Huh? I’m a UK consumer, how am I not aware? My food shopping bill has gone up £30 a week since May, energy bills have gone up from £88 a month to £419 in the last 4 months too. How can anybody not be aware of the consequences of a weak pound?!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
All iPads Has Apple finally done it this year?
- Thread starter bobjonesco
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Huh? I’m a UK consumer, how am I not aware? My food shopping bill has gone up £30 a week since May, energy bills have gone up from £88 a month to £419 in the last 4 months too. How can anybody not be aware of the consequences of a weak pound?!
I quoted you using the quote function. No misquoting occurred.Except you quoted me incorrectly and accused me of doing something the poster I had quoted was doing. You didn’t even have the decency to correct yourself so the other poster in this ridiculous chain did it for you. Anyway, we’ll complain as we all do, that’s part if the purpose of forums in the first place.
. Anyway, we’ll complain as we all do, that’s part if the purpose of forums in the first place.
You said:
To which I said:
In relation to this:
You're probably right. I think Apple's product decisions are fine (in some ways the iPad-10 and iPhone 14-Plus are ways for people to get an upgrade without having to shell out for the iPad Air and iPhone 14 Pro Max respectively), but their non-US pricing is unsupportable in the numbers Apple needs. On the plus side, I expect people can wait for discounts driven by lower than expected revenue.
Last edited:
The thing is, Apple’s design philosophy is better than the alternatives. Heck, they’re one of the few companies to actually have a design philosophy. But my experiences with macOS are a lot better than the problems I used to have with Windows back in the days when work forced me to use a PC.
But there’s a price to everything. At some point I am going to have to sit down and look at exactly how much inconvenience the Apple ecosystem really saves me with its philosophy of “It just works”. If it’s a day a year in lost time managing passwords and system drivers, then I may have to bite the bullet, because frankly my time right now is looking less valuable than the contents of my bank balance.
Apple is lucky that in the past year I’ve just spent 3650 euro’s on new gear, and I don’t need anything else beyond maybe a new tablet to set me up for the coming five years.
But there’s a price to everything. At some point I am going to have to sit down and look at exactly how much inconvenience the Apple ecosystem really saves me with its philosophy of “It just works”. If it’s a day a year in lost time managing passwords and system drivers, then I may have to bite the bullet, because frankly my time right now is looking less valuable than the contents of my bank balance.
Apple is lucky that in the past year I’ve just spent 3650 euro’s on new gear, and I don’t need anything else beyond maybe a new tablet to set me up for the coming five years.
I believe there are examples where they have reduced prices outside of a refresh cycle, but most often they review prices when products are refreshed - as is happening now. I can remember some £50-£80 reductions on Macs mid-cycle, but I can't pinpoint any articles to prove it actually happened.
Well you're moaning about pricing as if there's not a justifiable reason for it. I know you're not alone in this, but it's absolutely reasonable for prices to go up as they have in the UK right now.
I had a 10.5 and only upgraded recently to Air 5 due to battery, the Pro did not seem worth the extra to me. Really the battery life is key as these devices are going to deteriorate over 3 to 5 years. My take on the prices is that the increases are about 50% too high, so I think 150 to 180 now just to add cellular? My suggestions for others is to look at Apple Refurb which again are not cheap but I think they have new batteries and screens, well worth having versus 3rd party used or open box sales.
I wasn’t complaining to the OP about them sharing their opinion though, hence why I am utterly confused by what appears to be a false claim by yourself.
That’s literally what you were doing. But it’s cool, let’s not worry about it too much. My apologies for upsetting you.
Apology accepted. I don’t like being accused of something I haven’t done, hence why I challenged you to quote me, which you couldn’t because I supported the OP, not accused them of anything.
Last edited:
Still waiting for iMac update with 27 or higher screen. Smart dudes at Apple want to sell me display + mac studio instead to squeeze more profit $$$. Not gonna work
Definitely agree with what you said, Apple Pencil situation and the others you mention are great examples of the mess Cook and team have created.
