Apple is about to make a big mistake with the iPhone 14

It is time once again for one of the Macalope’s quarterly paeans to the small iPhone form factor. If small phones aren’t your thing, feel free to read this week’s column at 1.5X speed.

Writing for The Verge, Sean Hollister says “Please don’t kill the iPhone Mini” (Tip o’ the antlers to Nick.)

Preach.

The Macalope used his first-generation iPhone SE for four years, waiting for the time Apple would ship a modern small smartphone again. Then he had to wait another six months while using a second-generation iPhone SE. Finally—FINALLY!—Apple shipped the iPhone 12 mini. Huzzah!

The huzzahs were not long-lived.

Several months later, rumors said that Apple would ship an iPhone 13 mini and then be done with minis again. As Hollister notes, a recent tweet by Ming-Chi Kuo seemingly confirms it, as far as rumors go: there will be no small phone introduced this fall. This is what is known as the tick-tick-TOOOOOOK strategy. And the Macalope hates it.

Hollister and some of his colleagues agree.

…when I polled my colleagues this week, seven of us still agree that the rest of the world’s too-big phones can shove it.

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Much like comic book characters, however, Apple products are only dead as long as they’re dead. The Macalope believes there’s every chance the company will ship another true small phone (the third-generation iPhone SE is a fine phone but it’s not a true small phone) someday. Apple certainly knows better than the Macalope what sells. The company may feel the market is insignificant enough that it can just drop us a bone when it feels like it.

You can’t build a market on anecdotes, but to back up Hollister and his colleagues at The Verge, the horny one regularly talks to diehard small phone fanatics. Back when the first generation iPhone SE shipped, the father of a friend literally switched platforms in order to get a smaller phone with modern internals, something that was unavailable on Android.

Hollister does get a little desperate, even if the Macalope feels it.

If Apple offered a Mini in 2023 instead of 2022…

Or Apple could bring it back in 2024…

Or… OR… OR!

LOOK, JUST GIVE US THE SMALL PHONE AND NO ONE GETS HURT, OKAY?

Like Hollister, the Macalope would be fine if the company adopted an “every few years” approach to shipping a small phone. But there’s no regularity in Apple’s approach other than seeming continued disdain.

The irony here, of course, is that Apple was famously late to the large phone game.

This piece on Engadget detailing how Steve Jobs said “no one’s going to buy” larger phones is an amusing slice of life from 2010. Of course, Jobs said that kind of thing all the time about stuff Apple wasn’t currently shipping. “No one’s going to buy high-priced, boxy Macs with ports on the front!” What’s funny is the size of phone that was considered “large” back then.

We’re assuming he’s likely talking about the latest crop of 4-, 4.3- and 5-inch phones…

Six years later, Apple’s 4.5-inch iPhone SE would be the smallest phone on the market from a major smartphone manufacturer. Six years after that, the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 and 13 minis are. And while Apple did make substantial strides in screen space by reducing the size of the bezels, the iPhone 13 mini is substantially larger overall than the original SE was. The smallest phone now is only small compared to every other phone currently shipped.

The Macalope isn’t sure how he became the weird, cartoon poster child for small iPhones but it’s a hill he’s going to die on. Apparently over and over again.