices corner to corner and would fit in your pocket better.
For sure, I admit I'm an outsider in most of my life choices, including retail decisions. But for about 13 years there I was able to purchase phones that worked one handed before the market completely shifted away from that.
I purchased the phone that was the lightest, thinking that maybe it's thinness would make it nice to hold in one hand (it does), but it's still too big. And so back it goes for my 13 mini until that thing can't hold on any longer.
I was still on my iPhone 12 mini until about a month ago. I was ready to buy an iPhone 16 Mini on launch day if it existed. My wife was on her iPhone 13 mini until about a week ago, and would have bought an iPhone 17 Mini if that was on offering instead of the iPhone Air. Apple's continued refusal to offer a newer Mini, combined with the iOS 26 bug & accessibility nightmare, got us to switch. We now each carry a Sunbeam F1 Pro.
The people who complain about wanting phones to be smaller are like me. We don't buy phones that often. Manufacturers will never cater to us, because I didn't replace my Pixel 2 XL until this year.
I can never compete with the market that replaces their phone every year. Nobody can. They are the ones that keep buying giant phones.
>It’s not as if Apple dislikes money. If they believed the market for small phones was large enough, they’d still be selling small phones.
Apple, like almost every business that size, only does things that are profitable enough. It's not enough to sell 1 million phones for a good profit, they try to avoid doing that.
> It's not enough to sell 1 million phones for a good profit
This is true but also not the entire story. Apple also has to consider:
* How many of that million would we sell anyway in a non-mini version?
* What will the margin be on these relative to our other phones?
* How much of our engineering resources will be siphoned into creating yet another variant that we could use for other efforts or to make our flagship phones better?
* What’s the long term support cost for yet another variant?
I did! As much as I could as someone who can't stand iOS, anyway. I used the Pixel 1 and then the Pixel 4a, for 4 years each.
I have sympathy for folks who want a small phone and legitimately would buy it if available. Unfortunately the set of people who will actually buy a smaller phone seems to be very small, which is why all the manufacturers have just stopped. Apple with their two sizes seems to be trying harder than most manufacturers.
SE, 12 mini and 13 mini user here. Yes, I bought them.
I’m one of those people. I’m carrying a second gen se.
You seem to have missed my point about manufacturers moving in lockstep.
Most people use a phone for at least two years. The way it happened in the 2010s, by the time someone is looking at buying a new one, all available phones on the market have already grown larger compared to their current one. So, they get sad and buy whatever is available.
Which is perhaps why Apple tried the iPhone Mini, to go back and see if they were missing a large market segment. Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale.
There isn't a grand conspiracy to make everyone sad with big phones they don't want.
> Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale.
This is the key thing. It’s not that no one wants it. But it’s a lot of engineering to produce another distinct hardware model and the market is tiny compared to the larger models.
Apple will have like 15 macbook skus but a small iphone is the straw that breaks the camels back.
They don't have 15 different Macbook chassis sizes. Most of those SKUs are swapping SoC and memory configurations on the same board and chassis design.
By that logic the iPhone 17 (base model) is at least 24 SKUs.
If for example the 15" MacBook Air ended up being less than 3% of Mac sales, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple killed it off.
I bet it still outsold the mac pro
Anecdotally, I, personally, know several people who bought the iPhone mini, some of them still using it.
I still blame Apple for considering that 3% of total iPhone sales is a failure. And then launching the iPhone air, as if it will do any better...
And I know several people who bought and are passionate about small, lightweight 2-door cars with manual transmissions.
Sometimes that isn’t enough to justify dedicating a mass production line to that product.
But it somehow is enough to do that for things like the Mac Pro or the Mac Studio that are clearly niche products compared to the rest of the Mac lineup?
I'm not sure it's fair to compare cars to phones or other tech products. Phones are not very repairable these days, but even if you manage to keep a 15-year-old phone working, the unnecessarily ever-changing protocols, APIs, and standards will render it unusable for most practical purposes. So you're kinda forced to upgrade every now and then. A 15-year-old car though? It takes the same fuel and drives on the same roads as brand-new ones. And spare parts are most certainly still available.
I think there are a bunch of related questions though:
- Are the Mac Pro and Mac Studio getting yearly updates?
- Are they as intricate to design and manufacture as phones?
- Are they liable to eat into sales for more profitable models?
Personally, I'd be happy to get a new Mini if they made one, but I'm not shocked that they're not catering to that market.
The Mac Pro that famously gets very infrequent updates and is far behind the rest of the line on CPU generarion? I would not be at all surprised if Apple kills it off in the near future.
The comparison to cars is the market. A company makes products it wants to and that it thinks will pay back their investment, and that will be the most profitable choice among the choices of product they could make.
Sorry, you aren’t going to debate your way into Tim Cook choosing a less profitable product to make.
Estimates are that the mini was only about 3% of total iPhone sales.
This isn't a pragmatic item though. It's a fashion item. Similar to when Apple made the real gold Apple Watch. It's not a statement on the broader market, it's Apple associating its brand name with high fashion and prestige. They've done this for many years.
Yep. If someone is looking for a more functional item similar to this, Fjallraven sells a "Greenland Pocket" which I used to solve the "too much phone" problem. (And, unsurprisingly, costs many times less while doing much more.)
(I'm not associated with Fjallraven, I just enjoy this bag and think it makes the functionality of the Apple Pocket look even more ludicrous in comparison.)
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Can any woman with a purse or man with a fanny pack chime in and let us know if they've ever thought about putting their phones in their bags before?
Blazers and sport coats.
They’re purses you can wear that also tend to make you look better.
They’re friggin’ great, and even the largest smart phones easily fit their hip pockets.
No more keys poking you through jeans pockets. No more sitting on your wallet. Even room for a smallish paperback book.
We never should have moved away from them. They’re a utility garment.
What if you're in 30 °C weather?
High twist wool, unlined, adds basically zero heat (“summer weight wool” is a term that may include all these qualities). Doesn’t even do much to block wind (but does block the sun, a bit!). Totally fine in that range. That’s before resorting to something like an unstructured linen jacket (ever seen Lawrence of Arabia? Those guys are wearing plenty of clothing in the heat, a linen jacket is nothing) or warm-weather cottons like a seersucker (I’ve not bothered with any of that for jackets, myself, as light wool does fine for me, though I have several other pieces in linen).
Hell I own sweaters that are totally comfortable up to about that point, and higher if there’s a breeze. It’s all about construction and fabric.
Is this supposed to dispute the claim? A man putting his phone in his fanny pack would also signify apple's phones are inconvenient to carry. Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
No, it's supposed to point out that there exists an entire set of people who have been putting their phones in bags for as long as phones have existed. We mostly don't hear from women here on HN thanks to old gender biases in tech.
> Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
Apple released a collaboration with a fashion brand.
i'm not sure i get the point here. at some point, i don't want to be carrying something by holding it in my hand. i might need to use my hand for something else. so I put the item down, or put it in a container that I bring with me (pocket, shoulder bag, etc). Are they 'admitting' that people move around with things and sometimes have more than one purpose for their hands during an outing?
Yes, I do this because when I'm using my bike to get into work as it often involves more than one set of clothes and swapping everything between different pockets is annoying so I have a big 'unipocket' fanny pack, my 6.7" phone is still cumbersome in there making digging out other items annoying. And when I'm wearing some pairs of pants and the phone isn't angled just right it will dig into my hip while walking up stairs until it's adjusted. (and that's with a relatively budget android phone, smaller devices are a tiny niche of old less powerful devices that barely have support)
I have a fanny pack. I usually put my phone, a notebook, my wallet, some band-aids, and a couple diapers. Sometimes I add a charger if I think I'll need it. It's quite convenient, and I basically don't put anything in my pockets. Phone sits on its charger or in the bag, usually.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Marketing 101: Create a customer. Even if phones were small enough that there was no need for such a product, Apple's marketing team would convince you that you needed this product for [reasons].
It’s no such admission anyway, it’s just a random fashion accessory. Everyone takes everything apple does too seriously lol.
Same. I got so excited by the thought of a new iPhone that would fit in my pocket, but clicked on the link to see… phone socks?
This is not any kind of admission about phone sizes. This is an "exclusive" tie-in with a high fashion brand, nothing more.
Same... back in my day, people worked to reduce the size of mobile phones. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer small phones, which is why I still have an iPhone 12 mini.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I think it's an admission that consumers prefer phones that are large enough that they have become inconvenient to carry in a pocket.
Some people have never had pockets big enough to comfortably fit even a smaller smartphone and have been carrying them in bags this whole time.
I also thought it was like Gameboy Pocket - another small form iPhone. Yeah not too excited about whatever this sling is. I already have pockets
Absolutely this. I was so excited for a second that they were re-branding and re-launching the mini. My 13 is getting long in the teeth, and won't be supported for OS updates in a few more years.
Instead it's an ugly, phone-only purse.
Bleh.
The worst part of this is the UI bloat that came along with it. Since there's no longer a need to consider smaller phones, everything got bigger and more padded also worsening the information density on larger phones.
Apple can pry my iPhone 13 Mini from my cold, dead, normal-sized hands.
I was also hoping it was a small phone announcement but it not being part of a keynote didn't give me high hopes.
I've been on Android since day 1 but I'm thinking about switching to iPhone. If they ever made foldable (clamshell style, not book style) phone I would buy it immediately. I just want a small phone.
Yes I could get an Android foldable that already exists but I like to stick with Pixels and they don't have one yet and I'm kinda of done with Pixels. They are crap quality.
I too thought we were finally getting a reasonable sized phone again.
Instead it’s an overpriced Apple branded jock strap.
> I was so much hoping for an iPhone that will fit into my pocket
Yes, and I was about to write "so some Android manufacturer will copy Apple and deliver a phone of the size that was common 10 years ago."
Almost all of them are too large and they weight too much. 200 grams, why?
Yep We need iPhone mini. Every year the phone is bigger which is worse. Android is the same.
I had a look for covers, and I could only find silicone (?) or plastic sleeves and the 'handbag straps'. I think / suppose a lot of people just have their phone in their hand or on a table all the time, so why make it pocket sized?
"But no, Apple's phones just had to grow and grow like cancer ..."
Larger screens are better for advertising
Maybe there are more eyeballs on mobile than on larger form factors
Mobile OS are, with few exceptions, exclusively corporate-controlled. The corporations controlling the OS are enagaged in advertising services
Might make sense for them to try to increase mobile use for more tasks. Perhaps increasing screen size will help
I still have an old iPhone 4. Is it still possible to jailbreak and install some old software for experimentation. I'm not interested in using it to access Apple servers. All computers I own access the web through a TLS forward proxy. I see no advertising
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One of the subtext reasons is that women’s’ clothing lacks proper pockets for whatever sexist reason, so a pocket you wear on the outside can seem like a great idea.
Surely you're not suggesting that modern women's fashion is governed by some vestigial sexism and not actual desires and wants of consumers who are otherwise spoiled for choice when it comes to any other property of their garments, whether functionality, style, colouring, percent coverage of any and all body parts, etc.
I only learned this as an adult.
/s?
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250909-how-womens-pock...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference
The current form factors are what people are buying. Even the Apple design team is surprised. I think even iPhone Air sales aren’t as good as they projected
Reading this on a first gen SE. Still works great.
Since it can’t get the lastest OS many apps don’t install, effectively making it the type of dumb phone I always wanted.
>that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
It would appear people simply don't want them based on mini 13 and other sales.
I want a tiny phone.
But I have kids, and am less willing to compromise on camera quality than I am size.
I’d pay the same price for a smaller phone if the camera specs (and ideally battery life—go ahead and make it a little thicker, they’re too thin anyway) were the same as the larger phones, but they’re not.
I bet those kinds of differences are what do it for a lot of folks. They’re like me and would prefer smaller, all else being equal—but all else is typically not equal, even compared to standard iPhones and not the ultra-high-end ones.
Me too, I loved my mini 13.
But overall people didn't.
When I had to buy an iPhone 13 because support for the 5s ended, my hands hurt from the big phone...
I too was expecting a small iPhone. But this giant sock is hilarious. What are they thinking.
It’s a fancy colostomy bag for all your digital shit
Why sell someone a small phone when you could sell them a large phone and a watch?
I'm surprised trouser pocket sizes have not adapted to the larger phones.
I'm surprised hand sizes haven't either. Er, Apple is, apparently.
iPhones have always fit in my pockets. Even in different types of pants and different brands. This is already the case and I don't understand how the iPhone isn't already pocket sized.
I share the frustration. But apparently small phones don't sell.
> small phones don't sell
It's all relative.
If Google sold five million iPhones Mini it would be considered a smash hit. But because it's Apple it's considered a flop because of the ridiculous sales numbers of their other models.
Apple sold 10-15 million of the minis each year, with a marketing budget of approximately zero.
The problem is that everyone believed Tim Cook when he claimed that this is a failure.
How much did it cost Apple to make those minis? Do we know?
I surely don’t. But if it wasn’t profitable, then Apple sucks at supply chain management (which is something I don’t believe).
It even can be profitable but not worth the opportunity cost: spending the resources on other things could be more profitable.
opens cupboard
iPhone 3GS
Galaxy S3
Sony XZ1 Compact
iPhone SE 2016
iPhone SE 2020
iPhone SE 2022
Unihertz Atom
There's one data point. I would bet, though, that Apple, Sony and Samsung have plenty more data points of devices that didn't move and thus they stop making smaller devices.
Yup, keep in mind the generally Western audience on HN is only a small minority of the total market, which is... hundreds of millions of people for the iphone alone.
This is the correct answer. I don't think anyone believes that Apple doesn't manufacture smaller phones out of spite? They are just not popular enough.
"They are just not popular enough."
The various Mini models accounted for 3 to 6% of sales, which was still millions of units.
That must be why all those vacuum robots and smart TVs phone home to China. Because people really love appliances that spy on them. Good thing Samsung patched their fridges to add advertisements and spyware, because that's what their customers (in the US) were really waiting for.
The Unihertz Atom is probably too small but it really fits the niche its web site targets. I might consider it for my bike.
