[GTsunny]

Originally Posted by AJ56

13 Pro Max ordered online from their store.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology...534-2021-10-21

Awesome congratulations!

Please share the colour you chose and internal storage and your reasons thanks.

Please do share pics of the phone after you unbox it.

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by mayukh42

Our govt has many things to take the blame, about the price of electronics and cars and others. But this one is global. Even Papa Elon tweeted about it

Apple products are overpriced for what they offer. There is enough dissection done on the subject. They get by because their target audience is possessive about it. Otherwise, they would not have made 30+ % profits across all their products, with their walled gardens even doing 60+ YoY.

It’s a $19 cloth that costs $26 here, that’s a 36% increase mainly as a result of import duties and taxes levied by the government. To me that’s not a trivial difference.

Apple’s user interface and optimisation is unmatched when compared to other OS’s be it battery, cameras, RAM, etc. that’s the reason iPhones with 6gb RAM consistently outperform android flagships with 8-12gb RAM on performance benchmarks. The displays have the best colour accuracy in the industry (not my opinion, it shows up when tested by independent third parties) and the way their devices work with each other is again unmatched by other mfg’s.
I’m not even going into safeguards against selling user data and privacy which is again industry leading.

You seem to be confusing price with value, personally I could care less about how much profit a company makes as long their product brings more value to me than what I paid for (subjective).
Take cameras for example, I run a detailing business and require high quality, detailed pictures as part of my work. My 12 Pro Max fulfils that need perfectly, a comparable DSLR camera + lenses would cost as much (if not more) than the phone itself, let alone not do so many other things my phone does.

Bottom line, when you make the best product money can buy, you get to charge the sky for it and people who see the value in it, pay. Take any industry not just phones. I’m actually happy Apple has kept prices competitive with Samsung (not much difference between the S21 Ultra and 13 Pro Max), in fact the 13 Pro Max is actually cheaper than the S21 Ultra in some markets like the US.

Originally Posted by GTsunny

Awesome congratulations!

Please share the colour you chose and internal storage and your reasons thanks.

Please do share pics of the phone after you unbox it.

Thank you. It’s a 512gb in silver. Main reason I upgraded was ProMotion (and improved ultrawide lens) + 20% brighter display at 1000 nits. The difference is mind blowing compared to 60hz iPhones. Also bigger battery doesn’t hurt, can finally have all day battery life (12 Pro Max was almost there but fell short by 1 hour).

Reason for storage is I need instant access for my work related photos and videos, for eg. if showing a before and after shot of paint correction to a customer, can’t have a 4k video waiting to load off iCloud, ruins the experience. Plus gaming apps like Call of Duty and GTA take 10gb+ each, ProRes videos are 40gb for a 10 min clip. All my lossless audio takes up another 250gb. If anything I hope I don’t regret not getting the 1tb.

Reason for choosing silver is simple, it’s looks the best to me and light defects and swirls can be easily polished off with fine abrasives, you can’t do this with any other finish as you’ll burn through the colour. I’ll be sure to post pictures once I receive it. Cheers.

[joslicx]

Originally Posted by AJ56

My 12 Pro Max fulfils that need perfectly, a comparable DSLR camera + lenses would cost as much (if not more) than the phone itself, let alone not do so many other things my phone does.

Even a very basic 30k rupees APSC DSLR will handidly beat any phone camera including the most advanced iphone under most conditions. The size difference in the sensor is just too huge and that is bottomline in imaging.
In mobile photography also quite a few phone cameras are very close to each other.

[Cyborg]

Originally Posted by AJ56

It’s a 512gb in silver. Main reason I upgraded was ProMotion (and improved ultrawide lens) + 20% brighter display at 1000 nits. The difference is mind blowing compared to 60hz iPhones. Also bigger battery doesn’t hurt, can finally have all day battery life (12 Pro Max was almost there but fell short by 1 hour).

Congratulations on your iPhone AJ! Agree with almost everything you say except the ProMotion part and feel due to your work you should have bought the 1TB storage option.

