ITrying to figure out what to focus on in the first post-Alex Hern TechScape was tricky. (If you missed it last week, you can and should check back for his farewell newsletter after 11 years at the Guardian.) Why? Well, it’s all happening all the time now, so there’s a wealth of topics to dive into.
We could talk about the likelihood of Elon Musk running Donald Trump’s “government efficiency commission” if he is re-elected as US president, but that would entail doing another newsletter about Musk, and you might be as tired of that as Alex. The likelihood of the latter happening remains a toss-up; the likelihood of Musk quitting running his multi-billion dollar companies for a low-paying government job, less so.
We could talk about Pavel Durov’s first public statement since his arrest in France last month, and how Telegram’s anti-censorship stance has collapsed (you can now report content in what used to be private chats that will be reviewed by a moderator).
Or we could talk about Nvidia’s integral role in the economy, but I spoke to Nimo Omer for Monday’s First Edition newsletter about that.
Instead, let’s talk about the latest big moment in the tech world, which has become exhausting in recent years: Apple’s latest iPhone announcement. And why, despite the bells and whistles, and being a tech-embracing bunch, I bet many of you won’t be lining up to buy it.
The reasons are complicated. One is the sheer price of the iPhone 16, which starts at $799 (£610). For many, such a high price is too much, especially at a time when the economy is in crisis, jobs are scarce and a new prime minister is calling himself the head of a “gloomy” government, as The Observer’s political editor Toby Helm put it.
“New mobile phone sales have fallen dramatically over the past decade,” says Ben Wood, chief analyst at market research firm CCS Insight. In 2013, Britons bought almost 30 million new handsets. Last year, just 13.4 million were sold. CSS Insight expects the figures to remain around the same level. Its research suggests that most people expect to keep the next phone they buy for up to five years.
At the same time, phone makers are offering fewer drastic changes to their products year after year. “Today, mobile phone updates are mostly incremental from a hardware perspective,” Wood says. “Last year’s iPhone will probably look very similar to this year’s, albeit with a slightly larger screen, a slightly better camera, and perhaps better battery life. That’s a stark contrast to the period from the mid-’90s to 2007, when there was an incredible acceleration in mobile phone performance and capability.”
All eyes on AI
The adoption of AI on the iPhone (which Apple unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June) could be seen as a radical change in how the iPhone works, but there may not be a huge appetite for using ChatGPT on the phone, as I explained in a controversial article in June.
Don’t think I’m a jaded, pessimistic tech journalist, but market analysts agree with me. Wood believes AI has become a “battleground” between Google (which has Gemini), Samsung (which is promoting its Galaxy AI) and Apple (which understood the task and cleverly named its version Apple Intelligence, trying to make its name synonymous with the technology). Will all the investment to put AI in its phones be worth it? “I’m not convinced it’s going to change overall sales of new devices much,” he says.
Apple has also already said that European users will not have AI built into their devices. This year because the company isn’t sure it can do so without breaking rules under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. There is one exception: it will be accessible in the UK, which is of course no longer in the EU, starting in December. But if you spend a lot of time on the continent, you won’t be able to use it there. So you’re paying for marginal upgrades and the potential appeal of AI at some point yet to be determined.
After the newsletter promotion
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
This is where I make an embarrassing confession: despite covering the latest cutting-edge technology, I don’t see the point in keeping up with the latest hardware. I’m not an Apple fanatic, even though I use my iPad (a seventh-generation model, released in September 2019 and discontinued a year later) every day.
It works, and it works well, despite being five years old. That’s partly because, with few exceptions, Apple’s annual hardware updates only make minor tweaks. Does it really matter if my news app looks a little sharper thanks to a fancier display, or if apps open a millisecond faster thanks to a slightly faster processor? And if so, do those marginal benefits justify the cost of a new device?
My phone is the same: When I dropped my two-month-old Samsung and had to replace it after a screen repair damaged the keypad, I chose to buy an equally outdated phone: a 2021 Samsung A52. I chose it because it was the last model I could find at a semi-affordable price that still had a 3.5mm headphone jacka technology I cling to because Bluetooth headsets have given us nothing but the agony of losing our headphones and having to listen to other people’s music on public transport.
I would say that the new iPhone costs a lot of money for so little new stuff. However, you may not agree. And if you don’t, let me know. You can find me at X on @stokel.
If you would like to read the full version of the newsletter, please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Tuesday.