Stop hogging the mineral resources and recycle them already!
Pixel 5 is a nice size. I like smallies too.
Pixel 1 was the ideal phone. Not too large. Completely flat back. Screen didn't bulge above the sides so you could drop it without shattering the screen. Google's design has only gone downhill since then. (The pixel 5 looks pretty nice, but it seems to have the bulging glass and the beginnings of camera bumps)
I've been yelling into the void for smaller phones for ~15 years now. I get that I'm not the audience... I use a PC all day. I only use my phone for text communication, talking with my parents, maps, weather, and maybe a bit of web surfing while I'm waiting in line somewhere.
I see a lot of similarities between big cars and big phones: i.e. They're not really well suited to their most-common applications and there is also not much of another choice. The average person seems to just gobble it up without much thought though. Very strange from my perspective.
I was hoping for a zfold
I remember there was the iphone12 mini but it failed as people didn't want it. It was quite good honestly.
In Soviet Russia, pocket fit phone.
> speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user
With this phrasing, does it feel like iPhone owns its user?
It's kind of hilarious to me when the tech world collides with the high-end fashion world. On the one hand, I get how absurd this seems from a tech perspective. On the other hand, dropping a couple hundred dollars on a fashion item that will be trendy for a season among a certain group... it's no different from any other high-end fashion accessory. It's just that the two worlds so rarely overlap.
You can see just from this thread how the tech world reacts to the fashion world.
The fashion world's biggest sellers are handbags and shoes, which are practical purchases and tend to feature pretty intricate design details. This is a Speedo for a phone, and it makes Apple's already over-the-top descriptions of its products sound even more absurd.
Nothing about the fashion world’s $5000 bags is practical. It’s 99% status signaling
> It’s 99% status signaling
So is buying a $5,000 laptop. Much like shoes and bags, a kernel of practical demand quickly grows into an unlimited demand for vain materialism.
I don't like either of these two worlds. Yes, plenty of people will buy an expensive laptop/desktop that's only ever used to run benchmarks. If anything I could admire the $5K bag more if it's actually nicer than the cheaper ones, but a lot of the time it's not.
> So is buying a $5,000 laptop.
No they actually do shit
So does a $5,000 bag. 99% of owning a $5,000 laptop is virtue signalling.
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HN commenter logic: 'if I don't understand it, this is clearly wrong'
'If someone doesn't spend money irrationally like I spend money irrationally its bad'
There is indeed a blind spot.
Well said
I still firmly believe that it’s made for Chinese market, where it will sell really well.
It’s only being sold in one US store so your belief is not unfounded.
The Google Glass/DVF collaboration was a notable example of cringe in this area.
https://archive.nytimes.com/runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09...
Compare with this Prada smartphone bag for 1470USD I don't know how many they sell every year but there's an audience.
https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/prada-speedrock-re-nylon-and-l...
These always overlap in dumb ways. Had to microwave my $400 Ferragamo wallet to kill the NFC chip inside that kept making my phone buzz.
Apple has been a fashion brand for a few decades now.
Apple is a fashion company when you think about it
I’m so glad there are some people willing to pay over $200 for “a piece of cloth” which I assume is a translation issue but it sounds uninspired- who knew your inspiration for a bag could be the material that most bags are made of?
I especially like how it’s sized to fit almost any iPhone ever made. So not only are you getting a bag made of cloth, for over $200 it’s not even custom fitted!
Anyway, this product isn’t for me. I suppose enough other people will buy it.
Edit: I suppose the short version is under $200 but my sentiment hasn’t changed. Perhaps I’m even more cranky now that increasing the length of the strap costs $80. That’s the same level of rip-off that Apple charges for increased SSD storage on their Macs.
I bought my current phone for $94 brand new. It can communicate with other devices over the air through literal magic. It has 2.5 million tiny lights, each independently controlled to be any color I want. It knows where I am anywhere on the planet. Through it, I can access an essentially infinite pool of entertainment, hail life-saving emergency services, perform monetary transactions, acquire food, etc.
This piece of cloth is twice the price and it can't even make phone calls.
Literally not magic, but millions of patents and innovations that we understand down to the quantum level.
That's why the Romans could never make huge advances, they didn't understand the fundamentals. They knew using coal to make swords gave them better, harder edges, but they found it by raw accident, not knowing that the iron and carbon were combining atomically.
Green bubbles though
Surely you understand things like economies of scale, surplus inventories, etc.?
Not to mention, "number of lights" or "ability to communicate through the air" has no real bearing on its value, clearly.
This is like complaining about the $400 Hermès band. The "iPhone Pocket" is obviously a luxury item from a high end designer, of course it's going to be expensive.
That's all fine, the problem is the product looks cheap and dorky
That's practically half of all "designer" stuff anyways!
Oh, I think those are ridiculous too, but they aren’t quite the same thing. All of Apple’s Hermès bands have “Hermès” in the name: https://www.apple.com/shop/watch/bands/apple-watch-herm%C3%A...
With this you don’t even get the designer in the name.
Plus, I can see spending money for things that are nicer or specially designed. There is a huge quality difference between a Loungefly bag made out of synthetic material and a Coach bag of leather (or even Louis Vuitton, although that is a big step up in price). But this iPhone bag isn’t that- 3D knitting isn’t even that special, you could just as easily put a cheap Android phone in this bag, and I don’t think it’s going to be any more durable than a moderately priced crossbody or small purse.
Had to make sure it wasn't April 1st.
When I clicked the link, seeing it so high on the FP, I was 100% convinced they were finally re-releasing + rebranding the Mini.
Then I saw what it was, and was like “ah it’s an April Fools joke — but wait, it’s not April 1st”.
So now I can only assume people are upvoting it because it’s so ridiculous?
Are there people (on HN) that seriously think this is a good idea/are considering getting one of these hideous things?
Any tech focused social media site (or tech subcommunity on one) are having a fieldday poking fun and/or expressing how baffled they are.
In the tech world, this is a laughable proposition to most people even at $22.90 (though an order of magnitude more palatable at that price).
In the fast fashion world, this is pretty typical pricing for a seasonal trendy item with a "premium" brand/designer attached. Of course, that's predicated on the trend actually taking off, which isn't guaranteed. But all this social media activity around it in the tech circles is certainly boosting it's visibility to people in the fast fashion world that have iphones, which - going out on a limb here - wouldn't surprise me if it were a not-insignificant number.
Besides, at this price point vs what it is and what it costs to manufacture, even if it "flops" it's unlikely to be a big expense to write off.
Whether or not this tarnishes the Apple brand by shear ridiculousness of it remains to be seen, but Apple's general strategy in the post-Jobs era seems to be "Enshittify, just not as much/fast as everyone else and people wont want to leave even if they complain because we're still not as bas as everyone else"
You're literally describing my thought process, but I thought it was an older April 1st joke resurfacing.
At this point, you may as well get a powerpack for a mini and put it in one of these slings, you could have a crazy powerful machine in your "sock-et" sling thing here...
When the iPhone Air was just another huge phone...but thinner...smh. Apple should put up some page to check interest level in a smaller phone, and with enough interest, go manufacture it. If it is more expensive because economies of scale don't work out, but they create one that is small yet powerful, that's what I would buy at premium, because apparently compactness is a luxury.
> The design drew inspiration from the concept of “a piece of cloth”
I'm not convinced this wasn't an April Fools joke accidentally released early.
And they say you can “create your own personalized color combination”. This is just literally just the pairing of the phone color and whatever color you pick for the bag. Who calls this a customized color combination?!
Some poor marketing drone trying to find anything to put on the page for this product.
It's an out of season April fools joke.
Do you guys not have phones?
Checked the ULR twice
Suttle joke?
For all intensive purpose's their one in the same.
With all the things going on in the world, you also had to do this. All of it at once. You’re a monster.
I once went swimming with some intensive porpoises.
Well played!
I'm still not convinced it isn't.
Let's wait until black friday and re-assess
It reads like satire until you hit the part where it costs $229 and realize... nope, this is 100% real
Whenever in doubt about your product’s acceptance, just jack up the price and keep a straight face.
Its showing as $149 for me.
Which still feels outrageous for what is basically a knitted scarf.
There are 2 different sizes.
There's a long and a short one. The long one costs $80 more than the short one. Jesus.
Surely it's satire! looks around in amazement
lol, people on HN learning that fashion is a thing is always hilarious to watch.
this isn't fashion; this is status signaling.
i would hate to be you.
> this isn't fashion; this is status signaling
TIL these aren't the same things.
You're right. Fashion is about trends. Being in love with Apple products, especially without considering the need, usefulness or cost, does seem to be a trend.
Your takes are so hilariously lukewarm
Lukewarm here meaning just a normal take or something else?
Normal and pointless. You may as well have just said “people like apple products”. Yeah, duh.
Lol I could’ve asked an LLM to make me a typical HN user response and it would look exactly like this, well done.
They're trained on human responses, so it makes sense.
I did the same. Nope, not a joke.
Hacker news is probably not Apple's core audience for this product.
I recently saw in Southeast Asia everybody had their phone with a strap going around their neck. Which is why Apple made a first party case recently that does this. Apple's making products to cater towards international trends. People paying a lot of money for a fabric product is not unheard of, simply take a walk around the nicer mall in your area with multi-thousand dollar handbags as a demonstration.
Apple is a tech company. Their last two tech products (Vision Pro and iPhone Air) were colossal and unexpected failures. The industry is holding it's breath.
We already know Apple can manufacture lifestyle products and market fashion to fashionable people - that's not the issue. We're starting to turn the corner on Apple's true desire to stop competing. They can't innovate like they used to with the iPad and the Apple Watch; the "new" Apple products today are expensive alternatives to superior products. Apple's most-lucrative investments are turning out to be the App Store and iCloud, software investments that have nothing to do with their hardware quality. So we're now in the awkward position of getting precisely zero innovative hardware and tons of useless and expensive bric-a-brak like iPhone Pockets and iPad laptop-cases to convince people the ecosystem doesn't need to compete to be fun.
On the one hand, yes, I am not the target audience for this in the same way I would ignore the Apple CPAP machine. On the other hand, this is setting a new low for Apple that hadn't been challenged since the polishing cloth debacle. Nothing here is innovative and it seems to confirm the industry's broader suspicion that Apple's business model is bankrupt.
Ah this year's "Apple is dOoMeD"~ get yours in while November lasts!
Apple is doomed. Tim Cook cannot lead; he succumbed to advertisements, subscriptions and surveillance.
Sour grapes, but hardly unpredictable.
Someone wasn't around for iPod socks!
The iPod sock was a $30 joke. The iPhone Pocket starts at $149.99.
If there's any punch-line here, you're going to have to help me see it. Even for Apple, it's pathetic.
Precisely.
People don't need to carry wallets anymore. No cash, no physical plastic credit card. It's little surprise that the purse will trend smaller as people need to carry less and less inside it.
Apple is hitting a revenue growth plateau, which means the time has come to expand into adjacent categories. In a world where people put their phones into purses, why not the purse? And at a Apple-brand price point to match?
Yeah, most Americans don't understand how ubiquitous this is in Asia. I doubt this will catch on in America because of how unsafe the cities are. I would never wear this in New York but I definitely would in Tokyo
It gets really difficult to parody apple (and some of their customers) when they do things like this.
They themselves are the best at doing it, really.
A phone brand that rich people buy selling overpriced designer items?
I sincerely believe one day we'll get an official release of one of those Airpod straps: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hilarious-accessory-reminds-us-at...
Wow, that article is wild! Talk about "aged like milk." I'm not saying iPhone Pocket will be a hit as big as AirPods, but it goes to show how unimaginative early reactions can be.
Apple should experience the same surge of collective excitement everyone felt when they first saw the headline "iPhone Pocket," followed by the crushing disappointment of discovering it's just a grocery bag for your iPhone.
It might be dumb, but at least it's expensive.
This looks like it would make basic interaction with your phone highly cumbersome. It also looks like an easier target for thieves.
There will be tons of cheap clones in 3...2...1....
This was one of my first thoughts. Could have knock-offs made for probably $10 landed cost, and put them on Amazon for $99.
My mom knitted a bag for my niece's iphone in 2024, so there already was a trend.
I'm sure there will be, will be interested in how many people who want cheap clones want ... that.
I'm not sure there's a sure crossover of big numbers.
This makes me wonder how strong this thing is because on first sight it just asks for being cut by a random thug. Same goes for this strap thing they introduced.
I thought I won't be seeing anything else more ridiculous this decade regarding phones than people talking on speaker and holding them like piece of pie and here we are. There's no practicality whatsoever - I'd rather buy a strong case, probably that would cover both screen and cameras and a good urban backpack where I can put other stuff like physical wallet and a bottle of water, some charging cable.
It's more a gadget sold as a status symbol - bit like some cases had that small rounded window for apple logo.
The classic is two guys on a moped in Marseilles. The passenger cuts a pedestrian purse strap (or iPhone strap) and they vanish.
One could embed an invisible security cable, but then...
Give it a week and you will get all colors from aliexpress or shien for $5.
> It might be dumb, but at least it's expensive.
Just realizing that the reverse could be a selling point for a phone here: It might be expensive, but at least it's dumb.
Haha, before looking at the price, I joked "I'm not going to buy this if it's only $99 or less."
I sure didn't get disappointed.
I was out with my young coworkers and was absolutely baffled to see a bunch of them with slings for their phones. That was the only time I’d heard of such a thing until now. I kinda thought I’d drunkenly hallucinated it.
I was just talking to my wife about this, literally 5 minutes ago. I just moved from the 13 mini to the Air and am hating that it doesn't comfortably fit in my jeans, to the point where I might go return it today. My young cousin was wearing her iPhone on a cross body sling, and I was commenting that we've gotten to the point where the phones are so big that you need bags or extra things to carry it comfortably.
To a contemporary person their smartphone is probably the single most functionally important object they carry with them. People have always modified their clothes around common items, and then those modifications become subject to fashion trends and then eventually tradition themselves. Think like briefcases and wallets, but also japanese inro, european snuffboxes, decorative scabbards, etc.
