Apparently a $1000 iPhone was announced today

Having learned their lesson, Apple unveils an even more expensive phone.

Further cementing Apple as a luxury goods retailer, rather than a computer company. *sigh*

LOL nope I’ll stick with the iPhone 6 for now. I haven’t seen any features introduced in the newer models that would make me want to upgrade yet.

Welcome to 1986.

Still rockin' the 5c here.

I'd say more like 2007. Before then, Apple focused heavily on computers and accessories that pushed the limits of those computers. Unfortunately, they realized in 2007 that the iPhone was making them more money than God, so they began focusing hard on developing it. Over the years, the effort put into laptops and desktops was funneled into micro-mobile devices like iPads and iPhones. Apple hasn't refreshed their iMac line in ages, but continue to charge the premium price that once went with premium hardware.

I take it you never heard of the Macintosh Lisa.

I do remember the Lisa, but that really was an absurdly overpowered computer for its day. Steve would go on to do the same thing with the NeXT PC. He had a penchant for high priced computers, but often the hardware could back up at least much of it. The iPhone X does not justify its $1,000 price tag. There are other phones, ones that are just as capable, that can be bought for half of that, a quarter of that. I have a Samsung Galaxy J3 Luna Pro. It's a great little phone, HD camera, I have a 128GB SD card in it, plays movies and music, internet is 4G, Android 6, the whole works. I paid $15 including shipping, but even the normal price is less than $100. Sure, the Apple hardware has a few more advanced features, but all in all there's no reason for the $900 gap aside from the obvious "Apple tax."

Why people keep buying iPhones, I don't know. Well, I do, but it just isn't rational.

I buy them because they just work, though I definitely don't get the latest model.

Both of my phones are iPhone 6 models. My personal phone is paid for and I know the ones we buy at the office cost less than a dollar each (something like $0.29 or thereabouts).

I should ask why people keep buying the latest iPhones, then. I guess it doesn't make sense to me why someone would spend $1,000 every year for a new phone that will only be slightly (if that if you consider the features they're taking away) better than the previous model they bought the year before, especially when there are plenty of non-Apple phones that just work. Right out of the box, my Samsung phone was ready to go. I filled in my information, it found my wi-fi network, transferred all of my data from my SD card, and got everything up and running. Inside of 5 minutes it was as if I hadn't switched phones at all, and had been using the Samsung Pro for months.

Honestly, I think a lot of other manufacturers, especially Samsung, have caught up with Apple, especially in the non-mobile divisions. Have you seen the new All-In-One PCs? Microsoft's Surface Studio desktops are smashing the shit out of Apple's desktops in hardware and OS innovation, running circles around iMacs and at half the price. There was a time when the 3x price tag on a Mac was high, but still somewhat deserved for what the system could do. Now, though, they're letting them languish as they focus on mobile devices. Granted, that's where the money is right now, but like I said, companies like Samsung are running their pace even now. Tim Cook's a good CEO, but he doesn't have the creativity and, quite frankly, bullshitting capabilities that Steve had.

I'm wondering where they'll be in a few years, because I think that eventually they'll run out of roman numerals people would be willing to buy.

I'm seriously considering buying a Surface of some sort when, in the past, I would've been looking an an iPad of some sort.

While it's $3,000 and out of my budget by about ten thousand miles, the Surface Studio desktop blew my mind with what it could do. If there was any time for Microsoft to strike out at Apple as the "Creator's Choice," it's now, because Apple's kind of pissed off its artist community with all of the fiddling it's done with its latest macOS, to the point where software developers for high end video and 3D editing are getting tired of trying to work around it, and are essentially dumbing down their Mac versions and moving over to more complex and well stocked Windows versions.

Apple seems to have learned its lesson on pricing.

That’s better by Apple pricing standards, but it’s still insane by any reasonable standard.