Apple in 2024: The complete commentary
Every year we ask a collection of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people for their opinions about how Apple fared in the year just gone by. You can read our 2024 report card for the average scores and some juicy quotes. But if you want to read the whole thing—all 32,000 words of it—who are we to stand in your way? They wrote it, you read it. That’s how this works.
Onward.
The Mac
How would you rate how the Mac platform went in 2024? Consider new Mac models, new chips, new macOS versions, and anything else you deem relevant to the platform.
Eric Linder: I have an M1 MacBook Pro, and the M4 looks delicious, but I’m going to wait one more year. I don’t have a vote per se, but I do like that Apple is updating the Mac lineup on a much more regular basis than in previous “times.”
Benjamin Mayo: The M4 chip continues to show Apple’s silicon supremacy, posting impressive year-over-year gains. I was particularly glad to see the M4 Pro chip core configuration pivot away from last year’s weirdness and return to a beefy performance-tuned chip. The Mac mini got its long-deserved time in the sun with a nice update and chassis redesign, alongside decent spec bumps for the iMac and MacBook Pro. Also, a really welcome surprise was the bump to 16 GB RAM as the base spec for all models, including the ‘old but still sold’ M2 and M3 Airs. As far as macOS is concerned, I use iPhone Mirroring a lot and found it to be a stable and enjoyable affair.
Roman Loyola: It sure feels like Apple took the criticism of the base M3 MacBook Pro to heart, and that’s why Apple made the changes it did, but I guess we’ll never know. Regardless, the upgrades were very satisfying.
Glenn Fleishman: Apple keeps ticking over with new processors and models filling out and updating their matrix. Generally, they are delivering solid, often exceptional performance per dollar. In a year with both M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro updates and M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis in a new form factor, it’s hard to pick too many nits. But I think the iMac is way overdue for a 27-inch model, the Mac Studio lacked a refresh, and I have no idea what the company thinks the Mac Pro is for. I wish I could split Mac into two categories: how well are they keeping things going (such as finally removing the 8 GB low-end configuration), and how well they are introducing new features and form factors that are in demand (like the cuteness but also power and utility of the new Mac mini). I can’t give Apple a five on hardware for those reasons, but I also think macOS is at a point of confusion. The introduction of Apple Intelligence in waves and without having tentpole features that solve problems (across all platforms) is absolutely mystifying. I have new-enough Macs to take advantage of all AI features and I honestly find them mostly useful. Apple even replaced a perfectly good touch-up feature in Photos for macOS with an AI-based one that has worse performance and is in beta. This removed functionality people relied on. However, I’m a huge fan of a probably uncovered set of features I’ve written about in my books: screen mirroring and sharing. It’s dramatically better in every direction. Screen Sharing between Macs now works reliably for me; with iPhones and iPads, there’s a new and better approach; Mac to Apple TV offers more options and is far superior; Mac into videoconferencing, particularly FaceTime, much better; and the iPhone Mirroring app is a big bonus integration. Screen sharing/mirroring are boring areas that some people use intensively and others not at all; Apple’s improvements show that they can pay attention to the little things and provide integrated, upgraded, seamless OS features!
Eric Slivka: The Mac mini redesign is a treat, while the overdue bump to 16GB of memory across the board was very welcome. Otherwise, nice to see the steady chip progression, though some will undoubtedly be disappointed at the higher-end machines skipping the M3 generation. macOS Sequoia has some nice improvements, though it has had a few hiccups along the way, and we’re still waiting on some of the promised features amid Apple’s gradual rollout.
Brett Terpstra: The M4 lineup is top-notch. I’ve been using an M1 Studio for a while now, and moving up to the M4 was a bigger performance leap than I expected. I’m anxious to see the Studio lineup get upgraded, but the M4 Mac mini has an amazing bang/buck ratio, and the M4 MacBook Pro has me very satisfied with my purchase.
Dave Hamilton: Great to see the MacBook Air get the M3 chip and continue to see love from Apple. I also love that the MacBook Air has become the default model for so many people, including professionals. Folks seem to have (finally?) accepted that it’s not only OK to live in a world of dongles, but it’s better because we each get to choose the ports that matter where they matter. Need one thing at your desk but different options when you travel? Great! You’ve got it. Also nice to see the “Pro” machines (iMac and MacBook Pro) get the M4 chip where it’s needed. I’ve (finally?) gotten over the fact that Apple won’t be making iMacs with screens large enough for me to use on a daily basis, but ViewSonic’s soon-to-be-released 27″ 5K Thunderbolt Display is an easy, $799 solution to that problem when paired with the new Mac mini, which is definitely the lede I’ve buried here. That thing is a beast and is the right computer for so many people who work on their Macs at their desks. What a fantastic upgrade!
David Sparks: Apple Silicon Macs remain some of the best hardware Apple is shipping. I’m satisfied with the pace of improvement and the product line as a whole. If, however, I was someone at that top end of the performance curve, I’d be sad. I can’t help but feel there is an alternative universe where the Mac Pro has a chip that is so fast that it comes with a warning label—just not this one.
Lex Friedman: I want every new Mac. Apple is crushing it with the Mac. I can’t believe how great every new Mac is. I feel like a fanboy when I write these words, but seriously, the state of the Mac today is exceptional.
Craig Hockenberry: Here’s the thing: over the years, I’ve become less eager to upgrade my Macs to the latest version of macOS. I’m still using Sonoma on all my Macs and will only move to the new version when I’m forced to by a system requirement (that’s most likely to be Xcode). The main cause for lagging behind is all of the annoyances that come with each new version. I’m really tired of all the new security prompts, odd bugs from incomplete testing, and UI weirdness from designers and developers whose primary focus is iOS. It’s a shame the software is in this state because the Mac hardware has never been better. My MacBook Air is the best computer I have ever owned, and the whole product lineup is great (yes, even with the outrageous incremental costs for storage and memory).
Marco Arment: It’s a great time to be a Mac user. The hardware is the best it has ever been, with nearly every need met with multiple great choices. macOS remains mostly good, due largely to neglect, but that’s better than today’s Apple touching it very much.
Myke Hurley: The M4 was a really nice continued advancement of the power behind the Mac line. We got great laptop updates and a welcome simplification for the MacBook Air. However it would have been nice to get some clarity over the future of the Mac Studio.
Matt Deatherage: The low end sees massive improvements, but the high desktop end seems more than ever like a status item for the one percent.
Kirk McElhearn: A solid year for Macs, with M4 processors across much of the line and the attractive new Mac mini. This said, with the exception of the Mac mini, there’s no real innovation in new Macs; they’re all just upgrades of previous models. Maybe we don’t need anything different? But where is the Mac Pro, and what about a larger iMac? I don’t want one—I’m happy with the 24″—but I know many people who do. The lack of an upgrade to the Studio Display is a bit surprising, and Apple seems to have, once again, given up on caring about displays. The bump to 16 GB on all new Macs at no price increase underscores the fact that this extra memory is not worth $200, and is a reminder that we have been paying this Apple tax for years, since we can’t add RAM to Macs anymore.
Stephen Hackett: As we round out the fourth year of the Apple Silicon Era, the Mac is truly firing on all cylinders. Modern Mac notebooks are incredible; even my new M4 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro runs silently and boasts shockingly good battery life. While I could have never had a notebook-only setup during the Intel days, I’ve done just that for several years with no complaints. The one ding on the hardware front is that the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are stuck on M2-based SoCs. It’s clear that the process used for the M3 was a bit of a dead-end and that an M3 Ultra wasn’t in the cards, but Apple’s two high-end desktops using old silicon is a bit embarrassing. On the software front, macOS Sequoia brought my favorite macOS feature in years, which was the iPhone Mirroring. I use it daily to access iPhone-only apps while sitting at my desk. I’m thrilled that Apple continues to find new ways to tighten the integration between the Mac and the iPhone without turning the former into the latter.
Peter Cohen: I’d never have picked the M4 Mac mini to be the MVP, but it’s like the Genie from Aladdin: PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER! (Itty bitty living space.)
Chance Miller: It’s pretty hard to complain about the Mac these days. The new Mac mini is another example of Apple flexing its design muscles in the Apple silicon era. The biggest change of the year, however, was Apple doubling the RAM in the base MacBook Air from 8GB to 16 GB. Bonus points for not raising the price and backdating the change to the M2 configuration as well. My only complaint semi-related to the Mac? We need new external display options. It’s time, Apple.
Brent Simmons: The Current Mac UI design—both in terms of how it works and how it looks—could be improved.
Nick Heer: The farther down you look on the Mac price list in 2024, the better the year was. The new Mac Mini is a tremendous value, as is the Walmart-exclusive M1 MacBook Air. Every Mac sold by Apple now has a (long-overdue) baseline of 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. As prices increase, though, the Mac is more of a mixed bag. The MacBook Air did not get Apple’s latest architecture despite updates to the Mac Mini and iMac, which share the same core parts. The MacBook Pro was updated, but the Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and Apple’s displays were not. MacOS Sequoia is fine. iPhone Screen Mirroring is useful, but Apple Intelligence is a mixed bag. Why is Writing Tools in an easy-to-accidentally-dismiss popover? Notifications are still buggy, and security prompts are out of control.
Federico Viticci: Look, as we’ve established, I can now use my iPad Pro for everything I do and don’t need a Mac in my life. But I think Apple is doing an outstanding job with its Mac lineup, and I’m particularly envious of those who own the new Mac mini, which is small, powerful, and just exceedingly cute. I would give this category five stars; I don’t because Apple still insists on not making touchscreen Macs or more interesting and weird form factors.
Shelly Brisbin: Apple’s Mac updates this year were solid but also satisfying. The ease with which M4 versions of the MacBook Pro and iMac entered the lineup says a lot about how well Apple’s hardware designs can carry forward for multiple years but leave room for the kind of performance improvements enthusiasts expect. The new Mac mini, though fans of the diminutive form factor impatiently anticipated it, was a big hit when it arrived, bringing plenty of power – and value – in a solid hardware package. More M4s are coming in 2025, surely. From a fan’s perspective, I enjoy the gradual, dare I say, thoughtful pace of updates.
Rich Mogull: Between chip updates and the new Mac mini, Apple is firing on all cylinders.
Michael Tsai: The M4 Macs have some virtualization, display, and USB issues, but overall the updates seem seem strong. I’m particularly excited about the MacBook Pro’s nanotexture display. The Mac input devices are finally USB-C, but they got the most minimal of updates, not fixing the Magic Mouse’s charging point or modernizing the globe key’s location on the extended keyboard. Unfortunately, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are still using M2 processors. SSD pricing is still ridiculous, and the software side is still a mess, both in terms of reliability and design. I have not found the Apple Intelligence features very useful. Probably the most exciting things for me in Sequoia are the new Passwords app and the new window management features, though in both cases I prefer third-party solutions.
Dan Moren: Look, the Mac continues to have one of its best runs ever. Apple redesigned the Mac mini (the Mac mini!) for the first time in almost fifteen years, making it even smaller and putting ports on the front—a home run. If the Mac suffers from anything these days, it’s that the hardware seems so good that it’s hard to imagine how Apple can continue to improve it.
Jeff Carlson: The Mac lineup seemed to find a groove and stick to it in 2024. Aside from the smaller size and greater power of the Mac mini, it’s felt like a transition to bigger, later things, especially at the high end. In fact, I’d say Apple has hobbled itself slightly with the M-series processors, particularly from a consumer point of view: the MacBook Pro has an M4, but the Mac Studio and Mac Pro still have an M2. Yes, there are Maxes and Ultras, and likely, the person buying those machines knows the differences, but it’s still not as solid of a pitch as Apple can do. All that said, the Mac remains solid.
Casey Liss: There is nearly nothing to complain about with the Mac — when it comes to regular people, anyway. The new Mac mini is adorable, powerful, and affordable. The laptops remain incredible; the Air is great for most people and, for Apple, affordable. The MacBook Pro is overkill for many, but it remains a truly phenomenal machine. Several years into the Apple Silicon transition, I am still amazed I can have the modern equivalent of iMac Pro performance in a machine that I can easily carry with me, and use without being connected to power for hours. Arguably, the one indisputably great thing to come from Apple Intelligence is the VERY, VERY LONG, OVERDUE increase in RAM across the Mac lineup.
Andy Ihnatko: The Mac lineup feels like an impressive, cohesive “collection” now (to dip back into my “Project Runway” super fandom days). I’m going to single out the Mac Mini for special love. The cheapest ticket to the Mac lineup is a perfect introduction to everything Apple does well.
Howard Oakley: Generally a very good year, with some great highlights, and relatively few gaffes.
James Thomson: The new Mac mini is delightful, though definitely not cheap at higher specs. More niche hardware like the Mac Studio still hasn’t seen any updates in a while.
Adam Engst: The M4 Macs are brilliant.
John Gruber: The Macs that Apple is shipping are better than ever. The most popular Mac models, by far, are the laptops, and both the MacBook Pro and Air lineups had good years, and now, even better, seem to be on regular annual upgrade schedules: MacBook Pros in the fall, MacBook Airs in the spring. I am especially pleased—borderline ecstatic—regarding the new nano-texture (matte) display option now available on MacBook Pros for $150. (They don’t even charge more for the option on the larger 16-inch models.) The only hitch in the lineup is the Macs Apple hasn’t been shipping: the Mac Studio and Mac Pro have remained unchanged since 2023, when the M2 models debuted. My presumption/hunch is they skipped the M3 generation for engineering reasons pertaining to TSMC’s first-generation 3nm process and will be back on track in 2025 with new M4-generation models around WWDC. MacOS 15 Sequoia, like 14 Sonoma and 13 Ventura before it, is a fine release. Reliable and familiar.
Jessica Dennis: One wonders what Apple could have been doing instead of spending person-hours building a bunch of AI stuff that doesn’t seem particularly good or useful into MacOS. Mac hardware quality continues to be excellent, and lucky for me, I fall into one of the well-supported niches (i.e., I buy a new laptop every five years or so, and it’s fine). However, I’ve definitely seen the genuine angst some folks have about product upgrade cycles.
Michael Gartenberg: The Mac has been pretty stable, and that’s not a bad thing; the M series of processors has delivered well for users. Unfortunately, for many users, there’s no reason to upgrade from their M1 or M2 to jump on the latest devices. The new Mac mini is a great device but creates confusion in the line relative to devices like the Studio devices, making it challenging for high-end users to figure out what devices are for them. Apple also finally acknowledges that perhaps 8 GB of RAM isn’t enough for users, which is good because Apple’s prices for both RAM and storage upgrades are absurd. Apple either needs to find a new supplier for memory and storage, make these things upgradeable, or stop gouging customers.
Carolina Milanesi: Apple Silicon continued to be the purchase driver for the Mac. Market share in Enterprise is growing, offering Apple a new opportunity to penetrate a space that has mostly been BYOD in the past. The broad range of price points and computing power offers Apple the ability to have a low entry point and go all the way to a workstation competitor.
Christina Warren: Man. What a great year for the Mac. Four years on, Apple silicon continues to impress. The much-touted Apple Intelligence might be a bust, but it forced Apple to finally give every Mac 16GB of RAM. RAM and storage upgrade pricing continue to be war crimes — but at least every Mac has 16GB of RAM now. The base model M4 Mac mini is one of the most compelling and best-value Apple products we’ve seen, probably since the venerable M1 MacBook Air. I wish it had more storage, but it shows that Apple can actually offer a compelling product priced under the competition for its performance. The MacBook Air would’ve been a push update for me but then Apple had to up the RAM even in the M2 models for the Apple Intelligence launch. I got a great deal on a 13″ M3 with 16GB of RAM for my mom that wipes the floor with anything priced that way in Windows Land — x86 or Qualcomm. The M4 chips look like real winners. I won’t be replacing my maxed-out 2023 14″ M3 Max, but I hope we get a Mac Studio this spring so I can harness some of that power. The Studio and the Mac Pro are the unloved children. But that’s fine. As a desktop devotee, even I’ve accepted that Apple is a notebook company that occasionally makes desktops and, about once a decade, releases a mini PC so compelling that it’ll act as my home server for the next decade. macOS is not as good as it used to be. I hate the new UAC stuff for screen capture, and the settings menu is the worst. But compared to our friends in Windows land (to say nothing of our Linux compatriots, steam notwithstanding) dealing with Recall drama, it’s a good time to be a Mac user. And as Simon Willison noted, Apple Intelligence might be hot garbage (OK, I editorialized the hot garbage bit), but MLX is great. And despite Nvidia being a behemoth, Apple machines are great for doing local AI development. It was just an unbelievable year for the Mac.
Andrew Laurence: The M4 generation looks to be one of leveling up across the product line. More like this, please.
