Linked List: December 26, 2017

Tuesday, 26 December 2017

Very Strange WSJ Story on iPhone Sales 

Tripp Mickle, in a story headlined “Apple’s New iPhones Get a Lukewarm Reception From Buyers”:

But estimates from two market-research firms indicate customers are buying the X and a pair of other new offerings at about the same rate as they did with new models in the past two years — which fell short of the iPhone’s 2015 peak.

The iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus combined for 69% of U.S. iPhone sales for the month ended Dec. 3., with the remainder going to older models, according to a survey of 300 iPhone buyers by technology-analysis firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

By comparison, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus accounted for 73% of all iPhones sold in their first month in 2016, and the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus accounted for 71% in their first month in 2015, the firm’s prior surveys show. Sales of those devices proved to be lackluster. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus — which were big hits — accounted for 91% of iPhone sales in their first month in 2014.

They’re not comparing how many of the new iPhones were sold each year, but instead what percentage of all iPhones sold were the new models. I suppose that’s interesting, but it certainly doesn’t justify the headline or basic premise of the article, which implies that iPhone X and 8 sales are weak.

Keep in mind that Apple’s guidance for the current holiday quarter was for $7 billion more in revenue than their previous best quarter ever.

Computer Latency: 1977-2017 

Dan Luu:

I have this nagging feeling that the computers I use today feel slower than the computers I used as a kid. I don’t trust this kind of feeling because human perception has been shown to be unreliable in empirical studies, so I carried around a high-speed camera and measured the response latency of devices I’ve run into in the past few months. Here are the results.

It may not surprise you that it’s an Apple device with the lowest latency of any he tested. It may surprise you that that device is an Apple IIe. Luu’s explanation for why this is so is just fascinating.

Also unsurprising: iOS devices have noticeably lower latency for scrolling than Android ones.