This Week's Sponsor:

Inoreader

Build your own newsfeed and cut through the noise

Posts tagged with "iPad"

Apple Upgrade Trades Ownership for Lower Monthly Payments

Apple has revealed its new hardware leasing program called Apple Upgrade, which is being offered in collaboration with Klarna. This is Apple’s pitch:

Introducing Apple Upgrade, a new way to always have the Apple products you love. Lease a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch with pocket-friendly payments and terms that work for you. Then easily upgrade to something new at the end of your lease, and return your current device. It’s that simple.

That pitch comes with a footnote that includes other details worth considering:

  • The program is U.S. only (excluding U.S. territories).
  • You need to be a U.S. resident who is at least 18 years old, or whatever the legal age is where you live.
  • There are eligibility and credit approval requirements and you must have a credit or debit card and an Apple ID.
  • When a device is returned, it must be in good condition or damage fees will be assessed.
  • Upgrades require a new lease subject to whatever eligibility and credit requirements apply at that time.
  • For iPhones, you have to have a carrier and can’t use a prepaid plan.
  • The program isn’t available for refurbished devices or through the Apple Employee Purchase Plan, corporate Employee Purchase Plans, Apple at Work, Government, Education, or Veterans and Military Purchase Programs.

Okay, so maybe it’s not “that simple” after all.

The program is available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch product lines. For the iPhone, monthly payments start at $17.99 for an iPhone 17e and start at $34.99 for an iPhone 17 Pro Max, for leasing periods of either 12 months or 24 months.

For iPads, the starting prices range from $12.99/month to $24.99/month, Macs range from starting prices of $24.99/month to $48.99/month, and the Apple Watch ranges from starting prices of $11.99/month to $47.03/month. But again, these are just starting prices. You can configure a fully loaded 16-inch MacBook Pro that is just under $230/month, and it won’t include AppleCare.

As a point of comparison, under the current program that is being discontinued, I pay $69.50/month for an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but I have a 512GB model, so my lease price for the same phone would be $40.83/month, significantly lower, but keep in mind that doesn’t include AppleCare+, which would add $13.99/month or $139/year for that iPhone. On a monthly basis, that puts a new iPhone 17 Pro Max with 512GB of storage and AppleCare+ at just under $55/month. Still a superior deal, but not nearly as good as the landing page might initially lead you to believe.

At the end of your lease you’ll have six months to decide to return the leased device, during which you’ll continue to make monthly payments, or pay a fee equal to the difference between the original purchase price and your lease payments to buy it outright. Your other option is to enter into a lease for a new device. If you return your leased device in poor condition, Klarna will charge you a damage fee. You can also terminate your lease early if you pay the remaining lease payments in full plus any taxes and fees.

If you lease accessories for your device, those don’t have to be returned. Why? Presumably because they have no value to Apple or Klarna.

Of course, if you have a device to trade in, that monthly figure could be significantly reduced. If I had the iPhone 16 Pro Max I had last year to trade in and leased a 17 Pro Max for 12 months, my monthly payments would be under $1. However, keep in mind that once you’re on the leasing train, you no longer own your iPhone, so future upgrades won’t reduce your payments the next time you swap your device for a new model. If you don’t own it, the value isn’t yours to trade in.

If you’re on the existing iPhone Upgrade Program like me, it’s being discontinued, but Apple has a transition offer for you. The old program spread payments over 24 months with the option to turn in an iPhone for a new one after 12 months. That’s not changing. If you’re paid in full on your first 12 months of an iPhone, you can sign up for the new program, get a new iPhone, and return your old iPhone to Apple, which will close your old account but won’t reduce your lease payments. You’re not obligated to join the new leasing program, though. You can also trade in your old iPhone, ending your finance contract, and buy a new full price iPhone.

As you may have figured out by now, I’m not a fan of this program, though I expect it will be successful.

Apple products, like all consumer electronics, are getting more expensive every day. The monthly payments on a leased device look very attractive compared to the pay-up-front price. For years, car leases have induced people into monthly payments that can become a burden when their financial situation changes. Now the same will be true of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches.

Maybe as a practical matter this program isn’t that different from the old financing program, but at least there, you owned your device at the end and could just keep using it indefinitely. With the new program, that’s not an option. When your lease is over, you’re empty-handed and faced with leasing again, buying out the lease, or buying at full price with no trade-in, which is objectively worse.

Ultimately, Apple isn’t responsible for customers’ bad financial decisions, but this program feels like Apple is putting its customers in harm’s way.

Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads

My Codex setup.

My Codex setup.

In the current era of coding agents becoming productivity assistants, iPadOS’ limitations are no longer defined by the lack of desktop-class multitasking or access to external peripherals. A new class of iPadOS shortcomings looms large on the horizon: the iPad’s app sandboxing and the absence of an open filesystem have relegated it to acting as a remote control for agents.

Read more

Apple Raises Prices Across Most of Its Product Lines

Apple raised the prices of Macs and other products across the board today. For entry-level Macs, the increases are mostly $100–$200. However, if you want a MacBook Pro or Mac Studio with lots of memory and storage, it’s going to cost you dearly. Prices were also raised on the iPad, Vision Pro, Apple TV, HomePods, and many items sold through Apple’s refurbished store.