Zac Hall: Good riddance, 8GB RAM. You simply don’t have enough memory to be missed.
Matt Birchler: It might be too bold, but I wonder if the Mac lineup is as good as it’s ever been in Apple’s history. Name a bad computer in the lineup; I don’t think you can. Exciting new form factors would be great to see, and macOS could always improve, but if we don’t call the Mac great right now, then I don’t know when it will be great.
Shahid Kamal Ahmad: The M4 line of chips feels like the first justifiable upgrade opportunity for those who jumped in with the M1. Where the M2 and M3 were decent but still just incremental upgrades, the M4 is a powerhouse. I’m disappointed that the black MacBook Pro is not a true black, but that’s truly petty given that there still doesn’t seem to be any other computer that comes close to offering the Mac’s astonishing quality, performance, and power, not to mention that it still beats everything else for style and convenience. The dark days of the Mac seem to be a fading memory now. Long may this continue.
Allison Sheridan: Who would have thought the Mac mini would lead the excitement for 2024 with the M4 Pro? The other across-the-board advancement was making all entry-level Macs come with 16GB/256GG, which was a win all around.
Brian Mattucci: While the migration to M4 is going as expected, and the Mac Mini redesign is a positive, the long wait for the Mac Studio with the latest Apple silicon continues to feel illogical when the model they’re selling is now two generations behind and will likely be nearly three generations behind by the time they finally update it.
Quinn Nelson: The M4 took everyone by surprise. From its unexpected debut on the iPad to delivering process gains far beyond expectations, it was hands-down Apple’s star of 2024. And the new Mac mini? Seriously—how could you not love it? Adorable!
Paul Kafasis: Mac hardware is really looking good, with frequent updates. MacOS updates have been good, though there’s a lot of churn going on, and features coming in 15.1, 15.2, and beyond, is somewhat bothersome. Can Apple get off of the annual OS update cycle yet?
John Siracusa: The M4 chip series is the best since the M1. The single-core performance and power efficiency are both great, which is important for the low-core-count M-series chips that most people buy. The uncertainty surrounding the “big” desktop Macs and the chips that will power them continues to be a problem, however. I was happy to see the base RAM in Macs increase to 16 GB this year. Call it the Apple Intelligence Dividend. Ironically, this is also the year that Apple’s absurdly high pricing for RAM and storage upgrades—which definitely continued in 2024—has gotten a bit more widespread attention. I’m not sure if it will change anything, but something has to give. Consider the new M4 Mac mini. It’s impossible to build a PC that is as powerful as the base M4 mini for the same amount of money. But as soon as you add any kind of upgrade from the base specs, the M4 mini completely loses its value lead—often by a lot. I’ve calculated that Apple’s storage upgrades are now 6.5x higher than retail market prices for the same size and performance. Ridiculous.
Philip Michaels: The move to Apple silicon continues to pay dividends. It’s probably the smartest thing Apple’s done in years.
Steven Aquino: I feel like the Mac is firing on all cylinders right now, thanks in large part to Apple silicon. While my daily driver machine is a 2019 Retina 4K iMac on Intel—I do have an M2 MacBook Air as well—the value proposition is off the charts, seeing it still going strong nearly 6 years after I bought it.
The iPhone
How would you rate how the iPhone and iOS platform went in 2024? Consider new hardware, new chips, OS versions, and anything else you deem relevant to the platform.
Paul Kafasis: The iPhone seems strong, and iOS 18 had some good updates. Interestingly, though, this is the first year since 2008 that I didn’t get a new iPhone. The hardware update just wasn’t that compelling to me, in part because my iPhone 15 Pro is Apple Intelligence compatible.
David Sparks: The iPhone is what it needs to be: a solid platform that sells billions of units per year. However, I wish Apple had continued the mini for folks who prefer something smaller. I’d also like to see them take a few more risks with a non-flagship model, which may be the aim of the rumored iPhone Air. But if the rumors are true, it doesn’t sound like a big enough risk to me.
Casey Liss: I could have made a case for a five, but for this year, I think four is more appropriate. While I mostly like the Camera Control, I think it’s too fiddly by half. A few months in, I suspect I would have preferred a dumb shutter button to the fancy touch-sensitive setup that we actually got. I am overjoyed to return to a human-sized phone from the 15 Pro Max I had last year, but even the regular-sized phones are large enough that I didn’t give up my PopSocket—#mykewasright. I’m also getting sick and tired of the Pro phones having absurdly boring colors. Apple, it won’t take away from the other Pro models to have fun colors. Offer the boring ones of today, as well as some fun ones… PLEASE! The non-Pro colors are SO GOOD this year; I’d probably pay a bit more to have that blue in a Pro phone.
Marco Arment: iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 family are almost universally great. My only (minor) complaint is the Camera Control button, an overthought, finicky, error-prone engineering indulgence that actually can be pretty useful, but only once most of its functionality is turned off.
Benjamin Mayo: Apple delivered about as much as you can reasonably expect for an ‘iteration’ year of the iPhone. The base models represent really good value this year, with only a couple of minor details separating them from the Pro lines. I think the Camera Control was a bit of a miss; it’s fine as a shutter button, but all of the gestural stuff feels like a gimmick, given its current implementation. The sheer number of settings to change its behavior is laughable and perhaps speaks to a need for Apple to give it a second look and strip it back to what is really most useful. Apple Intelligence may still be rolling out in a piecemeal fashion, but I find features like the email summaries and improved photo search to meaningfully improve the iOS experience.
Jessica Dennis: The iPhone continues to be solidly Good, if unexciting. Apple may have been shocked that no one was particularly interested in upgrading their phone just for the new Apple Intelligence features, but very few other people were (myself included). I get a new phone annually because of the Apple Upgrade program, and that’s the only reason. For the past couple of years, I haven’t had a use case for a Pro model. And I miss the iPhone Mini so much.
Dave Hamilton: I was stoked that Apple Intelligence essentially forced Apple to make the base model iPhone 16 almost as powerful as the iPhone 16 Pro. This truly gives people options and, of course, allows everyone getting a new iPhone this year to take advantage of Apple Intelligence.
Adam Engst: Having the Action button and Camera Control on all iPhone 16 models is great, but otherwise, the iPhone 16 lineup doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement over previous models. And while I know it’s boring to complain about the lack of a smaller iPhone, I also field non-stop complaints from people who want one and aren’t upgrading from the iPhone SE because of that.
Rich Mogull: The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro are solid updates, and the non-Pro has really stepped up the value proposition. I’m mixed on the new Camera Control; even though I use it a lot for zoom, I still don’t have a good handle on making it work like I want. The response is just a bit off. iOS 18 is a good start, but Apple Intelligence isn’t quite there yet. Maybe in 18.4.
John Gruber: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Nothing has been broke regarding the iPhone lineup, and Apple hasn’t tried to fix anything. This is good. Changes for the sake of change are the surest sign of a company in decline. Stagnation and hubris are concerns for any wildly successful product, but it takes confidence to let great design speak for itself without making facile, unnecessary changes. Camera Control is the big new hardware change in the iPhone 16 generation, and while I’d like to see the actual button improve (I think it’s too hard to press), in practice I make frequent use of it. I spent some time back on an iPhone 15 over the holidays, and I instantly missed having a Camera Control button to launch the Camera app. Kudos to Apple for bringing Camera Control to the entire iPhone 16 lineup, not just the Pro models. iOS 18 is refined, mature, and familiar.
Joe Rosensteel: The hardware is the best iPhone hardware they’ve ever shipped. The software promises Apple is making around Apple Intelligence aren’t compelling, and Apple didn’t deliver on them in 2024. Camera Control is a mess, but it doesn’t impair phone usage. People should really take a step back and think through the headline features because they were anything but. The new, editable Photographic Styles have had a bigger impact on my life than any other 2024 feature.
Michael Gartenberg: Someone at Apple forgot that it’s _under_promise and _over_deliver, not the other way around. iPhone 16 was sold on the basis of Apple Intelligence, which wasn’t present at the launch, it took two releases to bring some of the promised features, and when they failed, Apple removed them as opposed to fixing them. Siri remains far behind Google and Samsung in terms of AI features that actually do something. The good news is iPhone 15 users don’t feel nearly as bad for not getting Apple AI on their devices, and they can use things like Gemini or Copilot for their AI fix. I do give them credit, as they promised a glow effect and delivered on that rather nicely. I am not a fan of the camera button. It feels like it’s in the wrong place, and it’s kind of hard for me to use; the volume button works fine for me. I was kind of baffled when Tim said that email summaries were a game changer for him, making me wonder if he gets very little email or uses some other AI for his email summaries.
Matt Birchler: The iPhone is still the best phone for me, but 2024 definitely felt like an off year to me. I think the iPhone 16 is a good update, but the 16 Pro line is a real miss in my book. I’d actually pay more to get a 16 Pro that didn’t have the Camera Control button because it’s turned into a button that I exclusively use on accident and never on purpose. I still use the Action Button to launch and use my camera because it feels better to me. Also, Apple Intelligence really put a stink on this whole year for the iPhone, as seemingly very few other software features were added, and the few Apple Intelligence features we’ve gotten have arrived later than hoped for and have been almost universally underwhelming.
Andy Ihnatko: The iPhone 16 is the same old dish, prepared with fresh ingredients. That’s all that Apple was prepared to release this year. It’s fine: a solid 3/5. I have to deduct a full point for Apple Intelligence. Most of these features are as squirrelly as everybody should have expected: no more, no less. I expect Apple Intelligence to improve after this first round of users provides a galaxy of training data. But Apple chose to roll these features into the mainstream iPhone OS and promote them as if they were finished features, so I have to factor that in.
Carolina Milanesi: Solid hardware, but Apple Intelligence was a bit of a letdown.
Brian Mattucci: 2024 was all about the slow trickle of Apple Intelligence features of uncertain value. Some features (Image Playground and especially Genmoji) were interesting at first, but they feel like they’re years away from being reliable and useful. I was a big fan of notification summaries at first, but I’ve seen enough errors at this point to no longer trust them. I turned off the mail categorization feature almost immediately. I love the Home Screen and Control Center customization options – they’re the highlights of iOS 18 for me. As for hardware, adding the camera control button makes some sense, though I don’t use any of the features beyond launching the Camera app – it just doesn’t feel precise enough.
Eric Linder: The iPhone is a fully mature product at this point, and sometimes, I struggle to think of new features that might be implemented. One criticism I have is that Apple seems to continue to sell the iPhone 16 line based on the promises of future features (I’m looking at you, not-so-intelligent-Apple-Intelligence). Even when the iPhone 16 was launched, commercials seemed to appear everywhere that used Siri app intents and context awareness, both of which are STILL not available even to iOS 18.3 beta users.
Roman Loyola: I usually upgrade to a Pro Max, but this time, I opted for the 16 Plus, and I’m happy with it. Until I start making “cinema,” I may not get a Pro phone again.
Steven Aquino: The iPhone impresses every year in my eyes. I upgrade it every year not merely for journalism’s sake but because it’s my most important and oft-used computer.
Jeff Carlson: I want to give this a 3.5 because overall, the iPhone is in good shape; the 16 series is good, but despite the technological complexity and ingenuity of the Camera Control on the 16 Pro, in practice, it just doesn’t work as well as it should. It’s too finicky and, most important, often doesn’t do what you expect it to do.
Dr. Drang: The Camera Control is possibly the worst Apple UI device since the hockey puck mouse. There’s a reason no real camera manufacturer recesses their shutter button. Depressing a recessed button is a recipe for both shaking (as you’ve complained about) and tilting. Worse is how the photographic styles shift for seemingly no reason. I know I must be sliding my finger on the button, but I’m trying not to. It’s too sensitive and keeps making changes I don’t want. I should say “kept” instead of “keeps.” I’ve changed the Camera Control to open Magnifier, and I now use the Acton button to open the Camera. It’s much less frustrating.
Dan Moren: The iPhone is great and continues to be great. But this year’s focus on Apple Intelligence is disappointing and sucked a lot of the air out of the room when it came to actual feature improvements that people want. I still use Camera Control, but I think a lot of its extra features, beyond opening/taking pictures and video, are clunky and not useful. It feels a bit like the company is struggling to find opportunities to improve what has become an increasingly mature product category.
Eric Slivka: The iterative updates continue as we wait for some bolder changes from Apple. I love the colors on this year’s standard iPhones but I continue to hope for some better options on the Pro side. I’ve struggled and failed to embrace Camera Control, and even in the second year for Pro users, I’ve not found a lot of value in the Action button. On the software side, Apple Intelligence is obviously the big thing, but we’re only barely dipping our toes into it so far. The verdict is yet to come, but so far, it’s been underwhelming.
Craig Hockenberry: Apple Intelligence is underwhelming, especially with Siri. It also feels like a lot of engineering resources were directed toward features that no one asked for and can’t really trust. But again, the hardware is stellar. And the “intelligence” does have an upside: more memory in our pockets.
Kirk McElhearn: It’s all about Apple Intelligence this year, and limiting these features to only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models feels like an attempt to force a super cycle, which doesn’t seem to be occurring. I upgraded from an iPhone 14 Pro, and honestly feel that I could have kept my 14 a year longer. I’ve heard from plenty of non-tech people that they simply don’t care about Apple Intelligence, and they see no need to upgrade phones that work just fine.
Shelly Brisbin: Like the Mac, the iPhone platform moved ahead incrementally in 2024 if evaluated year-over-year. But the base on which this year’s updates stand is solid enough to offer tempting upgrades to almost anyone who has kept their phone for more than a year. I feel good about the division of features between Pro and non-Pro phones. If an advanced camera system is irresistible, you can have it. But bringing hardware features like the Action Button and Dynamic Island to the full line of new phones is friendly to all kinds of users. The most disappointing aspect of this year’s phones is Camera Control, which attempts to pack a lot of punch into one hardware button but remains confusing to use. iOS is frankly weighed down by the simultaneously glacial pace, and forcible implementation, of Apple Intelligence. From a business perspective, Apple had to build AI into its platforms this year, and the iPhone is where that’s unavoidably apparent. But there have been bugs and poorly implemented offerings, and despite the emphasis on Apple Intelligence in the ads, it’s unclear to me why a buyer would choose Apple’s version of AI over another. I like the tabby cat playing the guitar that I sent to my friend yesterday, but even he isn’t a killer iPhone app.
Chance Miller: I tried really hard to use the Camera Control to its full potential with all the various swipe and half-press features. The reality is it’s most useful as a way to launch the Camera app and take a picture. Nothing more. Otherwise, the iPhone 16 Pro models are a stellar upgrade. The battery life continues to impress me on a daily basis. The non-Pro phones are more enticing than they’ve ever been. Oh, and RIP FineWoven. I wish Apple had replaced it with something better, but at least it’s dead.
Federico Viticci: It’s been an interesting year in iPhone land for me. After the September event, I purchased an iPhone 16 Pro Max, but my mind kept going to the iPhone 16 Plus. I was fascinated by its color, slimmer form factor, and more affordable overall package. I used the iPhone 16 Plus as my primary phone for two months and loved it, but then something happened: much to my surprise, I realized that I wasn’t taking as many pictures of my dogs, friends, and family as I used to with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. That’s when it hit me. I thought I wouldn’t need all the features of a “pro” phone – and, honestly, since I’m not a professional cinematographer, I really don’t – but in the end, I was missing the 5x camera too much. In my experience with using a 16 Plus, I was able to confirm that, if I wanted, I could live without a ProMotion display. But it was the lack of a third, zoomed camera on the Plus model that ultimately got me. I rely on the 5x lens to take dozens of pictures of my dogs doing something funny or sleeping in a cute way every day, and its absence on the 16 Plus was preventing me from grabbing my phone out of my pocket to save new memories on a daily basis. I’m glad I did this experiment because it also left me with a couple of additional thoughts about the iPhone line. First, if Apple comes out with a completely redesigned, slimmer “iPhone 17 Air” later this year that doesn’t have a 5x camera, I’ll have to begrudgingly pass on it and stick with the 17 Pro Max instead. Second, now more than ever, I truly, fundamentally want Apple to make a foldable phone that expands into a mini-tablet when opened. I don’t care how expensive Apple makes this device. I look at the latest Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and I’m very jealous of its form factor, but I also know that I wouldn’t be able to use Android as the OS for my phone. If it weren’t for the lack of a foldable form factor in Apple’s iPhone lineup, I would give this category five stars. I hope we’ll see some changes on this front within the next couple of years.
Michael Tsai: This is one of those years where the new iPhones seem fine, but I feel no urgency to upgrade from the previous model. The most interesting things to me are Photographic Styles and Camera Control. I’m hoping that the former will eventually let me reduce over-processing . The latter sounded promising but now seems more like the new Touch Bar: over-engineered and less useful than the basic Action button. iOS 18 adds a bunch of useful features.