I use the iPhone 11 (non pro) and did not find the much talked about ProMotion on the 13 Pro Max to be that much of a game changer as it’s made out to be. Sure it seems a bit smoother/faster but nothing earth shattering.

Enjoy the new beauty AJ.

Cheers

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by joslicx

Even a very basic 30k rupees APSC DSLR will handidly beat any phone camera including the most advanced iphone under most conditions. The size difference in the sensor is just too huge and that is bottomline in imaging.
In mobile photography also quite a few phone cameras are very close to each other.

I highly doubt a $400 camera will beat the 13 Pro Max, see below, they compared it to a $5500 Sony A7S3 and to me the iPhone won in most shots (I kept guessing wrong that the better looking image would be the pro camera only for it to say iPhone a few seconds later) (except zoom).

https://youtu.be/OIIJYHSQ8Pg

Regarding other flagships, there are dozens of comparisons with the S21 Ultra and trust me they’re not close, specially in image detail and low light, in fact even the 12 Pro Max beat it last year when it came to image quality but it was close, with the 13 there’s just no comparison.

Apart from the sensors (which are obviously bigger on a dedicated camera), a lot of it also comes down to image processing. Like I said, it’s not a replacement for a professional photographer but for my use it’s perfect and eliminates the need to carry additional lenses/equipment every day and then bother with charging it separately when I get home, that convenience alone is worth it to me.

Another point is, just like with everything else there are diminishing returns after a certain point. There are numerous videos on YouTube comparing 13 Pro Maxes with professional film cameras that run into thousands of dollars, and to most people (even professionals) it takes some time to tell the images apart and even then they admit it’s close, and sometimes they can’t tell flat out. Just a testament to how capable modern flagship phone camera systems are and how far they’ve come in the last 10 years.

Originally Posted by Cyborg

Congratulations on your iPhone AJ! Agree with almost everything you say except the ProMotion part and feel due to your work you should have bought the 1TB storage option.

I use the iPhone 11 (non pro) and did not find the much talked about ProMotion on the 13 Pro Max to be that much of a game changer as it’s made out to be. Sure it seems a bit smoother/faster but nothing earth shattering.

Enjoy the new beauty AJ.

Cheers

Thank you. Yes I hope it’s enough, I actually don’t use my phone for all the lossless audio as I have an old iPod permanently hooked up to my cars system so that’s a couple of hundred gb saved. Plus I don’t shoot in ProRes/ProRaw all the time as I’m not a photographer and don’t need to edit (much) in post.

To me the 12 Pro Max was literally perfect except it drops frames during certain animations sometimes (like swiping down from control centre) and that used to bother me. Plus it has thermal throttling issues where it’ll heat up specially when using the camera/lidar outdoors, force the brightness to just 50% and be difficult to read in daylight as a result, the 13 has much better thermal management with a faster chip so the screen dimming is much less. ProMotion solves all the frame rate issues and makes it feel like butter when interacting with the display. I guess it’s subjective and some folks don’t really feel it but to me it feels huge. Cheers!

[neeraj0272]

I read a lot of discussions going about brand Apple vs Android phones brand.
I feel Apple has luckily positioned themselves in a place of being a poor man's Ferrari although a reliable one.
So by spending just a few thousands more an average Joe can get the most expensive brand in this particular product line and that makes him feel like royalty. Where else can you get this experience? Certainly not in the automobile sector where you will have to spend a few crores more to have the same experience!
People here are keeping on justifying their Apple purchases as vfm due to their perceived longevity which might most certainly be. But I ask them do they always buy other products also for their vfm quotient or for longevity? Most probably not because many times vfm products don't appeal to heart or actual longevity comes at a price which most consumers(including iphone buyers) don't want to pay.
I find the debate about Apple products being expensive useless. Pricing is Apple's prerogative and spending money is consumer's prerogative.
But please don't try to justify a snob purchase as vfm. There is nothing wrong in buying things for their snob value if you have the cash. Just admit it.

[Turbo_anup]

Originally Posted by neeraj0272

People here are keeping on justifying their Apple purchases as vfm due to their perceived longevity which might most certainly be. But I ask them do they always buy other products also for their vfm quotient or for longevity?