This is more like an ancient and near universal practice being applied to a modern tool, rather than a totally new thing in itself.
For sure, I had that thought as well, that clothing is evolving alongside the things people are needing to carry.
But, for me, it does seem like we're going in a functionally poorer direction. Just a few years ago I could have a computer I could fit in my pocket. I can't buy that anymore. The fact that people are selling modifications to these devices (cross body slings, cases with those weird pop up things on the back so you can hold it one handed) to me means we've missed the mark on design. For more than a decade we had a great one handed computer that'd disappear into my pocket. No longer.
I’m still clinging to my 3rd gen SE. My daughter had one too, but was forced to get a new phone recently because she had destroyed the old one. Got talked into a 13 mini and now I never stop hearing about how much of a pain in the ass FaceID is compared to TouchID. When Apple finally takes my button away I’ll probably go to android.
Note: the other thing I like about the SE is it was comparatively cheap. I will never get close to spending $1000 on a phone. Apple doesn’t want me anymore.
For the demographics whose mainstream clothing includes no or very small pockets, this has been true for many years.
Absolutely, and the lack of decent pockets on women's clothing is probably a large reason I can no longer buy a computer I can fit in my jeans.
Reminds me of the iPod Socks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Socks
That was actually quite a nice product, though. And 6 for $29 was pretty good.
Note that it's $49 when adjusted for inflation
yeah, I loved them. Still have a couple of them with one of my iPods. Still going strong after all those years.
> The socks were jokingly presented by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a "revolutionary new product"
People were home knitting them anyway at the time. Some still do.
I still use an iPod Sock with my current iPhone
I was hoping this would be the announcement of a mini iPhone.
Instead they’re selling larger pockets because normal pockets aren’t big enough for large phones.
You would think pants manufacturers would cotton on and start making decent phone pockets.
I wear jeans a lot and the back pockets are dangerous for phones, and the front pockets are uncomfortable when sitting if there's a phone in them. I want a phone pocket on the outside of the leg that's big enough for a phone but not too bulky/puffy.
For those surprised by the cost, this is an Issey Miyake product, and the price is in-line with that. It's no different than the $800+ Hermes leather Apple Watch straps.
Also made in Japan
I'm as big a weeb as anyone but this is a textbook example of:
>thing >:(
>thing, Japan :O
In the context of this thread it's not so egregious. It was "It's expensive because it's designer" "Also because it's made in japan".
It's an economic fact that a factory worker in Japan will have a higher salary and more overhead than a similar worker in Vietnam or China.
> iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).
My Nana doesn't charge nearly enough for her crocheting.
Nana's been lowkey running a luxury accessories brand this whole time
Honestly… was having a conversation with my aunt about this last week. Knitting, crocheting, and quilting are all high-skill activities and no one charges enough for it.
I used to joke that I made some of the most expensive socks in the world: 20 hours per pair, and I’m a run-of-the-mill IT ops person in western Europe - do the math.
I have decided to up the cost by taking up fleece processing and hand spinning. Even on the wheel, it takes another twenty hours to clean, comb, and spin enough wool for a pair of socks.
If I were doing this for income, I’d definitely get faster at all the steps.
As I pick up more of the steps in making clothes, it’s mind-boggling how cheap even “luxury” clothes like the 500 EUR pants discussed above, much less my sturdy midrange jeans (Tom Tailor, 60 EUR, pockets that hold an iPhone 13 mini, even in a ladies’ cut), are.
Yep, lots of people doing knowledge work vastly underestimate the material cost, effort and skill associated with artisan goods. On one hand I blame modern manufacturing which justifies this ignorance somewhat but on the other hand I die a little inside when I hear about people willing to fork over large sums to something better advertised.
Though it's worth mentioning that some people are jumping into hand crafted stuff as a business first, cranking out subpar cookie cutter designs and while not terribly expensive and still a minority it's worth making sure you support people who care about the craft first. A category to watch out for is minimal leather wallets, while quality leather and correct thread selection practically guarantee the wallet will last, the care put into making it determines how enjoyable it will be to use.
The vast majority of people making handcrafted do not charge enough for their items. If they did, nobody could afford them. Most items are priced based on the cost of the material with little consideration to the time to make them. I have a friend that is a very skilled knitter, but for large items like blankets and sweaters, there are weeks of effort involved. When broken down, "kids in Chinese factories" make more per hour.
The great thing is that this type of person will tell you they are not in it for the money. As long as they can "buy more string" with the proceeds (or whatever their materials are), they are quite happy.
This is a prime example of the fact that ultimately prices are set by what people will pay, the cost of the item is functionally irrelevant.
see also: half of apple's product
I don't think this is the answer you think it is. Every person that I know that knits or crochets is not doing it to make money, or even when selling items are not charging because they think that's all someone will pay. They do it because they like doing it. If they were doing it to make money, then the fun and relaxing nature of it is lost. If you've ever been to or around a stich-n-bitch, you'd understand. It's cheaper than a therapist. Plus, there's usually wine and baked goods. I'm in Texas, so it's not like the items knitted are used for more than 2 weeks out of the year. That doesn't stop them. To blame it on the "what people will pay" is grossly not understanding.
You're arguing against a point I didn't make.
What you're saying is that these people don't do this in order to make a profit, they gain other benefit.
My point is that the cost/labor to produce an item has no real relationship to its sale price in a free market system.
> Most items are priced based on the cost of the material [...]
If that, in my experience.
"I've got some wool going spare" is a common anecdote.
My friend made a rule that no new yarn could be bought until the same amount of yarn from existing inventory is used first. An entire closet was dedicated to said inventory. Receiving yarn as a gift does not count.
> My friend made a rule that no new yarn could be bought until the same amount of yarn from existing inventory is used first.
Everyone makes that rule and no-one sticks to it XD
Prices fall when supply exceeds demand.
Labor is easiest to underpay when passion/fun gets involved.
Do they also sell Replacement Wool for $10/inch?
Only if you're an Apple authorized service provider.
Fashion statement. Plus it is a Limited edition release. Plus it is weird. Plus it is apple. Price seems right.
Ha, I bet the muggers/phone thieves will have a field day.
I find it interesting that anybody is that surprised. Remember, this is the company that overcharges for SSDs (no they're not magical super SSDs that only Apple can make)/extra ram.
They charged $1000 for a monitor stand that's pretty much just a thin block of aluminium.
I guess it works as a really expensive lasso/strangulation device.
I assume the sort of person who buys this walks from the chauffeured car door to the door, not down a regular high street.
I'm still waiting for them to collaborate with Levi's to bring iPhone sized pockets to women's jeans.
Or maybe iPad-sized pockets: https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/igotabigasspocket-ipad-jeans-1...
On one hand, I want bigger pockets that fit my iPhone, and on the other hand, I want smaller iPhones that fit in one female-sized hand.
Honestly, that would be the most genuinely useful Apple fashion collab yet
And like this product, it has a Steve Jobs tie-in. His on-stage uniform was Issey Mikaye turtlenecks and Levi’s 501s.
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”
Ugh
Its just a stiff translation of a marketing term. If you look up 一枚の布, you'll see a bunch of Miyake's clothes, where the whole gimmick is that they have no seams. A better translation probably would have been "inspired by the concept of seamless design"
That makes much more sense, even "a seamless piece of cloth" would have been much less ridiculous.
A more literal one-to-one translation would be "one sheet of cloth", which also would have been better.
That makes much more sense. Thank you.
Wait, it really does say that in the article. Wow.
Thats the point where I started double checking for april fools
Emphasizing a central concept/theme is common with Japanese brands, restaurants, events, etc. The translation is often slightly peculiar.
For example the Osaka Expo theme is "Designing Future Society for Our Lives". Or the retail store f.k.a. Tokyu Hands says, "Our concept is 'Create your own life in your own way with what is available within reach.'"
Looks like the swimsuit from Borat
Absolutely. They missed a great opportunity to call it the Apple CockSock.
I had to check the calendar to see if it was April 1. If Apple can sell a sock to put your iPhone in for 150 bucks… I wish I had the skills for that.
I just can't.
This is 150$ and probably cost 5 to 10$ to make.
You can ask a traditional crafts person in most the world to make you a custom one with traditional patterns and it would be significantly better. Then they can feed their family for a least a week.
Apple isn't the only one who can make a giant sock!
Apple wants to charge $150 for this sock. My premium fair-trade version, woven using traditional indigenous practices from sustainably-grown biodegradable materials, blessed via an aboriginal ritual, complete with an autographed certificate of authenticity from a rural craftsperson who subsequently follows you on social media, will cost $200. Joke's on Apple.
Apple selling this validates the idea. Those traditional crafts people now have a bigger market to sell their unique variations into.
I think the discussion is missing the real purpose of this (and which can't be achieved by other vendors) which is to normalize carrying your phone in a way that it's recording without your holding it in your hand to make it obvious that you're recording.
phone strap is not a newly invented product category https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phone-Lanyards-Wris...
This Apple product is not a phone strap and those Amazon products are not Apple products
Cats are not dogs.
Checkmate.
But its like 3D! Totally worth it when other objects are totally not!
I feel like you’ve missed the forest for the trees here
Wait until you see what a bag from Coach costs.
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Rarely do items (and their prices) make sense in fashion - but people still buy it by the droves.
All it will take is some celebrity placements with the iPhone Pocket and people will lap it up.
It’s a very long sock though. And it’s, ahhh… “3D woven”
Am I the only one who feels that Mt. BS is getting way too high?
Hey, I don’t know about you, but that seems like a screaming deal for a design that drew inspiration from the concept of “a piece of cloth”
It’s just a small collab, who cares
They're hardly the only retailer that successfully markets overpriced accessories.
Apple releases a baffling knitted thing every 20 years. What wonders will 2045 bring?
The iPhone Pocket is not even the first baffling knitted thing (BKT) they released this year.
That award would go to the "Dual Knit Band"
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-vision-pro-upgr...
Nah I'll give them credit for that one, the dual knit band is what the Vision Pro should have shipped with in the first place. The original designs were the baffling ones, you had to choose between a fancy knitted band without any top support, or a cheap band with top support, but now you get the best of both in one. Which you really want for such a heavy headset.
I don't think it's baffling; the original band was just Apple making the same kind of fumble that Coke made with New Coke: they assumed that because something is well-received in quick one-time demos, that means that people will also like it over longer exposures.
If you don't know the backstory: New Coke had a sweeter formula than Coke Classic. And, as the original "Pepsi challenge" [1975] demonstrated a decade prior to New Coke [1985], people tend to prefer a sweeter drink when they're only being given a 15ml sip of it. New Coke's initial user testing was essentially a "New Coke challenge" — giving people 15ml sips of Coke Classic vs New Coke — and this led them to believe that this sweeter formula would be popular. But as demonstrated by later attempted replications of the "Pepsi challenge", the preference for sweeter drinks goes away when people get a full mouthful of the beverage; let alone when they're handed a full glass to drink as they please. It never seemingly occurred to Coke to do another round of "full-scale" testing, with testers being given full glasses of New Coke to drink (perhaps with ice; perhaps with food; perhaps chilled, perhaps warm... etc), before green-lighting the formula for production.
Same thing seemed to happen to Apple with the Vision Pro's original band. You don't tend to notice the strain of headset's weight pressing down onto your face at first; it only becomes apparent after ~10-15 minutes of use. It was likely that both their user-testing sessions, and their shareholder demo sessions, were short. (The final retail demo they walk you through is certainly short!)
You wouldn't think that this could be true of the Vision Pro, because it was a very-clearly dogfooded product: Apple made this thing first-and-foremost for Apple engineers, to allow their hardware design teams to work remotely during COVID. (That's why they shipped a "Pro" SKU first; the "Pro" SKU was what they needed.) Many of those same engineers were likely wearing prototypes of the Vision Pro to design later revisions of the Vision Pro.
My guess, though, is that early revisions didn't have all of visionOS (especially the computer-interaction parts) finished yet; and therefore, the Vision Pro was, at the time, really just serving as a peripheral for viewing of spatially-AR-embedded 3D objects (i.e. their hardware prototypes). The workflow likely looked like: edit and collaborate in a CAD program, with the headset off; save their changes; push the 3D model to the headset; pop the headset on; check out their changes ("do a walk around" of the object); take the headset back off; and go back to editing/collaborating on their computer.
Obviously, the original band would have worked just fine for that workflow!
The Genius Cap - the world's first knitted cap with built-in EEG electrodes and Neuralink inductors?
Neuralink injectors.
Ah, or like that. I was thinking about some kind of hypothetical wireless power or communication.
Are you saying they released a knitted thing in 1984?
Yes, Apple released knitted shirts in 1984 with the launch of the Macintosh.
But not, I think, shirts for the Macintosh. Although I'm sure we can all agree that they should have.
It sucks that most people don’t see the pocket as the perfect overlap between fashion and tech. It’s the ideal Issey Miyake bag, it’s just something tech people won’t get.
That and the design misattributions. Even going in blind, if you actually read the Newsroom post and find the Store page, you can figure out that this isn’t even an Apple product. It’s an ISSEY MIYAKE product. If you end up finding any of the Vogue articles, it says right in the article that this was a design project initiated by and done within ISSEY MIYAKE by an ISSEY MIYAKE team, with some input from Apple employees they (proactively) approached and talked to.
I’m sure a lot of people get it, but “this is kinda neat” makes for less of a HN comment than [insert an elaborate rant on how ridiculous it is to charge markups for fashion stuff]
Correct. It's acceptable to not like it, but 200 or whatever for an Issey Miyake piece is pretty par for course.
It sucks that most people don't see that Apple totally stole this (iPhone Pocket) after it became trendy. I bought it as a gift last year. It was very trendy then. I forgot the store's name. Just like apps, Apple steals fashion ideas.
Seeing all the nerd brains of HN implode trying to understand this. This is what happens when the tech and fashion worlds overlap for a moment.
No one can convince me a $229 sock to hold your phone is comprehensible to the average person, nerd brain be damned
my conclusion is that designer fashion is not for average people
see also apple watch hermes $500 watch straps (https://www.apple.com/shop/watch/bands/apple-watch-herm%C3%A...)
or (non-apple) LV purses, $5000+ https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/women/handbags/all-handba...
or LV phone strap, "Contact Us" https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/products/monogram-phone-s...