Brent Simmons: The App Store monopoly continues.
James Thomson: Incremental updates, but still interesting.
Stephen Hackett: By tightly bundling the iPhone, iOS, and the App Store, Apple has made it impossible to untangle the iPhone from Apple’s ongoing legal woes in the European Union and beyond. And by plastering the planet with rainbow-colored Apple Intelligence ads, Apple has wound the iPhone up very tightly with a group of features that weren’t even shipped when the iPhones launched last fall. That puts Apple’s most valued product in a slightly weird spot, but the Report Card demands answers, so let’s start with hardware. The iPhone 16 cycle brought Camera Control, an excellent bit of hardware engineering swamped with confusing software decisions. Learning to swipe, press, and click around the tiny UI can be confusing. With visual intelligence a press-and-hold away, it’s easy to be in the wrong mode entirely if you activate the button as you pull your iPhone out of your pocket. Apple has made it possible to simplify the Camera Control, boiling it down to a basic shutter button, but this requires delving into multiple sections across Settings. The Action button was added to the regular iPhone 16 models in 2024, and the 5x telephoto lens from the 15 Pro Max lives on in both the 16 Pro Max and the 16 Pro. Both are great changes, as is the move to a bolder color palette for the 16. However, 2024 was also the Year of Apple Intelligence. These loosely associated features run across various iPads and all Apple silicon Macs. However, Apple is marketing these features as a core component of its newest iPhones. That’s unfortunate, given how mediocre much of Apple Intelligence has proven to be so far. Apple’s writing tools are good, but nothing exceptional, and the UI is quite cramped on the iPhone. When it comes to image generation, Apple Intelligence shines with Genmoji, which is a genuinely fun feature, but it also falls on its face with Image Playgrounds. The images it creates are far behind the competition, and honestly, a race I wish Apple weren’t running. The company says it has gone to great lengths to build guard rails to keep Image Playgrounds from creating anything offensive or troubling, but it’s not hard to get it to create fictional images depicting some of history’s worst people. At least they look like cartoon characters, which is the best product choice Apple made here. The lack of photorealism may keep Image Playgrounds out of the headlines for making fake news, but Apple’s summarization of notifications has done just the opposite. From screwing up sports scores to re-writing breaking news alerts to say the opposite of the reporting, notifications summaries don’t seem ready for prime time. Apple hasn’t yet shipped the next generation of Siri either, which raises questions about Apple feeling rushed to get these features into the market. If it’s true, it’s an unusual place for Apple to be in, and I hope the company will not make the same mistake again.
Zac Hall: Desert titanium and a dedicated camera button are nice.
Nick Heer: While the flagship Pro model always makes the most noise among the kind of people who read pundits’ report cards about a tech company, the iPhone 16 should not be overlooked. Neither should iOS 18, which, even without considering Apple Intelligence, has solid updates to core apps I use every day and is more customizable. However, iOS remains buggier than I would like. I find interacting with the Dynamic Island and always-on display needlessly difficult, and Apple Intelligence is not very good yet.
Andrew Laurence: This iPhone SE user looks forward to the next iteration of the iPhone’s value entry.
Rosemary Orchard: I love the new camera button, but I feel it needs more automation possibilities
Shahid Kamal Ahmad: Apple’s AI functionality feels like a rushed misstep. Most of us just don’t need what it offers, and the contortions to ring-fence access to OpenAI’s back end feel like the kind of thing Apple did when it apologetically added iTunes to a Motorola handset. Meanwhile, the hardware continues to be elegant, assuming what seems to be the definitive peak form factor for such a device. Incredibly, the 16 Pro Max feels less of a tank than previous models while still offering best-in-class performance and camera quality. After my iPhone mini 13, I didn’t think I’d upgrade. Now that I have, I don’t regret my purchase for a minute. This phone has all the performance required to deliver a class-leading UI responsiveness, and apart from the AI farce, a rollout that surely must be embarrassing for the executive team, it’s a device that does everything I need from a smartphone without ever breaking a sweat. It looks, feels and behaves like a premium product, but one where the UI could likely do with an overhaul to manage all the underlying complexity and features a little better. This complexity manifests in the form of additional buttons. It’s unusual for Apple to move so far away from the austerity of the Ive era, but perhaps with the addition of the camera button, they’ve made the UI more confusing than it needs to be. I keep forgetting that the button is there, and I sometimes activate it by accident, but can never seem to remember to use it when the need arises. This is to be expected, given that I’ve become so accustomed to the UI that’s been working well for so long.
Philip Michaels: Phones are becoming commodities, and whatever will freshen up the platform AI in general and Apple Intelligence ain’t it right now
Christina Warren: This is weird because, on the one hand, this is easily the most underwhelming iPhone Pro update I can recall in years and years. But the base model iPhone and iPhone Plus got some real juice. Apple Intelligence is still vaporware and nearly useless except for the ChatGPT integration, in my opinion, but I’m glad it forced Apple to up the RAM in the non-pro phones. But even though I genuinely have noticed nothing new on my iPhone 16 Pro Max compared to the 15 Pro Max, I think the base iPhone/iPhone Plus upgrades are really strong. It is too bad so many of the “features” of the phones are tied to software that might not land until mid 2025.
Alex Cox: ust when the regular iPhone gets good enough for what most power users would want in a phone, the iPhone Pro is really pulling away from the smartphone pack in terms of actual professional use. Final Cut Camera with multi-camera support came out of left field and landed pleasantly into independent filmmakers’ laps. That said, when one needs to use multiple iPhones on multiple Apple IDs and then allow them to connect to another device running Final Cut Pro, it feels like Apple is trying to take it out of our laps. There needs to be a better way to manage and administer multiple phones as cameras when you’re a three-person company not brimming with enterprise-managed devices.
Allison Sheridan: I’m going 5 again primarily because of the iPhone 16. They brought so many of the top-of-the-line features to the non-Pro phone, allowing people to make very few compromises to get a fantastic phone. Bringing 5X to the 16 Pro gave it feature parity with the Max, so there are no compromises between the two.
Glenn Fleishman: Nothing stands out for me on the hardware side. As noted for macOS, I don’t find that AI serves a need. Siri on the iPhone seems marginally better. I use it a lot and feel like it can do more within iOS, but I still get weird transcription errors that seem like they should be overcome, and it fails to be able to do a lot. It often says, “You need to unlock your phone,” when my iPhone is unlocked already…and then Siri completes the task anyway.
Peter Cohen: The 16 may be “built for Apple Intelligence,” but so what?
Rob Griffiths: So far, at least, Apple AI has been a massive disappointment. I’ve found so little benefit from it that I’ve disabled it. In my work, at least, there’s absolutely no benefit to having it enabled.
John Siracusa: My new iPhone 16 Pro has followed in the footsteps of its recent predecessors by being a bit better than the iPhone it replaced without adding any major regressions. My one frustration is the Camera Control. The button itself is fine, but most third-party case makers accommodated it by cutting a huge hole in the side of their cases, which I find awkward and uncomfortable. Only Apple and a handful of third-party case makers have included a pass-through button for the Camera Control, and none of those cases are to my liking. I hope more case makers offer pass-through buttons in 2025.
Myke Hurley: I think if I were grading without my personal feelings, I would knock this down a bit. But switching from the Pro Max to the Pro this year has been a really lovely change. The new increased size of this phone has made it the perfect sweet spot for me. I am a fan of the Camera Control button, but I think the execution leaves a little to be desired. I think the swiping is too complicated, and the force needed to take photos is too strong. I look forward to this changing over time. I think that there was a lot more conversation in the broader community this year about the regular phone over the pro phone. This would indicate that Apple kinda missed the mark on the overall product mix.
Quinn Nelson: On the one hand, we have the best update to the standard iPhone in years. On the other, we’re stuck with one of the buggiest, most feature-deprived versions of iOS in recent memory.
The iPad
How would you rate how the iPad and iPadOS platform went in 2024? Consider new hardware, new chips, OS versions, and anything else you deem relevant to the platform.
Brian Mattucci: I love my M4 iPad Pro. The screen is beautiful, the thinner design makes it easier to hold, and it feels like a really refined device. As with iOS, the Home Screen and Control Center customization options are wonderful. While there are plenty of ambitious changes I would love to see on iPadOS, the product they’ve delivered is still one that I find essential.
Matt Birchler: After the no-new-hardware year that was 2023, it was refreshing to get updates to almost all iPads in 2024. The new Pros are amazing devices that even got the privilege of introducing the M4 generation of chips; the Air got a boring but fine update, and the Mini got maybe the most subtle update of all. Sadly, software was on the back burner this year as the iPad got almost no new features outside of Apple Intelligence and a couple of minor things iOS also got.
Craig Hockenberry: I still want to run macOS on an iPad. It’s so weird that I take a MacBook on trips when an iPad would be a better choice.
Carolina Milanesi: iPad Pro was a solid upgrade, but some of the issues about software being able to elevate the device to a Mac level remain.
Kirk McElhearn: This year, I upgraded from an M1 iPad Pro to the M4 model, which is a very nice if overpriced iPad. The M2 iPad Airs also look fine, and these two iPads offer Apple Intelligence features for those who care. The iPad mini upgrade seems a bit underwhelming, but Apple has never shown much love to that model.
Federico Viticci: What can I say about the iPad that I haven’t already documented extensively? I love the iPad Pro’s hardware, and I find the M4 iPad Pro a miracle of hardware engineering with no equal in other similar products. In 2024, I chose to go all-in on the 11″ iPad Pro as my only computer; in fact, since the MacPad stopped working a few weeks ago (RIP), I don’t even have a Mac anymore, but I can do everything I need to do on an iPad – that is, after a series of compromises that, unfortunately, continue to be the other side of the coin of the iPad experience. Going into its 15th year (!), the iPad continues to be incredible hardware let down by a lackluster operating system that is neither as intuitive as iOS nor as advanced or flexible as macOS. The iPad is still stuck in the middle, which is exactly what I – and my fellow iPad users – have been saying for years now. I shouldn’t have to come up with expensive hardware-based workarounds to overcome the limitations of a platform that doesn’t want me to use my computer to its full extent. But, despite everything, I persist because no other tablet even comes close to the performance, thinness, and modularity of an iPad Pro.
Dave Hamilton: I’m an iPad mini user (and fan!) and am stoked to see it continuing to get upgrades. That tells me enough people are buying these models to keep some of Apple’s attention. (Is this where we pour one out for the iPhone mini? Dang, I miss that thing!)
Benjamin Mayo: The M4 iPad Pro is undeniably cool. The thinness and compactness of the design is remarkable, and it leaves a lasting impression. The screen is great, and the M4 chip is crazy fast, even in a 5.1mm thin fanless tablet form factor. That product is a momentous achievement. Unfortunately, iPadOS remains woefully underdeveloped. At the very least, I appreciated that the iPad software got the iOS 18 home screen customization features at the same time as the iPhone did, rather than it being a year behind as has happened in the past.
Dan Moren: The iPad’s frustrations are eternal. Although the hardware is fantastic, the software feels increasingly left behind, limited, and, at times, downright clunky. Stage Manager hasn’t fixed the multitasking issue, and the lack of modern audio support continues to keep me from doing my full job there. It’s probably time they let us run macOS or, at the very least, virtualize it.
Chance Miller: As usual, you can break the iPad category down into two parts: hardware and software. The new iPad Pro is the most visually impressive product Apple has released in years. I mean, who had Apple comparing the thinness of an iPad Pro to an iPod nano on their bingo card? Software-wise, the iPad continues to falter. iPadOS 18 added nothing new to the experience and Stage Manager feels like abandonware at this point. It’s a real bummer because I’d love to use the iPad Pro more often, especially with the new Magic Keyboard, which rights a lot of what was wrong with the last model.
Nick Heer: I still find the iPad-and-accessories lineup confusing, but it is in much better shape this year than last. Apple introducing the M4 chip in an iPad first, and not a Mac, is one of those twists I still find hard to believe, but it happened! I promise!
Michael Tsai: This seemed to be the year where a lot of people accepted that the software is what it is. If you love iPadOS, the hardware for running it is now better than ever. If not, no matter how much potential there may be, it’s time to stop waiting for Pro to happen in the way that you want and just use a Mac.
David Sparks: My same answer as every year: Solid hardware with too conservative operating system and software.
Rosemary Orchard: Nothing whelmed nor underwhelmed me.
Marco Arment: Apple finally updated the iPad lineup, and it has all of the strengths and weaknesses it has always had: great hardware with amazing computational power that’s almost impossible to utilize because of software limitations.
Shahid Kamal Ahmad: I have the latest iPad Pro Max. I’d have given it a higher mark had the OS been able to use the power of the device better, but as has been heard by many notable commentators, it’s just not there yet; the hardware power continues to massively outpace any progress in delivering that power to the user in a way that suits the iPad without compromising its accessibility. While this is going to be a tough nut for Apple to crack, if they want to sell more devices, they’re going to have to make the iPad more useful.
Michael Gartenberg: The iPad is the iPad. At the lower ends, they’re still the best for content consumption, at the high end, the Pro OLED models do deliver the best way to watch Severance on a mobile device. It’s a hard sell for creators to spend the money on a tricked-out iPad with Magic Keyboard when a cheaper MacBook will do the job better for most people.
Aleen Simms: The iPad’s hardware is unparalleled, but iPadOS still feels like a failed experiment. The iPads Pro are such stellar pieces of hardware, but the inflexibility of the operating system hamstrings them. I know that many people use iPads to great effect, but most people are unwilling or unable to put in the effort it takes to create workarounds—or they don’t even know that workarounds are possible.
Lex Friedman: The iPad product line is confusing. I bought an Air to replace an old Pro. I should have bought a Pro ONLY because Face ID on the iPad is so much better. But iPad Pros are ridiculously expensive. The iPad is great! But the product lines are too much.
James Thomson: I genuinely couldn’t remember if there had been new iPads this year. Great hardware that continues to remain underutilized by the software.
Brent Simmons: The App Store monopoly continues on iPad, too.
Joe Rosensteel: I don’t find this platform compelling, and it’s mostly the fault of iPadOS.
Shelly Brisbin: The new iPad Pro is great, as is the iPad Air, which adopts tech from the previous Pro. I’m thoroughly happy with my 13-inch Air. I’m not the first to point out iPadOS’ continuing limitations. The better the hardware becomes, the more glaring the software problems become. And it seems there’s little appetite or corporate support for making big changes to the platform.
Zac Hall: An even thinner design and optional nanotexture define this generation for me.
Quinn Nelson: iPadOS continues to be a “love it or hate it” experience, but the M4 iPad Pro, with its stunning OLED display, feels like a sci-fi-level feat of engineering.
Steven Aquino: I was gifted a 13″ M4 iPad Pro (with Magic Keyboard) for my birthday in September. The hardware, most especially the OLED display, is stunning. As to software, although iPadOS does exactly what I need it to do, there’s no question the pace of improvement needs to pick up.
John Gruber: The iPad hardware story is excellent. iPad Pros got the M4 chips months ahead of the Mac and now have an excellent nano-texture display option. (Please, Apple: bring nano-texture to the iPhone. Take my money.) The iPad Air got a fine update to the M2 chip in May. And the iPad Mini got its first update since 2021, and thus continues to be a product in Apple’s lineup. But iPadOS still strikes me like the no-man’s-land platform: nowhere near as capable productivity-wise as a Mac; nowhere near as portable or as conceptually simple as an iPhone. I made a concerted effort not to use my iPad for anything but long-form reading in recent months. I find myself noticeably more productive for it. To me, it’s like trying to work with my hands while wearing mittens.
Eric Slivka: The iPad Pro, with its incredibly thin form factor, OLED, cutting-edge M4 chip, and landscape front camera, received a great update. The iPad Air also received a solid upgrade, and the long-in-the-tooth iPad mini received its Apple Intelligence upgrade. However, I would still love to see Apple do more on the software side to take advantage of the iPad’s power and screen size.
Andy Ihnatko: There has been little progress with the OS or hardware. But we finally got a new iPad Mini, and my heart is full!
Rich Mogull: The M4 iPad Pro is a marvel. The new iPad Mini is… well… maybe next time. I’d rate it a solid 4.5, so I rounded up.
