Tamara Shopsin’s novel Laserwriter II (MCD) will be published on October 19. It’s a funny and quirky book about ’90s-era Apple products and the people who fix them at New York City’s premier Mac repair shop, Tekserve. Tekserve was a real place! I never went there, but it was a fixture in Mac magazines and at Macworld Expo on the east coast.
The main character in Laserwriter II is a young woman who is taught the secrets of printer repair by the sages of Tekserve and works with a cast of characters—some pleasant, some unpleasant. It’s an enjoyable trip back in time with several laugh-out-loud passages. My only real criticism is that it’s too short, and left me wanting more.
Here’s a brief interview with the author:
Jason Snell: What prompted you to revisit the ’90s?
Tamara Shopsin: It was born of a desire to document the shuttered Macintosh repair shop: Tekserve. A place that happened to have had its heyday in the ’90s. I think anyone who went to Tekserve will understand the impulse of wanting to bottle it. It was a weird magical place whose advice could be trusted more than Yoda. If a person lived in NYC in the ’90s and used a Mac computer in any way they ended up at Tekserve. So it was an important place to the history of New York, but also Macintosh, which are two things that run through my veins.
The portrayal of Tekserve is incredibly detailed. Did you have personal experience with Tekserve? Did you talk to a bunch of former employees to get the story? It feels at times almost like a memoir rather than a novel.
Yes, I worked at Tekserve for three months, and I did work the printer desk, so much of the very technical stuff like using Apple’s service source documents comes from my memory. I also talked to a lot of former employees, many of whom I never met, all of ’em worked there much longer than me.
I put everything in the hopper and tried to spit out the truest & most readable version of Tekserve I could. The result is definitely fiction. Many swaths are made up from thin air. But it is also spun from real history. I worked hard to include as many actual details of Tekserve as I could. The result is that classifying the book is super confusing.
It doesn’t really matter to me if it is taken as a memoir or novel. I just hope people laugh and rip through it and feel full after they read it. Also that Tekserve is remembered as the kindhearted predecessor to the Genius Bar.
Did you do any technical research to get your portrayal of the nuts and bolts of computers and printers from that era correct?
Yes, but I am at heart a designer not a journalist or computer historian, so my technical research was often looking at eBay listings of Quadras and Mac Manuals. I did gleefully binge read Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org in what began as research but ended up being entertainment.
I was struck that there are lots of women in the novel, even though tech in that era felt very much like a boys’ club. Were you trying to comment on this unpleasant aspect of computer history?
I was just trying to be true. That aspect of the proto-tech bro was present at Tekserve and it would have been off to ignore it. There were many good men at Tekserve and that is represented as well.
I do think Tekserve was a bit of an exception to the boy’s club. David and Dick, the founders, both came from the utopianism of the anti-war movement and not some delusional Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo. They really wanted to live in a more just society as such they went out of their way to hire women.
No idea if it is better today. I do know the book Broad Band by Claire L. Evans is a nice sweep through female computer history, that makes me think it isn’t a straight line.
There’s some very nice pixel art throughout the book. Is that your work? What was the inspiration for creating it?
Thank you. Yes, those are my drawings, though they are very inspired by the work of Susan Kare. I think it started with one pixel drawing. I wanted to draw cockroaches crawling on a page, and for some reason it struck me they should be little pixel roaches. The bugs crawling all over the page was obvious, but bad ideas often lead to better ones.
Almost every year since 2007, I’ve gotten a new iPhone.1 Some years promise big improvements over the past—others are more incremental. But 14 years into the iPhone’s life, those big updates are decidedly fewer and farther between.
Such it is with the iPhone 13 Pro. This is the third “Pro”-branded iPhone in Apple’s history, and with every iteration, it’s increasingly clear that the moniker is more marketing than anything of substance.
What makes a Pro phone? These days it’s more camera lenses, different materials, and one or two additional features. Not a better processor, increased storage, or even more RAM, the traditional hallmarks of “pro” in the Mac lineup. This isn’t a phone for pros—what would a “professional” smartphone user even look like? Are the rest of us rank amateurs by comparison?
