Apple's Shifting Differentiation

Its difficult to think different if you're the world's largest company and dominate the phone market. In laptops it looks like they are differentiating themselves very well.

Apple has a small piece of the smartphone pie. That said, their CPU's are consistently in a class of their own.

And this year they are creeping back to 90s era: iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro are essentially the same phone. So no reason why both exist, except to muddy up the product line.

The key differentiator is the camera on the Pro, which significantly increases the cost. Some people will pay a premium for the privilege of owning the top model and yet others will go for the Pro precisely because of the more advanced camera.

By having separate lines, Apple can sell the 12 for cheaper than the 12 Pro, and those who are willing to pay for the 12 Pro camera can do so. Don’t see any muddying here.

The problem is as a “normal user” you can’t go to your ‘tech friend’ and get a straight answer — there are too many considerations now to direct someone to one phone over another.

It’s not ‘yeah, the new iPhone is great! You gotta have it.’ It’s “so what do you want to do mostly?” — no one knows.

That is what I believe the 90s curse really means — your evangelists are no longer as effective because they give potential customers an overwhelming amount of information that slows down, and sometimes prevents, a sale.

—- Your point is exactly right - Apple has decided to harvest the demand curve over making something undeniably great.

Edit: let me clarify, watch and homepod mini are currently in the category of 'just get it' products. This is only a critique of the iPhone line.

> The problem is as a “normal user” you can’t go to your ‘tech friend’ and get a straight answer

Uh, it's 3 options.

Small size, best camera option, remaining option.

I didn't know this - I just went to Apple's website, clicked iPhone and it has a single page that presents all this very clearly.

So um, yeah. This is by the way how I do 'tech advice' to anyone who ever needs it - I open google, I type in the question and the first link has the answer 95% of the time.

Phones haven't been in 'gotta have it' category since iPhone 6 when they released a bigger size that a lot of people wanted. Since then, it has been 'better camera' yearly releases, oh and 'better chip', as if anyone needs a supercomputer to browse Instagram.

It's four options. Two of them different:

- iPhone 12 Mini, the small one

- iPhone 12 Pro Max, the huge one

And then there are these two: iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro.

They are the exactly same phone in every regard that a "regular" user cares about. They are so identical that Gruber lumped them together in benchmarks in his review at Daring Fireball.

The only difference is the difference in cameras which is important to a very small number of people. And even then it doesn't make sense to make two different models instead of one, with the new camera setup.