Stephen Hackett: There’s little to say about the iPad this year that hasn’t been said. The M4 iPad Pro pushes the ole “Wow, this iPad hardware can do so much more than iPadOS will let it” adage to the stratosphere. It’s powerful and thin, with an amazing screen, but it’s still just an iPad. The new Magic Keyboard looks fantastic, but it’s still hooked up to iPad apps. I’ve settled into equilibrium with this in my usage. My iPad mini is a great tablet for what I use it for: YouTube, TV shows, podcasts, and reading. I may hop into Slack or scroll through my mentions on social media, but I’m just no longer interested in turning the iPad into a computer I can or want to use for work. Zooming out, the overall iPad family is still messy in places. Thankfully, the 9th-gen iPad has been sent out to pasture, meaning all iPads finally use the modern gesture system for control. All iPads basically look the same, but there are still numerous differences as you move up and down the product line. The fact that Apple’s iPad keyboard page has a huge dropdown for a user to pick which iPad they have so the website can show them compatible models is not great, but Apple has been making progress. The current line of Apple Pencils is pretty straightforward, and having two models of iPad Air makes a lot of sense. I hope that the company keeps working to restore sense to the iPad hardware line while, at the same time, making iPadOS more capable for those who want to use their iPads more than they can today.
Christina Warren: I hope we get a good iPad update in 2025 because I need to buy one for my mom, and I’m annoyed the iPad Air doesn’t ship with 256GB standard, raising the price the $700. The 2024 updates to the iPad Pro were tempting but I kept my 2022 11” iPad Pro because I don’t want to buy a new keyboard or Apple Pencil. And my M2 is still so powerful, given the software is utterly anemic. The problem with the iPad, or at least the iPad Pro, continues to be iPad OS. It just isn’t as robust as I would like for something that costs more than a MacBook Air. And the MacBook Air now has 16GB of RAM standard. And that’s before you have the price for the pencil and keyboard. If you’re going to tout the importance of the form factor, don’t nerf what I can do with it. It’s especially annoying when you can run many iPad apps on the Mac and use your iPad as a second display with touch support on the same Mac. So I continue to be mad that I can’t run VS Code or something like it on my iPad. And that my web browser on my $1000+ tablet cannot even run real web apps super well. The iPad Air is probably the ideal iPad for the middle-of-the-road user, though I think a 256GB 10th gen iPad is probably just fine too. I forgot Apple even updated the iPad mini this year. I think Apple did, too.
Adam Engst: At least Apple released new iPads after a year off, but they don’t change the game at all. I’ve basically stopped using the iPad at this point, and none of the new models give me any reason to rethink that. Performance isn’t the problem.
Myke Hurley: I am no longer going to grade the iPad on the disappointment of iPadOS. I have accepted the iPad for what it is rather than what I want it to be. The new M4 iPad Pro is everything I wanted. I use the 11-inch as my main device at home, and I love everything about it. The OLED screen is fantastic, and it is so thin and light—it’s a joy to use.
John Siracusa: The M4 is a great iPad chip, but the highlight of the year for me was the Tandem OLED display on the new iPad Pro. I use my iPad as a tiny TV most of the time, and OLED displays provide the best picture quality available today. It’s been an amazing upgrade for me, even if it seems like I’m “wasting” that M4 by using it to watch videos for hours on end. Oh yeah, and they updated the camera placement, improved the Apple Pencil, and made all the Pro iPads even thinner. It seems like the rest of the world is not as excited as I am about the new iPad Pro. That may have something to do with the (continuing) limited and confusing nature of iPadOS. But for me, the new M4 iPad Pro is the best iPad ever.
Paul Kafasis: The hardware updates were good, but I hoped to see more from the new Mini. I’d been waiting to upgrade to a new Mini, but the minor update meant I bailed on that idea.
Casey Liss: While I don’t regret buying a new iPad Pro in 2022… I kind of regret it. The 2024 iPad Pros are really stunning—a phenomenal OLED screen in a case that cannot possibly be that thin. They’re such a joy to hold, and I want one despite having absolutely zero need for one. The Mini was my iPad of choice for many years, but I’ve squeezed it out by the combination of my phone getting ever-larger and the incredible utility the Magic Keyboard brings to my iPad Pro.
Jessica Dennis: I pretty much only buy the iPad Mini, and Apple put out a new one in 2024, so I bought it. I like that it’s purple. I was upgrading from a 5th-generation iPad Mini, and other than being snappier (and having TouchID on the power button instead of a button below the screen), I don’t feel like I gained a whole lot. I am not surprised that Regular People suffer from Apple Pencil Confusion — even I had to go back and check which one(s) would work with my new iPad when I was deciding that I didn’t really need one anyway.
Alex Cox: The tale as old as time is that iPadOS can’t keep up with the hardware in the iPad. This year, the design of the hardware doesn’t match the internals. Yes, the new form factor and screen options are great, but even the new Magic Keyboard for iPad feels like a mediocre upgrade after four years. The promise of the iPad’s modularity still doesn’t pay off.
Eric Linder: I have purchased almost every iPad model since its debut, and I will likely continue to do so. I absolutely love it, and use it every day. But it is such a shame that the hardware improvements are so far out of alignment with its software. One thing I love about Apple is that so often, they underpromise and over-deliver. But with iPad OS, the opposite is the case. They hyped up Stage Manager so much, and I recall the excitement that fellow Apple geeks like Federico Viticci shared with the community. It shipped broken, which is somewhat forgivable, but what is not forgivable is that two years later, it seems like Apple has completely forgotten about it. This does not bode well for the future of iPadOS. Whereas iOS continues to build and iterate on most of its features, it seems like iPadOS is just throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks, and sadly, not much is sticking.
Allison Sheridan: It was a solid year for iPad. The M4 coming to the iPad Pro before the Macs was interesting, while moving the camera to the landscape side was probably a bigger improvement to the user experience. The iPad Air got a modest improvement going to M2 and remains a solid choice. Even the iPad mini finally got an update.
Gui Rambo: The fact that after all these years the iPad is still using the exact same foundations as iOS, including its multitasking model, is just baffling. We have iPads with Apple’s most powerful CPU cores that can’t have Final Cut Pro export a video in the background due to these stupid limitations.
Wearables
How would you rate Apple’s performance in Wearables overall in 2024? Consider the Apple Watch, Vision Pro, AirPods, and anything else you deem appropriate.
Charles Arthur: The Vision Pro has been a calamity. What it needed was content, and what it also needed was app support. Apple hasn’t done the first, and alienated developers so badly in other areas that it didn’t get the second – Netflix and YouTube being the obvious objectors. If you can’t charm the two biggest content platforms to be on your device, then you are already fighting with one, perhaps both, hands behind your back. The lack of immersive sports content is significant. The Vision Pro will never take off without it.
Joe Rosensteel: The Apple Watch is pretty stagnant and has feature regressions thanks to the ongoing patent dispute. The Vision Pro really whiffed. I was filled with ennui when the guy conducting my Vision Pro demo noted how sharp and readable the text was and how it could be used for work… A sentiment I didn’t share at all, and really underscored that people at Apple didn’t really know how to make a $3500 science fiction gadget exciting.
Casey Liss: The addition of medical-grade hearing aid functionality to the AirPods Pro is Apple at its best. The AirPods Pro remain possibly my favorite Apple product of all time. I use them on and off all day, every single day. However, the utterly preposterous AirPods Max “refresh” is borderline insulting for fans of that device. I am not a fan of it and yet here I am grumbling about it. (Apple Watch specific stuff follows)I would never have guessed, when working on my 2023 Report Card, that I’d be here working on my 2024 Report Card, still discussing the Masimo lawsuit. It is rather absurd that Apple, a company with effectively infinite resources, hasn’t fixed this problem. Throw money at it in terms of licensing, or just buy Masimo outright. Do something. The Ultra wasn’t bumped in any way this year, which was disappointing. Before the September event, I had assumed I was going to buy myself an Ultra 3 as my new watch. The lack of hardware updates — other than an admittedly hot black case — convinced me to go with a Series 10 instead. I like my Series 10, and I am pleased it’s thinner than my prior Series 8, but it’s otherwise more of the same. The one large difference for me is the addition of fast charging, which is a surprising quality of life improvement — especially if you sleep track. Sigh—what to make of the Vision Pro? I preordered one, and collected it on launch day. It is, without exception, the coolest piece of technology I own. It is unlike anything I had previously experienced, and as I’ve said many times, using a Vision Pro is strapping the future onto your face today. As I write this, today a fortnightly chat with your beloved editor (and three others) is scheduled. These hangouts — which are “just” FaceTime calls — are so uncanny. Those of us who can make any given call will sit, using our Spatial Personas, in the circle the Vision Pro software puts us in, and chitchat. Something about having that presence makes it feel like so much more than the handful of monthly FaceTime calls I have with friends — including one of the others on this fortnightly call. A FaceTime call with my friend James feels like a phone conversation with video. A Spatial FaceTime call with James, Jason, and others… that feels like hanging out. I could make a strong argument that if you and your friends can convince yourselves to spend the absurd amount of money for a Vision Pro, Spatial FaceTime calls are worth it alone. But the killer app for the Vision Pro — if you ever leave your house to do work — is definitely Mac Virtual Display. Just before the end of the year, Apple came out with a second version of MVD, and holy smokes, it’s incredible. My at-home setup is three 5K monitors because, well, I have problems. While my 13″ M3 Max MacBook Pro lets me take all the power of a desktop out of the house, it very much does not let me take all the screen real estate. Well, it didn’t, anyway. Now it does. In fact, the Ultrawide mode on MVD is too wide. A problem that I never thought I’d have. If we can only normalize wearing them, my portable computing life will improve vastly. I have used my Vision Pro at our local library, but I always do so in a study room, because I’m too embarrassed to do so in the throngs of everyone in the main areas. I’m writing this post at a local Wegmans, and I’m doing so without my AVP, because I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The Vision Pro is incredible, and every time I strap that stupid thing to my face, I can’t believe how lucky I am to have one and how cool this device is. However, I only have the occasion to do so once a week at most. The Vision Pro is an engineering marvel — easy 5. The Vision Pro is frustrating to use by itself and you look like an idiot when you do so — 2. That makes this section a 4 to me — as an engineer, I can’t get past how impressive it is. The Vision Pro is simultaneously more than I ever expected and a near-total letdown. Doing work in it is nigh impossible outside of MVD. Typing is so painful that I avoid it at all costs. Using Siri is not a substitute for a workable keyboard in visionOS. There’s not enough immersive content, although the pace is quickening and the content is getting ever-better. Ultimately, though, it’s too cool for me to grade any lower.
Shelly Brisbin: Wearables feels like a category poised to evolve in interesting ways, and I’m here for it. 2024 gave us a couple of glimpses: the technology behind the Vision Pro and the adaptation of a pair of earbuds (AirPods Pro) to the task of finding and mitigating some kinds of hearing loss. I’m with those who admire the Vision Pro but are skeptical of its future as a viable product. I wish Apple were more open to the idea of offering developer-focused technology previews that aren’t necessarily ready for primetime. Let the early adopter/pundit class buy them, too, but set expectations about what the Vision Pro is good at. I recently saw how a developer plans to incorporate the Vision Pro into a wheelchair-based navigation assistant. Now that’s innovation!
Marco Arment: Apple Vision Pro was the most disappointing launch I’ve seen from Apple in recent memory, with huge mismatches between the delivered product and consumer priorities and almost no follow-through from Apple to get software or content on the platform. A year after launch, a new owner can still watch the entire catalog of immersive videos during their first evening of taking the Vision Pro home… and then watch some episodes of Severance and still go to bed early.
Lex Friedman: Apple Watch remains good. There isn’t much in the way of new features that I’m excited about on the Watch, but it remains good. I wish it were better at tracking steps on a Treadmill Desk, though. Apple Vision Pro remains a product that I am not at all interested in.
Rich Mogull: The Apple Watch Ultra is getting close to being a true sports watch, but once you hit that category, Garmin still wins out (despite the latest Fenix updates being lackluster). The rest of the line is solid, but there still feels like room for growth.
Eric Slivka: A thinner design for the Series 10 was a welcome change, but otherwise, we didn’t get much in this regard. The black Ultra 2 looks great, but no hardware updates was a disappointment, and we missed out on a rumored SE update as well that sounded like it could have brought some fun colors. I continue to be astonished that Apple hasn’t settled the blood oxygen patent dispute in the U.S. one way or another. Nearly a year in, Vision Pro continues to be a half-baked prototype. AirPods 4 look like a really nice upgrade that has helped modernize and streamline the lineup, but I’m an AirPods Pro user looking forward to a 2025 update on those. AirPods Max simply adopting USB-C and some new colors with no other changes is so sad that it’s hilarious.
Stephen Hackett: Apple continues to kill it when it comes to AirPods. The AirPods 4 (especially with ANC) offers incredible value, while the AirPods Pro 2 continue to become more valuable to users through some remarkable software updates. Using AirPods as a way to take a hearing test or have your hearing augmented means millions of people who didn’t even know they had hearing loss will enjoy more moments with their loved ones in conversation. With the Apple Watch, it’s more of the same good vibes. Detecting falls, car crashes, and possible cardiac issues has saved an untold number of people, and with sleep apnea detection in the newest batch of Apple Watches, users can be notified if their Watches detect a problem. This is some of Apple’s most important work. I took the lack of an Apple Watch Ultra 3 personally, but the Series 10’s thinner and more powerful design almost makes up for it, as long as my bought-it-on-launch-day-like-a-maniac Apple Watch Ultra 1 holds on. 2024 saw the launch of the Vision Pro, and it’s unlike any Apple product launch I can remember. The Vision Pro is an incredible feat of engineering. Just holding the thing feels nice, and the years of work that went into it shows when the screens light up. It is the only AR or VR headset I have worn that hasn’t made me feel sick after a few minutes. The Vision Pro is priced like a computer because Mac-level hardware powers its array of cameras and sensors, screens, audio system, and more. visionOS springs to life on this hardware — after a lengthy boot process — and wraps the user in a world of their own content and apps. The floating windows feel real and stay in place as if they are made of actual frosted glass. The pass-through video feed of the outside world is by no means perfect, but it’s fast to respond to a turn of your head. A simple turn of the Digital Crown has the world fade away, dissolving into any number of landscapes that can help you focus on the task at hand. Sadly, there are just a handful of tasks best suited for spatial computing. Text input can be tedious without a keyboard, the lack of any window management tools mean there’s a lot of fussing about needed if you want to look at more than one application at once. (Stage Manager seems like it was built for this thing.) The App Store is quiet on the Vision Pro. The high price of the device has surely limited its adoption from both the user and developer perspectives. The new nature of the platform means users need to experience the Vision Pro before understanding it. Apple Stores have done a good job at this, but most consumers don’t know what they’d do with a device like this beyond playing games, which isn’t Apple’s strength. There’s no killer app for visionOS yet, and even if there was, you end up back at the price tag.
Nick Heer: On the plus side, Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods 4, and Vision Pro. On the other hand, Apple Watch Ultra New Color, AirPods Max New Colors, and Vision Pro.
Christina Warren: AirPod Pro 2 remains one of the best products Apple has ever released. The OTC hearing aid function is such a huge win for so many people. I don’t understand why the AirPods 4 with noise canceling exist, but that’s not my business. Just buy the AirPod Pro 2s on sale. I regret to inform the world that I bought the USB-C AirPods Max. No one else should do the same. An overpriced product that lost features over four years, got zero improvements, and is now priced even worse compared to the competition. As for Apple Watch, I upgraded this year (and to the Hermes edition at that — the Grand H band got me) after sitting out the Series 9 year and I noticed nothing different — though the screen is larger than my Series 8 and the new Hermes band is amazing. But the lack of the blood ox stuff doesn’t impact me, but it’s a regression I dislike. I hope Apple can return this feature in the future. I did not buy an Apple Vision Pro this year and I do not regret my decision. It was a rare example of restraint on my part. I think it is a terrific tech demo and incredibly well-engineered. This sort of technology at theme park rides or in certain scenarios is jaw-dropping. But I could never convince myself I’d use it enough to not feel bad when it inevitably sat unused on my shelf. I can afford to buy one. But I am sadly not rich enough to be able to buy one and not feel angry about its lack of use. The weight and face pressure are also concerns — I’m glad to see the Belkin strap seems to have improved the fit. The lack of apps, let alone a killer app, outside of watching movies alone, is an indictment of Apple’s developer relations problems as much as it is an indictment of the AVP itself. I can’t help but think Apple’s focus on AR/VR at the expense of things like AI was a mistake, and I’m not convinced we’ll ever see the promise of Apple Vision Pro. Again, incredible tech demo. But I can’t convince myself to buy one and I love to use girl math to make bad decisions. It is what it is.
Myke Hurley: I feel like this was a miss year for the Apple Watch from a hardware perspective – thinner is great, but I want to see more design change! However, watchOS 11 is a really great advancement. I love the enhancements to widgets and the Smart Stack, as well as the inclusion of live activities. The new Photos face is amazing. I love the fact that I get these moments of joy every time I look down at my watch, as it picks a photo to show me from a vacation or a cute photo of my wife. I cannot wait to see photos of my baby on this. The Vision Pro is a real mixed bag. The launch was so exciting, the hardware is so futuristic, and visionOS is overall a good operating system with some good advancements through the year. But the lack of developer support, and the loss of buzz for the product over the year cannot be ignored. I really hope for more, as I believe in the platform. But I could not give it the mark I had hoped for.