Ultimately, the Pro phone is simply the more expensive phone—but Apple couldn’t exactly call it the “iPhone Pricier.”2 But I digress.
Jason has already taken a close look at the 13 and 13 mini in his review; the iPhone 13 Pro (and, by extension, the Pro Max, which feature-wise is exactly the same this year, with the exception of being larger in every way: chassis, screen, and battery life) mainly differs from its standard 13 counterpart in three ways. Do those features make the Pro phones “better”? Not necessarily: the real question is whether those factors make a meaningful difference to you, the potential phone customer.
Surprise! Jason and Myke predict what will happen at next week’s Apple media event. What ports will be on the much-rumored MacBook Pro? Will it appear in familiar colors, or will Apple branch out and offer something new? Will we see updates to the Mac mini, new AirPods, or—dare we dream—an affordable external display? It’s all to play for.
I know a lot of people who have been monitoring the progress of macOS Monterey and hoping that there might be more changes in store to the Safari interface before the final version ships, possibly as soon as later this month. I’ve been pretty dubious — it’s awfully late in the process for changes, after all.
And then macOS Monterey beta 10 dropped this week, and would you look at this:
Yep, that’s the Safari Favorites Bar, now located above the tabs.
If you don’t use the Favorites Bar, maybe you won’t care. I use the Favorites Bar a lot, and I hated Apple’s decision to move it beneath the tabs. And now… it’s not?
So I’ve got to hand it to all of those people who wanted to believe that the design of Safari 15 on the Mac might still be in flux. I think they may be right, after all!
David Smith is a prolific app developer, and has created several popular apps focused on the Apple Watch. And yet when it came time for him to take an extended backpacking adventure outdoors, he chose a different watch:
For short day trips, the Apple Watch is great. It has done an admirable job tracking various hiking outings for me, and I love being able to see exactly where I went on those adventures.
But its battery life has never allowed for this to be practical for multi-day trips. It needs to be charged after around 7 hours of tracked hiking. Fine for a day trip, but when I head out to environments like this there aren’t an abundance of outlets to be found.
When I read Apple Watch reviews that wish it had longer battery life, I think about how there are key milestones for some features. If an Apple Watch can’t get through a day, it’s too short. But after it can get through a day (and it’s fair to point out that for people who use workout tracking a lot and have the smaller Apple Watch model, it may not be there yet), does it need to get through a day plus a few hours?
It seems to me that once an Apple Watch can make it through a day (and a night’s sleep, if you’re doing sleep tracking), it’s a quantum leap to the next goal. I’m not sure what that goal should be—if I had to remember to charge my Apple Watch every two or three days, I’d lose track of what day it was and end up charging it every day regardless.1
Smith’s post, however, shows another way to calculate that goal. The watch Smith bought for his adventure lasted for nearly two weeks on a single charge. Rumors abound that Apple is thinking of creating a more rugged Apple Watch; I wonder if part of the goals for that project should be a larger battery and some sort of new extended-life mode that would provide extreme power savings and long life.
Maybe, maybe not. But once Apple has plausibly extended the battery life of the Apple Watch to beyond our own diurnal cycle, the next goal becomes a lot less distinct.
[Thanks to Six Colors member Gareth for the link.]
I used to wear a Pebble smartwatch, which had multi-day battery life. Its battery died far more often than my Apple Watch ever has, because I never established a daily routine to charge it. ↩
Over the last several decades, Apple’s success has stemmed from one overriding philosophy: making technology personal. From the computer that sat on your desk, to the notebook you popped open on your lap, to the iPhone that you carry in your pocket and the Apple Watch you wear on your wrist, the company has increasingly fostered that personal connection between us and our devices.
But more recently, that personal connection has also carried with it a degree of insularity, of wrapping ourselves up in technology. In a recent interview with Bustle, Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on the interplay between technology and mental health:
… it’s how we look at the world. We want people to do things with their devices, like the photography exhibit that we both enjoyed, or connecting with family and friends with FaceTime. Not endless, mindless scrolling.