And exactly, they have gone way too far. The funny thing is people often use "its a business" to excuse anti consumer behavior (not saying you are here, just in general) and yet if one studies business those practices never last. When you do that, you leave yourself wide open to being disrupted by someone else eventually, even if you enjoy a few years of extra profits, just look at Kodak, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, legacy auto makers. Big tech companies have the biggest monopolies we've seen (watch Thiel's competition is for losers) so I guess they feel confident enough they can get away with it. Which, to be sure many on my list eventually recovered because they had so much cash from their monopoly days.
Its still surprising to me this is happening at Apple, since tech leaders are uniquely aware of the disruption I'm talking about AND Jobs preached such a different ethos and supposedly thats in the DNA at Apple, but I guess the old saying "power corrupts" is still as true as ever. Obviously there are still very good and very talented people at Apple, but the leadership culture and priorities have also clearly shifted; it's just a shame it's not what it could be.
Yeah exactly, I like how you framed that. There is still value, but also it's not what it could be and that artificial limiting is not the vision Jobs set at Apple nor what they preach in all their marketing material. Going in the apple ecosystem is a huge risk for the customer because its a closed garden, to make that risk worth it you have to trust they have the customers intention at heart, and they talk about how they make stuff for their own families, but now they are breaking that trust.
I got an iPhone 13 Pro Max last year.
I just had the battery in my Series 5 Apple Watch replaced earlier this year, so I will likely hold on to it for another year at least, or maybe till the next ultra refresh.
My 2018 iPad Pro is still going strong (had this screen fixed earlier this year as well). Probably can hold out till the next major pro refresh.
I got the M1 MBA in 2020. Barely 2 years old. Likely won’t be upgrading anytime soon.
Bought the AirPods Pro 2 when it came out. A bit of mixed feelings. It’s not as comfortable as my AirPods 3, and the noise cancelling feels a tad lacklustre. But I still use it when travelling outside.
Will probably get the new Apple TV when it gets released, to replace the A10x one on my room.
The next on my list is the 2017 5k iMac in my room. Going strong also, and I got it mainly for the screen, but I am open to something newer and sleeker.
Even if I had enough of the Apple ecosystem and wanted to leave, I am not sure what I would leave it for. Windows laptops don’t have Apple silicon. My passwords are in keychain and 1Password. Random products from different manufacturers are not going to integrate as well together. At this point in my life, I just want my stuff to work more than I want them to be cheap.
For all the flak Apple gets for pricing and random shenanigans, the competition doesn’t seem to be doing any better of a job getting their act together.
I just had the battery in my Series 5 Apple Watch replaced earlier this year, so I will likely hold on to it for another year at least, or maybe till the next ultra refresh.
My 2018 iPad Pro is still going strong (had this screen fixed earlier this year as well). Probably can hold out till the next major pro refresh.
I got the M1 MBA in 2020. Barely 2 years old. Likely won’t be upgrading anytime soon.
Bought the AirPods Pro 2 when it came out. A bit of mixed feelings. It’s not as comfortable as my AirPods 3, and the noise cancelling feels a tad lacklustre. But I still use it when travelling outside.
Will probably get the new Apple TV when it gets released, to replace the A10x one on my room.
The next on my list is the 2017 5k iMac in my room. Going strong also, and I got it mainly for the screen, but I am open to something newer and sleeker.
Even if I had enough of the Apple ecosystem and wanted to leave, I am not sure what I would leave it for. Windows laptops don’t have Apple silicon. My passwords are in keychain and 1Password. Random products from different manufacturers are not going to integrate as well together. At this point in my life, I just want my stuff to work more than I want them to be cheap.
For all the flak Apple gets for pricing and random shenanigans, the competition doesn’t seem to be doing any better of a job getting their act together.
This, exactly. Although I was thinking that regards the iPhone lineup.
