Will you be ordering the new iPhoneS or C ?

That appears to be true based on my experiennce joining and then leaving linked in. Howver, check out this story:

LinkedIn Accused of Hacking Users' Email Accounts. Here's the Complain - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

 

I guess I have iOS 6.1.3 on my Mini. It says it's up to date, but I guess they don't automatically offer to update to a new integer version number. What does 7 have that 6 does not? I often find that the latest version of something offers nothing new that I care about. The latest iTunes has nothing new that I want. I do all my security updates, but big new releases often just take up space, or don't work as well on the older hardware.

As for Siri, I played with it a bit, but mostly find that typing into Google is easier. I doubt we'll see a stand-alone (off-line) version of Siri just because of the immense amount of information needed to respond to requests.

 

This is not a simple question; it depends on your use.

My wife talks a *lot*, sends perhaps 5 messages a day, and uses perhaps 2 GB of data that does not require LTE for good performance. She pays $41 a month (total) on a pre-paid plan to satisfy her uses. Over 2 years, along with a 16 GB 5s bought outright the nominal cost is ~ $700 + 24*41 = $1684 or $70 a month. Subscription plans for similar use are easily 50% more expensive, up to 100% more expensive once fees and taxes are added. On the other hand the two choices are not strictly comparable because LTE is not offered on the prepaid service.

Another example: I only use talk minutes. I buy them for about 4 cents a minute and end up spending anywhere from $0 - $5 dollars a month. No subscription plan can come close.

 

Typically they'll continue to support an OS for several years. My home computer is running OS X 10.6.8 and cannot run the current version of OS X, but I continue to get upgrades. It will be a LONG time before iOS 6 is no longer supported, and in fact a lot of iOS devices will not run 7.

I did some googling and came across several variations of reasons to upgrade and reasons not to upgrade. Reasons not to upgrade (yet) are the likelihood of bugs in the first release, and that some apps may not work right away, if developers are slow to upgrade them. And there's no way to go back! I presume that means even restoring from your backup will not restore iOS 6.

I found a promo from Apple in which a guy with a sophisticated-sounding British accent talks for 6 or 7 minutes and says basically nothing about new functionality. All he talks about is how wonderful the new "design" is: more colorful, "improved" icon appearance, etc. One item he mentioned is "transparency": You can see your wallpaper through your app. This is a deal breaker for me. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE WALLPAPER THROUGH THE APP!!! I suppose it might be possible to turn that off. There's also a "feature" by which as you move the device you get a sense of parallax between the app and the wallpaper in the background. This has to consume computing power and slow down the device and shorten battery life. So you LOSE functionality (speed and battery life) for a "feature" that is just annoying.

I'll probably upgrade. But not for a while.

If the second-gen iPad Mini has retina display, and IF that turns out to make a noticeable and significant difference to my eyes, I might upgrade and get a bigger memory at the same time. I never expected to put so many apps on my iPad Mini, and I'm getting low on available memory. But if the display seems no better, or is not changed, I will stick with mine and maybe delete the Audubon apps (birds, flowers, mammals, and fishes) which take up a humongous amount of space, and which I've never succeeded in finding anything on.

 

iOS 7 is a *very* welcome change. I am a minimalist at heart, and iOS 7 sings to that choir. As my wife said, surprising that loud complaining from conservatives/reactionaries is not being heard.

Daniel, the 3-D effect from the parallax use and semi-transparent layers works very well to effectively enlarge the screen through depth. I'm happy to say that the graphics capabilities of the iPhone are now much more in service to function rather than show. Aesthetic form follows function. Brilliant.

The power drain from iOS-7 is not from the interface per se, but mostly from background activity. Easy to shut off.

 

I try to avoid the .0 version of any program. I only recently upgraded to iOS6.1.2. There were battery issues with the 6.0 releases. iOS6 seems more CPU intensive than iOS4 that came with my 4th gen iPod touch. It just feels a little more sluggish. My 2 year struggled with learning the new youtube app on iOS6 which was the major reason for my delay. I'll try to avoid iOS7 as long as I can but it's inevitable that some app will require it in the future.

 

Just upgraded to a Note II from a SG 2 so will stick with this one for a minimum of 6 months. I have large hands and large pockets and find larger screens work great for me and I'm already geared up on android stuff. The Torque Pro app looks great and is easy to read on my phone. I find it amusing that some on here criticize not buying American while driving a Japanese car.

 

Thanks, JMD and Sagebrush. Good to know the problems are not as bad as I anticipated. Of course, I may be using different apps. The ones I'd hate to lose even for a short time are Shredder Chess and my Sudoku program (OpenFeint). I also use Chrome (I don't like Safari) but I'm sure that's already upgraded for iOS 7. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll upgrade.

My iPod Touch is too old to run iOS 7, but I never connect it to the web. Mainly I use it for music and podcasts and audio books, and it's not likely to need an OS upgrade until it dies a natural death from old age. I got it for email and web browsing while traveling, as well as audio, and I put some games on it, but since I got the iPad Mini, the iTouch is just an audio device.

 

iPhone 5c $99 16gb ...
Apple iPhone 5C review | The Verge

 

You forgot to factor in your inflated monthly payment for the privilege of using your spanky new phone for the whole 2 years, LOL!

According to this: A Breakdown of iPhone Price, from Phone to Monthly Plans
Iphone costs from $2000 to over $3000.

 

I pay $75 family plan for 4 phones with T-Mobile (2 unlocked iphones, 2 Android phones). How much do you pay for your new iphone plan?