That prioritization does sometimes seem at odds with the very nature of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, these windows into a world that is at time disconnected from our own, even as it connects us with other people. But perhaps it hints that the next evolutionary step for Apple is to find a way to integrate our technology into the world around us.
It’s official: there will be another Apple media event this fall, and it’s Monday, Oct. 18 at 10 Pacific.
New MacBook Pro models are likely to be the star of the show. We’ll have full coverage on Six Colors, as always. Myke Hurley and I will offer post-event coverage after it’s all said and done, live on Relay FM.
Left to right: Kobo Libra H2O, Kindle Oasis, iPad mini, Boox Nova Air.
Many years ago, the Internet handed around an old Radio Shack newspaper ad and pointed out that the smartphone could now replace nearly every product in the ad. So many gadgets dedicated to individual tasks that have now been rolled up into a device that’s the ultimate multitasker.
For decades we’ve been warned by Alton Brown that unitaskers are evil, and while that’s a good general rule when it comes to kitchen gadgets, every rule comes with its exceptions.
My favorite tech unitasker has long been the e-reader. With their black-and-white E Ink screen, long battery life, and laser-focused software, Kindles and Kobos have been my choice even though I have a perfectly good iPhone and iPad on which I can also read books.
While I read novels on a Kobo, I still do a lot of reading—newsletters, RSS, newspapers, links from Twitter, you name it—on my iPad. That stuff’s just not available, or readily available, on devices with E Ink screens.
But what if it was? What if someone built a tablet that could run a wider selection of apps but still had the crisp, clear look of an E Ink screen?
In fact, a few companies have been trying to marry E Ink with Android for a while now. Recently I got a chance to spend a lot of time with the Boox Nova Air, a $389 Android tablet with an E Ink display, just as I was also spending time with Apple’s $499 iPad mini. These devices, combined with my ongoing use of the $170 Kobo Libra H2O, made me think a lot more about what I really want out of a digital reading device.
Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders lead to more Apple color confusion, Apple’s App Store rules may need to skate to a puck that’s headed for a courtroom, and Myke takes his iPad mini on a train.
Jeff Verkoeyen, staff engineering lead for Google Design on Apple platforms, on Twitter now:
This year my team shifted the open source Material components libraries for iOS into maintenance mode…
The time we’re saving not building custom code is now invested in the long tail of UX details that really make products feel great on Apple platforms. To paraphrase Lucas Pope, we’re “swimming in a sea of minor things”, and I couldn’t be more excited about this new direction.
One year at the XOXO conference I was buttonholed (in the nicest way) by someone who worked on iOS apps at Google, who wanted to understand why I was so hostile about Google’s apps not respecting iOS conventions and instead forcing Android conventions on iOS users.
I felt that Google arrogantly believed that people were first and foremost users of Google’s platforms, and benefited from consistency across those platforms, when the truth was that people who use iPads and iPhones expect apps to behave like every other app on the platform.1
Over the years Google has unified its design language and moved its work forward in a lot of ways that are admirable. But as Verkoeyen’s Twitter thread points out, it also takes a lot of effort to reinvent your own design language when the platform provides its own for free. It’s easier to be a standard iOS app on iOS.
This is good news. It’s good for Google’s developers, who no longer have to build that custom code. And more importantly, it’s good for people who use Google’s apps on iOS, because with any luck they’ll be updated faster, work better, and feel more like proper iOS apps, not invaders from some other platform.
Back in August, we passed the 10th anniversary of Tim Cook being named CEO of Apple, and of course, this week marks ten years since the passing of Steve Jobs.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the decade since, and in my mind, there are three major inflection points when it comes to Apple under Tim Cook.
Apple Watch
Announced in the fall of 2014, many say the Apple Watch is the first new product to materialize under Tim Cook. While the exact timeline isn’t known, I think it’s clear that the Apple Watch is a very Tim Cook product with its focus on health and fitness.
The Apple Watch has come a long way in the years since its introduction, but looking back at the original announcement and the first set of models, it is surprising how muddied things were. Apple didn’t quite seem to know what the Apple Watch was for yet, so it threw a lot of stuff at the wall. Kevin Lynch demoed about a ton of apps that never really materialized, and the emphasis on personal communication was way off the mark.