Well, my take on Apple products is a bit different, though I see your point. I have been in Apple camp since 2012 (prior to which I was using Nokia E series), and my primary reason for staying in the camp is stable updates for min 5 years and much better support on Enterprise apps. Yes, the cost of Iphones is exorbitant compared to Android phones, but they offer stable, good software experience and most important of all - overall software & hardware experience is great. in the end, to each his /her own.

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by neeraj0272

I read a lot of discussions going about brand Apple vs Android phones brand.
I feel Apple has luckily positioned themselves in a place of being a poor man's Ferrari although a reliable one.
So by spending just a few thousands more an average Joe can get the most expensive brand in this particular product line and that makes him feel like royalty. Where else can you get this experience? Certainly not in the automobile sector where you will have to spend a few crores more to have the same experience!
People here are keeping on justifying their Apple purchases as vfm due to their perceived longevity which might most certainly be. But I ask them do they always buy other products also for their vfm quotient or for longevity? Most probably not because many times vfm products don't appeal to heart or actual longevity comes at a price which most consumers(including iphone buyers) don't want to pay.
I find the debate about Apple products being expensive useless. Pricing is Apple's prerogative and spending money is consumer's prerogative.
But please don't try to justify a snob purchase as vfm. There is nothing wrong in buying things for their snob value if you have the cash. Just admit it.

I fail to see how the Apple iPhone is considered a snob purchase when it’s closest competitor (S21 Ultra) is priced within 10% of it (1.6L vs 1.4L for S21). Unless you consider both snob purchases which invalidates the initial reasoning singling Apple out.

Coming to the comparison with cars, the delta in pricing for phones is actually much more than the delta between the cheapest car you can buy (Alto 800) and the most expensive Ferrari you can buy (812 Superfast) in India. Here are the numbers:

Cheapest car you can buy, base Alto 800: 3.52L
Most expensive Ferrari you can buy, 812 Superfast: 598L
Multiplication factor of 170

Cheapest phone you can buy: 600 (see Amazon)
Most expensive iPhone you can buy: 1.8L
Multiplication factor of 300

Now applying the same factor of 300 to the Alto’s pricing and you get 10.5 crore, almost double of what the most expensive Ferrari cost. So if anything, in the phone world, a Ferrari equivalent would be around 1.02L, at 1.8L you’re in Rolls Royce Phantom territory (10.5 Cr on road).

[mayukh42]

Originally Posted by AJ56

It’s a $19 cloth that costs $26 here, that’s a 36% increase

That's correct. The GST slabs have raised prices. As an example, for computer parts KA state VAT was 5% and you could get cheapest prices in SP Road when I came here in 2008, compared to Mumbai's Lamington Road or Kolkata's GC Avenue. But the 18-28% GST has increased prices across, and now I choose between PrimeABGB and Vedant and do not bother with Golchha (off-topic).

But the reactions were with it being $19 in the first place!

Originally Posted by AJ56

Apple’s ... industry leading.

My observation about Apple's pricing is from my own experience of using a top of the line MacBook Pro and a ThinkPad before that. The latter is way better, and blows Apple out of the water. With several servers and containers running in a typical software developer's machine, Apple runs out of juice too soon. The only good thing is that Apple is well-tested Unix machine, which has its advantages.

Apple products have good QC and come with software updates for a long time, agreed. But the target audience of these devices usually do not take advantage of that - many will still buy iPhone N+1 after buying iPhone N the previous year.

Apple knows this too; their customer is not going to wait for 5 years before upgrading the device. Because in tech landscape things are fast moving and people won't like to wait if they can afford. This along with the walled gardens (closed Apple software ecosystem with 30% cut on the App Store, much stricter NDAs with the OEM manufacturers too these days, and not the least, closed devices for repair) is why if iPhone was $749 Apple could still have made a $50 profit but instead they sell it for $899 and bag the 30%.

Even if I have a budget of $899, I would rather spend the $150 on something else. AAPL can make do with the $50 too, not necessarily $200 (my opinion).