I remember when Jobs came back to rescue Apple. He reduced their product mix to simplify and improve profitability. Seems the current management is headed in the other direction.
On a different note, when I read that Apple was keeping the Gen 1 pencil with the basic iPad all I could think of was this is Apple's version of a corporate yard sale. Personally, I think moves like this dilute the quality of the brand.
I think one part of apple has always been brand-identification. They seem to have lost that a little recently.
Their products still work reasonably well, but it feels dissatisfying to either spend a fortune on their latest/greatest hardware or have the option to buy "leftover" older products that are partly just as expensive as they were when they were released (looking at you, 800€ iphone mini).
Over the last years, I've more and more changed from recommending apple products to others without hesitation ("sure, you pay more, but you also get more") to be more apologetic ("yeah, you'll have to pay 200€ more for an entry level iPhone SE than for a mid tier android, and then you'll only get an old looking design and one camera lens for it. it's still a good product in that old shell, the apple eco-system is nice and it will probably last for 4-5 years - but I can see why this doesn't look like an exciting deal to you").
Back in the day, the iphone 5c or the plain white macbook felt somewhat like the affordable entry level products - less premium but still high quality - but they also felt like something genuine. You had an apple-thing and while it wasn't their top of the line product, it stood on it's own. And you loved the little design quirks and were somewhat proud of it.
Nowadays, "entry level" is often a recycled design that feels like apple making a buck off a dead horse.
It's not about the actual, factual value of the products but about their emotional value. Maybe I'm just nostalgic, but imho it feels like that value has been in a steady decline over the last years and might even reach a tipping point some day.
Their products still work reasonably well, but it feels dissatisfying to either spend a fortune on their latest/greatest hardware or have the option to buy "leftover" older products that are partly just as expensive as they were when they were released (looking at you, 800€ iphone mini).
Over the last years, I've more and more changed from recommending apple products to others without hesitation ("sure, you pay more, but you also get more") to be more apologetic ("yeah, you'll have to pay 200€ more for an entry level iPhone SE than for a mid tier android, and then you'll only get an old looking design and one camera lens for it. it's still a good product in that old shell, the apple eco-system is nice and it will probably last for 4-5 years - but I can see why this doesn't look like an exciting deal to you").
Back in the day, the iphone 5c or the plain white macbook felt somewhat like the affordable entry level products - less premium but still high quality - but they also felt like something genuine. You had an apple-thing and while it wasn't their top of the line product, it stood on it's own. And you loved the little design quirks and were somewhat proud of it.
Nowadays, "entry level" is often a recycled design that feels like apple making a buck off a dead horse.
It's not about the actual, factual value of the products but about their emotional value. Maybe I'm just nostalgic, but imho it feels like that value has been in a steady decline over the last years and might even reach a tipping point some day.
I agree with both points.
I'll add that the "corporate yard sale" (and what a great descriptor!) can be appropriately done, but not as current lineup. They can sell the units as "refurbished" through their normal "refurb" webpage although, of course, this means not using the tactic of creating a new product line just to use up "leftover" items.
There's a broader point to be made about the differences between Apple then and now. Whether it should be interpreted as Apple "losing their way" is a matter of perspective.
The simple fact of the matter is that Apple is a fundamentally different company than it used to be. The company can't help it. It's like if you went from paycheck-to-paycheck living, crashing on friend's couches, to a million-dollar a year job. You can claim to be the same person inside, but you're not. When your relationship with your surroundings changes dramatically, that filters down into your core, and it changes you. You can't help it, and you can't control it.
20 years years ago, Apple was a company that living on the edge, metaphorically couch surfing. Its existence buoyed by a small population of die-hard fans that looked to it for technology and aesthetic leadership. It had a flock. That was its sustenance. That core group that was willing to follow where it led. Its investor pool was also similar - believers (and a few long-play speculators). You don't hold shares in a company teetering on the edge of non-existence unless you truly believe in it.