Benjamin Mayo: Before this year, I had always assumed noise cancellation would be the AirPod Pro’s differentiating feature. I have a dislike for the feel of the in-ear tips, so I had just accepted I would always be missing out on that. But 2024 brought the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, and it’s amazing. The noise cancellation is incredibly effective given the open-earbud design. Even the non-ANC base model is way better value for money than what Apple previously sold at that price point.
Peter Cohen: The Vision Pro will be a fantastic product when it’s ready to come out of beta in a couple of years.
Federico Viticci: I love my new AirPods 4, and I find the combination of no in-ear tips and basic noise cancellation a fantastic balance of trade-offs and comfort. I didn’t rely on AirPods Pro’s advanced noise cancellation and other audio features that much, so switching to the “simpler” AirPods 4 when they were released was a no-brainer for me. As flawed as the Vision Pro can be (it is, after all, a fancy developer kit with an almost non-existent third-party app ecosystem), I also think it’s an impressive showcase of what Apple can do with hardware and miniaturization if money is not a concern and engineers are free to build whatever they want. I don’t use the Vision Pro on a regular basis, but whenever I do, I’m reminded that visionOS is an exciting long-term prospect for what I hope will eventually be shrunk down to glasses. That, in fact, is the reason why I’m not giving this category 5 stars. I really want to stop using my Meta Ray-Ban glasses, but Apple doesn’t have an alternative that I can purchase today – and worse, it sounds like their version may not be ready for quite some time still. It seems like Apple is, at this point, almost institutionally incapable of releasing a minimum viable product that doesn’t have to be a complete platform with an entire app ecosystem and a major marketing blitz. I just want Apple to make a pair of glasses that combine AirPods, Siri, and a basic camera. I don’t need Apple to make XR glasses that project a computer in front of my eyes today. And I wish the company would understand this – that they would see the interest in “simple” glasses that have speakers, a microphone, and a camera, and release that product this year. I hope they change their minds and can fast-track such a product rather than wait for visionOS to support that kind of form factor years from now.
Brent Simmons: Got new AirPods in 2024 — they won’t stay in my ear. I tried Vision Pro and am not surprised it didn’t sell well, especially at that price.
Kirk McElhearn: The Vision Pro developer kit looks like it is full of innovations, but just doesn’t seem like something I’d want to use. Who wants to wear a computer strapped to their face for a long time? And the price is out of reach for most users. As a proof of concept, it’s interesting, but the mere concept of that device, and the way Apple has promoted it, feels like an episode of Black Mirror.
Michael Gartenberg: Watch seems to have stagnated with some odd choices. Watch 10 has a screen that can do things Watch Ultra can’t, even though Ultra remains the best choice for battery life (and replacing the Rolex Submariner as the watch for desk athletes). The new back titanium is pretty, along with the new titanium bands. AirPods also got a weird upgrade with the new models lacking the hearing aid features that live in the pro models. As someone who listened to his iPod too loud at the turn of the century, I found the hearing features to work pretty well, but they aren’t replacements for OTC hearing aids. The battery life is way too short, and it’s kind of socially awkward to talk to someone when you have earbuds in, needing to explain that you really are listening to them and not tuning them out. I do think there’s a great opportunity for Apple to build a true hearing-first, music-second device for users. It’s clear they have the technology, and this is an area where Apple can really shine with a product to fill a need and make all the other products in that category obsolete. The less said about Vision Pro, the better for Apple. It’s been a long time since Apple took a swing for the fences and struck out. AVP remains a device that should have been called a developer kit or “peek at the future” science experiment, not as an end-user product. It’s an odd case where Apple tried to leapfrog the market and be first but also flawed. AVP doesn’t compete with anything on the market. It’s a device all alone in that space at that price. Apparently it’s great for watching Ted Lasso on your ceiling, according to Tim, but not really useful for much else. Ironically, the sleeper wearable/AI came from Meta, with their collaboration with Ray-Ban. Meta chose a subset of features such as photos/music/messaging/AI that relies on your phone to do the heavy lifting, works reliably well and comes in a form factor that’s actually fashion friendly. It’s the type of device with feature set and partnership that Apple could have and should have done. All the features would tie wonderfully into Apple’s ecosystem. Meta didn’t even haggle over branding—the Ray-Bans just say Ray-Ban. It’s not too late for Apple to do something similar, but I doubt that they would do a product copy if for no other reason than out of pride.
Quinn Nelson: The Vision Pro is expensive and uncomfortable. It’s too heavy, the straps are awful, the software feels primitive and limited, and it lacks the robust first- and third-party app support it desperately needs. Even Mac Virtual Display isn’t polished enough to replace a dedicated desktop monitor. In short, it feels unfinished. But despite all that, it has improved significantly since launch—and I still find myself looking for excuses to use it because every time I put it on, I can’t help but think, “holy crap, this is incredible.”
Andy Ihnatko: The Vision Pro isn’t an embarrassment for Apple; it’s fine. It’s not the breakthrough, paradigm-destroying hit product for 2024 that Apple imagined when they started developing the Vision Pro in earnest in 2016. Unfortunately, the TVA pruned that timeline during the most boring episode of “Loki” ever. Here in Earth-616, the Vision Pro is just a high-end version of one of those VR headsets that nobody really needs.
Jessica Dennis: The newer, thinner Apple Watch is legitimately pretty great (and I’m grateful that I could still use all my existing bands). I was kinda bummed that there was no stainless steel model this year; I had psyched myself up to finally upgrade from aluminum, but I didn’t particularly care for the titanium models, so went with the jet black aluminum after all. I do really love all the ultramarine accessories, though — my phone and phone case are also ultramarine.
Brian Mattucci: I love the new Apple Watch, and have no complaints. I was all set to upgrade to USB-C AirPods Max, but they didn’t change anything else about them so I had to pass. As for Vision Pro, I held off on even trying it for many months, largely due to all of the negative things I heard about it. But then I did the store demo and ended up buying one. I’ve used it nearly every single day since, and I’m very happy with it. I don’t fault Apple for creating an expensive device for early adopters (like me), but I do fault them for not doing enough to allow for a thriving App Store. Rumors of PSVR2 controller support are welcome, but late. I know Vision Pro isn’t primarily for games and that’s not why anyone would buy one at this point, but it adds value to the device and helps people justify the purchase (especially of an eventual more reasonably priced version). While AVP is a weighty device, I don’t find it uncomfortable with the solo loop alone. Everyone’s skull is different, and there are many options out there, but I think it requires a lot of a person to understand how to wear AVP comfortably and people simply aren’t used to it. Other complaints I’ve found don’t really apply to me (FOV) or aren’t that big of a deal to me (glare). Ultimately I think AVP is their best first-gen device ever and I’m excited to see how the next several revisions improve on things. I hope it doesn’t take them years to add folder support though – my home screen is a mess.
Rosemary Orchard: I need an Apple Watch Ultra that fits on my wrist.
Allison Sheridan: The clear winner on wearables this year were the AirPods. Redesigning them to fit more ear shapes caught my eye originally. but noise cancellation in the non-Pros has made them a big draw. The OTC hearing aid features of the Pros is also compelling. Apple Watch was a very modest improvement.
Dr. Drang: AirPods are such a good product that Apple is now adding features I have to turn off. Head gestures seemed like a good idea until I looked both ways before crossing the street when a question was pending.
John Gruber: AirPods 4 with ANC are a terrific update, and AirPods Pro 2, though years-old hardware, saw significant software improvements—most notably, widely acclaimed support for use as certified hearing aids. AirPods continue to exemplify Apple its best. Series 10 watches feature a new display that supports once-per-second updates while in energy-saving always-on mode. So the seconds hand on an analog face can “tick” once per second even when the display isn’t fully on. But Apple only enabled this ticking seconds indicator on two watch faces, both new to WatchOS 11: Flux and Reflections. Setting aside the fact that I personally don’t like either of those faces (Flux in particular seems deliberately obtuse), this is ridiculous. WatchOS 11 offers, by my quick count, at least 33 different watch faces that offer a non-digital seconds hand or indicator. And only two of them support the new 1Hz refresh rate? That’s bullshit. And it wasn’t just a launch thing, because here we are in January and no additional watch faces have been updated to support it. This is not how a serious watchmaker treats its watches. I will admit to caring far more about always-on second hands than most people, but what a waste of a technical breakthrough. Not just most, but every single watch face should have been updated to support ticking seconds. Apple Watch is turning more into a fitness tracker that happens to show the time, and away from serving as a proper watch. Also: no Ultra 3 this year. The year-old Ultra 2 did gain a very nice black titanium color option, but that’s it. Kind of weird for a watch that starts at $800 to skip a year of silicon improvements. Is Vision Pro a hit? No, far from it. But I remain unconvinced that Apple ever had much hope that this first Vision device would sell in much higher quantities than it has. The narrative that it’s a laughably overpriced bust reminds me of the original Macintosh in 1984, whose $2,500 price tag, adjusted for inflation, works out to over $7,500 in today’s dollars. After an initial wave of publicity on launch, the original Macintosh sold so poorly that it was arguably the impetus for John Sculley and Apple’s board to fire Steve Jobs and exile him from the company. Many pundits of the era confidently proclaimed that the entire concept of a GUI was a gimmick with no future. Am I predicting that the Vision platform will have as bright and essential a future ahead of it as the Macintosh did in 1984? No. But I suspect it has a bright and essential future ahead of it. The entire concept and paradigm is so new and different that, like the Macintosh 40 years prior, the product had to ship years before a version could be made at a price that appeals to the mass market, and years before there’s all that much to do using it. But, as it stands, Vision Pro today offers an incredible experience for watching traditional movies and shows, and a breakthrough experience for watching spatial content. If Bang & Olufsen sold this product in a form that only played movies — no “spatial computing” — it would cost $10,000 and some people would consider it well worth the price. Spatial computing feels fun to me, but not very productive. That could change, and I suspect “fun but not productive” is how I would have described trying to work on a Macintosh in 1984 vs. an Apple II. And Vision Pro’s remarkable (and with VisionOS 2, much improved) Mac Virtual Display feature is a highly-productive environment for work. I can’t give Vision Pro an A for 2024, but I foresee A’s in future years.
John Siracusa: At best, the Vision Pro seems like a first step on a long journey. It will require many years of dedication, and perhaps some significant pivots, to turn this platform into a success. After spending a decade and several billion dollars on a car project that never shipped, I hope Apple can muster the resolve to keep plugging away at the Vision Pro. The new AirPods 4 are great for those of us who don’t want our headphones to be shoved into our ear canals. The noise canceling cannot compete with literal earplugs that are the AirPods Pro, but it’s still a nice improvement. The smaller size of both the earbuds and the case are also great. After a brief burst of excitement from the Apple Watch Ultra a few years ago, we appear to be in a holding pattern again as we wait for a more radical redesign of the mainstream Apple watch. The new watches this year were fine, though.
Steven Aquino: Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro all are winners in general. The new Apple Watch’s bigger screen in a lightweight package is lovely, especially after wearing an Ultra for 2 years solely for its big screen. Vision Pro is the most accessible content consumption device I’ve ever used, but it is heavy, and the app story for streaming TV and movies feels thin other than TV+ and Disney+.
Matt Birchler: The Apple Watch seems to be coasting along, which isn’t terrible, but it seems like that product is approaching its effective final form, while AirPods continue to get really good software updates that make them more valuable over time (except for AirPods Max, of course). The Vision Pro really drops this category down, as it does have some devotees, but they seem to be a huge minority of purchasers. There was chatter after the Vision Pro’s unveiling at WWDC 2023 that it sucked the energy out of the LLM “fad” that was just getting off the ground, but at the end of 2024 I think it’s clear that the Vision Pro is far more niche and unexciting than we thought it would be nearly one year into its time on the market.
Aleen Simms: I’m glad they released the Vision Pro, but it still feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist (for most people). I’m interested to see where Apple decides to take it over the next several iterations, assuming they continue product development. A convenient, glasses-like wearable could be a major accessibility boon for a lot of people.
Michael Tsai: The AirPods 4 seem good. AirPods Max remains a product in Apple’s lineup. Apple no longer offers software updates for my watch, and I’m waiting for a new Apple Watch SE, which hasn’t been announced yet. Apple Vision Pro is technically impressive, but it increasingly seems like Apple built the wrong thing. Those engineering resources would have been much better spent improving Apple’s other platforms.
Chance Miller: The AirPods Pro 2, despite being over two years old, are the standout wearable product of the year. The new hearing health features will go down as one of Apple’s most important releases of all time. Apple Vision Pro gets a lot more hate than it deserves. I’ve had very few if any, technological experiences as magical as interacting with it. Apple has work to do if it wants Apple Vision Pro (or whatever “Vision” product comes next) to truly become the future of computing. The good news is that I think Apple is taking the feedback in stride and will continue to perfect the spatial computing experience in years to come. The Apple Watch Series 11 is the first Apple Watch that feels like it sits flat on my wrist. It’s a subtle change, but one I notice every day.
Andrew Laurence: Barely one year into the Vision Pro’s product life, I it feels like the early days of the Apple Watch — also introduced with a set of features that showed a puzzling lack of vision. Over time, the Watch found its market of utility, and apps sprung up around it. We’ll see if the same happens with Vision Pro. Meanwhile… is Vision Pro, like Apple Intelligence, a case of organizational FOMO leaking out to product? I, for one, have zero interest in “strap something to my face” computing. Might Apple Watch’s greatest impact be a generational change in product naming? Since the Watch, Apple’s wholly new products and services have followed its naming convention of “Apple Product”, with “Product” being a generic category word. Since then, Cisco retired “AnyConnect” for “Cisco Secure Client”; Dell retired years of brand equity for the same convention of “Dell Product.” Is “Ford Truck” next? AirPods Pro 2 continues to be my most consistently superlative purchase in some years.
Carolina Milanesi: Apple Watch has become a cornerstone of the ecosystem for many users and a device that is keeping users in the ecosystem, as competition on the phone side is growing in Android both on form factor and AI.
Paul Kafasis: AirPods updates have been great. Apple Watch, well, they really need to fix their patent situation. Vision Pro… God, so much hype, and it sure seems like a pretty big flop. From all I can see, even those people who were excited about it are finding themselves not using it.
Alex Cox: Apple Vision Pro is the most influential hardware I’ve ever used, and I don’t have anyone to else to use it with, make things with it, or even demo it unless they’re willing to sit for forty minutes to make sure the guest mode calibration works. Apple is getting in the way of letting AVP grow, and not just because of the price. Until there’s developer access to more APIs and more accessibility to dev kits, I don’t think there will be anything interesting made for AVP that isn’t a big-budget immersive video partially funded by Apple.
David Sparks: The Vision Pro deserves better than its current reputation as a pundit punching bag. While everyone’s busy dunking on Apple’s spatial computing experiment, I’m regularly strapping it on and using it for work and entertainment. It’s definitely first-generation, but there’s something genuinely compelling here. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Adam Engst: The big story in 2024 for wearables is the AirPods Pro 2 and their hearing health and hearing aid capabilities. Those have the potential to be life-changing for many people. Otherwise, it’s hard to get excited about the changes to the Apple Watch Series 10. The Vision Pro is impressive technology that completely misses the mark in terms of being useful and affordable.
Dan Moren: The AirPods Pro 2’s Hearing Aid feature is probably the biggest announcement in all of Apple’s wearables lines this year. It’s truly impressive, even if it’s not something that everybody’s going to use. But this is where Apple’s Health initiatives shine: solving actual problems people have and doing so in a way that’s accessible to the masses. I find the Vision Pro fascinating, but have spent so little time with one that I can’t offer more than that. I hope the next one’s cheaper.
Dave Hamilton: The hearing features added to AirPods Pro 2 are a HUGE game-changer in my world. The active earplugs feature works so well that these have replaced my custom-fit musicians’ earplugs as my default earplugs for concerts. As for Vision Pro, I’m eager to see where Apple takes it, but it’s obviously just a public beta at this point of some very cool, extremely overpriced tech.
James Thomson: The Vision Pro is a fantastically impressive technological achievement that no normal person should actually buy. The hearing aid functionality for the AirPods Pro could genuinely change lives.
Craig Hockenberry: I have largely ignored the Vision Pro, and it appears I am not alone. I still don’t see a reason to put the thing on my head for hours each day.