These are normal items, just expensive
it's just status symbol
some rich people like it
some rich people think it's dumb and targeted at those with ego issues
A $10 fanny pack from Uniqlo or H&M looks better than this thing and is also more practical (can carry other stuff, keys, wallet, etc)
https://static.standard.co.uk/2023/01/19/10/uniqlo%20header....
I found the reddit ManyBaggers recently and there is a cottage industry of high-end bags that seem incredibly made for the price that are in no way luxury products.
You mean 99% of the world who scoffs at wasting money on this? Maybe it’s the fashion world at odds with literally anyone else
No, I am not trying to "understand this". I don't give Apple enough credit to try to understand it.
This thing is just a "Balenciaga": trash disguised as luxury.
I always have a little chuckle when I see people holding a tiny delicate smartphone in a massive fat case to protect it from the damage it will inevitably take in normal use. I always think that it would have been better if they had just made the phone itself a little tougher!
Cases are an ablative layer of protection, you can’t get the same thing by making larger phone of some uniform material.
Young kids can go through multiple cases each of which look like they have been run over, but it’s relatively common for adults to replace a case.
I'm not a native speaker, I tried googling and translating and still did not get what "ablative" means. Do you mind explaining like I'm 5 what does it mean please..
> Ablation (Latin: ablatio – removal) is the removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosive processes, or by other means. Examples of ablative materials[clarification needed] are described below, including spacecraft material for ascent and atmospheric reentry, ice and snow in glaciology, biological tissues in medicine and passive fire protection materials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablation
The poster is saying that a case can wear out and be replaced without damage to the phone. You can let the case take all the damage, then get a new one. But if you let a phone take all the damage (even if it's a tougher phone), you can't remove that damage.
Thank you! I just searched for "ablative" and ended up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_case which confused me even more hehe
I think they meant in the sense of it being worn away and destroyed as an intended use.
Adjective definition 3 from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ablative
Thank you, this page is much more informative than default google's definition of this word!
It's good to have a choice. I know I'm going to drop my phone from time to time, and sometimes it will be onto a hard surface, so I always get a case. I once managed to shatter the back glass while it was in a case, not sure how I managed that. Other people may be less clumsy, or more tolerant of living with damage, or more willing to pay for insurance or replacements.
It's also nice to be able to choose a texture. In my latest iteration, I got Apple's techwoven case, and I really like the feel compared to the usual silicone stuff, or bare metal. The texture also makes it easier to grip so maybe I'll drop it less. I can hope.
The phones are incredibly tough, I have never used a case and I've only cracked my screen once and that was like 8 years ago.
And then worry about what colour they are going to buy while not a single picometre of that colour is visible in many cases.
funny thing - every 2 years gorilla glass creates a tougher one. and the phone makers then make the glass thinner, thus erasing the durability gain
I haven't had a screen break in almost a decade now. I do buy flagship phones. So I don't think we need to make glass anymore thicker. But I also use screen protectors, and I had maybe 1 break in the last 10 years.
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I legit had to do a double take and ensure this wasn’t an old April fool’s post. The concept… odd but whatever. The price…
Wasn‘t Borat wearing one of those like 20years ago?
Wait this thing is like $150? It's got all of like $2 worth of yarn and plastic.
A sucker is born every minute, clearly.
And an iPhone is just made out of stuff dug up from the ground.
I've seen the leaked BOMs, it might as well be with the margins they command.
Back when Steve Jobs was at Next, Apple released the Duo Dock. Instead of plugging your laptop into a docking station, you put it in a slot like a giant 3.5" floppy. It was different, sure, but I still don't know what design problem it solved.
This is today's Duo Dock, isn't it?
> I still don't know what design problem it solved.
It supported a CRT so you could have your laptop under your display without needing to spend desktop space for a laptop off to the side.
I’d love to out my laptop into a slit and take it out later ? This “bag” though seems like an insult considered I still liked the smaller iPhones.
> the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.
Their level of innovation is inspiring. I knew my grandmother was ahead of her time. Apple just proves it.
Nerd question: what are the in-wear physics of this item?
It looks like a mass on a spring: the phone is a relatively heavy weight, and the wool pocket and strap are naturally springy.
So during everyday wear, does this thing bounce around? It seems like it would be impractical.
It shouldn't be legal to sell products under the name of a dead person (at the very least in cases where there's a strong chance buyers are given the impression that the person had something to do with production of the product).
> a collaboration between ISSEY MIYAKE and Apple
Issey Miyake died 3 years ago. He has not participated in this "collaboration".
Can we also not have Levi's? Ford cars? Jack Daniel's? All of their namesakes died a very long time ago.
I added a qualifier because these exist (see also pretty much every Japanese company), though if such a hypothetical law were implemented I'd honestly see no major moral gain in protecting the creation of new names like those either. If Strauss had decided to name his company something other than his own name it wouldn't have altered the quality of the product.
But no, those aren't comparable here because people today don't believe Henry designed the latest F150
> Material: Nylon (14%), Polyester (85%), Polyurethane (1%)
Its crazy they didnt even use any expensive materials to maybe somewhat justify the price.
Just the cheapest stuff you can get away with.
> iPhone Pocket features a singular 3D-knitted construction
What does that mean? What would be an example of 2D knitted construction ?
Imagine being the copywriters tasked with making this sound cool.
[1] [Issey Miyake] was also inspired by fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet's use of geometric calculations and "a single piece of beautiful cloth".
The apple release chose some poor wording / translation in it's description 'Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”', but that part actually makes _some_ sense in the context of Miyake's designs. I make no such claim about the product as a whole...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issey_Miyake
Miyake has a line called A-POC which makes clothing out of a single piece of cloth. So it's a product line at IM.
Not for me.
But my partner is a fashion designer and was just this morning working through studying 3D knitting technique.
So I wonder if this will lead to more 3D knitted products.
Drug dealers are going to be as upset at their style being stolen by hipsters as sailors were when hipsters decided that tattoo's were cool.
Phone thefts where I live (London, UK) are at an all time high. If ever a product was needed to self identify as a target this has to be it. "See this expensive iPod Sock? It's holding my expensive iPhone"...
This is the best idea since having a charging port on the bottom of a mouse. Finally, a product we can source from the US completely.
Almost no one who actually uses one has ever been bothered by the charging port on the bottom.
If for some reason they ignore the low battery warning that occurs days before it runs out of power and it actually dies, 2 minutes on the charger will provide enough charge to get through the rest of their day.
Yet it still continually comes up. You ever wonder why? It's because "Almost no one who actually uses one" is incredibly dismissive of the people who do have a problem with it. It's like being disabled, like blind people or wheelchair users, or foreign language support. In this case, it's neurodivergent people. It's "you're holding it wrong", it's Apple shuffling things under the bed and pretending they don't exist, just buy their shiny new thing and your problems go away. And consumers supporting them in that while Tim Cook laughs all the way to the bank.
Yeah, no one you know has that problem. For the people for whom it's a problem, it's a problem! You can dismiss them and say well they shouldn't be like that, or that they're being crazy, but at the end of the day, even after you've called them crazy and don't care about them, they're still them, and they still have to deal with a mouse that doesn't work for them. They still have to deal with the problem. Severe untreated ADHD means poor time management, low executive function, and zero impulse control. This means waiting until right when the project is due to start working on it, this means emotionally the user is panicking, so having to sit still and let it charge is physically painful.
Yes, neurotypicals don't have this issue. Good for them! Apple isn't the problem user's therapist, that user can't access healthcare anyway, and it's their problem, not yours.
The charging point on the bottom of the mouse is fine.
The people shocked by this are the same people who still believe Apple can sell a normal sized phone but isn’t doing so possibly just to piss us off. The thing is there are millions and millions of suckers out there who will suck these Sock™s and Pocket™s up in possibly dozens - some for the colours and some for the mere satisfaction of getting to pay Apple. If you venture across iForums and iSubs you will slowly start seeing comments about these fabric things are already curing haemorrhoids and insomnia, in anticipation (even before shipping starts).
If this seems like an odd accessory to you, consider that women’s clothing often does not have pockets.
Oh my... I'm just left wondering if Apple releasing a giant sock for your phone equals to the proverbial moment of your taxi driver giving you advice on stocks to buy.
Well at least it's multithreaded. :D
I clicked hoping they’re making a small iPhone again like the SE was.
I look around at people with the smaller phone and wish we had a newer model. Whatever happened to this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0gtsjfy7E
The small iPhone is like the Cadillac Ciel. So many would buy it if they could, but they can’t so they won’t.
I take the pants that have insufficient pockets to a tailor, and ask them to extend the depth of the phone pocket. You can even ask them to do the extension in phone size if you want to restrict its movement in your pocket. On average I've needed about a 3" extension which both restricts lateral phone movement, and also carries it low enough on my thigh that the phone doesn't pinch into my hip when I sit down.
$30 or so later you'll have an integrated Pholster and don't have to carry another thing around with you. For $200 you should be able to update all the pants you have that lack a proper pocket. This is also an incredibly easy thing to sew yourself, by hand, while you watch TV. $30 for a tailor to do the first pair to give you a template to follow, $50 at a craft store will get you some decent scissors, needle, thread, and a yard of whatever material you like. You'll butcher the first pair of pants, but the second, will be better and the third will be perfect.
Finally, Apple have invented the bag.
No, Apple has never had to be the first to invent. They wait, and they don't release until they get it right. /s
"3D-knitted"
Do others knit in the 2-dimensional space?
Should have said 4D, because it exists in the space-time continuum.
Did anyone else think/hope it was a new actually tiny iPhone?
I built some of the first apps on the App Store. Top twenty navigation app. Won an ADA.
Still, my pocket is my iPhone pocket.
Until they release something the size of the X or smaller, I’m sticking with my iPhone 13 Mini or eventually going for a Razr style Android.
Every year they release something, I go check it out. My love for Apple dies a bit more.
I do not use Apple products so I do not have an opinion about them.
One thing I know is that they are z making beast. The fact that they could sell a monitor stand for ~1000 € and wheels for something I do not remember for I think 200 €, and now this, means that they are genuises.
haha who came here because expecting a mini/small iPhone like the SE? :-D
>3d knitted construction
This genuinely has to be a gag.
This does look like a gag to me too, but 3D knitting technology is interesting. I have a pair of carbon-plate marathon race shoes made with 3D knitting. They're very light and very comfortable, with stretch in some axes and stiffness in others as needed, no seams but form-fit around my foot in compound curves.
Instead of making the thing out of 2D pieces of fabric, even stretchy knit fabric, and sewing those planar shapes together into something 3D, they made this as one continuous knit object that adds and drops stitches to give it shape without seams. The machines and programs that manipulate the yarn and partial garments, tying knots at crazy speeds to create something 3-dimensional out of something 1-dimensional, are just astonishing. Equally astonishing is the fact that with two sticks and their hands, it's not that challenging for a human knitter to do the same. I think that "knit a sock" is one of the most challenging tasks to give a humanoid robot.
They bought a bunch of 3D knitting machines to make Vision Pro headstraps, and since that isn't selling I guess they're using the excess capacity to make iPhone socks.
You can briefly see them in this ad: https://x.com/tim_cook/status/1748337010191077462
It certainly has that dual use.
I don't want to kink shame anyone, but I'd be concerned about getting all of that fuzzy caught in someone's throat. Unless I missed the version made of silk.
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”.
no https://us.isseymiyake.com/collections/pleatsplease
no, it's a whole garment knitting technique
Pairs well with pieces from the Apple collection https://archive.org/details/apple-collection-1986-1987/page/...
"Who is going to buy this?"
I assume the same people who bought the $700 wheels for their computer case.
I never thought this will be a reality but here we are https://scoopertino.com/apple-blasts-into-supermarkets-with-...
Issey Miyake was the most interesting high end clothing designer, many of his high fashion designs didn’t sync with any trends from other fashion designers, they were instead highly sculptural and informed by art rather than design.
He was interested in fashion enabled by technology, and there is the long standing connection between him and Steve Jobs.
It is okay to dismiss high fashion brands that don’t suit your needs, this is a niche thing that doesn’t appeal to everyone. It makes sense as a part of the Apple product portfolio that is fashion conscious.
The next product Apple will unveil will be an iPhone case made of human fingernails from those who have tried to climb this K-shaped economic ladder and failed. It'll be a steal at only $500 a pop.
Notably: <Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth">
The problem is not that ordinary clothes pockets aren't "designed to fit any iPhone". The problem is many iPhones no longer fit inside many pockets.
For now at least, Apple is still selling to people who wear clothes, and their devices are becoming less compatible with those clothes. This is what a "workaround" or "kludge" looks like in the non-software world, and the consumer gets to pay for it to boot.
FWIW, the designer behind these also created Job's turtlenecks.
Were those also made mostly out of polyester?
Could this be some sort of joint venture? In other words, is Apple being paid to promote this in some way?
I realize this is a “limited edition” item but it seems to me as being way off brand.
apple x designer fashion has been around a while https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-hermes/
The answer to your question is in the article :)
It feels like a relic from the iPod Nano era
So iPod Socks[0], but with a strap?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Socks
Every knitter on the planet is simultaneously thinking, "$150 for a rib stitch tube with a slit that I could make a clone of in one sitting? Dang."
This pattern repeats itself in "high" fashion quite a lot. Simple, ridiculous things that are relatively trivial to make, yet massively expensive due to hype/brand/fomo. I guess it wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it, but it also shows how people don't value craftsmanship so much as status symbols.
Show them two identical products, one from Apple, one from Auntie down the street, and they'll pick Apple and tell you the other is inferior.
I'm sure theirs is better than anything I could make myself in all sorts of little ways. I'm just not sure it would be $140 better.
On the other hand, if I did make one for myself (which I won't - one purse is enough) it would probably have a 2-color brioche stitch or something like that for more visual interest.
