Comment by izacus
4 years ago
These "slow iPhone 13 mini" sales are more than all Google Pixel phones sold in a year. Think about that.
I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews and modern American perception. Why is being able to buy niche products somehow not a worthy thing to be desired?
I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews
Because so many on HN have been indoctrinated into the "scale at all costs" mentality.
It demonstrates the difference between HN and the real world.
On HN, if you can't serve a billion people, your product is niche. In the real world, billions of people earn a very nice living making niche products.
It's why so many people on HN don't understand Panic, or its PlayDate. They don't understand artisan anything. They've forgotten the whole hipster movement, which still exists in pockets of the world. They can't grok that there are companies that have been in business for hundreds of years making products one at a time — by hand.
"X doesn't scale" is HN for "I know nothing about how the world works."
>> I don't understand when did the ability to choose a product fitting your preferences become a bad thing on HackerNews
> Because so many on HN have been indoctrinated into the "scale at all costs" mentality.
HN also has many fanboys that slavishly celebrate the decisions of certain prestigious companies as the best possible ones, because that prestigious company made it. Other decisions can be assumed to be inferior because, if they had merit, the company would have picked that instead.
IMHO, a lot of technology has plateaued, to the point where the hip new thing is objectively a regression that just looks different.
> In the real world, billions of people earn a very nice living making niche products.
But rarely something as expensive to create as a smart phone.
Really? Because things like cabriolet cars, speciality cars, high-end audio equipment, luxury furniture and many others exist.
If anything, mobile phone market is exceedingly horrible because of consolidation into a single product with not much choice.
11 replies →
The limitation to making niche phones are the stupid, sclerotic, CARRIERS--not the manufacturers. It's the carrier gatekeeping that prevents niche phones from forming.
We need a ruling like from back in the Bell System era where you are allowed to bring customer equipment to the network without the network owner permission.
2 replies →
Also consider he's specifically appealing to makers of premium phones - you can bet Google and Samsung care a lot about scale. And to the parent's point about the iPhone 13 mini's sales still being more than all Pixels: ok, so then consider the already much smaller Pixel market share and how many people are left at the % of iPhone sales that the mini made up.
I'd love for this to happen, signed the petition, and will hope for the best, but I think even if there would be a decent market for this the big players don't care to make that bet.
If hipster culture was so good, it would have expanded across the world and taken over everything.
If hipster culture is predicated on being different/“not like the other girls” then by definition it is unscalable.
The whole point of a lot of things is that they are unscalable and if they somehow do scale they are not longer what they were.
Are you saying hipsterism can't be very good because it didn't scale?
That’s not how it works. X is amazing, but has a steep price so only “hipsters” can buy it which prevents it from taking over the world.
Saying that HN readers (who are quite diverse, btw) "know nothing about how the world works" or "don't understand" things in this context is just lazy thinking.
We understand just fine. It's not difficult to comprehend the appeal of customized, handmade work. The appeal is clear.
It's just that it's completely irrelevant in the context of this thread. Because you can't design and make smartphones by hand, one at a time. So what are you even talking about?
And it took Panic a decade to release the Playdate and it is still back ordered for over a year. Hardware has to “scale” to get manufacturing capacity and scale economies.
Much of that can be chalked down to the fact that Apple doesn't have that many models they actively sell, so the models that they do tend to have way more than any individual Android model, and that the mini is the cheapest iPhone in the 13 line. I know a few people who went for the mini because it was marginally cheaper.
I went with the mini because the new SE is fraking bigger with less screen. The mini is just about the limit of what i want to put in my pocket. If they get any bigger, im going watch with cell and leaving these phablets at home.
Do y all have really small pockets or something? For women, I get it, your pants don't come with pockets and that sucks. But for guys? I've had a Samsung Note phone in my pocket since the Note 2, they where the model that invented the phablet moniker... Never had an issue. Do I just make better pant choices than most people?
1 reply →
"Oh, the Mini sells better than all of the Pixels, but only because of <complex set of reasons>"
Sorry to post off-topic but I've never heard it before. Does chalking down mean the same thing as chalking up?
Yes, both — writing something with chalk on slate.
While I agree with the sentiment of your post, I'm not sure if Pixel are the best example, as they have demand that they don't satisfy.
For example in Spain, the Pixel 6 Pro was only sold for a few days in February, then sold out, then returned a few days ago - so it only seems to start being consistently available now, and it's a 2021 phone. Oh, and only the 128 GB model is sold here. I had to ask an Australian friend to mail a 512 GB one to me!
And at least, they do sell it here. In most countries, you can't even buy it.
Compare to iPhone where you can get every model with every storage capacity consistently, in Spain, and in the overwhelming majority of countries in the world.
I've even seriously considered switching to iPhone for this very reason, by the way.
NRE costs on a phone are easily measured in the $Millions. Your niche has to either (a) have enough volume to dilute those costs; or (b) be willing to pay a lot more per unit to cover them.
It's not a "bad thing" about HN or American perceptions -- it's economic reality: it just isn't cost effective for the big incumbents to pursue, and it's (likely) beyond the scope of a grass-roots, Kickstarter-style effort.
> These "slow iPhone 13 mini" sales are more than all Google Pixel phones sold in a year. Think about that.
That really doesn't say much. Google has never figured how to sell hardware, nor shown the will to learn. If Google was trying to sabotage the sales of the Pixel line, it could probably not do a better job.