However, as the hardware and software have matured, so has the idea of the Apple Watch: it’s a wearable for people who want to track their fitness and get notifications wherever they go. It’s come into its own quite nicely I think, but it’s easy to look back at its launch and wonder if things were a little too broad because Tim Cook, Jeff Williams, Kevin Lynch, Jony Ive and the other people who led the charge to create the Watch lacked the editor Steve Jobs often proved to be.1
Cook is never going to have the product sense that Jobs had, but I’m that’s a fair measuring stick for anyone. However, as Cook and his lieutenants have gained more experience, products like the Apple Watch have gotten better and better.
iPhone Boom
The second inflection point for Apple under Cook has everything to do with this chart:
Guess which number corresponds with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
When Apple relented and finally made a set of bigger iPhones in 2014 — ironically introduced just minutes before the Apple Watch — the market rewarded the company with record sales that made their subsequent earnings look weak for years.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were far from perfect phones. The industrial design was lackluster in some people’s eyes, and the 6 Plus, in particular, was starved for RAM and could bend if left in the wrong pocket. Out in the world, none of that mattered. There was so much pent-up demand for larger iPhones that Apple could barely keep up with demand. Some reports claimed that the iPhone 6 line accounted for some 20% of iPhones in use worldwide after being on sale for just three months.
It propelled the iPhone — and Apple — to new financial heights. Much of this growth was thanks to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus being incredibly popular in China.
The company’s cash reserves, stock price and power in the marketplace have only grown since. In many ways, Cook’s legacy at Apple has more to do with the company’s stability than its products.
Apple as a Global Power
That brings us to the third way Apple has changed under Cook’s leadership. Cook has used Apple’s vast power and wealth to back causes he believes in, from the environment to social justice, education and beyond. He’s been to multiple White House meetings and even gave the former President a tour of the Mac Pro factory in Texas.
I think Cook would disagree with any assessment that ends by stating that he has political power, but it’s true of him and many other tech CEOs. These companies wield more power than most countries and enjoy a seat at the table not only in the United States but in China and other countries as well.
It’s hard to imagine Steve Jobs willingly taking these roles on, regardless of which party is in power.
Who’s Next?
There’s no doubt that Cook had big shoes to fill when taking over the CEO role. Whoever is next in line will too; they’ll just be a little different from Jobs’ grass-stained New Balances.
Not to mention the whole question of “What was Apple thinking releasing a gold Apple Watch that started at $10,000?” ↩
[Stephen Hackett is the author of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay FM.]
Many years ago, when I first started writing about Apple on the MacUser blog, one of my first recurring features was a series I called “Under the Gavel”, in which I rounded up legal challenges to Apple.
Those challenges haven’t abated over the last several years—if anything, they’ve intensified. In fact, just in the last day or two, there have been several new places where Apple has found itself on the receiving ends of government investigations or legal actions. So, if you’ll allow me to indulge in a bit of a trip down nostalgia lane, I’m briefly dusting off the old gavel to break down these latest developments.
Can’t tap, won’t tap
Reuters reports that the European Union is preparing to bring antitrust charges against Apple over the locking down of the Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip in the iPhone. That’s the wireless radio that powers things like Apple Pay—which is precisely what’s dragged the company into the EU’s crosshairs.
At issue is the fact that while Apple uses the iPhone and Apple Watch’s NFC chips for Apple Pay, it doesn’t allow third-party developers to take advantage of the hardware for the same purpose. Therefore, companies like Square or Venmo can’t leverage the technology for tap-to-pay features in their own apps without using Apple Pay—of which Apple, of course, gets a cut.
These charges stem from an investigation that started last year into Apple Pay more broadly, and will likely not be issued until next year. One possible consequence could be a fine of up to 10 percent of Apple’s global revenue, which, while it wouldn’t sink the company, would still be painful.
Going Dutch
Also on the topic of payment, the Netherlands has taken aim at Apple’s in-app payment system, perhaps the company’s most popular punching bag at the moment. A story in Reuters says that Dutch antitrust regulators are accusing Apple of abusing its market power by forcing app developers to use its in-app payment system. The official decision is expected to become public later this year, but it seems as though rather than fining the company, the Dutch regulator is expected to insist on changes of the system.