This might be smart. A few thoughts:
1. It gets the camera out of your pocket, which could give your ai assistant more context about what you're doing.
2. The high price tag helps get the word out (e.g. this thread) and invites third parties to compete with cheaper and more practical versions. This makes sense if Apple's goal is #1
I bought iPod socks back in the day and loved them. I used them for more than just my iPod, like my Palm pilot and my digital camera :)
How about making phone that fits into a normal pocket?
Its all good for Apple cause the more people talk about this and not Apple intelligence, the better for them.
This costs almost as much as my Android phone, which (unlike an iPhone) fits easily in the pockets of all of my clothes.
Which phone do you have that's smaller than an iPhone?
Unihertz Jelly Star; 3" display 116 grams.
Same company makes a Jelly Max, which is a larger volume than an iPhone, but about 2cm shorter in height and 1cm shorter in width than what I think is the smallest-screen iPhone currently for sale (16e).
Btw Issey Miyake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issey_Miyake) died in 2022.
This piece of trash likely has nothing to do with the guy, somebody's likely just milking the brand/name as long as it still has some relevance.
Really poor taste from Apple.
Pretty much every other Apple product has appeal to every demographic: young, older, professional, student, all walks of life - as long as you can afford it.
This product has a very narrow and limited target customer base.
I’m not going to walk into the office with my fuchsia Apple sock around my shoulders.
Best storage design out of Apple since the iRack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjLEwZqcQI
I wonder if it fits an iBrator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP9Ef_KQTTI
They could make a small iphone if they wanted to:
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-Air,Appl...
Hey, any of y'all want one in hand-spun, natural-colored wool (as in, as it was shorn from the sheep) yarn?
The thrill I had clicking on this link, thinking I was about to see the next evolution of the iPhone mini, an even smaller, minimalist iPhone, only to discover it's just a completely useless novelty product.
I should have known better.
Amazing that Apple would prominently highlight a product made with 3D knitting, as I’ve just gotten in to machine knitting as a hobby after buying an old Brother KH-910 on eBay and modding with with an AYAB (all yarns are beautiful)[1] open hardware/software knitting machine board from the AYAB discord. I just got a second needle bed for my knitting machine (KR-850 ribber) so I can do double bed jacquard knitting and other more advanced stuff.
But this has also led me down the rabbit hole learning about industrial machine knitting and 3d “wholegarment” knitting, invented by Masahiro Shima first in the 1960’s for autonomous glove knitting and later for entire full size garments in the 1990’s. [2,3,4] That’s what Apple is using in this product (now two companies offer 3D knitting machines according to Wikipedia). In traditional machine knitting you still have to make multiple flat sections and stitch them together, but in 3D Wholegarment knitting the machine is capable of knitting an entire complex garment, bag, utility item, whatever all in one go fully autonomously. Shima Seiki invented a new kind of knitting needle and expanded the system from two needle beds to four to enable the most advanced form of Wholegarment knitting. What I find fascinating about this technology is that it makes it possible to run a garment manufacturing business which is almost fully autonomous, eliminating the need for often poorly treated overseas labor [5], and potentially simplifying business operations dramatically.
The piece linked in [2] talks to an Italian knitting company that was able to keep manufacturing domestic thanks to these machines, and this helps explain how Apple can offer these bags as made in Japan in these volumes. I daydream about getting a used Mach2x and parking it somewhere to make it run 24/7 to make warm garments for the homeless around the Bay Area, perhaps with a low volume boutique fashion brand which helps pay for it. Anyway they’re really neat machines and this has been my little autistic hyperfocus lately, I thought I would share!
[1] https://www.ayab-knitting.com/
[2] https://youtu.be/kZE8rvPYbII
[3] https://www.shimaseiki.com/ire/about/history.html
[4] https://youtu.be/y6wHl0Xtxfw
[5] https://youtu.be/PxFwA-jw3X4
I think apple is short on some cash and they are trying to get some quick money. The issue is now you will see this ugly looking “case” all over the streets and especially among women, it might be the next Stanley cup all over again.
First thought this was a parody, joke or something.
Then saw the domain apple.com, can't believe it!
For everyone who is upset about the price tag: this is a wealth-signaling product. Like a Hermès handbag.
Apple is not a luxury brand but it's close enough with some of its products that it can get away with a price like this on a product like that.
One of the most innovative companies in the world......supposedly.....and they come out with this.
"Users can create their own personalized color combinations with iPhone Pocket and iPhone."
You don't think that's innovative?
Wait it’s not April?
You're not familiar with the internationally recognized Day of the Joker every 11/11?
Is this an early April 1 post? 150 bucks for an ugly, impractical sock?
You can achieve similar results by throwing your iPhone inside a £1 trail sock...
The is the ultimate Rincewind accessory - you can put a half-brick in it and wallop people, without having to take off one of your socks. In a pinch you can even just wallop people with your phone, if no bricks are to hand.
Does it fit an android phone or is it immediately ejected from the pocket with gusto?
Ejecting with gusto would be gouache. The Android phone is simply shamed into dropping out of the sleeve.
Do you perhaps mean gauche, as in socially awkward verging on unacceptable or is there a connection to art supplies I'm missing here?
EDIT: or perhaps your phone "helpfully" autocorrected something wrong, as mine did.
The bag will turn blue
this voids the warranty
If only they spent these resources on bringing “slide over” back to iPad in its original form.. :(
This looks kinda lame. I already have a pocket for my phone, it’s my.. pocket. Or I can throw it in any other pouch if I don’t have pockets.
> I already have a pocket for my phone, it’s my.. pocket.
As Steve Jobs intended.
(Like, really. I think the original "one more thing" presentation was also so powerful became he could just casually pull some next-gen tech out of his pocket)
Bwuh, I thought they had a new name for a smaller iPhone, but it’s just a bag.
On the bright side, it looks as if you could also use it as a decent slingshot.
>designed to fit any iPhone
given Apple's track record in the past, this is the first indicator that there will soon be an annual line of iPhones that will not fit in these slings
If this is released on April Fools' I would just gig and skip it as a joke. If it is not then I would just think Apple is a stupid money grabbing machine just like EA
250$ for a sock…
Yes, it's designer sock with a famous fashion designer's name on it.
The pricing is insane. I could see $30-50 for premium materials and design.
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”
I thought this was an April fools joke.
This is gonna launch first in Taipei (among other stores) and looks a lot like the bags people use to carry their boba tea in here. It's a bit expensive for a drink bag though.
I do wish they sold a double-side magsafe that you can put on your shirt/jacket so I can just clip my iPhone on my chest. Pro Max is too big for my pockets.
I thought it was a parody! Is this really what Apple can do?
They expect me to walk around with my phone in a long sock? A fannypack even looks more appealing.. also, isn’t this a sign that phones are getting too big?
Aww. I was hoping for a super mini flip or foldable low-power minimalist iPhone, but it's another weird Apple hipster fashion accessory. Very disappointing.
I don't think selling a useless product for ridiculous amount is a problem for Apple. I do think that selling an ugly product is a problem for Apple.
> beautiful way to wear and carry
I strongly disagree with that statement.
Could this be apple's attempt at testing out the waters on whether their customer base would be interested on a new wearable piece of hardware?
So phones have gotten so big they nessecitate a whole new type of clothing to carry around.
Maybe, just maybe, the solution is a smaller phone?
Might just have my mum knit me a custom one.
True story: when I got the iPhone 5 the first case i used was a home made fabric slip. Fashion really does come and go in cycles.
Do your iphones hang low Can you swing them to and fro...
"The design of iPhone Pocket speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user"
I have so much to say about that sentence that I cannot seem to say anything.
Lol it feels like this is their solution to the "phone too big" problem. Anyways, when's the next iPhone Mini???
Instead of redesigning the "pocket" they should just make phones that fit inside regular pockets.
Is this a better thing to announce instead of the iPhone Air? I personally think so :) the Air should never have been green lit
here i am replying from my iphone air. My favorite iphone to date, by far. I “downgraded” from a 16 pro. Phone feels like a feather. Fits so nicely into my cross body bag as well!
Battery life has been better than expected.
I think this should be called the iPhone Borat.
What in the Teenage Engineering is this?
I was hoping iPhone Pocket was a new iPhone mini which fits into any pocket, even the ones women have on their clothes.
I'll propose a name for products that are like this, visibly, trash disguised as luxury.
We should call them "balenciaga".
They're telling us that iPhones are going to be getting so big, we're going to have to buy it its own custom pocket.
A smaller phone just means you'll spend less time on it. That's not a desirable outcome for anyone except the customer.
I do not mean to be crass, but some of the ones that are carrying an iPhone bear more than a passing resemblance to a human vagina.
I actually thought this was an iPhone that fits in my pocket or something sleek, iPod style. This is worse
At least they put Hong Kong to the top to clarify if it is included or excluded from Greater Chinɑ.
hilarious seeing so many folk here turning their nose up at spending so much on an accessory from a well known designer brand. Apple devices could be considered by many (particularly outside of Californian circles) as of the same ilk.
Saw this earlier today and legitimately thought it was satire, especially when I heard the price. Turns out it's real?
You'd be better off wearing a cross-body bag that a lot of Japanese men use.
Worst of all is that it's polyester, basically a piece of plastic. I hope this product fails just because of that.
Well this is a head scratcher for sure.
This will make theft so much easier as compared to normal trouser pocket. It's more of a style thing I guess.
Apple's been heading down the toilet since Cook took over, now they've morphed into a parody of themselves.
That’s a nice piece of cloth. I would worry about it getting damaged. I wonder if they will sell a case for it.
I wonder if it supports the $19 Polishing Cloth (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mw693am/a/polishing-cloth).
Saw the link and was looking forward to an iPhone that could actually fit in one hand again, welp.
This feels like a step backwards and if it were released on April 1st would be indistinguishable from a prank.
I would prefer if we flipped it, "Pocket iPhone", and got an iPhone that fit in a normal pocket.
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,”
Had to triple-check that this wasn't a parody website.
I thought it's a joke and someone made a satire website or something.
The ridiculous part is, people will buy this.
Wow, it's not even a parody. The iPhones are so huge and heavy now it needs its own purse.
Stylistically it looks like something that goes with a very specific style of clothing and only that.
Formerly known as a "purse".
It’s a thneed!
Reminds me of the thong Borat wears.
I was kinda hoping for new HomePods today, if rumors are to be believed, but instead I get this.
My iPhone 12 mini is my iPhone Pocket. Still using it and holding onto it as long as I can.
I don't doubt they will sell millions but it looks so absurd
I am looking forward to this being available on taobao/temu for around $5 !
They could just make a device that fits in a regular pocket. Most phones are too big now.
Mental note...be sure to see the final design before I sign the contract.
Products like these wouldn't need to exist if we just let women have pockets.
Who is “we?” Why are you preventing women from having pockets? I’m certainly not.
And yet, they lack pockets.
Mysteries abound.
if women actually bought clothes with pockets, vendors would sell them. there is no secret conspiracy against pockets for women
I invite you to talk to literally any woman.
Wish they would make a modern iPhone that still fit into a pocket, as well.
My prediction this will fail, it's like a target for people to steal
Just search them on Taobao, you can get tons of these staff.
I thought this satire at first.
Steve would have fired everyone involved in this stupidity.
Steve was a noted fan of Issey Miyake
My god, for that price...
Imagine the cost if it was a pair of pants! Apple pants™
Reminder to self: don't buy fashion items from an IT company.
Is it usable as a sling? To throw the iPhone in self-defense?
A slingshot, A blind fold, A pocket -- Steve Jobs never said that.
Doubles as the sock outfit for the next Red Hot Chili Peppers tour.
Oh! I so wish this was an actual pocket iphone.
Immediately reminded me of Borat's Mankini.
Phone tote bag that goes hard with world's thinnest phone.
Like many, I was disappointed this wasn't a new iPhone mini.
$30 for a pack of six iPod socks always seemed like a horrible value to me in the mid-2000s. I'm not denying they were fun and whimsical, but as cases, they didn't protect your iPod or allow you to use it while inside them. It felt like a rip-off two decades ago, and these are 30-46 times more expensive per-sock.
I know Apple does things like this to position themselves as a luxury brand and as a shareholder I still do not buy the idea stunts like these are what's best for the company. At best, a small segment of the target demographic will see this as a curiosity at the cost of further damage to Apple's reputation. People will see this as further proof Apple is more concerned with products and services which rip off their customers and developers, as opposed to providing real value.
I will be the first to welcome Apple bringing back some semblance of fun and whimsy into their product line-up, and this is not the way to do it.
iPhones are hefty these days, so it could double as a weapon.
When I saw this I thought it was April 1st for a moment.
This is actually Apple doing this? What is going on there?
I can see Apple releasing a pro version at $499
Is this intended as a serious product? Can’t quite tell
Two hundred and thirty American dollars for this?
Is it April already!?
$150 for a sock? Is Apple completely joking?
IPhone 8 Xamsexiis2023gmail.com
The long strap version is too short on that model. Purse straps hang to hip level for a reason. Hanging at the hip makes reaching in substantially more ergonomic.
Also lmao at the photo of the little bag strapped to the other larger bag. Yo dawg, I heard you like bags.
Also they're super ugly. But I guess that's "subjective".
… that’s a sock… Apple made an iSuck!?
If you listen closely, you can hear Taps playing.
I hope they release a pro version at $599.
Dammit, Ali Express doesn't have any yet.
From the company that gave us the iPod socks
this reminds me of the little man bags poker players use (a lot of casinos ban full sized backpacks) and not in a good way
This just screams that Apple has jumped the shark to me. First of all, they're selling a knitted scarf for putting your phone in, which... what?
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth”
Groundbreaking.
> iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).
Just... good luck, guys.
It's a high-end fashion partnership, like the Hermès watches.
You could probably argue that high-end fashion is in a constant state of jumping the shark.
But the Hermes watch was at least an Apple watch with some Hermes branding and accessories. This is just... a sock.
I'm not sure how an Hermès branded watch accessory is different than an ISSEY MIYAKE branded iPhone accessory.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication -- Leonardo da Vinci
"A piece of cloth" is referring to Miyake's preexisting fashion line of clothes without seams, 一枚の布.