Michael E. Cohen: I have a Vision Pro and really like it, but mostly as the best widescreen and 3D video-watching experience I’ve ever experienced. The device needs more apps, especially the kind of apps only Apple can provide that demonstrate to other developers both the device’s unique (and sometimes less obvious) capabilities and the best ways to make those capabilities accessible to users.
Home
How would you rate Apple’s overall performance in Home technology in 2024? Consider HomeKit, the Home app, Matter, overall strategy and anything else you deem appropriate.
Rosemary Orchard: I love the support of Matter. But feel more progress needs to be made.
Lex Friedman: The Home app is ugly. Home app integrations in Control Center are useful but inflexible.
Dave Hamilton: Attending CES the past two years, I saw a marked shift in how much Matter mattered to vendors. (I had to do it.) Last year, everyone was stoked to tell me they had added Matter support to their various widgets. This year, it was mentioned as an afterthought, “Oh, and yes, we’ll support Matter if and when that becomes important to our customers.”
Myke Hurley: The new Control Center actions I can add have saved Apple’s Home efforts for me this year. Outside of that, I am not sure of anything else I could focus on. I hope for a 5/5 next year, though.
Michael Gartenberg: The digital home is a mess, and Apple is doing its best to tame it in an Apple way. No one is doing a better job but no one is doing a great job either for consumers to implement.
Steven Aquino: As an Apple user, I love the idea of HomeKit. The smart home makes tasks like turning lights on and off more accessible. What frustrates me, however, is its unreliability. I see “No Response” statuses way more often than I’d like, and it sullies the overall experience.
Christina Warren: I don’t understand why Apple continues to pretend to invest in this area. Pro tip: use Home Assistant, the excellent open-source project that will let all your IoT stuff talk to one another using whatever you want — rather than trying to get HomeKit to do what it claims it is going to do.
John Gruber: I can’t name one improvement to HomeKit or anything Home-related in 2024, and this is a platform sorely in need of many improvements. Fingers crossed for 2025, though. I know there are talented people on that team, and they have to be up to something.
Adam Engst: Did anything happen in 2024?
Eric Slivka: 2025 sounds like it might be the year of the home for Apple, so 2024 didn’t see very much. The HomePod family managed only to replace the Space Gray mini with a Midnight one. HomeKit remains finicky at times, and I’m not sure Matter has helped much.
David Sparks: This year, Apple made many nice quality-of-life improvements, including better Matter support, control center widgets, and (in my experience) more platform stability. There’s room for improvement, and I am interested in Apple possibly making its own accessories. But overall, I think Apple moved the needle in a positive direction.
Casey Liss: The following is what I wrote for the 2024 report card. Word for word. Every word of it remains true, except now I’m using Home Assistant instead of Homebridge. I bumped my rating from 2 → 1 because, holy smokes, can we get some forward progress here, please? Same as it ever was. HomeKit is unreliable and doesn’t work with enough devices. It pains me that I have to run Homebridge. That’s not necessarily Apple’s fault, but it’s also not not Apple’s fault. Matter seems to be a total nothingburger. Same story: not their fault, but not not their fault. Though I’ve never owned a HomePod, I’ve heard continual grumbling of them failing. No thanks.
Michael Tsai: My HomePod continues to not work well for Siri or music. This year, I dipped my toes into the Matter ecosystem. I was pleased to find that it all “just worked,” though the automation options are a bit limited, and I still don’t like the Home app.
Paul Kafasis: Someday, the Home app and smart home controls will be better. They are still not this year, though! I have assorted Shortcuts to do things, and they seem to have gotten slower.
Rich Mogull: As a 20-year home automation enthusiast with over 100 connected devices and a lot of automation code, I have historically rated this lower, but the combo of the Home app and Siri just gets the job done these days. I have no issues connecting what I need to and making it do what I want. A better Siri could easily bump this to a 5.
Shelly Brisbin: Make the Home app better. It’s still awful.
Matt Birchler: I scored this right down the middle because I don’t recall Apple doing much this year in the home category. However, I do have all of my smart home items in the Home app, and it works pretty well for me. In a post-Matter world, I have my choice of apps to use for this since my devices show up everywhere, but I still gravitate towards Apple’s app.
Craig Hockenberry: If you had told me ten years ago that I’d have a phone app that controlled my 104-year-old home, I’d have laughed. Yet here we are: thanks to HomeKit, lights, heating, entertainment, and even a coffee pot are all seamlessly connected.
Peter Cohen: Does Apple have a Home strategy? Does it really Matter?
John Siracusa: Siri continues to be a boat anchor weighing down the HomePod and other HomeKit accessories. Apple Intelligence hasn’t even come to most home devices and probably won’t until they get hardware upgrades.
Marco Arment: HomeKit continues to mostly work, but the promised world of Matter has still not materialized. The HomePod remains a buggy mess, and there are few signs of effort on either front.
Benjamin Mayo: Apple kinda skipped this year as far as the smart home is concerned, so it’s hard to really pass judgment positively or negatively. I was disappointed by the lack of any Apple Intelligence strategy for the HomePod, though.
Chance Miller: With the continued rollout of Matter, I expected a bigger upgrade to the Home app and HomeKit ecosystem in 2024. That didn’t happen. Apple has already lost so much of this market to other companies, but I’m hoping to see a renewed focus in 2025 with new hardware products and much-needed improvements to the Home app.
Stephen Hackett: HomeKit continues to hum along, working better and better each year. The ecosystem continues to expand; if Matter ever really arrives, which ecosystem a particular product supports will become a moot question. Rumors are swirling about Apple entering new markets, with cameras, locks, and even smart screens a possibility for 2025 or later. We will have to judge those offerings if/when they arrive, but I’m fascinated to see what Apple would bring to the table.
Federico Viticci: My entire apartment is wired to HomeKit, but I don’t love HomeKit because I’m tired of purchasing third-party hardware that doesn’t have the same degree of quality control that Apple typically brings to the table. I’m intrigued by the idea of Apple finally waking up and making a HomePod with a screen that could potentially serve as a flexible, interactive home hub. That’s a first step, and I hope it won’t disappoint. Seriously, though: I just would love for Apple to make routers again.
Andrew Laurence: This technology enthusiast has yet to embrace Home or any of the “smart” home generations. All I hear about it is janky futzing and interoperability issues. These sound like problems, not solutions. Call me when it achieves the “Spouse acceptance factor” that TiVo had in 2000.
Quinn Nelson: Another year, another bare-minimum effort from Apple to make any meaningful strides in the smart home space—beyond some obligatory Matter point updates. Apple Intelligence should play a key role in the home ecosystem, but the necessary software and hardware just aren’t there yet. Honestly, it feels like we’re still a few years away from Apple finally recommitting to the platform that needs it the most.
Rob Griffiths: The Home app is a dreadful piece of software. Although I’m fairly technical, I still find it confusing, and the layout and home screen design are abysmal.
Joe Rosensteel: I have experienced many bugs with Home. Even after I switched to the new home architecture, the tvOS 18.0 beta broke, and Apple TVs could not be used as a home hub for a few months. I replaced a bunch of WeMo smart plugs with Eve Energy smart plugs for no good reason other than WeMo just got flakey. There is no forward progress on the Home app, which remains a clunky pain in the butt. I still can’t add or remove seasonal devices (like smart plugs for my Christmas decorations) without it freaking out. I have Siri tell me it can’t turn on a scene from my Watch, but it can from my iPhone. It’s just a pervasive irritation that works often enough that I don’t rip it all out.
Jeff Carlson: Still a mess, even though some of that is outside of Apple’s control. But come on, it’s been like this for years. Maybe 2025 will be the Year of Matter or whatever. I’ll save this comment for next year’s survey.
James Thomson: How long have I been giving Apple the benefit of the doubt that this will be the year they turn around their Home strategy?
Zac Hall: Home is a category that remains in the Six Colors Report Card lineup.
Allison Sheridan: I continue to be disappointed in the Home app itself. The interface isn’t getting less baffling than it ever was, even for a seasoned user. Scenes vs. Automations continue to break my brain. “One of your devices didn’t respond” is a message that could use a slight improvement; WHICH ONE??? The only good news I see on this front is that at CES, Matter was all the rage, causing vendors to proudly display compatibility with HomeKit.
Charles Arthur: Never improves. The commands haven’t changed: being able to put an IF statement in would make such a difference. (Yes, you can do it with Shortcuts if you have the patience, but who does? Why should you have to divert out of the Home app, which has Actions, to Shortcuts?)
Dr. Drang: I like my new HomePods mini, but Siri still hampers their value.
Carolina Milanesi: Does Apple even care anymore?
Glenn Fleishman: I’m giving Home a low rating because, despite improvements to the Home app across platforms, including the important issue of granting guests access, it’s still a bloody mess of an interface. I’ve added several smart things to my network in recent months: a lock, outlet switches to control lights, a porch HomeKit bulb, more cameras, a doorbell cam, and a thermostat in a guest room—the management process is not wonderful. It’s inflexible, things break, and the connections among devices feel fragile. Apple hasn’t managed to convince many more manufacturers to buy into HomeKit, which means the set of supported options hasn’t grown much, particularly in the doorbell market. Automations remain limited and frustrating about what you can use as triggers and linking activities. For instance, I’d like to set my porchlight to go on for some time in the evening to early morning but also have it turn on when someone approaches the house other times, then turn off within minutes after that if it’s not within the period it should be continuously on. It cannot be done (to my knowledge, testing, and inquiry). I feel like some X10 systems of many years gone by had greater configuration options than I can achieve in some cases with Home. Even setting up a simple “away on vacation” setting requires lots of grouping and programming, and I am unable to see how I could set up random on/off times, which are usual to simulate people at home. (Some third-party apps for HomeKit-connected outlets and lamps offer these features.)The new sharing feature, too, doesn’t let me share lights—only locks, alarms, etc. So someone can’t housesit and be able to access the house’s lights and such without a full invitation. I’d like Apple to put in a lot of rethink about Home in general and come up with something dramatically better that fits the quantity and utility of what HomeKit is good for.
Apple TV
How would you rate how the Apple TV hardware and tvOS software platform went in 2024? Consider anything you deem relevant to the platform. (Do not address the Apple TV+ streaming service.)
Matt Birchler: After a few years of tvOS updates making the platform more annoying and more clearly an advertising platform for the shows Apple thinks I should watch more than what I am currently watching, it was nice for tvOS not to move further down this road in 2024. However, I recently used Google TV for a few weeks and was shocked to find numerous features that I greatly preferred on that platform. I really do hope Apple is looking at competitors and finding the good stuff they can adopt in their box.
Rich Mogull: There is not a single other privacy-preserving device for the streaming age. Not one. And the Apple TV works well and looks and sounds better than nearly anything else.
Joe Rosensteel: Apple really isn’t making any progress on tvOS. I use my Apple TV every day, and it is the only set-top box I would recommend to people, but that doesn’t mean Apple perfected the form. Things are more or less in the same state they were in at the end of 2023 when the Home app was updated with that sidebar that mostly can’t be customized. We still don’t have a unified Home and TV app experience. We don’t have anything for live entertainment short of sports notifications. We don’t have any kind of firm policy on pause screen ads (see the YouTube screensaver controversy from 2024). Apple hasn’t enticed anyone new to add support for the jog wheel they introduced on the remote in 2021.
James Thomson: Hardware not updated since 2022, software feels like it barely changes each year, and yet still the best streaming device to buy.
Allison Sheridan: Nothing went wrong but it’s been two years since they’ve changed the hardware.
Steven Aquino: The Apple TV box is laughably over-engineered for what it mainly does: stream content. I appreciate the horsepower, to be sure, but the point stands. Software-wise, I’m still holding my breath for tvOS to have its iOS 7 moment. The grid of icons UI is good in some ways, but on a screen as large as a television’s, there is a lot of untapped potential. Widgets, etc.
Chance Miller: The hardware feels as uninspired as ever, but the Apple TV is still the best streaming set-top box. Everything else is a poorly designed, ad-ridden mess. The Apple TV app could sure use some love, though.
Quinn Nelson: Little was done, but little was needed.
Benjamin Mayo: A minor year for the Apple TV box with no new hardware in sight. However, tvOS 18 did include a handful of niceties, like automatic subtitles and a much better Enhance Dialogue algorithm.
Casey Liss: The Apple TV remains a product in Apple’s lineup. I am an Apple TV apologist and superfan. Other than a couple of Nintendo consoles, it’s the only thing that’s connected to my TV. We watch live TV using the wonderful Channels app. We watch movies and shows on Plex, the infuriating Apple TV app, and Disney+. My wife and I do our exercise using a couple of apps on the Apple TV. It’s is our TV, for all intents and purposes. However, our Apple TV HD is getting really long in the tooth, and though we only use it on rare occasions, it’s still getting pretty painful. It’s our third-tier Apple TV, and I’m anxiously awaiting the time when we can upgrade the main one, and thus trickle our 4K first-gen down and retire the HD. We haven’t really had any noteworthy changes to tvOS in… years? While on the one side, I’m not sure what I’m really seeking; on the other side, it feels like Apple has mostly forgotten that tvOS exists.
John Siracusa: I continue to be frustrated with the poor quality of many of the streaming video apps I use on Apple TV, both in terms of bugs and interface design. Is that Apple’s fault? Maybe only to the extent that these apps are using standard Apple frameworks for things like video playback. But Apple also isn’t exactly leading by example when it comes to user-centric design. TV apps everywhere continue to prioritize the needs of the streaming service over my needs as a viewer. I want to continue watching my show. They want to shove a bunch of new content in my face while making the show I was just watching as difficult to find as possible. And they don’t seem to care if they lose my place or fail to track my progress. And heaven forbid I go back to refresh my memory by watching a scene from an earlier episode. Now my current place in the series is apparently impossible for modern technology to discern.
Craig Hockenberry: The only thing I hate about Apple TV is how every damn service has its own weird user interface. Still, the Apple TV is the best general-purpose entertainment device for the post-cable world.
Michael Gartenberg: It feels like Apple TV has not only gone back to being a hobby but a hobby that you started investing a lot of money in and got bored with. I’d give it a lower score, but the Snoopy screensaver is cute.
Rosemary Orchard: Still using my Apple TV from last year?!
Paul Kafasis: I’m a big fan of the Apple TV. I’m willing to pay a premium over other hardware to get an ad-free, upscale experience. That said, I’d like to see some new hardware here.
Michael Tsai: Nothing much happened this year, though I like the new feature of automatically showing subtitles when you rewind a bit. I still don’t like the software or the remote.
Lex Friedman: My cable company discontinued its support for Cable Cards, so I switched to its cable-over-streaming offer. However, this functionality works only on iOS, Fire Tablets, and Apple TV. So, I’m now reliant on Apple TV to watch cable TV, which I use almost exclusively to watch NFL games. It works just fine.
Marco Arment: Apple TV continues to be a product in Apple’s lineup.
Andrew Laurence: Nearly all our TV viewing goes through our Apple TV 4K. In the “streaming box” category, Apple competes at 5-10x the cost of its popular rivals. As a middle-aged technology nerd, I value its user experience and privacy stance. My college-aged kids are content with the built-in TV apps or a $25 stick from Roku or Amazon. Apple TV can play more roles than just a streaming box; is the whole, in fact, greater than the sum of its parts?
Myke Hurley: Steady.
Adam Engst: I appreciate that Apple has finally improved its photo screensavers, but why does the Portraits screensaver, which works like the iPhone Lock Screen/Apple Watch Photos face, ruin every photo by displaying the time over it?
Eric Slivka: No new Apple TV hardware for the second year in a row, and only minor tvOS updates leave us wanting as we await the home revolution of 2025. I would still like to see a cheaper stick-style Apple TV option.
John Gruber: I’m a very happy daily (well, nightly) Apple TV user. But what exactly improved or changed in 2024? Anything? It may well be fair to say the current hardware — Apple TV 4K 3rd-gen, which shipped in November 2022 — is fine, and this is a hardware platform that only needs updates every 3 or 4 years, but we’re grading what happened in 2024. Also: I feel like Apple has never yet made a truly great remote control for this platform.
Christina Warren: Apple obviously cares a lot about Apple TV+. It seems to care a lot less about tvOS and the Apple TV hardware. Another year, more lack of updates on hardware or significant updates on software and a price delta between other boxes that doesn’t improve. Especially since Apple has good TV+ apps on Roku, Fire TV and Google TV — not to mention stuff for TV makers like LG and Samsung.
Jeff Carlson: Apple TV still doesn’t feel like it’s changed a whole lot, but I still swear by it because it’s not the crapware that every other vendor creates.
Stephen Hackett: For the 2023 Report Card, I wrote, “The Apple TV hardware has been so overpriced and overpowered for so long that it feels like I’m wasting everyone’s time by mentioning it again.” I also said, “tvOS continues to feel trapped between Apple’s vision for the platform and what it can work out with streaming giants like Netflix.” Yup.