Of course, $749 ain't cheap either especially when it is not being sold at a loss, unlike say Playstation consoles.

As for the identity protection, it is not that they don't snoop, just that they don't give the data away readily. A really good alternative for the conscious is devices like Pinephone, but just a quick comparison of the specs tell how much subsidy this data collection offers us in the pricing.

[neeraj0272]

Originally Posted by Turbo_anup

Well, my take on Apple products is a bit different, though I see your point. I have been in Apple camp since 2012 (prior to which I was using Nokia E series), and my primary reason for staying in the camp is stable updates for min 5 years and much better support on Enterprise apps. Yes, the cost of Iphones is exorbitant compared to Android phones, but they offer stable, good software experience and most important of all - overall software & hardware experience is great. in the end, to each his /her own.

Man, I have no issue with Apple or their buyers. I just said that some people(not all, for example like you) buy APPLE for snob value but they don't admit it. I am not against snob value. I also buy products for their snob value. But I admit that a part of the reason for my purchase is brand value or snob value or status symbol or whatever it may be called.

Originally Posted by AJ56

I fail to see how the Apple iPhone is considered a snob purchase when it’s closest competitor (S21 Ultra) is priced within 10% of it (1.6L vs 1.4L for S21). Unless you consider both snob purchases which invalidates the initial reasoning singling Apple out.

Coming to the comparison with cars, the delta in pricing for phones is actually much more than the delta between the cheapest car you can buy (Alto 800) and the most expensive Ferrari you can buy (812 Superfast) in India. Here are the numbers:

Cheapest car you can buy, base Alto 800: 3.52L
Most expensive Ferrari you can buy, 812 Superfast: 598L
Multiplication factor of 170

Cheapest phone you can buy: 600 (see Amazon)
Most expensive iPhone you can buy: 1.8L
Multiplication factor of 300

Now applying the same factor of 300 to the Alto’s pricing and you get 10.5 crore, almost double of what the most expensive Ferrari cost. So if anything, in the phone world, a Ferrari equivalent would be around 1.02L, at 1.8L you’re in Rolls Royce Phantom territory (10.5 Cr on road).

You can buy an Iphone by selling your kidney but not a Ferrari. Indeed many have done so if news reports to this effect were true.

What I mean is that a huge number of masses can spend money in absolute terms on Iphones and indeed they are doing so but these same people can not buy a Ferrari even if they sell their house. Your percentage wise analysis wont be able to capture this fact. Indeed this is my fine point that those who cant afford other luxuries in life are compensating this by buying Apple products.
I see multiple examples of this and please don't tell me that a vast majority of Iphone buyers buy Iphones for vfm or for productivity.

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by mayukh42

But the reactions were with it being $19 in the first place!



My observation about Apple's pricing is from my own experience of using a top of the line MacBook Pro and a ThinkPad before that. The latter is way better, and blows Apple out of the water. With several servers and containers running in a typical software developer's machine, Apple runs out of juice too soon. The only good thing is that Apple is well-tested Unix machine, which has its advantages.

Apple products have good QC and come with software updates for a long time, agreed. But the target audience of these devices usually do not take advantage of that - many will still buy iPhone N+1 after buying iPhone N the previous year.

Apple knows this too; their customer is not going to wait for 5 years before upgrading the device. Because in tech landscape things are fast moving and people won't like to wait if they can afford. This along with the walled gardens (closed Apple software ecosystem with 30% cut on the App Store, much stricter NDAs with the OEM manufacturers too these days, and not the least, closed devices for repair) is why if iPhone was $749 Apple could still have made a $50 profit but instead they sell it for $899 and bag the 30%.

Even if I have a budget of $899, I would rather spend the $150 on something else. AAPL can make do with the $50 too, not necessarily $200 (my opinion).

Of course, $749 ain't cheap either especially when it is not being sold at a loss, unlike say Playstation consoles.

As for the identity protection, it is not that they don't snoop, just that they don't give the data away readily. A really good alternative for the conscious is devices like Pinephone, but just a quick comparison of the specs tell how much subsidy this data collection offers us in the pricing.