It’s unlikely that the Netherlands will be the last country to take umbrage at Apple’s business practices, raising the question of whether the company intends to make country-by-country exceptions to its App Store, or get ahead of the matter with more sweeping, global policy changes.
(Too) Big in Japan
Having settled one antitrust matter with the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC)—which led to a global policy change about “reader” apps—Apple may have thought itself out of the spotlight in that country. But now the JFTC has launched a new investigation, this time into Apple’s dominance of the OS market, according to Nikkei Asia.
Apple reportedly controls almost 70 percent of the mobile operating system market in Japan, with Android making up the other 30 percent. The JFTC will thus be investigating how that market dominance comes into play, and whether or not Apple and Google are using their positions to limit competition. (It will also look into related markets like wearables.)
The investigation is, of course, not guaranteed to yield charges against Apple. At the moment, it’s merely a study that will talk to app developers, users, and the companies themselves, culminating in a report detailing any anticompetitive practices. This is likely to be a bit of a slower burn than the other cases, which expect decisions more imminently, but it’s also casting a much wider net, which could mean a higher probability that the JFTC takes action on something.
Just the beginning
As I wrote over at Macworld a few months back, Apple’s position as one of the biggest companies in the world has not only painted a target on its back, but also means that its biggest threats come not from competitors, but from government regulation and legislation. While the stock market often looks for growth at all costs, it’s not without risk: the bigger you get, the more scrutiny you receive from everybody, including governments around the world. Because when your company is the size of a country, the only thing that poses a threat to you is other countries.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
“Squid Game” and Netflix’s international strategy, the difference between a hit and a franchise, “Law & Order” and TV network brand extensions, successes and failures at the box office, and the best streaming services for scary movies.
Our paper document approach, our thoughts on Facebook and whether we think it will change its ways, the single-purpose robot we’d have in our homes, and the rate at which we replace and/or upgrade our smart watches and smart phones.
The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini aren’t for everybody. Apple’s higher-end iPhone Pro line offers a high-refresh-rate display and a telephoto camera and a few other features that make those phones the ne plus ultra of smartphones, and if you really want the best the smartphone world has to offer at any price, they’re a great choice.
But the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini are for everybody else.
They’re cheaper. They have most of the same advantages as the higher-end iPhones do. They’re a huge improvement over most upgraders’ current phones. The iPhone 13 mini is the rare modern iPhone to come in a manageable size. And at least to my eyes, the iPhone 13 design just looks better than the iPhone 13 Pro.
Don’t want to spent $1000 on a new iPhone? Don’t sweat it. Apple’s lower-priced iPhones are anything but second rate.
Best deal, best look
What I find remarkable about the iPhone 13 (and the iPhone 12) is that they appeal to me more aesthetically than the iPhone 13 Pro (and iPhone 12 Pro) models. The shiny glass back, especially when dressed in a bright color, is bold and interesting where the iPhone 13 Pro back is frosted and muted. The anodized aluminum ring around the sides of the iPhone 13 case also appeals to me more than the ultra-shiny, fingerprint-magnet stainless steel on the Pro models.
Everyone’s tastes vary. But I always expect the more expensive iPhone to be the one that’s more covetable in every way. I’m not suggesting that Apple make its cheaper phones dull, but I am suggesting that this generation of iPhone makes it a lot easier to opt for a cheaper phone—because they look (and feel, because that shiny glass back also has a bit of tackiness to it that I love) so good.
That said, after a brief break where I was thrilled by Apple’s decision to present the new 24-inch iMac in big, bold colors, I’m back to being frustrated by Apple’s incredibly conservative choices when it comes to coloring its products. Leaving aside the limited choices of the Pro models, even the bright, colorful iPhones we saw with the iPhone 12 models have been drained of a lot of their color for the iPhone 13. Sure, the blue and red models still sparkle, but the others—starlight, midnight, and pink—are boring.
