By John Moltz
August 14, 2025 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Making an entrance
Apple preps for September, raises and lowers some prices, and takes the phrase “read the room” maybe too literally.
Touching things up
It’s less than a month until Apple’s expected iPhone 17 event and the company is rushing to dot all the “i”s in “iPhone”. Sure, it’s just one and there are no “t”s but it’s a lot of iPhones.
In preparation for eventually one day hopefully delivering the Apple Intelligence features it promised us last year, Apple has been testing its new and improved-curious Siri with a number of third-party apps that you might use such as Uber, YouTube, and Temu. Soon you’ll be able to order cheap goods then watch a video from inside a ride share, all hands free!
I do not need or want to know what you’re doing with your hands in the back of that Prius instead of using them to operate your iPhone manually. I’m just going to assume you’re waving them in the air like you just don’t care.
Apple has also been continuing to tweak Liquid Glass, iterating it over and over until it gets it juuust riiight. Or at least until people aren’t complaining about it so much.
And, finally, don’t put a fork all the way in Apple’s ongoing legal battle with Masimo yet but the company has issued a workaround to allow blood oxygen sensing on Apple Watches with the capability. Just run the test on your Watch and you can see the results on your iPhone. That may seem awkward but it’s better than their plan B workaround which involved faxing the results to you.
Will the price be right?
Analysts are coming out of the woodwork to tell us to brace for higher iPhone prices this year.
“iPhone 17 Pro to get higher price and fewer storage options”
Wall Street analysts have estimated that iPhone 17 models could be $50 to $100 more expensive than the equivalent iPhone 16 models, but this is likely guesswork.
This may be some lower form of guesswork but it’s not world-class, mind-bending analyst guesswork like the time an analyst projected that Windows Phone would overtake Android by 2015.
No, I will never tire of bringing that up, thank you for asking. The web site for that analyst’s firm is now, and I am not making this up, an ad for a Vietnamese soccer streaming service. 100% true story.
Prices of the iPhone line may be going up but Apple can also be a benevolent god. Tim Cook was heard to remark, “Let them eat cheap MacBooks.”
(Disclaimer: eating your MacBook may void the warranty.)
“New 12.9-Inch MacBook Could Launch This Year Starting at $599”
Yes, the occasionally not completely wrong DigiTimes is now backing up early reports by Ming-Chi Kuo that Apple’s cheapest laptop evah will cost between $599 and $699. I’m not a big-time analyst but I predict they will sell like hotcakes and be sized like large flapjacks.
And now I’m hungry for pancakes. Great. That’s just great.
Speaking of MacBooks, Apple issued an onboarding video featuring a MacBook that mysteriously does not have a notch at the top of the screen, launching wild speculation of Apple removing the notch in an upcoming device. More than likely it was just a video edited over top the image of a MacBook.
I mean, c’mon. A MacBook without a notch? Whoever heard of something so outlandish?
OONZ OONZ OONZ
If Mark Gurman is correct, Apple is placing a big bet on its ability to improve Apple Intelligence.
“Report: Apple planning ecosystem of home security devices to compete with Ring and Nest”
Apple expects to leverage its privacy advantage along with stuffing a whole bunch more cameras into your house.
The device has facial recognition and infrared sensors to determine who is in a room.
And what all the yelling is about.
That could mean turning lights off when someone leaves a room or automatically playing music liked by a particular family member.
Or… or… music that is disliked by a particular family member, if you’re anything like me.
This probably won’t come for years if it ever does at all, but if Apple eventually ships this technology you people better effing look out because ya boi’s gonna have an entrance song and a personal light show, all followed up by a block-rocking walkout song and it’s all going to be extremely elaborate to the point of deeply affecting my personal relationships in a very negative way.
Seriously, my whole set is going to be absolutely unbearable but also magnificent.
No “Final Countdown” or “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, though. I’m not a monster.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]