At $19 their cloth is much cheaper than plush dual weave towels from other high quality brands like Carpro and Gyeon where they charge $25-28 for their towels. So I find it’s good value.

I don’t know which MacBook Pro you used for comparison but I agree the 13” pro being sold until now wasn’t worth it with the basic M1 chip and limited GPU cores and memory. However now you can try with the 14” and 16” pros with the M1 max chip and 64 gb of ram maxed out which I’m sure won’t run out of juice against other mass production laptops. Also with Mac OS you have the advantage of running windows natively using bootcamp while the reverse isn’t possible (running Mac OS on windows).

I don’t mind paying $1500 for the max iPhones, but in India we have to pay $2200 for the exact same phone, which makes it feel overpriced.

Yes correct about user data sales subsidising product/service cost, main reason why facebook and google searches are free.

Originally Posted by neeraj0272

I see multiple examples of this and please don't tell me that a vast majority of Iphone buyers buy Iphones for vfm or for productivity.

I can’t speak for others but I buy for the smooth UI and OS and the best cameras available in a phone, among other things. As far as productivity goes, with the cameras, excel sheets, airdrop and a 6.7” display it eliminates the need for me to lug my iPad to work as it does everything the iPad does and is more portable, by eliminating the need for pro cameras + a tablet I see it as value for money but I know it’s subjective.

Here’s the litmus test if you want to test your hypothesis, assume all phones are free of cost. They cost nothing to buy, now which brand and model would you select? I’d wager even with a level playing field (affordability wise) many would pick the iPhone over androids, thus proving which is the better device, sales never lie. Cheers.

[speedfreak01]

My almost 2.5 years old iPhone XR just refuses to die. I have gotten a bit bored of the device and have been thinking about upgrading but my phone works so flawlessly that I dont feel like letting it go. What’s worse is that both the 12 and 13 dont feel like having anything new over the XR series ( personal opinion ). Battery health of my phone is still at 90% and trust me I’ve been waiting for it to fall to 82-83 so that I get a reason to upgrade but it just wont. And to make matters worse, I am still getting a resale value of 50% of the price at which I got it for.

Now compare this to my previous flagship android - Samsung galaxy note 9, the phone had heating issues from day 1 and the battery backup was just average which made me shift to iPhone XR just after 9 months of buying the Samsung Note 9. And almost 2.5 years later, iPhone is going rock solid and just as good as day 1. Now for some iPhone XR is outdated and stuff, but for my usage its just perfect. And for me this is reason enough to stick to Apple again whenever upgrading time comes.

[neeraj0272]

Originally Posted by AJ56

I can’t speak for others but I buy for the smooth UI and OS and the best cameras available in a phone, among other things. As far as productivity goes, with the cameras, excel sheets, airdrop and a 6.7” display it eliminates the need for me to lug my iPad to work as it does everything the iPad does and is more portable, by eliminating the need for pro cameras + a tablet I see it as value for money but I know it’s subjective.

I completely understand that you prefer Apple over other options for certain features that you find useful. i am not going to argue that.

Originally Posted by AJ56

Here’s the litmus test if you want to test your hypothesis, assume all phones are free of cost. They cost nothing to buy, now which brand and model would you select? I’d wager even with a level playing field (affordability wise) many would pick the iPhone over androids, thus proving which is the better device, sales never lie. Cheers.

So obviously if apple is charging more they certainly are giving something back in return for that extra price. Just like premium phones from other manufacturers like Samsung or Huawei. if this logic is applied to cars then obviously higher priced cars will be picked because these offer something extra.
To do such a proper litmus test you have to remove branding and just compare two or more similarly priced phones say one from Samsung, one from Apple and so on and label these phones as A & B ans so on.
and then after a certain period of usage, ask the users which did they prefer.
I am sure that many will prefer Apple for its smoothness, simplicity, great photos or similar features etc.
Also many will prefer Samsung for their amazing display, great photos, striking designs, bold new features etc.
Yet many like me would prefer Android for some power features for which i don't have to look upto the OS of my phone and not feel constrained by OS or phone manufacturer.
So you see this debate is not simple as that.
Once again my contention is not which phone or OS is better. My contention was the needless justification of Apple as vfm when there is certain snob value attached to Apple products.

