The ecosystem. It’s what everybody always talks about. What makes Apple products so damn sticky, competitors so hella jelly, regulators so silly salty, and customers just… so happy… if sometimes… straight jacket itchy?
Your AirPods automatically switch between all your other Apple devices, sometimes miraculously, others times… way too promiscuously.
Your Apple Watch unlocks your iPhone when you’re wearing a mask, or your Mac.. any time. Syncs your rings to Fitness+ on the Apple TV at workout time. Copies your Apple Pay off your iPhone so you can oh so easily tap to pay.
Your iPhone unlocks your Apple Watch, hands off a message to your iPad, a song to your HomePod mini, scans a document into your Mac. And soon, will be pushing a FaceTime movie over SharePlay to your Apple TV.
Your iPad copies and pastes a photo to your iPhone, or works as a Sidecar display for your Mac. Projects a 3D spatial audio with dynamic head tracking experience to your AirPods.
Your Mac does all the big editing and batch jobs, from photos to music to contacts to, soon, Shortcuts that all get synced back to all your other devices, all the time. And, soon, will act as an AirPlay target for your iPhone or iPad or other Mac, or will take control of your iPad or other Mac for a fully unified experience.
But… at what cost? What’s the buy in?
The ecosystem. The ecosystem. The ecosystem. It’s what everybody always talks about. What makes Apple products so damn sticky, competitors so hella jelly, regulators so silly salty, and customers just… so happy… if sometimes… straight jacket itchy?
You get an Apple device, create an ID, it works fine. You get another, log in, Bluetooth creates a secure pairing, direct Wi-Fi creates a fast connection, and then they’re working together. You add another, maybe another, and then you’re off and ecosysteming, child, and the more you add, the more you’re locked in… but the more you unlock as well.
Your AirPods automatically switch between all your other Apple devices, sometimes miraculously, others times… way too promiscuously.
Your Apple Watch unlocks your iPhone when you’re wearing a mask, or your Mac.. any time. Syncs your rings to Fitness+ on the Apple TV at workout time. Copies your Apple Pay off your iPhone so you can oh so easily tap to pay.
Your iPhone unlocks your Apple Watch, hands off a message to your iPad, a song to your HomePod mini, scans a document into your Mac. And soon, will be pushing a FaceTime movie over SharePlay to your Apple TV.
Your iPad copies and pastes a photo to your iPhone, or works as a Sidecar display for your Mac. Projects a 3D spatial audio with dynamic head tracking experience to your AirPods.
Your Mac does all the big editing and batch jobs, from photos to music to contacts to, soon, Shortcuts that all get synced back to all your other devices, all the time. And, soon, will act as an AirPlay target for your iPhone or iPad or other Mac, or will take control of your iPad or other Mac for a fully unified experience.
But… at what cost? What’s the buy in? If you’re new to Apple and just want to know how much, or how little, it takes to get a Nike-clad foot into the bead-blasted aluminum door, or if you know all about but have family or friends you’d rather have me explain it all to, I gotchu.
Good
Apple doesn’t typically make cheaper versions of their products the way other companies do. They don’t typically let you choose lower quality casing materials, less performant storage, lower binned chipsets, or adware subsidized experiences to lower the cost of entry. They’re a premium technology company, like a premium watch company or car company, and they charge premium prices. Love that or hate that, hate that you love that, or just love that you hate that — it is what it is. Kinda.
Apple does price drop, sometimes even repackage, previous versions of their products, sometimes for substantially lower premiums. And every once and a while, they even push out new products with paid-down technologies at much lower prices. Well, lower for Apple prices.
That’s the case with the new Beats Studio Buds. Really good active noise cancellation and transparency mode, all for $150, which less than any pair of AirPods. If you want actual AirPods, you can lose the ANC and interchangeable tips, pay a little more or a little more more for inductive charging. But Beats right now are the ones to beat.
You can get an Apple Watch Series 3, with all the basic fitness and notification features, for $200. It’s getting a little long in the bluetooth — the whole silicon stack, actually — which means it won’t be getting software updates for much longer — but if you don’t want to step up to the much more modern and capable Apple Watch SE, which starts at $280, the Series 3 is the cheapest way to at least step in.
The second-generation iPhone SE gives the all the power of the iPhone 11 in the body of the iPhone 8, starting at $400. That still makes it one of the most capable phones on the market, even if it has only a single camera and a battery that you more often than not might have to top up before the end of the day.
