Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which incorporates all of the Apple information you missed final week in a helpful bite-sized roundup. We name it Apple Breakfast as a result of we expect it goes nice with a Monday morning cup of espresso or tea, but it surely’s cool if you wish to give it a learn throughout lunch or dinner hours too.
Not so particular
When requested by family and friends for my recommendation on which iPhone to purchase, I used to speak up the SE. It was only a good compromise: a quick chip in a basic chassis at an interesting worth. They could have appeared enviously at whichever ludicrously overpriced flagship iPhone I used to be toting on the time (for a assessment!) however for 90 p.c of the populace, the SE made much more sense.
I ended providing this recommendation some time in the past, nonetheless. Certainly, perceptive readers can have immediately been in a position to date these conversations, or no less than tie them to a selected period of iPhone SE: particularly the 2nd-gen mannequin from 2020. The 2016 authentic was fairly respectable too, however the Third-gen SE from 2022 represented a steep nosedive in worth and relevancy, and it’s laborious to see the road enhancing from right here on out.
Theories on the 4th-gen SE range extensively, however one new report sums up the final sense that no one, not even Apple itself, can see a transparent roadmap for the previously standard funds telephone. Writing on X/Twitter, the prolific leaker Majin Bu goes towards the favored consensus that the subsequent SE will mimic the design of the iPhone 14, and says as a substitute that it’s going to intently comply with the design of the yet-to-launch iPhone 16, together with a vertically aligned rear digital camera bump (with a single digital camera) and Dynamic Island. Wait, what?
The SE was at all times based mostly on the concept funds clients would moderately compromise on design than energy, therefore the choice to place an up-to-date chipset in an previous chassis. Which makes the thought of (presumably?) subsequent spring’s SE getting a bodily design that’s barely six months previous very laborious to grasp.
That’s to not say there gained’t be compromises: for one factor, the 4th-gen SE will reportedly nonetheless have a single rear-facing digital camera lens. Which is a nostalgic choose, to say the least. (You already know the final non-SE iPhone to have a single rear digital camera? The XR, from 2018.) And also you’re left to marvel who on earth Apple thinks is in search of an iPhone with an extremely new design and an extremely previous digital camera setup—that most likely prices no less than $499.
In fact, this report could also be inaccurate; MacRumors, certainly, goes as far as to deploy probably the most dreaded of all rumor descriptors, “sketchy.” However the specifics on this case matter lower than the bigger sense that nothing will work, that not one of the varied rumors surrounding the 4th-gen SE have made sense or offered an interesting case for anybody to purchase the factor. There merely isn’t the area in Apple’s lineup that there as soon as was for a canny funds compromise.
The issue, as I’ve mentioned earlier than, is that the second handed. For a number of years after Apple switched to an all-screen design on the iPhone X, a whole lot of clients wished to purchase an iPhone that also had a house button—particularly one for $399—enabling the SE to be each a compromise and an interesting area of interest choice. If it had simply been a crap telephone for much less cash, it wouldn’t have been wherever close to as profitable.
Followers of the house button have dwindled in quantity, and sub-5-inch smartphone screens now look positively quaint; the subsequent SE realistically has to undertake an all-screen design, and Apple has to search out compromises in different areas. However the firm doesn’t present any indicators of even understanding the alchemy that made the 2020 SE so successful (or the restrictions that prevented it from doing even higher). The 2022 SE mixed an older design with poor battery life and the identical restricted digital camera array (ring any bells?) and even received a worth hike. As a product providing, this was so self-sabotaging that it felt like one thing out of The Producers.
The factor is that Apple by no means really wanted the SE. Opposite to standard perception, Apple was promoting funds iPhones lengthy earlier than the launch of the SE, and even the 5c: they’re referred to as earlier fashions. If somebody needs an iPhone however doesn’t wish to pay greenback, they will presently purchase the iPhone 13 for $599, or go to different distributors or the Refurbished Retailer and get one thing nonetheless older for nonetheless much less. There’s no legislation that claims there must be a brand-new funds iPhone. And if I have been Tim Cook dinner, I’d be giving severe thought to cancelling the SE challenge as soon as and for all.
Foundry
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Our Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional assessment is in progress, however we have already got loads of ideas.
The rumor mill
SiriGPT? Tim Cook dinner confirms Apple’s gen AI push for iOS 18.
Report claims the iPhone 16 may get a large battery enhance.
Leaked schematics ‘affirm’ iPhone 16’s iPhone X-style digital camera design.
Apple hasn’t given up on a folding iPhone–but it surely’s nonetheless a good distance off.
Software program updates, bugs, and issues
New iOS 17.3.1 iPhone replace noticed within the wild.
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visionOS 1.1 will get its first beta launch with MDM and gadget reset.
And with that, we’re completed for this week’s Apple Breakfast. Should you’d wish to get common roundups, join our newsletters. You may as well comply with us on Fb, Threads, or Twitter for dialogue of breaking Apple information tales. See you subsequent Monday, and keep Appley.