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but it’s painful just the same. Last week, Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that price increases were coming without getting into specifics. Apple was able to hold the line on prices for several months, even while smaller gadget and computer makers raised their prices or canceled products altogether.

What’s happening is simple macroeconomics. Demand for memory and storage is vastly outstripping supply, largely due to the insatiable appetite of data centers that power AI services. That demand shows no signs of waning, and supply isn’t as simple as turning a knob to 11. There just aren’t that many makers of memory chips and SSDs, and bringing new plants online to manufacture takes years and billions of dollars.

For now, the price of iPhones has been left alone. Some may see that as a silver lining, but I suspect all it means is that Apple has enough prebuilt inventory to get to September, when new iPhones are announced. Apple Watch and AirPods prices remain the same, too.

Could Apple have avoided this? I doubt it. The magnitude and speed of the price increases and the projected duration are beyond what any reasonable company could or would plan for.

That said, I do think the situation will get better with time, again because of macroeconomics. The increases may preserve Apple’s margins, but it’s going to reduce the number of customers who can afford its products. Margins only equate to profits if you have customers willing to pay for your product. So with time, if the data center demand slackens or new chip capacity comes online, prices will improve. Just don’t expect that anytime before 2027 or 2028 if current projections are to be believed.

iPadOS Lets You Automate Window Placement with Shortcuts

MultiSwitcher for iPadOS.

MultiSwitcher for iPadOS.

Update: An earlier version of this article referred to this feature as having been introduced in iPadOS 27, but it was actually introduced in the iPadOS 26 cycle. I missed it. My apologies.

In iPadOS’ Shortcuts app, the existing ‘Open App’ action was recently updated with the ability to launch an app with a specific window placement parameter. This means you can now automate window positions on iPad by opening a bunch of apps and programmatically selecting where their windows be placed.

Read more

Apple Releases Watch Band, Watch Face, and Wallpapers to Celebrate Pride Month

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple has released its annual Pride Collection, including a new Apple Watch Pride Edition Sport Loop band, watch face, and iPhone and iPad wallpapers celebrating LGBTQ+ communities.

The commemorative Sport Loop uses 11 colors of nylon thread that blend the colors together in a unique way. As Apple’s press release puts it:

The intricate weaving blends one color into the next, creating depth and movement across the band. The resulting design is joyful and vibrant, showcasing a full spectrum of colors that reflect the unique identities that shape LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The watch face and wallpapers share a similar style of gradient strips of bright colors radiating out from the watch face’s analog clock design and in vertical strips on the wallpapers.

As usual, Apple’s designers have done great work with the band, watch face, and wallpapers. There’s a vibrancy and energy to them that brings them to life.

The Apple Sport Loop is available to order today online and in the Apple Store app for $49 and will be in retail stores later this week. The watch face and wallpapers will be available as soon as the 26.5 releases of watchOS, iOS, and iPadOS are released to the public.

Well, I Guess I Like Safari’s Compact Tab Bar in iPadOS 26.4 (Also: Using Vertical Tabs in Safari for iPad)

We're so back.

We’re so back.

Yours truly, back in September 2021:

In case I haven’t been clear enough above, I’ll be blunt: I don’t understand why the compact tab bar exists on iPad, and I think this design shouldn’t have shipped to customers.

My understanding is that Apple thought the benefit of removing a separate address bar, therefore saving a few vertical pixels on the page, would have made all the compromises we’ve seen so far worth the trade-offs in usability. I think that’s a wrong and mismanaged decision driven by an unmotivated pursuit of an iPhone-like design that has no place on iPad. If slightly increasing vertical space on webpages is Apple’s only argument here in favor of the compact tab bar, you tell me if it’s worth the trouble by judging from the screenshots below.

If, like me, you missed this in the release notes for the recently released iPadOS 26.4, the compact tab bar has returned to Safari for iPad after mysteriously disappearing in iPadOS 26.0. And I’m here to tell you that not only do I not despise it like I did five years ago, but I actually like this mode and have been working with Safari on my 13” iPad Pro like this for the past two weeks.

Read more

The iPhone Fold Doesn’t Need iPadOS to Be a Great “Tablet”

I meant to link this at the beginning of the year, then I forgot, but I guess the story is still as timely as ever given the state of the latest rumors. A few months back, Jason Snell 3D-printed a mockup of the upcoming iPhone Fold (which I still think should be called iPhone Duo), which revealed a surprising design decision:

If these mock-ups are real, this folding iPhone is not going to be what you may have pictured in your head: a modern iPhone, roughly the shape of an iPhone Pro, that folds open to reveal a larger screen inside.

Instead, Apple may be making a device that’s much wider and squatter than existing iPhones when it’s folded up. The mock-ups people are printing show a phone that’s squatter than an iPhone mini and wider than an iPhone Pro Max! If that shape is right, the iPhone Fold will look a bit more like a mini notebook when it’s folded, unlike any iPhone that has ever existed.

And:

The shape makes sense, however, when you imagine what that phone looks like when it’s unfolded: a screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the shape of an old-school television and—more importantly—an old-school iPad. In fact, this rumored design would make the unfolded iPhone the shape of an iPad, just slightly smaller than the iPad mini. (The iPad mini’s screen is 8.3 inches when measured diagonally, while this screen is rumored to be 7.76 inches.)

Read more