Boring is fine—some people want their phones to be understated, and that’s understandable. (And yes, I accept that many people will wrap their iPhone in a case and never see anything but the merest hint of color around the sides and on the camera bump.) But some people want… more from their iPhones. Apple itself made a big stink about releasing a bright purple iPhone 12 last May—but there’s no equivalent purple iPhone 13. It’s almost criminal to only offer two bold colors on these phones.
iPhone priorities
The most important single feature in any smartphone is its camera. As you might expect, the iPhone 13 delivers some incremental improvements over last year’s models, and if you’re upgrading from an older model those incremental upgrades accumulate into an even more impressive jump.
Apple says that improved the standard camera in the iPhone 13, and added sensor-shift optical image stabilization for even better performance in low-light scenarios. It’s very, very hard for me to tell the difference in performance from the iPhone 12, but I’m sure I will encounter some low-light scenarios that will generate better photos because of the new features.
Photographic Styles lets you adjust the output of Apple’s image-capture pipeline to fit your preferences.
A more obvious improvement is the introduction of Photographic Styles, a feature that lets you adjust the target image that Apple’s image-capture pipeline is solving for. Every photo you shoot on the iPhone is the product of computational photography; the camera’s shooting multiple frames, analyzing them to pick the best one(s), and often merging them together in order to expand dynamic range or enhance detail. The JPEG or HEIF image you get out of a standard iPhone photo is anything but raw (for that, you’ll want to shoot… in RAW format). It’s a complex bit of software that’s trying to make what Apple thinks is the best-looking photo possible.
But just as with phone colors, everyone’s tastes vary when it comes to what the ideal photo should look like. Apple’s philosophy has always been to depict reality as accurately as possible. Other phonemakers have amped up the color in order to make the results eye-popping. There’s no correct answer to this question. It literally is a matter of taste. And with Photographic Styles, you can tell Apple’s image-capture pipeline to shoot for something different—something warmer, or cooler, or richer, with more or less contrast.
In contrast with a filter, which is adjusting an entire image after the fact, Photographic Styles hook into Apple’s complex image-processing system, so your preferences aren’t applied globally, but added to the capture process in appropriate ways, in appropriate areas of your shot. For example, I prefer a warmer image—but Photographic Styles will try to maintain a realistic skin tone on the people in my shot, regardless. It looks great, and as someone who prefers richer, warmer shots, I’ve set up Photographic Styles with those settings and have been really happy with the results. I’m glad Apple has broken the seal on its imaging pipeline and accepted that reasonable people can differ when it comes to what images they want their phones to produce.
My dog walking in Cinematic Mode.
The other major photographic upgrade on the iPhone 13 is Cinematic Mode, which is essentially a Portrait Mode for video. But calling it that undersells the amount of intense computing effort involved—it’s building a depth map and calculating out what parts of the image it’s going to blur with a photographic effect 30 times a second. That’s impressive.
So let me get all my criticisms about Cinematic Mode out: Like Portrait mode, it’s phony, not based on real optics, which means that if the software fails to properly detect depth, you end up with not-quite-right effects. Edges are fuzzy. Glasses look wrong. The triangle of open space between an arm and a chest becomes a window of sharp focus in what should be a blurred background. If you look at Cinematic Mode with a critical eye, you will find that it’s full of faults.
And now let me tell you, I don’t think it matters. No professional is going to want to use this feature, no matter who Apple featured in their video event that launched it. But as for the rest of us? Yeah, regular people are going to use it, and they’re going to love it—because it’s fun. It is an enormous kick to flip into Cinematic Mode and shoot video with everything artfully fuzzed out in the background. Yes, it’s only 1080p30 video—but again, who cares? The hike I took with my dog through the redwoods looks inescapably film-like. Fun!
And since the whole thing is synthetic, you can change the focus choices later—or turn them off entirely, which means you can shoot in Cinematic Mode without worrying that if it screws things up you’ll lose that important moment that you’ll never have a second chance to catch.
Cinematic Mode is flawed and if you are someone who notices its flaws, you should turn it off. My guess is that most people won’t, and will find it an incredibly fun feature on their new iPhone.