Carolina Milanesi: Nothing to see here – no pun intended!
Andy Ihnatko: Until Apple decides to give Apple TV a mission beyond “run streaming apps and generally be invisible,” it’s a solid 3 out of 5 by its nature. I’m giving it a 4 because of the new Snoopy screensavers.
Glenn Fleishman: I still find tvOS’s UI primitive, but I use it for about 95% of my video watching across many apps, and it generally serves the purpose. Feels stale compared to other options and sometimes frustrating in terms of scrubs and basic rewind/fast forwarding. This may be a function of app implementation, such as how YouTube stinks and others don’t.
Services
How would you rate Apple’s performance in services in 2024? Consider the App Store (from a consumer perspective), Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple Card, Apple Pay, AppleCare, and anything else you deem appropriate.
Brian Mattucci: I’m thrilled that Apple Music Classical finally got CarPlay support, but it’s still missing on Mac and AVP.
Michael Tsai: iMessage and Siri still work poorly for me. Apple Pay and the rest of iCloud are OK. The other services don’t interest me except that their existence seems to be warping Apple’s product design decisions.
Craig Hockenberry: I’m not a fan of how pitching services has become part of the modern Apple software experience. When I check my stock portfolio, I don’t need to be reminded of Apple News+.
Carolina Milanesi: The Apple TV+ lineup remained strong, and the sports win is important for Apple, especially in light of Vision Pro. I have some concerns around Apple Card and savings as Apple looks for a new partner.
Matt Deatherage: Barely noticed any improvements, didn’t notice any regressions.
Chance Miller: The prices for all of Apple’s services remained the same in 2024 while the quality of each continued to improve. Apple Arcade continues to be underrated, and I’ve found myself opening Apple News on a surprisingly regular basis. In particular, the election coverage in the Apple News app was top-notch. Apple Music excels in a world where Spotify continues to combine music, podcasts, videos, and other junk into a single interface.
Kirk McElhearn: Still only 5GB based storage for iCloud, which means a lot of people don’t back up their iPhones. This is unconscionable these days and borders on forced bundling, requiring users to pay for extra storage. Even if it’s only a dollar a month, the mere fact that users have to enter into a regular transaction with Apple seems monopolistic. There should be options to use other services to back up the device. I have the basic Apple One subscription, and it only comes with 50 GB of storage, so I have to pay another $3 a month to get enough. This all feels like Apple is nickel and diming people.
Matt Birchler: Much like the home category, I am struggling to think of anything notable Apple did in services this year, and I guess I think they’re mostly fine.
Steven Aquino: I wish Apple would revisit the Apple TV branding to make it clearer. There’s the box and the streaming service, but I’d bet most people associate “Apple TV” with TV+ instead of the box. The TV app adds more complexity and confusion in terms of naming.
Brent Simmons: Most of the services I’ve tried work okay, but I’m annoyed by all the advertising for them.
Paul Kafasis: I think Apple is spread too thin, and a whole lot of these items are distractions that aren’t worth their time.
Lex Friedman: Apple TV+ and Apple Music remain very good. Apple Fitness and Apple News remain fine. Apple Pay is wonderful. iCloud storage is still an issue in 2025. C’mon, Apple.
David Sparks: I understand how important services are to Apple and Wall Street. I simultaneously fear how much building services revenue now enters the equation for new products. Also, the free iCloud tear of 5GB was first announced in 2011. That was 14 years ago. As a point of reference, the human genome project took 13 years.
Dan Moren: I use almost all of Apple’s services, and they are fine. But very few of them make me want to stand up and cheer. It’s eye-rolling that the company still hasn’t upgraded that 5GB base iCloud tier.
Myke Hurley: The content! It continues to be great. There are always Apple TV+ shows in my favorites of the year, and this one was no different. Slow Horses, Bad Monkey. Great work.
Benjamin Mayo: Apple didn’t make a big deal about the personalized ‘New’ tab in Apple Music, but it makes a big difference. The app feels a lot more vibrant and alive, with rolling recommendations and suggestions relevant to individual music tastes. It filled a big gap in the Apple Music offering.
Philip Michaels: If Apple silicon was the smartest move Apple did in years, then setting up a bunch of services with recurring revenue that tapped into all those installed devices was the second smartest
Jessica Dennis: I still love a fair amount of Apple TV+ content, and sometimes Apple News+ comes in handy. I’m an Apple One Premier subscriber, and luckily for Apple, I have not sat down to do the math and come to the conclusion that it’s probably not really worth it for me.
Shelly Brisbin: Apple offers enough services now that it’s hard to craft an overall narrative. Some, like Apple Music and iCloud, are great. Apple News+, which I want to love because I believe in a news environment where multiple platforms and ways of staying informed can thrive, hasn’t taken hold or made a compelling case for its own unique value. Also, on the negative side of the ledger, a recent issue with a subscription purchased through TV+ left me stuck in a limbo of automated prompts, with no easy way to contact a human. This is an issue plenty of people face, but Apple tends to get more of a pass than other companies, it seems to me. There’s no Genius Bar for services issues.
Rich Mogull: We are an Apple One family. The storage expansion solved my biggest gripe. News is my go-to news app, and across the family, we make heavy use of all of the services except Apple Arcade. The privacy features of iCloud, like Private Relay and Hide My Email, are underrated. Passwords and Keychain sync are borderline disruptive.
Marco Arment: Apple TV+ is the flashy star of the services, reliably delivering great new shows and seasons. iCloud and the service infrastructure remain the quiet heroes, working reliably behind the scenes to make everything else work so we don’t notice. But a massive chunk of “services” revenue comes from inconvenient truths that Apple wishes we wouldn’t pay attention to. Look at these nice TV shows!
Michael Gartenberg: Most services are somewhat stagnant, which is why we see all sorts of bundles that bring services into users’ hands they wouldn’t necessarily buy, like Apple News. I was particularly disappointed that there’s a song on Apple Music called “Let’s Go Bomb Tel-Aviv.” I expect more from Apple.
Michael E. Cohen: The plethora of services offered can sometimes be overwhelming to navigate or even understand. That said, I have had little problem accessing and using many of them.
Roman Loyola: I guess I should stop waiting for Apple to increase the free base storage amount.
Stephen Hackett: All in all, Apple is doing a good job with its various Services. TV+ is home to some of the best storytelling, and Fitness+ is inspiring and fun. iCloud syncs data more reliably than ever. Apple Arcade has become home to many rebooted classic iOS games, while Apple Podcasts has made the industry more accessible than ever. There are still sore spots, but none of them are new. iCloud’s storage tiers are stingy and oddly spaced out, and the ads in News+ continue to spoil an otherwise solid experience.
Charles Arthur: TV+ has been disappointing. Slow Horses is the standout series. Most else is indifferent and uninteresting.
Glenn Fleishman: Everything worked for me this year!
Christina Warren: My continued line about Apple Services is that they are not best in class in any area. But the ubiquity and the way they work with Apple products keeps me paying. But in my mind, there isn’t an Apple service that is best in class in any way, and what I ultimately pay for is the convenience. I will give the new Passwords app a shoutout because I think it can replace a 1Password or Bitwarden or LastPass subscription for many families. I still pay for 1Password, and I’ll continue to, but for most people in the Apple ecosystem, I think Passwords is good enough. So that’s a bright spot. Everything else. Meh. It’s fine. But I wouldn’t call any of them best in class.
Andrew Laurence: In the name of all that is holy, Siri and Apple Music’s default for “play this song” to be the most recent release version in my library needs to be stopped. If I say, “Play the song Born to Run,” the original 1975 release is the only correct answer.
John Siracusa: Apple really needs to give some attention to the client apps for its “lesser” services on its “lesser” platforms. The Music app on macOS is in desperate need of some love, and iCloud Drive in the Finder is still maddeningly inconsistent and buggy.
Howard Oakley: Apple’s ‘curating’ of the App Store remains lamentably poor and isn’t improving.
John Gruber: TV+ is far from the biggest streaming service, but I’d argue adamantly that it has by far the highest batting average for quality content. Movies are still a weakness: “Wolfs” should have been great but was mediocre and forgettable. And that was TV+’s best movie of the year. But TV+ series continue to excel: Slow Horses had another crackerjack season, For All Mankind finished a good fourth season, and new shows like Dark Matter, Bad Monkey, and Presumed Innocent were all strong. TV+ is also a great streaming platform for small kids. iCloud, especially with iCloud Plus, remains secure, fast, and reliable. It enables so much seamless continuity (hence Apple’s “Continuity” umbrella brand for those features) across devices. But here we are again, with me repeating the same gripe from previous years: it’s miserly that Apple is still offering only a mere 5 GB of storage at the free tier and has left the paid-tier storage allotments unchanged forever. I wonder how many zillions of iPhone users out there don’t have device backups because they only have a free iCloud account with 5 GB? The Apple One bundle is a good deal, but the free iCloud tier should be genuinely useful for backing up a modern iPhone. And paid Plus tiers should now offer more storage than they do.
Brett Terpstra: I really enjoy Apple TV+ shows, but I have moved away from Apple for news and music. There are just better services out there. I appreciate Apple Pay and my Apple Card, but the only changes in that area this year that I know of were APY decreases on Savings accounts.
James Thomson: AppleTV+ programming continued to be a highlight in an otherwise lackluster—or, at best, stagnant—set of service offerings.
Allison Sheridan: Apple TV+ is knocking it out of the park on show content. Developers can now confidently include iCloud syncing in their apps, making a seamless and delightful experience for users. Fitness+ continues to add new workouts, and the interface improvements make it easier to get to your saved workouts.
Casey Liss: We. Still. Get. 5GB. Of. Storage. For. Free. On. iCloud. Apple services are mostly good on the surface. Fitness+ is great, although (like the Vision Pro) I wish more content got added more frequently. Apple TV+ continues to fire on all cylinders — as I write this, I just finished Shrinking season 2, and I am counting the days to Severance season 2. Apple Music is pretty good, but annoying issues with the app on all platforms wear me down. Any time music just doesn’t play — without any sort of error messaging, naturally — I get just a bit more frustrated. Thankfully, Spotify has worked hard to enshittify their app recently, so I am not feeling the longing I once did for a return to the land of the green and black. I know services are printing money for Apple, but the value for money for consumers is bad and getting worse. We should have had more iCloud storage years ago — especially at lower tiers. Every time I see a NEARLY FORTY DOLLAR bill for AppleOne, I die a little inside. Which means I’m dying a little inside twelve times a year.
Nick Heer: As Apple’s services business grows, it begins to do things that feel uncharacteristic but are increasingly commonplace. Partnering with Taboola is one example. Flaky client software is another. Also, remember how lots of people were locked out of their Apple IDs in April, and we still have no idea why?
Dr. Drang: I’ve been very pleased with Fitness+, which surprised me. I do wish it would get smarter about the kinds of workouts I tend to use and stop showing me stuff I don’t care about. I guess I should bite the bullet and build up a library so I don’t have to hunt.
Rosemary Orchard: Puzzles, etc., are still not available outside of America!!!
Quinn Nelson: Apple TV+ continues to stand out as the shining beacon of excellence in an otherwise neglected lineup of services.
Federico Viticci: I switched from Apple Music to Spotify last year, so the only Apple services we use in our household now are iCloud storage with family sharing and Apple TV+. I love Apple TV+, but they should make a native app for Android so that I can watch their TV shows on my Lenovo media tablet. As for iCloud, I use it for Shortcuts, app integrations, and basic iCloud Drive storage, but I don’t trust it for work-related assets because it’s so damn slow. For whatever reason, with Dropbox, I can upload heavy video files in seconds, thanks to my fiber connection, but with iCloud, I have to wait a full day for those assets to sync across devices. iCloud Drive needs more controls and tools for people who work with files and share them with other people.
Reliability of Apple Hardware
How would you rate the overall reliability of Apple’s hardware in 2024? Were things better, worse, or pretty much the same in terms of the hardware working the way you expected? Were there issues? Consider anything you deem appropriate.
Benjamin Mayo: Stellar year as far as reliability goes. I can’t recall any scandal at all, which is perhaps a first.
Matt Birchler: It’s amazing how reliable and consistent Apple hardware is. The iPhone, especially, is made at a scale where basically no other product in the world matches, and it still releases on time and at very high quality without fail.
Paul Kafasis: Apple hardware has been great for me.
Marco Arment: We live in a golden era of Apple hardware reliability that’s so good that it’s easily taken for granted. No other consumer tech company executes at this level of hardware reliability.
Chance Miller: Another year without any major complaints in this category is a victory for everyone.
Rob Griffiths: Despite the foibles with software, I’ve only had one hardware problem in recent memory (a new Studio had a bad motherboard).
Michael Tsai: My most recent hardware has been working well this year. My 2019 Intel MacBook Pro’s internal SSD partially failed. The Mac is out of AppleCare, and the SSD is non-replaceable, so now it can only be used with an external SSD, which is inconvenient for a portable computer and somewhat unreliable (with sleep, etc.). This would be worse with an Apple Silicon–based MacBook Pro because, for security reasons, they no longer support booting from external storage when the internal storage isn’t working. Without being able to replace the SSD, the whole Mac would be dead.
Kirk McElhearn: I haven’t had any hardware issues on any of my Apple devices this year.
Dan Moren: Hardware reliability has been solid for the last few years. I can’t remember the last time I had a hardware problem that was not caused by actual damage. (Sorry, MacBook Air screen.)
Jessica Dennis: All my Apple hardware has been pretty much rock solid.
Howard Oakley: Hardware problems remain surprisingly uncommon, as far as I’m aware.
Christina Warren: I got my mom a 16GB M3 MacBook Air for Christmas, replacing a 2018 Retina MacBook Air — a laptop that, in 2018, had 8GB of RAM and that I paid extra to get it with 256GB SSD. Her new model fortunately got the Apple Intelligence-led RAM upgrade, even if 256GB of base storage is abhorrent in 2024. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I was reminded of just how bad Apple’s laptops were 6 years ago. Butterfly keyboards. Chips that required loud fans to cool if they were in thin chassis. Performance that frankly peaked in 2015. I spent $1400 on that 2018 MacBook Air and it was never a good performer (we didn’t have any reliability issues except for a minor hiccup last year that made me learn the ridiculous requirements for rescuing a Mac that won’t boot post macOS 11) and I’ve felt angry about that basically the whole time she owned it. When the MBA got a RAM upgrade and Best Buy had a loss-leader price for Black Friday, I jumped at the chance to upgrade her and I feel like this is going to be an excellent laptop. It’s really a testament to the work Apple has done since 2020 or 2021 to re-earn their trust, at least as far as laptops go. My iPads, iPhones, AirPods, Apple Watches, and other devices have all had a good year as far as reliability goes.
Federico Viticci: I have never had an Apple product fail on me, hardware-wise, in the 16 years I’ve been covering the company. If there’s one area where Apple is leagues ahead of its competition, I think it’s hardware manufacturing and overall experience.
John Gruber: No news remains great news in this category.
Stephen Hackett: Apple has long been a leader in hardware reliability. Now, with the company publishing repair guides and making parts available to end-users and small shops, users have more options than ever when something goes wrong.
Carolina Milanesi: I have had some issues with the iPhone and AirPods, but nothing critical.
Michael E. Cohen: None of my many Apple devices had reliability issues this year.
Brian Mattucci: Touch ID is still mostly a miss for me on the Mac, even after upgrading to the USB-C keyboard.
Software
How would you rate the overall quality of Apple’s operating system software in 2024? Were things better, worse, or pretty much the same in terms of the operating systems working as expected? Where there issues? How would you rate the overall quality of Apple’s apps, including bundled apps and apps it sells separately, in 2024? Consider anything you deem appropriate.
John Siracusa: Apple really needs to shift the balance between new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements. Today’s Apple vastly undervalues the process of “polishing” existing features. There needs to be way, way more of it, especially on macOS.
Craig Hockenberry: I never tell my wife about upcoming changes in Apple software. I’ve found it’s a good way to get an unfiltered opinion about new things, both good and bad. Let’s just say there was a string of expletives regarding the changes to Photos on iOS. I’m seeing a trend towards complexity in Apple software. The recent changes in Mail categorization made no sense to me—and they were enabled by default! I had a similar reaction to Focus modes, but at least that wasn’t forced upon me. It feels like the designers and developers at Apple know their products too well. I’m sure a lot of these changes feel important to the folks working on them, but to someone who’s not following the products so closely, it’s just a series of confounding hurdles.
Dave Hamilton: I wish Apple would focus more on reliability and less on changing features that have just been integrated into our workflows. I appreciate that they don’t want to stagnate, but wholesale changes to what might seem like minor features (I’m looking at you, Safari’s “Add to Dock” functionality) can be massively disruptive to one’s workflow.
