A Few Thoughts About iPhones, Apple Intelligence, and the Next Few Months (Premium)

Apple's annual iPhone launch is its biggest event of the year, and I'm guessing many readers were underwhelmed by today's entry. I get that, to some degree, and I felt it too. But when you consider that we're long past the point when Apple or any other company can wow us with year-over-year smartphone upgrades anymore, it's perhaps unfair to complain. And while the Apple Intelligence features it promises are on a slow boil, this coming year will at least be interesting because we know a lot of updates are in the works.

For me, the iPhone launch--called It's Glowtime because everything Apple does has to have a silly name--was a mixed bag. But it's a mixed bag with a big qualifier attached: I have spent an inordinate amount of money on Apple hardware and services this past year, and even more time navel-gazing over what this all means. But most of the upgrades it announced aren't particularly compelling to me for that reason. And I have more money to spend, too. In addition to whatever iPhone 16 series I device I land on, I recently ordered a pair of HomePod Mini speakers to bring to Mexico, where I'll add them to my Apple TV there.

The iPhone launch was also weird for me in some ways. After inadvertently expanding my exposure to Apple this past year, I had headed into last month's earlier than usual Made by Google event not expecting much: Surely, my Pixel 8 Pro was good enough to let me skip this cycle. But I found myself more impressed by what Google announced than expected, and I ordered a Pixel 9 Pro XL, and am currently using it daily and preparing a review. Spoiler alert: It's freaking great, and while much of that is familiar--the incredible computational photography features, the helpful, highly customized Pixel version of Android, and so on--this phone is good enough that I'm once again questioning everything. Which made the build-up to this iPhone launch a bit unsettling.

I will watch the Apple event recording again and pour over Apple's website to gain a better understanding of where it's at. But my day one knee-jerk reaction is that it didn't have much compelling to announce in the way of hardware upgrades. And I'm curious now if this, tied to the Apple Intelligence "delays"--really, just slowness--will harm Apple in any way. That is, it's already suffered from a year of flat sales and could have used a home run, similar to what Intel may have just achieved with Lunar Lake. But this launch felt like a solid single at best. Respectable, but not all that exciting. Almost the opposite of my experience with the Made by Google launch, with the caveat that leaks ruined both launches, and only Google still impressed.

In the end, pragmatism may win the day. I could skip this round, of course, but Apple explicitly made the point that it and its wireless carrier partners were offering terrific trade-in values and other incentives, a surprisingly bald-faced plea for attention that's rare for the company. Heading into this, I...