I’m not concerned; we’ve been here before with iPod Socks [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Socks
Well, I stand corrected.
Sold all my apple shares today
It's inspired by a piece of cloth!
Hey guys, you could like just not buy it.
From the designers of the $20 deo stick.
Nothing like a $150 or $230 phone bag.
More accurate to call it the iPhone Purse.
Meanwhile, can I have multi-message selection back in (iPad) Mail? Whoever decided to axe that feature apparently has a spam-free inbox.
This company has become such a joke. Maybe Apple should start being concerned about building computers that Just Work well again rather than continuing to flounder after Cook's obsession with bad fashion.
I suppose the underlying message here is that, if you can no longer innovate, shill overpriced purses instead.
I may be missing what you’re after for ipad mail but isnt it under the “...” then “select” to select multiple messages?
Literally just looks like a cut sock.
150 USD for a piece of cloth !
Talk about greedy !
Sweet! Pocket and sling - two in one!
wow, that's seriously hilarious
it's so ugly that it shows their desperation, who would ever need this?
And the ghost of Steve Jobs Wept...
I thought this was an april fools.
I respect Apple.
It takes a lot of skill, talent and dedication to pull out a massive rip-off bullshit like this and have millions of fools buying it.
Who is the target group for this?
Y'all remember iPod Socks?
April fools came early for 2026
iPhones are now so big we need a special carrying device for it.
Please bring back the mini :’(
XD Who even buy these things
Did a pickpocket design this?
Officially jumped the shark?
Wait, Tim is not excited?
April fools? $150 and $230?
I can make a better phone
This is an iPhone Thneed.
Quote: “ Inspired by the concept of ‘a piece of cloth.’” Is this some kind of joke? If it were April 1st I’d assume the whole article is meant for comedic effect.
</NotTheOnion>!
$5 on Aliexpress next week
I genuinely find it hilarious that everyone has such a strong opinion about a random accessory. Seriously, who cares? Why is it that any company could make any random thing an everyone shrugs their shoulders and either likes it or ignores it but when apple makes something everyone’s knickers get in a twist?
Why do y’all care so much about something you’d just walk past and ignore in literally any other scenario?
Hope. For better or worse tech nerds (me included) maintain a hopeful optimism that Apple will make good products.
For the longest time they were the only tech company that really cared about design, and most people don't encounter good or thoughtful design or ever really see behind the scenes or think about design and designers.
Jony Ive and Steve Jobs really glorified design I think rightly in many ways, and elevated what industrial design could be in technology and engineering companies that historically had treated design as something you paid an external agency to do.
Most people don't know Dieter Rams or Donald Norman, tech people maybe know Edward Tufte. Loads of people know Jony Ive.
Unfortunately the only good ideas Apple have had this decade are the M-series processors, which are fantastic. Their software and hardware are otherwise lacking, across all categories.
So, when Apple releases _anything_ people hope it's (a return to) good, of all the consumer product makers I think Apple has the highest level of goodwill, people are excited and hopeful that the next thing they release will be great, and are disappointed when it isn't.
This predisposes that people are currently on average disappointed with apple products - which is just so far from the truth I don’t know where to start. Sure, a small percentage of tech nerds like us might be, but we are so far from the norm.
> Why do y’all care so much
My pension. When "jokes" like this hit the frontpage of HN, I am reminded that every dollar I put into my 401k will never see the light of day. The FTC should be mauling Apple for resting on anticompetitive laurels, but instead they're letting them grow fat and become a high-risk business. If you're not filing for retirement tomorrow, you should be considering the consequences this will have when you turn 65. Letting Apple fuck off and manufacture high-margin designer is terrible for America in the long-term.
The economy is not as simple as "don't buy the product then" at Apple's scale. Look at how John Deere transitioned from a blue-chip brand to an Oracle-level scourge on humanity. I don't want Apple to head down that same road, but we might be too late to save them at this point.
I’m sorry but you can’t expect me to take you seriously if your position is a small collab with a Japanese design studio to make an iphone accessory is a sign of them tanking the economy…
It's okay, you don't have to understand the economy to be effected by it.
what stops me buying one and using with my Samsung Galaxy?
iPhonegina
Is it April 1st today?
This is yet another sign of the K Shaped economy. While I am homeless through no fault of my own, people can buy a $200 sweater pocket for their iphone.
This is an old story, and it does not end well.
Will be a hit in Asia
Makes me think og Borat.
It's satire.
Apple Mankini by Borat.
Early April Fools joke?
"Wear an iPhone"... It's increasingly difficult to love this company.
It’s an iPhone Socket!
I’m not trying to be glib here, but this genuinely looks like something a satirical blog might post.
I’m not a product or UI/UX designer but when you have to design a new, ridiculous way to carry a phone your company’s manufacturing and selling, I’d have thought that’s your sign to focus on making it less awkward to carry. “Think different”, indeed.
Apple is cooked
Wow did they really make it so you can't just pick-up and use the screen?
There are thousands of sub 10$ case strap-attachments which make it easy to both use and not drop your phone while wearing it around your neck.
Imagine milking your phone out of this every time there is a notification... What a joke
[dead]
Top of the market
> iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).
Really? Lot's of value there...
Like a new OnePlus Nord N30 5G is around $250, and Samsung Galaxy A16 approximately at $200. And Samsung Galaxy A14 5G is between $120 to $160.
An Apple Thneed
Shark jumped.
Ew. For some reason it looks absolutely disgusting to me.
It’s a sock.
is it april-1st already ?
Didn't we turn the clocks back recently? Maybe someone just gave it too big a push... oh god, so it's only April 2025? I don't want to go through all that again.
Cringe.
"Crafted in Japan, iPhone Pocket features a singular 3D-knitted construction that is the result of research and development carried out at ISSEY MIYAKE."
How would a 2d knitted construction look like? Lmfao.
hoping for game boy pocket...
Short AAPL
Worth $5
OMG
$229.95
As silly a product as this is, the fact that it made it to the front page of Hacker News makes it a bigger deal than it actually is.
It's not like it's sitting on Apple's frontpage. It's not some major product announcement. To get to the `/newsroom` page where the product was listed, you have to literally scroll to the bottom of https://apple.com and click a tiny link.
I will however comment on the price and utter lack of functionality. This product is utter garbage--a total niche for art goblins (said lovingly).
Correct. The fact this made it o the front page is because the economy in the US is horribly K shaped.
I don't follow
dear god, this is stupid…
welcome back, iPod socks.
I thought it was an april fools joke. Looking at the price I had to double check. Is this serious? It is ludicrous
``` Apple Canton Road, Hong Kong
Apple Ginza, Tokyo
Apple Jing’an, Shanghai
Apple Marché Saint-Germain, Paris
Apple Myeongdong, Seoul
Apple Orchard Road, Singapore
Apple Piazza Liberty, Milan
Apple Regent Street, London
Apple SoHo, New York City
Apple Xinyi A13, Taipei ```
Couldn't hack it in Apple Plaza, Kansas City, huh?
For a second, I believed they were launching an iPhone small enough to reasonably fit into a pocket. That might make me switch to iPhone.
Nope
What a terrible name and the only reason I know it’s not an aprils fool is because it’s November.
I clicked hoping for a smaller iPhone and I’m very disappointed that it’s just a sock to stuff my current oversized one into
I had to check the address a few times to make sure this isn't a satire page, and I'm still not convinced it isn't
Make. A. Smaller. Phone.
Clicked the link hoping it would be a new attempt at something like the iPhone mini. Sadly disappointed!
The iPhone Pocket is a pocket for your iPhone and not a pocket-sized iPhone??? Unbelievable. So disappointing.
"Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,”"
I had to check that if wasn't April 1st
edit: holy shit, $150 for an iphone sock
Unironically utterly brilliant.
I don't have an iPhone and will not get one at least until Google kills ReVanced, nor would I ever get a sock for my phone but wow, I fully expect this to be hit. Not only in this collaboration, it will spawn a thousand copies as well.
Everything about this is perfect. The Japanese origin, the idea, high tech manufacturing (single cloth, 3d knitted, whatever), the cheap material, the timing... I am in awe. The kind of shock and awe that militaries aim to deliver.
Apple has ingested a million tiny current trends of craftsmanship, story telling, accessorizing, ground them into this magnificent triumph of corporate capitalism. This is why commies never even stood a chance.
iSock
Pffff... No AI? Who need it? Even my shower gel is AI already.
Please tell me this is an out of season April fools joke...
Is this a joke or are they serious with this?
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,”
This is satire, right?
And yet apple is still priced like a growth company.
> Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,”
Is this satire?
Reminded me of the IKEA floor mat knit lol
Checks date… nope, not April
Apple doing Balenciaga shit
That was my first though. After "wait, it's not April 1st yet".
They literally sell a $400 Hermes apple watch band
Or a 2000 euro Hermes Apple Watch with bracelet, but it comes with special wallpaper you don’t get if you just buy the strap or 1000 euro bracelet separately
The strap and bracelet are both really nice though, do recommend if you aren’t very price sensitive.
Balenciaga would be an oversized black latex condom.
...
I thought this was a joke
Then i was navigated to news.apple.com
Wow.
The CookSleeve™
I honestly thought this was satire at first, maybe April 1st? A joke for sure. Nope, they've given us a pocket.
its literally a pussy to stick your phone in lmao
Is this a joke?
lol 230$ for a sock ..
I was excited when I saw the headline -- I thought Apple had finally brought back a smaller iPhone, like the Mini.
But nope. It's just an ugly phone purse.
Look, it's bad enough that the much-hyped Vision Pro didn't take off (1), and the much-hyped iPhone Air didn't take off (2), and default Apple apps will soon have ads (3), and the latest MacOS is full of issues that would have been caught if they did any QA on it before release (4)... but Tim Apple is also throwing bribes at Trump every chance he gets (5)...
Time for some new leadership at Apple.
(1) https://applemagazine.com/us-vision-pro-sales-expected-to-de...
(2) https://nypost.com/2025/11/11/business/apple-pulls-plug-on-i...
(3) https://www.tuaw.com/2025/10/27/apple-maps-to-introduce-ads-...
(4) https://osxdaily.com/2025/09/19/why-im-holding-off-on-upgrad...
(5) https://www.thedailybeast.com/billionaire-apple-ceo-tim-cook...
> "Greater China"
Irredentist pro-war language, Tim Cook? I am so done with Apple. They knew what they did when they chose the words; they certainly spent thousands of hours deliberating them.
This is Lebensraum with Chinese Characteristics.
> "The term is often used to avoid invoking sensitivities over the political status of Taiwan.[16] Contrastingly, it has been used in reference to Chinese irredentism in nationalist contexts, such as the notion that China should reclaim its "lost territories" to create a Greater China.[17][18]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_China
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
With respect, this topic is of immense interest and significance to a large number of us on HN. The many engaged and enthusiastic responses attest to that.
Is it off-topic to talk about the adversarial role of tech companies in a potential war, one that would be devastating to many of us? About the entanglements of their supply chains? Have I truly, in your judgement, derailed this thread away from curious discussion? Because, this subthread looks to me comparatively thoughtful (if mildly heated), while the more narrowly-construed topic of discussion is a polyester fashion accessory.
To paraphrase Anakin Skywalker: "from my point of view, it's the iPhone Pocket that's generic and uncurious".
It's obviously off topic and obviously nationalistic flamebait. Those are the high-order bits here. Adding provocations like "lebensraum" makes it even more of an obvious call.
> Have I truly, in your judgement, derailed this thread away from curious discussion?
For sure. A subthread like this usually has a lot of activation energy because the (off) topic is sensational and divisive, but that's not the same thing as curious conversation. Supplanting less sensational/divisive topics with more sensational/divisive ones is the essence of the "generic tangent", which HN's guidelines ask users to avoid for good reason.
If the OP isn't so interesting, the solution is to find other threads that are interesting, not turn this one into a flamewar (or potential flamewar) about something else.
I think it's a common term used to loosely describe the geographical region. It's used by many other companies like Microsoft [1] and Google [2]
[1] https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/locations/gcr.htm...
[2] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/collections/gre...
It's a large step up from "it's used for job postings in (or closely working with) mainland China", to "it's featured in Apple product announcements targeting a global audience of millions".
Has it been used in an Apple product announcement before? My search is imperfect, but I actually can't find an example (on their /newsroom subdomain).
As recently as two months ago, with the Airphone announcement, they weren't doing this:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/introducing-iphone-ai... ("Introducing iPhone Air, a powerful new iPhone with a breakthrough design")
> "The 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max will be available in Canada, China mainland, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the U.S."
Apple seems to have been using "Greater China" for a number of years, going by the newsroom section of their site.
2016 - "Users in Greater China will see these new features by default on iOS and OS X® after updating."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2016/05/17Apple-Celebrates-Ch...
2019 - "The New Artist of the Week program provides new talent with a prominent platform across greater China for their work to be discovered."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/HomePod-available-in-...
2020 - "First, I want to recognize Apple’s family in Greater China. Though the rate of infections has dramatically declined, we know COVID-19’s effects are still being strongly felt. I want to express my deep gratitude to our team in China for their determination and spirit. As of today, all of our stores in Greater China have reopened."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-covid-19-respo...
2024 - "Today, Apple has 57 stores in Greater China, with thousands of team members delivering exceptional service and creating magical experiences for customers."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-jingan-to-welco...
That might be because that product was only available in China mainland, unlike this product which is available in Greater China.
It's not a "loose geographical region". It's usually denotes precisely the PRC (People's Republic of China, including mainland China and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao) together with the ROC (Republic of China, usually known as Taiwan).
Greater China is never used to describe a region. It means China, Tibet, Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan according to Apple.
[flagged]
Well put.
Just like how they removed all the gay dating apps in China yesterday (by request of the government of course).
So sad to watch a gay CEO just sit comfortably and allow his company quietly destroy his own “community”. Don’t get me started on SA either…
> Just like how they removed all the gay dating apps in China yesterday (by request of the government of course).
Those apps have always been illegal in China. Of course, one could say Apple should not operate in China (and this is perhaps true), but they cannot both operate there and break the law.