When the vast majority of the population that drives your existence are true believers, it gives you flexibility to bring that population with you as you navigate your challenges. If that population is small, then the small revenue limits your options, but their strong loyalty also lets you do things. You can change technology stacks quickly (OS9 => OSX). You can kill off entire classes of partnerships (clones). The population backs you, because they believe. Back in the late 90s, Mac users held a special pride. It took a certain about of personal conviction to stand the tide against "the default". You suffered, and struggled to be a mac user in the face of lack of software choice, and lack of hardware compatibility.. because it was worth it, and you "were a mac user”.
The proportion of Apple's userbase today that are true believers is far smaller. Likewise for their investor base. The current user base and investor loyalty is not based on conviction, or a personal identity-based affiliation, but is instead far more grounded in pragmatic self interest. For this user base, it’s a combination of their understanding of Apple products as “good products” and “cool products”, their understanding of the Apple brand as a trustworthy, fashionable, quality, desirable brand. For investors, it’s the typical investor mix - some mix of growth-oriented investment and revenue-oriented (i.e. dividend-oriented) investment.
This is the kind of loyalty most companies have to work with. It’s not as strong as the kind of identity and conviction-based loyalty that sustained the company through its dark days. The problem is that this new, more pragmatically loyal user base and investor base is also what gives Apple its new identity as the most successful company in the world. If Apple’s product quality takes a stumble, some significant chunk of this user base moves on. If Apple’s brand is perceived as less fashionable than it used to be, some significant chunk of that user base moves on.
The user and investor base isn’t a flock anymore. It can’t “be led” like it used to. The company that could forge ahead with drastic decisions, relatively assured that its user base would follow, cannot make that assumption anymore. Instead of leading a flock, it now has to cater to an audience. This is a drastically different relationship.
Their relationship with shareholders is likewise different. Back in the 90s, people used to argue that Apple should just cash in the $4 billion they had in the bank and return it to investors, as that would be a bigger value than forging ahead with their products. Apple’s investors could certainly have forced that outcome, but they didn’t. They hung on, through dwindling marketshare and sales numbers, because they believed in the company.
Are the bulk of shareholders today just as likely to stick with them as those core shareholders from yore? If profits start dropping, is this new shareholder population as willing to just go along with it? Or are they going to start thirstily eyeing those juicy hundreds of billion dollars sitting in the bank? How much would it take for this new population of shareholders to decide “hey, it was a good ride, let’s force the Apple directors to squeeze some of that juice out for us”?
In this new reality, that original core user and investor base.. those true believers.. they don’t matter anymore. They got to enjoy the ride from the start, but now their secluded island has been inundated by a population of visitors that outnumbers them by a couple of orders of magnitude.
This new population sets the tone for what kind of company Apple will be, because they have the power in this new relationship.
Has Apple “lost its way”? Apple is slowly transitioning into a much more traditional company, and its behaviour will start to match those of a traditional company’s behaviour. If you want to consider that as them “losing their way”, then yeah.
I wouldn’t call it “losing their way”, though. Circumstances changed, and the company changed, and that’s just the way she goes.
Your electric bill does not go from £80 to £415 at all, that is UTTER lies, my electric bill went up from around about £85 to £147
Excuse me? Who the hell are you to call me a liar?!! Good bye.
I am an average user of iPads and Macs; nothing high power, but Office, Teams for work and consumption / photo editing for personal use only. I am upgrading my iPad every 4-5 years. I will retire my 2017 10.5” IPP now and replace it with the M2 12.9” IPP. I keep Macbooks for 6-8 years. My current 15” 2017 MBP is in for a battery replacement. That will give it 3 more years before I will think replacement.
Phones I upgrade every 3 years. Watches I am more frequently upgrading. After Series 0, 3,4 and 6 I went for the Ultra this time.
Bottomline, nobody needs annual upgrades anymore. Apple caters to this with extended product cycles as well.
Phones I upgrade every 3 years. Watches I am more frequently upgrading. After Series 0, 3,4 and 6 I went for the Ultra this time.