now I will explain why i prefer Android over Iphone. In the last 5 to 7 years I feel that all smartphones including even budget smartphones are sufficient for use case of most of the population. I am myself a power user and except for photography I use my phone's features extensively. i am using a 2 year old 25k Samsung phone with a budget chipset and never felt the need for smartphone more powerful than mine.
my 1st few phones were all flagships including Samsung S1, S3 and Nexus 6. At that time you needed most powerful phones. not now. It is the same as in PC market. I have a 6 years old i3-4150 with 8GB ram as my work pc which is much more than sufficient for my needs.
Now the added problem with premium smartphones is that besides being a very rapidly depreciating asset, there is a very high probability of it getting broken or lost due to the nature of smartphones being small handheld pocket-able devices with glass displays. I have seen many Iphone holders with broken displays or crying about spending 20k on getting their displays fixed.
Now if smartphones were to come with unbreakable displays and that which can not be lost, i will most certainly pay a premium(snob value) for a brand.
But until then I will rather pay premiums for other snob value items!

[Shiftlock]

Originally Posted by speedfreak01

My almost 2.5 years old iPhone XR just refuses to die. I have gotten a bit bored of the device and have been thinking about upgrading but my phone works so flawlessly that I dont feel like letting it go. What’s worse is that both the 12 and 13 dont feel like having anything new over the XR series ( personal opinion ).

In my opinion, the only area where the 12 and 13 are a MAJOR upgrade is the OLED XDR display (for everyday Joe's who are not bothered by camera specs). Apart from the screen, the iPhone XR still is a very competent phone and with Apple's optimization it will last till 2024 at the very least.

On a different note, After being an exclusive android user, (S7 edge -> Oneplus 7T) the biggest reason I prefer iOS ecosystem is the stability and consistently stable updates. These two reasons alone are enough to switch people over to the apple garden. The only android manufacturer that comes close is Google and I would have loved to have gotten the Pixel 6 if Google had shown any amount of interest in India, maybe in 4-5 years time if they find India to be a competitive market I might make the switch, but until then I'll enjoy using my iPhone 13 (I'll be getting it on Friday )

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by neeraj0272

I completely understand that you prefer Apple over other options for certain features that you find useful. i am not going to argue that.

I have a 6 years old i3-4150 with 8GB ram as my work pc which is much more than sufficient for my needs.
Now the added problem with premium smartphones is that besides being a very rapidly depreciating asset, there is a very high probability of it getting broken or lost due to the nature of smartphones being small handheld pocket-able devices with glass displays. I have seen many Iphone holders with broken displays or crying about spending 20k on getting their displays fixed.
Now if smartphones were to come with unbreakable displays and that which can not be lost, i will most certainly pay a premium(snob value) for a brand.
But until then I will rather pay premiums for other snob value items!

By all means, if the cheaper phones are working well for you, stick with them and save the cash, money is hard earned after all. I’ll just say let’s agree to disagree as there’s no conclusion to the ios vs android debate

I will say that don’t look at phones as assets, they’re not, just like food/clothing, consider them consumption items and you’ll be much more at peace (psychologically).

If the fragility of the screen is that important to you that’s it’s holding you back from swiching then just look up the drop tests done on Ceramic Shield displays found in iPhones 12 and up. Very, very hard to break. My mums 12 mini has been dropped dozens of times on hard tile floor from a good height and both front and back glass is intact, only the aluminium sides got nicked.

Personally despite being a heavy user, I’ve not dropped my phone since 2015, as a result my 6s lasted 5 years with no scratch/broken screen and that’s one of the reasons I don’t use any cases or screen protectors, same story with my 12 pro max, have never dropped it in a year, so it’s a non issue for me, but you can always get Apple Care/insurance if you’re worried about repair costs.