Welcome to our regular collection of all the Apple news you missed this week in one convenient, bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s also cool if you want to read it during lunch or dinner as well.
When bargain prices have their price
Some say you get what you pay for. The late Sir Terry Pratchett argued that being poor was very expensive. But most of our brightest minds agree that a cheap buy is likely to come back and bite your butt.
Apple products can hardly be called cheap, but all things are relative and the company has long recognized the appeal of what we might call its most affordable offerings. I’ve always advised readers and family members to look beyond Apple’s enticing base prices, which can leave you with less storage than you need or otherwise hold you back on features or specs.
But that vague suspicion of low prices has been compounded by recent experience with Apple’s newly updated M2 MacBook Air, which performs shockingly poorly if you opt for the entry-level configuration. Read and write speeds for this machine’s 256GB single-channel SSD were 50 percent slower than the top-end $1,899 model in our tests, and the expected M2 speed boost was almost entirely absent.
So the $1,499 model with a better chip, more memory, and a fancier charger is actually the better bargain in the long run. While the $1,199 model might be tempting, we’d recommend spending more for at least 512GB of storage or looking for a discount on 2020’s M1 Air rather than buying this year’s cheapest model.
Inexpensive entry-level products are trendy. The iMac line contains a similar trap for the unwary bargain hunter. The cheapest ($1,299) version of the 24-inch iMac seems like an attractive option, as it has the same 4.5K display as the $1,499 model and a very powerful M1 processor. What Apple doesn’t make public is the lack of a power adapter with Ethernet, the Touch ID keyboard, fewer color options and ports, and only one fan, resulting in slower performance and more noise under load. At only $200 less, it’s hard to recommend.
Once you develop an instinct for price paranoia, you start noticing false austerity measures across the Apple range. For example, what’s the Apple Watch Series 3 still doing in stores when we’re just months away from the Series 8 launch? I’ll tell you what it does: seduce innocent buyers with its titillating price tag, and then disappoint them with its flimsy feature set and looming lack of software support.
The second-gen AirPods of 2019 are still available, but you really shouldn’t buy them if the newer edition easily justifies the extra money. And the iPhone SE, newly updated this year and seemingly cheap in price, is actually more expensive than the previous model and doesn’t offer much in the way of modern features. Either way, you should pay more or forgo a better alternative.
Of course, all of this is easy to say as an Apple-focused reviewer who gets access to (mostly highly specialized) products with some degree of regularity. Of course, I prefer the premium editions, which are more expensive for a reason. In Apple’s world, price correlates fairly closely with quality.
But that doesn’t mean the relationship is linear, and at different points on the chart, price is increasing faster than quality, or vice versa. At the high end, a lot of extra money gets you relatively little extra quality: the Apple Watch Edition has always offered poor value for money, and the Mac Pro and 12.9-inch iPad Pro aren’t worth their respective sky-high prices, it is unless you have a job or a specific niche use case that justifies their skills. On the other hand, at the entry level, a fairly small amount of extra effort will result in a huge improvement in your experience with the product.
Buying cheap, whether you’re buying a pair of boots or a laptop, is generally a waste of money. And because we’re talking about Apple here, it’s a waste quite a lot of money. Spend more or spend nothing at all, but you should probably skip straight over the entry tier if you can avoid it.
I.D.G
Trending: Top stories of the week
iOS 16 and macOS Ventura show how far ahead Apple really is, argues Dan Moren.
An ounce iPhone and no Mac makes one bitter apple cocktail. Yes, it’s time for results again.
After a backlash against the feature shameful opportunitiesApple cracked down on iMessage editing and retiring in iOS 16.
After rightly relaxing rules Apple is now accused of scaring customers away when it comes to regulating in-app payments. It’s absurd.
The economy is doomed, the Macalope notes, and you know what? It is all Apple’s fault.
Bad luck for AOLers: Apple will no longer help you set up your dial-up modem.
It is that end of an era. Apple’s M2 MacBooks no longer have any trace of Intel inside.
The rumor mill
Jason Cross dives deep into the upcoming A16 processor and asks: How much faster will it be iPhone 14 pro actually be?
It’s also been pretty much confirmed that the 14 Pro will have one Always-on display. And we’ve seen what that will look like.
Mind you, the Apple Watch Series 8 could well overshadow the new iPhone. Here are 5 reasons to be happy.
Good news on this subject for squares and square lovers: Apple is finally allowed to Redesign of the Apple Watch– although it will not have a new form.
The M1 Mac Pro has reportedly been scrapped as Apple plans to do huge M2 boost this autumn.
Reviews and product comparisons
Benchmarks confirm our fears: the performance of the $1,199 M2 MacBook Air is shockingly bad on some exams.
It is that ecosystem that matters mostargues Jason Cross in the comparison of iPhone SE and Google Pixel 6a.
Karen Haslam compares the M2 MacBook Air to the M1 model and expects to spend $200 never made more sense.
Which Apple charger should you buy for your? new M2 MacBook Air? If you want more comprehensive advice, check out our round-up of the best USB-C chargers for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
In the mood for music? We tested and ranked the best wired Lightning and USB-C headphones for iPhone and iPad.
podcast of the week
The rumor mill is churning great possibilities for the Apple Watch. In addition to what’s coming in watchOS 9, we could see the biggest change to the Apple Watch lineup in its seven years of existence. We talk about the upcoming Apple Watch in this episode of the Macworld Podcast.
You can catch any episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app or our own website.
And with that, we’re done for this week. If you would like to receive regular summaries, sign up for our newsletter. You can also follow us on twitter for breaking news. See you next Saturday, enjoy your weekend and stay Appley.