Apple could choose to give the users of their devices freedom to run whatever operating systems and programs they choose. Then they could truthfully say that there is no way for them to control what people do with their devices once they leave the Apple store. If you put yourself in control of such things because it is profitable, you ought to take responsibility for the consequences.
China could also make that illegal, and probably has.
You're never going to outsmart the Chinese government with clever little tricks. They don't play like that.
It's not really about outsmarting them. Authoritarian systems of control rely on centralization. If you create an ecosystem where end users have lots of agency, of course most of them will go the path of least resistance, but the few who are willing to put in the effort to resist still can. Google and Apple tightening their grip over their respective mobile ecosystems is a very potent lever for authoritarian governments to pull.
They don’t rely on them. They successfully use them. In the Soviet Union every one horse village with unpaved roads had a commissar. No internet, no telegraph, no newspaper, no electricity but they held control just the same. Central control makes it convenient for them, but it isn’t the difference between them existing and not existing.
I admit ignorance of a lot of this but just going off of your comment wouldn't the commissar be the system of centralized control in this case?
In a way. Basically yes any totalitarian regime will want to create a system where the people in charge have total control over everyone and everything. But my point is that Stalin was able to exert control over all parts of the Soviet Union without the internet, Facebook, WhatsApp, backdoored E2E messaging systems, email and email spying, parallel construction, etc.
The comment I was replying to is not wrong exactly but the better way to phrase that is that any unrelated but centralized system can and probably will be co-opted by a totalitarian regime and in the long run only helps the oppressor and not the oppressed.
Surely there’s a difference between hardware being a locked down appliance and… well, a more generic computation device.
I think the argument is that Apple or even any company that makes Android phones could choose to have an open bootloader (and maybe some driver stuff) and normally that wouldn’t really offend any government, while also giving the users more freedoms.
Otherwise, what’s next, PCs that only run Windows and only allow Edge as the browser and force the telemetry on?
Can china make linux illegal?
Not only that, they can ignore their laws and disappear/kill you whenever they feel like it.
They're not killing their own people by the millions like in Mao's days, but it's still a brutal dictatorship when it wants to be.
Oh, we do that, too. And we also don't protect our own in other countries.
Chinese people lives are getting better and they largely are on the same page. Meanwhile the US has DEI in the govt while the govt says DEI is bad. Minority authoritarian rule in the US with the Senate.
The US is a brutal dictatorship all the time.
China thankfully has a govt that is on the same page as the people.
Obvious troll or just mentally sick.
Country with social credit, LLMs that have a seizure at "Tiananment square", Winnie the Pooh and Taiwan, Great firewall, cultural genocide of Uyghurs is a country where "lives are getting better" while US is a brutal dictatorship, my fucking sides.
Is that so? I have not surveyed the Chinese, but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas of communism have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
> I have not surveyed the Chinese but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
Ask other dictatorships while you're at it. Systems so great one wonders why stupid democracies haven't adopted the model still.
You're weasling your way out of the core point. I'm in no way advocating for such ideas. Quite the opposite. I'm just saying unless you have data about this you shouldn't rely on your instincts. There are many nuances around this and economic prosperity can mask huge other issues.
> Ask other dictatorships while you're at it.
In fact, I have observed immigrants from certain failed states that you refer to as "dictatorships." In many cases they say they hate their government yet they vote for mostly the same policies when they are given the chance to do so in the West, so again, even surveying them directly with a lazy question "do you like the government in country X" won't get you to the spirit of the answer.
To wit, you also just fell for the common fallacy of assuming dictatorship is the opposite of democracy. They are much more alike than you'd think. Democracy isn't liberty.
What makes you think they wouldn’t if they felt it would be useful? Or more likely, require a particular government-endorsed Linux.
They can make iPhone illegal.
Would they? Unlikely, given iPhone creates a lot of jobs there. But if iPhone becomes the de facto devices for Chinese citizens to access illegal content then the chance is none-zero.
(And of course they can make Linux illegal too. It's just harder to enforce than making iPhone illegal.)
If Brazil can, China can.
Can you give me the source of where brazil made linux illegal? I am sorry but I tried to search and the only references I could find were of brazil banning twitter/X for some reason.
I am genuinely curious how someone can decide linux to be illegal. How would the ban even work out?
Brazil has what is known as the Felca law, which requires providers of app stores and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification and to provide secure auditable APIs that meet government standards for doing the same. Presumably, specific distros like Red Hat can go through a government approval process in order to be legal to distribute in Brazil, but without such certification and without providing such system-level APIs, a random distro like Debian will be illegal to distribute in Brazil.
It's delusional to think the default OS would be replaced by anyone more than a few percent of niche users.
It's your desire to have open OS just say so. Doesn't really tie into avoiding oppression by communism. The Chinese need to solve that problem at its root.
Then China asks Apple to blacklist prohibited apps via notarization revocation. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
If only you could run your own software on the computer you bought and paid for.
People on HN thinking Apple should get into some kind of dick waving contest with an authoritarian government that rules over 1/6th of the global population and that supplies the labor to build their products and the materials in those products by implementing your guy’s pet issues is the height of fucking delusion.
At least try to pretend like you guys are thinking about situations in the real world.
Allowing me to run my own code doesn’t involve the dick waving contest.
Or you know, allow third party app stores?
> they cannot both operate there and break the law.
Clearly they were doing exactly that until yesterday?
You can’t fight City Hall.
The iPhone is a Chinese product. China ultimately controls whether or not the iPhone exists. No place else on earth can manufacture 20,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7/365.
Making two hundred million devices of the iPhone’s complexity and quality is not a trivial matter, and takes tens of thousands of skilled (and experienced) workers. Almost all of those people are Chinese, in China, subject to Chinese law. Apple cannot meaningfully fight Chinese law.
“sit comfortably” is a big stretch here. I imagine it must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
> must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
Yes, he will just have to comfort himself by crying into his pillow made of solid gold bars on his California King-size bed made of a solid block of hundred dollar bills. Poor Tim Apple — the real victim here.
In seriousness, even if he feels (and is right!) that there was nothing Apple could do better, nothing stops him from resigning, and then publicly stating that he didn’t want to be a part of a company that had to collaborate with a brutal and inhumane government. He just would rather acquire more billions for some reason.
He did give a tour of Apple HQ to MBS. But maybe they think they can do more good than harm by selling products in Saudi.
This is why, as a gay man, I give people a look when they ask why I still rant about gay rights "even though you guys have marriage and stuff now".
It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
Most hetero people will never (thankfully) know that pitted feeling of having to check your surroundings and environment every single day when you simply want to hold your partners hand, chat to a coworker, book a hotel reservation, or book a night out to celebrate.
Every single macro outcome like this only demoralizes gay people just wanting to wake up and not think about anything other than the stresses and excitement of the day ahead.
If anyone reads this and you think it sounds dramatic, it’s not. It’s a reality, and Tim Cook knows that..he should do better.
>It’s a reality, and Tim Cook knows that..he should do better.
You say that, but he's made billions by explicitly not doing better. And he's Wall Street's darling for it.
Tim Cook has no ability to change the Chinese government's policies.
Untrue and defeatist. Tim Cook does influence Chinese policy, you can't pretend he's the victim here:
OK, honest question: did Tim Cook and Apple successfully get the EU to change a policy they didn't like?
I am a straight man and I feel like some communities just become scape-goats
We have this us vs them mentality which some people use to collect power and influence at the costs of them
Ultimately I think that it is a very foolish thing because I think that as long as nobody bothers on my freedom etc., I should be in literally nobody's business bothering their freedom
> It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
I agree 100% with this message.
But one thing I have problem with (on the straight side of things) is that I have seen occasionally some extremely feminist comments which do try to impeach or try to have this very fundamental skewed problem that man are ALL the problem and its all man's fault etc. and I have seen the same in masculinity cultures as well and I feel like both of them are just radicalizing people to seize power and influence or sell courses or feel better about themselves.
I think that we sometimes forget that people are people and we should treat others with the same courtesy and kindness that we expect to be treated with, I guess. maybe we sometimes don't treat them that way or didn't treat them that way and I guess we should just apologize or try not to do that ever again. Mistakes happen but as long as we still have a mindset similar to doing good, I feel like things would be hopeful.
I didn't know that tim cook was gay and here is one message from wikipedia I want to quote
> In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff.[85] On October 30, Cook publicly came out as gay in an editorial for Bloomberg Business, saying, "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."[86] While it had been reported in early 2011 that Cook was gay,[87][88] at the time, Cook tried to keep his personal life private
I feel like Tim Cook should be a man of his words and try to actually help the community he is proud to be in but I am sure that investors might not be happy but that just goes on to show that maybe even some CEO's could be puppets of shareholders and can be forced to do things solely for profit where their heart might not lie.
I think that another point is that shareholders can also be puppets of CEO's in the case of Elon musk 1 Trillion $ deal shows that imo
I feel like we live in the times where morality can be side-lined for profit and be celebrated. The whole idea why even people can be puppets of each other could be because they get profits and power and influence because of it (basically money most of the times)
But what power do those CEO's have if they can't stand for what they think is right or educate themselves on these matters.
Food for thought.
> virtue was not convenient at the time
Maybe we live just in such times.
Tim Cook has no ability to change the Chinese government's policies.
"No" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The things he could do would be very painful, maybe a Pyrrhic victory. Maybe they're worth it if the alternative is aiding an abetting authoritarian regime. I'm not casting judgment, just presenting the options. Which do actually exist.
The things he could do would not change the policies implemented by the Chinese government.
Repeating your flawed statement doesn't make it more correct.
> So sad to watch a gay CEO just sit comfortably and allow his company quietly destroy his own “community”
His community are elites and money.
Not engaging in political fights outside your circle of influence is actually good for business and responsible leadership.
There is no middle ground. Mentioning "Greater China" isn't neutral. It's precisely the idea of considering "Greater China" as neutral that is de facto siding with the PRC.
No, this is Apple being confident that the USA will drop Taiwan and that this and that siding with China is the "responsible" thing to do.
Last October, 17 Office Management Specialists (OMSs) from posts across broader China convened at U.S. Consulate General Shanghai for the third annual Greater China Office Management Specialist Workshop. Participants included OMSs from Embassy Beijing and consulates across mainland China, as well as colleagues from Consulate General Hong Kong and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Taipei. The workshop’s theme, Reenergizing Your Why, provided participants with a forum to discuss common goals, motivations, challenges and benefits of their career paths.
https://statemag.state.gov/2019/03/mission-china-strengthens...
There are approximately 50 Protestant denominations, including Anglican, Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church of Christ in China, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, and Seventh-day Adventists. The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong recognizes the pope and maintains links to the Vatican; the Bishop of Hong Kong and his retired predecessor are the only Catholic cardinals in greater China.
https://2021-2025.state.gov/reports/2016-report-on-internati...
The ROC also believes in one china, including one day resuming sovereignty of the mainland, no? I don't see any obvious indicator of the concept as siding with the PRC.
> The ROC also believes in one china, including one day resuming sovereignty of the mainland, no?
The ROC isn't a one-party state like the PRC and different parties in Taiwan have different positions on that. The KMT and other parties generally aligned with it mostly favor unification under the ROC (or a one-country, two-systems end state), the DPP and parties aligned with it tend to favor both Taiwanese nationalism and independent statehood. The DPP currently holds the Presidency and the KMT has the larges legislative bloc, so...?
The us dropped taiwan 50 years ago when they removed them from the UN
"Good for business" is not the highest goal a human can achieve. Not even close.
Start with "do the right thing" and progress from there.
I'd rather we drop the pretense or expectations that corporations have anything but one goal. That will help us direct our energy to where it can actually be productive.
If the marketplace demands better corporate stewardship, and people vote with their wallet, and companies decides to change then great, but the corporate ship is only ever getting steered in one direction and it's not for noble reasons.
I really dislike this narrative.
Because if you really want to stick with it, most companies should do business in a handful of countries in the world.
I think businesses should mind their own businesses and comply with local laws, end of story.
I ain't got no patience for companies quitting country X, but not Y.
if you really want to stick with it, most companies should do business in a handful of countries in the world.
Why is that a bad thing?
Difficulty: Don't use the trope "maximize shareholder value."
Because what you consider moral issues are actually just issue prominent in media.
And yes, I want my business to be prudent in earning money. Doing harm to people is not effective or prudent. Getting in political name callings is also not prudent.
How's that Gulf of America map working out in Mexico?
The world changes very fast.
This leads to uncertainty.
Can you imagine McDonald's starting to open/close non-stop in countries depending on their status in some imaginary ethical ranking?
And who gets to decide that imaginary ranking anyway?
- What do you desire from professionals you hire?
- is performative naming of countries that hurt your relationships “the right thing”
- is business where we achieve our highest goals as humans?
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> What flavor are hydrogen protons?
Sour. A high concentration of hydrogen protons (low pH) tastes sour.
Apple is the third most valuable company in the world. Not a mom and pop grocery store.
Apple CEO meets with the US president.
And the US President does the talking and makes demands. Not the other way around.
Nothing pro war about it. Read history books instead of making assumptions. It is referring to the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau as a whole. It became popular with the rise of China. Try any business newspaper in the 90s. It is less relevant now as Hong Kong and Macau are now part of China.
It isn’t unlike Benelux, or Scandinavia, or Iberian, or Balkan, or Gulf countries.
>It isn’t unlike Benelux, or Scandinavia, or Iberian, or Balkan, or Gulf countries.
Greater Israel, Greater Italy, Greater Germanic Reich oh wait I lost the point, I guess any connections to irredentism are purely coincidental.
When was the last time Greater Italy being used? Right.
From the book “The Concept of “Greater China”: Themes, Variations and Reservation”:
The world is suddenly talking about the emergence of “Greater China.” The term has appeared in the headlines of major newspapers and magazines, has been the topic of conferences sponsored by prominent think-tanks, and is now the theme of a special issue of the world's leading journal of Chinese affairs. It thus joins other phrases – “the new world order,” “the end of history,” “the Pacific Century” and the “clash of civilizations” – as part of the trendiest vocabulary used in discussions of contemporary global affairs.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574100003229X
“Pro war” you say?