Let’s get small
I’ll leave the detailed battery tests to others, but I can corroborate that Apple has lifted the battery life of both iPhone 13 models when compared with the iPhone 12. While Apple has eked out even more battery savings on the iPhone 13 Pro models owing to the variable-refresh-rate screen, the physically expanded battery and more power-efficient A15 processor still contribute a lot.
As someone who has spent the last year using an iPhone 12 mini, I can tell you that the extra battery life is appreciated. The mini’s greatest weakness is that, owing to its small size, it has the least battery life of any modern iPhone. The iPhone 13 mini isn’t going to win any awards for battery life, but it’s noticeably better than the previous model, and that’s a good thing.
Which brings me to a painful section of this review: I don’t come to bury the iPhone mini, but to praise it. I couldn’t love this little phone more. It’s got a big enough screen for me to do just about anything, but fits well in my hand and is light in my pocket. I’ve got iPads and Macs to do the heavy lifting, but when I’m out and about I love that my iPhone isn’t weighing me down but still gives me access to all the information I need.
Apparently I am part of a small group of people who feel this way, because according to fairly authoritative reports, iPhone 12 mini sales were so poor that Apple has no plans to release an iPhone 14 mini next year. Apple reportedly plans to replace the mini with a lower-priced Max model instead. I get it, lots of people like big phones. Some of us don’t. And using the mini’s slot to sell Yet Another Huge Phone is the unkindest cut of all.
This may be the end of the line. But I don’t care, I’m going to use my blue iPhone 13 mini with reckless abandon. I’ll shoot Cinematic Video like nobody’s looking. And I’ll dream of a scenario that causes Apple to build another iPhone with a sub-six-inch screen.
Next year, I’ll be prepared to complain vociferously. But for this year, I will celebrate the existence of the iPhone 13 mini.
What you don’t get
If you opt not to spent money on the iPhone 13 Pro, what do you lose? The biggest loss is the telephoto lens. I’d like to say that I never missed that lens in my year of using an iPhone 12 mini, but that wouldn’t be entirely truthful. I did miss it, occasionally—but much less often than I expected to.
The iPhone 13 Pro also offers a photographic Macro mode that’s fantastic. Basically, if you’re frequently tempted to take super-close-up shots, or shots of things that are far away, you should give the iPhone 13 Pro another look.
And then there’s the ProMotion display, which is a very nice feature—but reasonable people can differ on just how nice. The iPhone 13 Pro models have displays that refresh 120 times per second, as opposed to 60 on other iPhones. (Apple introduced ProMotion on the iPad Pro a few years ago; this is its first appearance on an iPhone.)
With ProMotion, everything is smoother. Animations are smooth and fast. You can scroll text while you’re reading it, and the text never breaks up—if you’re an inveterate read-while-scrolling person, you are the target audience for ProMotion. It’s a really nice effect.
For me, the test was simple: After I spent a few days with an iPhone 13 Pro, could I go back to the iPhone 13’s display without feeling as if my eyes were slumming it at 60 frames per second? (To me, that was the true test of the importance of Retina displays: Once I saw a Retina display I could never go back to life without one.)
The truth is, while I noticed the lack of ProMotion on the iPhone 13, it didn’t gnaw at me. Don’t get me wrong—I look forward to the day when every iPhone has a ProMotion display, because it’s a better experience. But it wasn’t noticeable enough to offset my other preferences—namely for a smaller, lighter, cheaper phone. Your mileage may vary. If you can see an iPhone 13 Pro in person, you should give it a look. For some people, ProMotion will be reason enough to upgrade. (For others it’ll be that telephoto lens.) For me, it just isn’t.
I have to commend Apple for the job it did with the iPhone 13, and last year with the iPhone 12. These are the less-expensive iPhone models, but they don’t feel cheap. They feel like the base-model, standard, everyone-should-have-one iPhone. The iPhone 13 Pro models feel like an upgrade, but the iPhone 13 doesn’t feel like a downgrade. It’s probably the right iPhone model for most people—and if you like a smaller iPhone, grab the iPhone 13 mini while you can.