Year after year, the non-Air, non-Pro iPad — the… just iPad — remains one of the best deals in tech. And it just keeps getting better. Better-best deal in tech. Starting at $330, you don’t get the newer, fuller-screen design, or anything more than a… pedestrian camera system, but you do get one of the best tablets on the market with access to all the iPad apps, and options for keyboards and the Pencil.
The MacBook Air was once the best mainstream laptop in the industry. And now, with an Apple silicon M1 chipset, it arguably is that again. Starting at $1000, it’s ultra portable, utterly silent, and Intel smoking fast.
Better
Apple mostly uses higher-end products to introduce and pay down new technologies, and then pushes them down to the more popular, mainstream product lines. Mostly. When they do, it gives you almost as much for… almost as much. A little bit less. The trick is figuring out when good enough is good enough, and you’re saving some cash, and when just a bit more money will actually get you much more value — especially over the life of the product.
AirPods Pro will give you the ANC and silicon tips of the Beats, the sensors and inductive charging of the AirPods 2, and dynamic head tracking for spatial audio. All for $250.
The Apple Watch SE will get you a modern wrist computer starting at $280, more for a bigger case and… or for LTE. If you want all the features, though, including an always-on display, blood oxygen, and ECG, you’ll need to step up to the aluminum Apple Watch Series 6, starting at $400. Which, yeah, bit of a step.
The iPhone 11 is last year’s model, but starting at $500 it still packs a ton of performance and value. If you want the latest chipset, an OLED display, 5G, HDR, and MagSafe instead of regular old inductive charging, there’s this year’s model for that. The iPhone 12… starting at $830.
The new iPad Air has many of the features of the iPad Pro, but starting at $600. The bezels are little thicker so the display is a little smaller, it’s got LTE instead of 5G, and it doesn’t have as many cores, but each of the cores it does have is every bit as efficient and performant. If you want 5G and prefer Face ID to Touch ID, you can check out the 11-inch iPad Pro with the M1 chipset, starting at $800.
For the Mac, you have the new M1 MacBook Pro, which is the entry-level MacBook Pro with only 2 ports, but with even better battery life than the M1 MacBook Air, starting at $1300. If you’re less laptop and more desktop, there’s the new 24-inch M1 iMac, also starting at $1300 for two ports… and more… for more.
Best
If money is no object, if you have cash to spare, if whatever you buy is paid off by clients or studios, or the time bigger and faster saves you is worth more than its weight in gold — you know, ancient bitcoin — then the highest-end Apple products typically have the latest, greatest technology, sometimes for Apple, sometimes for the entire industry.
The AirPods Max will give you full over-the-ear immersion with all the computational bells and whistles — and, uncharacteristically for high-end Apple, a rainbow of colors — for $550.
You can go with the aluminum Apple Watch, starting at $400, but if you want to be — if you need to be — extra, you can go up to stainless steel or titanium, starting at $700, or flex all the way up to Hermes starting at $1230.
You can make your iPhone Pro, which gives you a telephoto camera, LiDAR Scanner, and more memory and storage, starting at $1000, or take it to the Max with a slightly better camera system, bitter OLED display, and longer battery life, starting at $1100.
If portability is the most important thing for you in an M1 iPad Pro, you can get the 11-inch model starting at $800, or a chunk more for 5G. If size matters, you can jump to the 12.9-inch model with HDR-capable mini-LED display, starting at $1100. Or more, much more, for additional storage or RAM, because that’s a thing now on the iPad Pro.
For the Mac… it gets complicated. There just aren’t any high-end, high-performance Apple Silicon Macs yet. The entire first year of the two year transition has been spent on ultra low power. So we have up to another year to wait. Which leaves us with Intel… for now. The 16-inch MacBook Pro starting at $2400 or the full-on Mac Pro starting at $6000 and going up… and up… and up. If… super big giant if… you can’t wait on Apple silicon.
Now, even if you want to complete your ecosystem bingo, you certainly don’t have to stick to all the products in one tier. You can mix and match to your heart’s, wallet’s and need’s content. That’s kinda what I’ve done with my own personal setup. But, long video already long, I’ll save that rundown for the Nebula cut, where I don’t have to worry about YouTube view durations or retention or views per viewer… or any of that stuff.