Yeah I think you may have understood my point. If you don't like Greater Italy, replace it with Greater Netherlands, it's much more relevant today.
EDIT: it would be cool if you add "EDIT" when editing a comment or maybe think for moment before posting so that I don't reply to a different comment. Every time I reload the page I see a different comment, it's pretty funny honestly.
My edit didn’t change what I wanted to say.
And I don’t understand your point. Greater China continues to be used today, like it’s been in the last 30 years. Who get to decide it’s relevant or not? UN?
My point is very simple: "Greater Nation" has been used countless times throughout history to describe irredentist movements. Given the political status between the PCR and the ROC, it's very reasonable to think that the term has negative connotations.
GP called the term “pro war”. That’s what I object. I thought it was very clear?
As for “negative connotations”, you are entitled to your opinion, but that isn’t commonly shared, judging from how often it’s being used. I’m sure there are people in Finland who don’t like being called Scandinavian, given their distinct culture and language compared to other Scandinavian countries. That doesn’t mean it is unreasonable for someone to call them that.
If you're referring to Pan-Scandinavism, there was never a serious proposal to conquer Finland. In fact, the opposite is true: Sweden sent soldiers to help Finland during World Wars I and II, making no attempt to annex the country. I have no idea how "Scandinavia" could possibly be compared to the many "Greater Nation" out there. Maybe you should take your own advice and read some history books as your example is fundamentally different.
You are right that was a bad example. I was thinking Nordic, not Scandinavia, but no one in Finland would object to that label.
It is common to use it for urban areas, cities, like Greater London.
Wikipedia tracks a very long list of "Greater $wherevers" in irredentist or pan-nationalist movements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pan-nationalist_conce... ("Template:Pan-nationalist_concepts")
The CCP has Apple hostage. Their products are (effectively) all made there.
China has more control over Apple than the US does, at present. They are, of course, in crash override priority mode trying to change that, but nowhere else on earth can manufacture (on average) 20,000 iPhones per hour, 24/7/365. (TBH it’s probably closer to 50k per hour in the months up to release day.)
The iPhone is a Chinese product, made by tens of thousands of Chinese people, on machines in China, subject to Chinese jurisdiction and law. That’s an uncomfortable fact for the US economy.
If Apple doesn’t do exactly what China wants them to do, the iPhone does not exist, and Apple as we know it today does not exist.
US government has FAR more control over Apple as a company. China only has control of the Chinese operations. The president is personally beefing with companies and buying stakes in them. The tariffs alone could have severely hurt Apple, but Apple bent over backwards to appease the president. The US government can simply request an app be removed and Apple and Google will do it worldwide.
China does not have that power over Apple. China can threaten Apple but they have already diversified their manufacturing to other countries so China does not have a strangle hold on the supply line.
Apple has to comply by Mainland rules. In addition to the supplychain that is slowly getting diversified, all Mainland customer data is handled by a co-owned (not sure %, or if it is 100% outsourced) datacenter in Guizhou.
"Pro-war" seems like an odd assertion here. They're recognizing the status quo in a reasonably neutral way, which seems anti-war to me.
It seems like you're advocating for Western powers to take a position, using either soft or hard power, on a war that already ended many decades ago. Sounds quite a bit like imperialism to me, and pretty far from being anti-war.
An anti-war position, at least from the perspective of a Westerner and Western companies, is more like, you guys lost, suck it up and stop asking us to intervene on your behalf.
The recognition of any "status quo" is political.
Push back, as in this thread, can change which hierarchies are accepted and which aren't.
In particular, the use of "Greater China" normalizes corporate acquiescence to Beijing's explicitly revisionist policy preferences.
Taiwan is an independent nation. It isn't lost. And all free nations should intervene whenever the right to self-determination of another is threatened.
Say hi to the chairman for me.
I don't really see how "Greater China" is more neutral than "Mainland China and Taiwan" which is the phrasing they previously used.
They've been using this term for years. It's nothing new and nothing unique to Apple.
Don't forget that the "we are the only legitimate Chinese government and we own it all" attitude is shared by both Chinese governments. The PRC claims Taiwan, but Taiwan claims all of China as well.
Taiwan claimed Mongolia until 2002!
Friend, this criticism has been relevant since 1998.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-criticised-for-dumping-t...
It is unfortunate that iPhones cannot be made anywhere else in the world. No other country has the right tooling, workforce, or skill set, at that volume.
China made a strategic decision to go deep there, and the rest of the world decided it was post-industrial
Taiwan still claims the rest of mainland China so maybe it's a reference to that.
of the 193 members of the UN, only 12 (6%) recognize Taiwan as a country.
the Kuomintang lost the war. its effectively the same as if the confederacy retreated to the Florida keys and China maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity.
Why is UN recognition the metric here and not, like, idk the fact that Taiwan is a liberal democracy with the rule of law and freedom of speech and not a hypercapitalist dictatorship that disappears dissidents?
Neither are the real metric here. Taiwan is a US ally, China (mainland) is not, this is a US board. The reasoning goes backwards from that point.[1]
You have to be on the level of Israel’s aggression to lose the “liberal democracy” cover that most US allies get (or similar great titles).
[1] Enough to start a subthread with a very confident and polemic phrasing anyway. There are plenty who disagree with the OP here. I’m not saying that this place is an echo chamber on this point at all.
The population of Taiwan is 23 million. The population of Florida Keys is 82000. Not the same.
Today I heard the word "Irredentist" for the first time as I'm about to turn 42.
Me too. I've always just heard that kind of thing called "imperialist". But "irredentist" seems more precise.
Thanks for pointing this out.
History shows without exception that authoritarianism and commerce are bedfellows.
I’m unaware of any for profit business interest over all of known history that hasn’t bent the knee to the desires of an authoritarian government
Since 2021, Tim Cook has repeatedly quoted the old IBM CEO's line "world peace through world trade."
This was the same line IBM used to protect their huge business with... wait for it... Nazi Germany
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Your comment is the actual prowar propaganda though in my europeean eyes.
The US is worse than China in many aspects, from forever wars to climate over colonialism to fascism and support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide on over a hundred thousand civilians, - where is China geonociding hundreds a week right now? Yeah nowhere, but the US is doing that every decade.
Incredible to see this angle that 'the good guys' are bowing down to bad China in this context when you have so much poverty, political repression and lack of gay rights, abortion etc in many right wing states to straight up hyper right wing terrorism targeting vulnerable populations every year.
I feel like in geo-politics. No country can be good.
Personally, I feel like america still has (had) hope with zohran mamdani but after the recent american shutdown, I would consider democratic party to be an extension of republican party or not doing anything radical except bernie,aoc, zohran and some other people.
I feel like America could have a hope to swing whereas china doesn't imo.
although, I feel like what is happening is that people made (short term?) decisions earlier generations earlier which lead us to where we are today where any country over-all needs a radical change as both europe and america and a lot of other countries need to radicalize what they are doing to give hope to the youngsters
Personally I feel like we shouldn't care much about US or chinese products but rather the ideologies of the product creators if we are worried about things and I think this is one of the reasons I love open source so much.
Hope to swing? The US has killed many more people in wars of conquest than China in the last 50 years. So i really see both as problematic but the US is still much more violent geopolitically. Ie worse in my eyes, Israels latest genocide being a creszendo on an already horrible track record.
>The US is worse than China in many aspects, from forever wars to climate over colonialism to fascism and support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide on over a hundred thousand civilians.
My man, the US and China are more or less the exact same here with the exception of forever wars.
Climate? China pollutes like crazy, and so does the US. Colonialism? Maybe not in the same vein but China does engage in actions to other nations, such as Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that could be classified as colonialism. Fascism? Well yeah both countries are pretty much openly fascist right now. Support for an ongoing extremely violent genocide of over a hundred thousand people? Yeah the US and China are both complicit there. In fact, in China, you're speaking about the regime itself, with context to the ongoing genocide of Uyghur people.
Yes its imperial logic so why arent you saying that to OP's bizzare US = peace and gay rights comment?
And the Uyghur repression is no genocide compared to Palestine thats complete US misinformation and frankly a sinister comparison - the US is much much more violent, again look at Palestine, before that literally 30+ wars for resources and markets with millions of civilians dead.
Im not naive about China but this US = beacon of human rights angle is frankly gross to me.
China has many problems but americans are literally worse and you wanting to boycut due to human rights, is this a joke?
No the chinese people, most of whom do not have a ICE car, do not produce those carbon numbers
China is where the west exported pollution to by the fact that we pushed most of the deadly and dangerous production and manufacturing there.
So all the west does is launder pollution through east and southeastern asia.
How does that excuse China's pollution? They still chose to do that, no one forced them to. I do agree that other countries are guilty of China's pollution as well, but that certainly does not excuse China choice to do that pollution laundering for them.
It doesn’t. The right answer is that both China and the West suck and should have worked together to reduce consumption rather than accept the waste-surveillance capitalism system they both accelerated from 1970-present
It’s like trying to reduce prostitution, when society is demanding more sex, do you jail the prostitutes or the tricks?
If there’s no demand for sex workers then there’s no sex worker market. However if nobody is struggling to survive, then theres no supply.
You need to end the desire for consumption in order to eliminate authoritarianism
Right. So what was your point when you replied to a commenter saying the US and China are equally bad, pollution wise, with
> No the chinese people, most of whom do not have a ICE car, do not produce those carbon numbers
That sounds to me like you're saying that China is not as bad as the US, because the pollution in China comes in some part from laundered pollution from the US. If that's not the case, could you explain what you meant?
You can’t do carbon production attribution the same between a consumption and a production nation at the per capita level
Someone paying to fly a private jet and a slave putting coal into a furnace aren’t the same
I really don't see that as a fair comparison. OP wasn't equating individual citizens, they were equating the nations as a whole. And China, as a state, definitely isn't akin to a slave being forced to do this dirty work.
>where is China geonociding hundreds a week right now?
Xinjiang. They put people in camps and take extensive efforts to prevent births, to eliminate the Uighur population over time.
Yeah i've looked into it and its bad still much much less violent than the over 100.000 civilians, kids and mothers killed in Palestine so whats up with this weird focus when you guys are littersally killing muslims by the thousands every other year with no remorse?
Do you condemn Israel? And if not - then what even is this concern of yours? Both are bad but Israel is much worse according to litterally all major NGOs.
Seriously do you condemn US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza too?
I didn't condemn or approve of anyone, I just answered your question. You're making a lot of assumptions.
You're focussing exclusively on violence. If Israel adopted China's Xinjiang methods they would:
1. Take direct administrative control over Gaza
2. Place any man even remotely linked to violence or Islam in a prison camp and use them as prison labour to produce products
3. Monitor all women and prevent them from having births
But, violence would go down. In Xinjiang the Muslim population is shrinking as the authorities prevent reproduction.
Following your logic you are saying you would find this less objectionable. Is that actually the case? I suspect not.
I write this to hopefully expand your view that more than one situation can be objectionable, that not everyone is American or Israeli and it is possible to analyze a situation on its own merits and say "huh that's bad".
China goes to great lengths to minimize actual violence, which minimizes attention, which lets them focus on shrinking the population of Uighurs. I doubt Israel could actually do this in Gaza, but I think it would be worse if they did.
So you don't condemn israels ethnic cleansing but are very worried about muslim minorities in China that are repressed?
I am totally on board condemning China, but you aren't with Israel and that says it all - and i don't believe you actually are concerned about this muslim minority if you aren't at least as horrified by Israeli actual warcrimes and an ongoing genocide.
They already monitor everyone, they already control all markets they dont just prevent births they kill kids in an ethnic cleansing according to experts at the ICC, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders and many others.
Again, unfathomable to me that you can list "they prevent births" as worse than murdering over 40.000 kids in a few years in Gaza and 100.000 civilians according to the newest numbers - that's by all measures worse than what China's doing and why every respectable NGO and expert groups are talking about Israel and not the Uyghurs at the moment.
Why are you not condemning Israels/US ethnic cleansing when i'm condemning chinas actions on multiple fronts?
Looks like you almost have this habit of explaining/talking about things 'as a European', particularly when bringing up USA in the context of international relations like now...
I guess it's OK — I'm European too, for example — but it does seem like you're doing it to imply that your views are somehow (at least relatively more) popular among, or representative of, well, Europeans. But now that we're making such massive generalisations, I'd claim that well-educated English-speaking Europeans are often likelier to be more familiar with the views and internal debates among Americans than those of many of their fellow Europeans, and that you're probably no exception.
As for your comment, had you not addressed it to 'you Americans', I'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a pretty standard-issue American Left (or 'Progressive') rant, perhaps somewhere from the younger and more identitarian part of that crowd, for example (despite some of the quasi-tankie undertones). While I'll admit that scoffing at things like pro-life policies and/or American poverty is certainly easier and more common throughout the political spectra in (Western) Europe, I'd say your cringe-inducing bothsidesism with USA and China falls closer to the crackpot left camp in Europe as well.
Europe contains multitudes, and undoubtedly for some but not all, up until now at least, it has been a bit too easy to comfortably observe and judge things for so long as a world-political bystander from under the US nuclear umbrella, typically further from the Russian border too — whether you were an insular French with casual contempt for all things 'Yankee', a German atomic-phobic pacifist (or worse, a far-right, Pro-Putin knuckle dragger) from that 'European powerhouse' heated with Russian non-renewables, or even a Swede from the world's leading moral superpower, or something like that, anyway... ;)
Us Euros here are all terminally online^W^W well-educated English-speaking citizens. Reader discretion is advised.
I sometimes wonder what the comments will look like here when China invades/blockades Taiwan, and I suspect they will look a lot like this. Lots of US whataboutism. Note that the OP doesn’t mention the US at all.
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I can put my phone on "do not disturb" for free
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Wow, that's a little tone deaf. I was hoping for a small iPhone, They're so big now we make dedicated bags... F
EAZZY MISTAKE /s
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Even I can see this is AI: "neat/interesting/fresh/nice."
How about no.
Wow Apple is innovative! lmao
LOL. Sorry. really. LOL.