Bottomline, nobody needs annual upgrades anymore. Apple caters to this with extended product cycles as well.
Idk I feel like this is only true if you purchase on day one straight from Apple.
Outside of that, at least here in the US, I don’t see how the prices have changed that much.
The iPad Air and Pro have mostly kept the same pricing they’ve had since 2018.
The iPhone 14Pro series has the same pricing it’s had since the X.
The Apple Watch SE and Apple TV both recently got nice price drops.
The new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro’s can be found for literally thousands of dollars off at certain retailers.
Old overpriced models like the Apple TV HD, Apple Watch Series 3 and iPod Touch have finally been discontinued.
The new Mac Studio is priced extremely competitively.
I feel like the only things that have gone up in price and haven’t really justified It are the iPad 10 and the Studio Display, but it’s not like those are necessary products at all.
Outside of that, at least here in the US, I don’t see how the prices have changed that much.
The iPad Air and Pro have mostly kept the same pricing they’ve had since 2018.
The iPhone 14Pro series has the same pricing it’s had since the X.
The Apple Watch SE and Apple TV both recently got nice price drops.
The new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro’s can be found for literally thousands of dollars off at certain retailers.
Old overpriced models like the Apple TV HD, Apple Watch Series 3 and iPod Touch have finally been discontinued.
The new Mac Studio is priced extremely competitively.
I feel like the only things that have gone up in price and haven’t really justified It are the iPad 10 and the Studio Display, but it’s not like those are necessary products at all.
As an ex-fanboy, I renewed all my basic Apple devices from iPhone to iMac, including iPad in the last 16 months, but now questioning the value I get out of them.
Both iOS and and macOS are getting more and more buggier. Now I can no longer do basic stuff like copying a 2GB video file from iMac to the iPad using the Files app, because iPad freezes after such attempts since iOS 15 update (was working just fine with iOS 14.x). And this is only one example of perhaps at least a dozen things which no longer function properly, or not working at all. Privacy measures which used to be a big plus in the past, now seems to be giving a false sense of security. Since Safari becomes more and more incompatible with today's world wide web, having to use other browsers nullify most of Apple's promise for privacy protection.
Moreover Apple's support is more ignorant, and more annoying than ever, and nobody at product development and engineering seems to be taking feedback from the Apple Feedback Assistant seriously.
I also think discontinuing Intel-based Macs was a terrible idea, and will reveal more repercussions in the coming years translatable in shrinking market share, so that it will fall back to where it was in the 90s.
The "accountants" have obviously decided that iPhone is the only the product they should seriously care about (since it is making more than 50% of their revenue), and now they are apparently allocating their top software engineers (if not all of them) to iPhone development, neglecting the OS for Macs and iPads like a small business that has limited resources.
Alternative? My next device purchases will be primarily Android and Windows-based for a change, and whether or not I stay with them will depend on whoever has the least bugs and best U/X now - with the way Apple is handling things at present, I have reason to believe Windows and/or Android experience might outperform what Apple has left to offer.
Last edited:
I keep saying this but Apple can’t seem to focus on more than one thing. Macs have been amazing these last two years. I’m not looking forward to the AR/VR product which causes yet more distractions.
Highly doubt Windows is any better, but actually worse in my opinion. I do not like how the direction Windows is going since Windows 8 and I think Windows 11 is even worse with the UI being very unpleasent to use, customization options taken away and forced Microsoft accounts, even on Windows 11 Pro. Given that Microsoft is very open to spying on their users, I think the Windows 11 experience is worse and buggy as well, probably worse than macOS with all it's bugs, which I hardly experience..
Also giving up Intel was the right move. My Intel 2018 MacBook Pro has crashing issues sometimes with Thunderbolt 3 when it's sleeping sometimes along with degraded performance. My Apple Silicon experience is so much better as I don't have any of these issues. The M1 Macs runs a lot cooler than my Intel Mac ever did.