I buy a new (non apple) phone most years, but I'll probably skip the next 2 years due to flatlining of specs and increasing price.
The 17 was a good step up, but it's hard to cheer for finally getting a 120Hz display, while 300-400 Euro Android phones had them for a few years already.
The iPhone Air was the only really interesting model. But with only one camera and high introduction price, I don't think it was a failure in the market. Samsung had a similar problem with the S25 Edge - fewer cameras, but priced near the Ultra (the Air/Edge are a steal at the current pricing of 880/520 Euro, if you can live with the battery life).
I'd love to see more actually meaningful features. While the Samsung privacy display of the S26 Ultra may not have been perfect the first iteration, it's a innovative feature that is useful to a lot of people. (No, a privacy screen protector is not the same, I want to see most apps with the full flagship display glory.)
Another issue is that the pricing barely gets reduced over the year, while you can already get an S26 for just over 600 Euro.
Releasing a new iPhone every year at this point is stupid, innovation has slowed right down, but Apple aren’t going to turn down the free FOMO money.
> At the end of your initial lease term, you can do one of the following:
> Upgrade and return your current device. Footnote ◊
> Leave the program and return your current device. Footnote ◊
> Buy the device outright with a one-time payment from your Klarna account.
The new program, at the end of the initial lease term, will switch to an extended 6 month month-to-month lease; then at the end of that if you have still not acted, Klarna will charge the remaining buyout amount.
> For an iPhone 17 Pro 256GB with a purchase price of $1099 (excluding taxes and any trade-in credit), the typical monthly payment is $31.99 (excluding taxes and any trade-in credit) for a 24-month lease term and $45.99 (excluding taxes and any trade-in credit) for a 12-month lease term.
Riding out a 12 month term, you'll have paid in $551.88. Buyout at that point is $547; ride out the next 6 months month-to-month another $45.99/mo and Klarna will then ding you $271 and close it all out. I assume this is how they're going to avoid any kind of possible "paying more than the cost of the phone" shenanigans from a perpetual lease.
Frankly, if you look at “capitalism” it oddly looks far more like the underlying con system of control core to “communism” than not, even if it has been far more sustainable and enduring because it is based on ideological control, not physical control.
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/eip-flex-36
... though curiously, out of all the carriers, T-Mobile is now the first to start charging anywhere from 0% to 24% APR on their installment plans based on creditworthiness. I assume this is a signal that the era of 0% APR installments from carriers is going to start to disappear as well.
Sprint also got sued a few times over for offering leasing for cellphones - I wonder when the first lawsuits against Apple and Klarna are going to strike as well when consumers realize what they fell for.
Eg often hardware over $1000 gets depreciated over 5 years but employee laptops get replaced every 3 years so subscribing can have a huge positive effect on cashflow
These personal plans make sense for people who want the latest and don’t like the hassle of reselling
My personal experience disagrees. A lot of colleagues are absolutely happy with keeping their machines for quite some time. A lot of it - believe it or not - is simply inertia. Apple has made switching MacBooks super easy but still the process of going through the migration process from one machine to the next simply isn't worth the trouble for a lot of them (and I include myself in that group as well).
If all your people are looking for is the latest and greatest gadget then you may simply have the wrong people in your team.
If the customer is the sort of person that upgrades yearly then it reduces hassle: no extra effort for valuing a trade-in or selling to a third party. It affects these customers the most because they might be able to recoup more in a third party sale in exchange for effort on their part.
I doubt “klarna” will have even 1% of the customer service that Apple provided.
Before people start strawmanning, yes, we do the same for house mortgages. But a living space is essential, but more importantly, long-term the value typically stays the same or rises. So, even if you cannot afford the mortgage anymore, you can sell the house, pay back the mortgage company and keep the capital you accumulated so far.
A phone is also an essential now, but they lose value over time, and many midrange 300-500 phones are barely worse than an iPhone nowadays and will also have 6 years of monthly security updates, etc. (if you pick the right brand).
These schemes are only there to trick people who probably couldn't afford luxury products into buying them. People who can afford an iPhone, can also save up for one or buy one outright.
Using Klarna is also indicative of Apple's moral rot. They are well known in Europe for willingly getting people to buy things they can't afford (I guess similar to US credit cards) and high-interest rate loans. They are a morally bankrupt company and it's sad that Apple has sunk so far just to make the line go up.
What?
When I last switched laptops, I just did `dd if=/dev/nvmeOldLaptop of=/dev/nvmeNewLaptop` and was good to go with the entire laptop state being replicated, compared to my colleagues who spent a week gradually copying all their stuff over, and still missing a ton. Some time later IT figured out my windows installation ID was wrong and just assumed they messed up during setup and updated their database.