Brett Terpstra: I love Sequoia. It doesn’t have groundbreaking features, but it was a painless upgrade that broke very few apps, and the minor improvements have been really nice. It’s kind of the same story on iOS. It’s nothing to write home about, but it’s reliable and has appreciated touches.
Dan Moren: Apple Intelligence: There’s a weird sort of reality distortion field operating here. Never has Apple spent more time on features that seem important strategically but actually feel mostly like things people don’t care about or won’t use. I’m not a generative AI naysayer, but Apple’s features here are uninspiring and lackluster. The biggest thing they rolled out on this front was Private Cloud Compute which is truly impressive technology with, so far, very little to merit its use.
Chance Miller: Apple lowered the bar for software quality in its race to ship Apple Intelligence features. There are genuinely useful Apple Intelligence features, like in-line summaries in the Mail app, but botched features like notification summaries are a plague on the overall experience. The new icon tinting and Home Screen customization options in iOS 18 are great. It’s easy to dunk on some of the uglier creations on social media, but I’m glad Apple has removed the guardrails to let people do what they want with their phones.
Joe Rosensteel: Apple has been slipping on software quality for a while, but with the focus on Apple Intelligence, the quality control has really suffered. We can’t even point to Apple Intelligence and say, “It was all worth it so we could have this” because all the Apple Intelligence software isn’t just buggy but poorly conceived from the outset.
Casey Liss: Literally the same thing I wrote about software reliability in 2023: New shiny continues to trump reliability. It’s not awful, but it’s not great. Same as it ever was. New this year, Apple Intelligence and Image Playgrounds are mostly a dud. It was clearly a feature done while Apple was on its heels — a way to say, “We can do that too! Look!” I actually mostly like the notification summaries, but every time I try to have fun with Image Playground, it ends up being a frustrating failure.
Myke Hurley: Apple Intelligence has been a thorn in the side this year. There are features that I do like, but the overall sentiment is not good for many valid reasons. I like Notification Summaries, but I know they are okay at best. For me, though, Image Playground was a mistake. They should have been able to see this, and it should not have shipped. It’s a bad version of something that isn’t great to begin with.
Michael Tsai: The software quality slide continues. The same old bugs are still there. Finder views still don’t update or reveal properly, and external drives still don’t mount reliably. macOS Sequoia brought new problems, particularly related to storage. Now, it’s sometimes impossible to unmount drives cleanly. Time Machine deleted lots of my old backups unnecessarily and had trouble completing new backups. Third-party backup utilities are also having trouble, as Sequoia broke ASR’s ability to create bootable backups. Multiple of my Macs now have regular kernel panics, which never happened before. There are a variety of new networking issues. Safari often stops working under heavy load, so, though it’s still my default browser, I’m increasingly incorporating Chrome and Firefox. I wish that, instead of focusing on Apple Intelligence, Apple had focused on improving the quality of the OS and on improving the design of Music and the other media/services apps.
Rob Griffiths: Both are just sort of “meh.” Nothing earth-shattering, long-standing bugs remain, and the Mac continues its horrendous slide toward the iOS UI.
Howard Oakley: Although OS and apps have been generally good, there have been some moments, such as the serious bugs in macOS 15.0 that had to be corrected early and the failure to progress other apps. Perhaps most disappointing is Apple’s lack of insight into what’s important to users: for example, macOS virtualization on Apple silicon continues to omit any support for App Store apps. While I understand the internal conflicts behind that (over authorization), I find it hard to believe that Apple wasn’t aware of them before it even launched virtualization. Yet, after enabling iCloud access in Sequoia, it has still not done anything about enabling App Store apps, which greatly reduces the value of virtualization for many.
Paul Kafasis: As I said, can Apple get off the annual OS update cycle yet? Given the new features in .x releases in the past couple of years, it’s clear that even they don’t believe in it at present. We don’t need new OSes every year, and Apple can’t actually provide them every 12 months. Slow it down—it’s really OK.
David Sparks: I continue to be impressed by Apple’s Productivity suite with annual solid, updates. I’m reserving judgment on Apple Intelligence until we see more.
Rich Mogull: I have a lot of devices, and they have all been quite stable.
Andrew Laurence: The Apple Intelligence rollout has been a FOMO-fueled own goal. The incremental feature rollout belies the aggressive advertising, the hoisted petard of notification summaries, the doesn’t-pass-the-red-face “beta” excuse, and the unknown timeline of fulfilling the 2024 WWDC announcements. As I type this, the lying eyes of Apple Intelligence news summaries are reaching the mockery strata once held by Newton poetry.
Brent Simmons: Hardware quality is far ahead of software quality.
Rosemary Orchard: I wish Apple would not push beta features like Apple Intelligence on everyone. My parents had it without me setting it up and were asking me if they needed a ChatGPT subscription for better Siri!
Christina Warren: Putting the Apple Intelligence of it all aside — I think this was a decent year for Apple’s main platforms. Are there some regressions and annoyances in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia? Absolutely.
Nick Heer: Apple’s computers are lots of things, but, ultimately, they are tools. I would like them to feel more confidence-inspiring. Apple Intelligence flaws are surely going to show up several times here. Setting that aside, I find plenty of bugs in Apple’s operating system, even in core features like window management. There was a wild layout bug in iOS 18’s Now Playing widget that shipped in public versions for two subsequent versions. I feel like there was a time when that would be more embarrassing. Nearly everyone I know was, at some point this year, prompted to use Check In and share their location with their parents; none of us live with our parents. Bugs aside, the introduction of yet more nagging security alerts in MacOS Sequoia continues an unwanted trend. My problematic opinion of the year is that I really like the new Photos app on iOS 18. Also, the new Mail app on iOS. I continue to ask whomever at Apple is available to please fix the Music app on MacOS.
Benjamin Mayo: This year’s Sports app is entirely new, and I think it takes a pretty novel approach to a sports scores interface. The Live Activities on iPhone and Watch highlight the best of Apple ecosystem integration.
Adam Engst: Apple Intelligence is disappointing, particularly given how much Apple has promoted it. If anything, Siri seems to be getting worse instead of better.
Kirk McElhearn: Please, Apple, take a year off from flooding us with new features and fix bugs across all the operating systems. I’m tired of spending time troubleshooting tiny problems. And AppleCare support for this sort of thing has gotten abysmal in recent years. While I didn’t have any such issues this year, over the past few years, I’ve had numerous cases with AppleCare which were escalated to senior advisors, who told me that they would “take ownership of my case” and from whom I never heard back, even after emailing several times. There seems to be little accountability with AppleCare anymore.
Quinn Nelson: OS updates are typically accompanied by new features—not the promise of new features.
Allison Sheridan: Purely from my perspective, macOS Sequoia seems quite a bit more fiddly than previous OSes. Apps crashing, annoying popups about apps wanting local network access, and, of course, the bug in ASR come to mind. That said, I continue to be delighted with the features of Continuity. Features like having all devices share a clipboard, using a phone to scan a document directly into Finder, or being used as a camera are things I haven’t yet begun to take for granted.
Stephen Hackett: Even with the addition of visionOS, Apple was able to move the ball forward across most of its ecosystem in 2024. Apple continues to ship features simultaneously across the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and beyond. Bugs remain, of course, but it’s been a long time since I’ve spent an afternoon troubleshooting something. Starting with the relaunch of Notes in the iOS 9/OS X El Capitan days, Apple has worked consistently on growing its first-party productivity apps into tools that more and more people can rely on at work. Reminders has gone from some sort of digital Hipster PDA with its card-based UI to a full-blown task manager, complete with robust sharing, a Kanban view, and integration with Calendar. Freeform came out of nowhere to take on some serious contenders from third-party developers. Safari is the true favorite child, with features added every cycle. Photos has become robust and even more useful with the launch of family sharing a couple of years ago. My biggest complaint is the lack of consistency across Apple’s apps. Look no further than Apple’s tools for smart searching. Editing a smart list in Reminders is weirdly different than creating a new smart folder in Mail or Notes, and on iOS in particular, Apple teams seem to be working from different guidelines when it comes to design elements. The new Sports app and Journal use gradients and color in fun ways, while much of iOS is still starkly white and blue. Messages is a hodgepodge of ancient message effects and fun, new text effects that operate in different ways in different parts of the app. It’s time for some UI cleanup across the board, even if that makes the Mac user in me a little nervous that the disease that is System Settings would spread.
Jessica Dennis: The Apple Intelligence stuff is just so underwhelming so far. I wanted Image Playground to be like Google’s Emoji Kitchen, and it’s really, really not. Image Playground does both more and less than what I want — I want a crying cactus, which is a mashup of the crying and cactus emojis, and instead, I get a standard boring AI-generated image that looks like all the rest of the AI “art” (let’s not even go there) these days.
John Gruber: Unchanged comment and grade from a year ago: I have concerns and complaints about aspects of the direction Apple’s software design is headed (or, in some ways, has been now for years), but their software reliability has been very good for me.
Michael E. Cohen: Stuff mostly works. But nothing’s perfect.
Matt Deatherage: Apple Intelligence to date not only doesn’t live up to its potential, it doesn’t live up to the commercials Apple has aired.
Dr. Drang: Apple Intelligence has really hurt Apple’s reputation on both the oversell and underdeliver sides. They advertised features well before they were available, and then when the features arrived, they didn’t have all their parts—a complete inversion of the “old Apple.”
Matt Birchler: I think Apple Intelligence is a mess right now, but the rest of Apple’s operating systems are in pretty good shape, in my view. More updates to iPadOS and tvOS would be great, and parts of Apple’s apps (mostly Shortcuts) can be buggy, but I still use Apple’s platforms and am confident they’re the best ones for me compared to the competition.
Lex Friedman: Image Playground is stupid.
Developer relations
How would you rate the overall relationship between Apple and its third-party developers this year? Consider anything you deem appropriate.
Casey Liss: Lol. I would give this a -5 if I could. Apple’s monopolistic behavior continues unabated — despite the EU’s efforts to… uh… abate it. Apple completely thumbing its nose at the spirit of the new rules, knowing full well how wrong it is, is deplorable. Even though I don’t concur with many of the EU’s rulings, Apple basically saying, “screw you, I’ll do what I want,” is incredibly off-putting. On a happier, if more schadenfreude-y note, it’s been hilarious watching the Vision Pro App Store colossally fail. Developers have been treated like shit by Apple for the better part of a decade, and Apple is now reaping what it sows. Why would developers do Apple a solid and go on faith this [potentially DOA] platform is going to be worth our time and efforts when everywhere we turn, they’re giving us the middle finger? I did the bare minimum for Callsheet, and I almost regret doing that much. Developer documentation remains a perennial yet solvable problem. It has absolutely gotten better, but it’s still really bad.
Andy Ihnatko: 2024 was just a typical year in which Apple expected developers to be grateful for the lavish bounty that the company has so generously provided them and not make trouble. If Apple treated all of its customers the same way they treated developers — who are also Apple customers — we’d all still be waiting for cut copy and paste on the iPhone.
Chance Miller: I don’t think developers embraced Apple Vision Pro with open arms like Apple had anticipated they would. Whether that’s because it’s a niche product or strained developer relations, I’m not sure. Probably a little bit of both. If Apple wants Vision Pro to mature, this is something that needs to be addressed.
Dan Moren: Apple’s pushback to the DMA is perhaps understandable from a business perspective, but it makes the company look petty and recalcitrant. There’s a decided sense that Apple doesn’t know which way the wind is blowing as regards people’s opinions of Big Tech companies.
John Siracusa: Apple’s continued resistance to the avalanche of new regional regulations being forced upon it is not serving the company well. At a certain point, it behooves Apple to embrace the changes and enthusiastically forge a new, more open path across all markets rather than wasting time and energy fragmenting its products and making things as difficult as possible for everyone involved.
Matt Birchler: Early 2024 was all about Apple fighting the U.S. and EU at every turn to not give up any of the restrictive rules they’ve set around monetizing every cent they can remotely justify. I think Apple’s developers and product people love third party devs, but the business people seem to only think those devs should be thankful Apple permits them at all to work on Apple platforms.
Marco Arment: Developer relations remain needlessly strained. Antagonistic positions and greedy policies from Apple’s executives continue to burn developer goodwill, trust, and enthusiasm that the developer-relations team is trying their hardest to retain, but there’s only so much they can do.
Christina Warren: I was going to give this a three but the more I think about it, I really do think this is an area Apple most desperately needs to have some internal “come to Jesus” discussions. The utter failure of the Vision Pro from a developer perspective, coupled with the drama around not just emulators but also the DMA and alt-app stores, shows that the tension between Apple and their platform devs is in as precarious of a place as I can recall seeing it. To be clear, devs are still building amazing apps for all Apple platforms, and I think Apple platforms have the best software in the world (games notwithstanding), but the ability for developers to make a living off that software gets more difficult all the time. And decisions around areas like In App Purchase and subscriptions for content that should never have a 30% fee associated with Apple (for things like Patreon) feel beyond capricious. I’m glad for apps like Delta and third-party app stores that finally allowed emulators in the proper App Store, but the continuous problems emulator devs have getting their apps and updates into the store continue to be frustrating. Jason said it best when he wrote, “the App Store era must end,” and I co-sign that entire essay. (I wish I had written it; amazing job, Jason.) I’m putting this under developer relations because I really do see this as a developer relations problem. Vision Pro, even more than Apple Watch, shows that developers aren’t just going to show up and build apps for Apple’s new platforms anymore. And I can’t blame them.
Nick Heer: What made me score this lower is Apple’s attitude toward regulators generally. I empathize with the company’s reluctance to make changes demanded by what it surely sees as meddling bureaucrats. But it has been obstinate in ways I think are counterproductive for everyone. For example, despite requirements to change its anti-steering measures in one jurisdiction after another, it is holding onto those policies everywhere else. In the European Union, its compliance measures have turned Apple into its own worst enemy.
Craig Hockenberry: Apple is blowing it with developers. Full stop. Look at the general ambivalence towards Vision Pro as a manifestation of this – a new platform needs developers who are excited and ready to explore a product’s capabilities. This did not happen with the headset. It’s a cumulative thing: a lot of folks went into iPad development with the same enthusiasm they had for the iPhone. Then, they realized that supporting the device was a lot of extra work without a lot of extra revenue. Then Apple Watch came along… same thing. You now have a situation where developers are leery of a new platform. Now, throw in some unsavory maneuvers to avoid regulations that let developers choose their path with customers. The new App Store structures are designed by lawyers and accountants, not folks who create software. It’s no surprise to me that all the developers I know have a growing distrust of Apple. Apple is doing a lot of taking these days and not giving back to the developer community that has helped make its products thrive.
Carolina Milanesi: I feel the negativity of previous years has dissipated somewhat
Alex Cox: I have nothing constructive—I just don’t like watching friends getting fucked over for making things people love.
Benjamin Mayo: They might be doing it by kicking and screaming, but the regulatory pressure is improving the developer ecosystem. For example, retro game emulators like Delta are now available worldwide on the App Store!
Michael Tsai: The same old issues with the App Store, documentation, and bug reporting. Nothing seems to be getting better. This was the second year in a row that Xcode shipped with a showstopper bug for Mac developers. Once again, it was reported during the beta period, but there was no urgency to fix it. The Swift toolchain is still crashy and unreliable. Apple continues to write SwiftUI and SwiftData checks that the frameworks can’t cash.
James Thomson: Apple continued its numerous legal battles with countries around the world to extract its cut of developer sales. It was forced to allow third-party App Stores in the EU, but then used supposedly neutral tools like notarization as de facto App Review, the Core Technology Fee, and surrounding rules to deliberately make them as unappealing as possible to developers. Apple should compete on merit, not threats.
Charles Arthur: Vision Pro. EU DMA and the wrangles over third-party app stores. Enough said.
John Gruber: Fourth year in a row with basically the same comment: Resentment over App Store policies continues to build. Frustrations with the App Store review process seem unresolved. Apple’s goal should be for developer relations to be so good that developers look for excuses to create software exclusively for Apple’s platforms. The opposite is happening. The big change globally this year is the Digital Markets Act going into effect in the EU. I stand apart from many in the Cupertino punditry racket in applauding Apple for its compliance efforts. I think it has complied with a terrible law as best it can while protecting its own vision for how its platforms should be designed and work. (And, of course, protecting its own vision for how it should be able to monetize those platforms.) But even I — a guy who thinks Apple has done a remarkable job shipping an enormous amount of work in order to comply with the DMA — can’t and won’t argue that any of Apple’s efforts on the DMA front have repaired or improved its relationship with third-party developers. Despite the situation being largely unchanged, I’ve adjusted my grade on this subject from C to D this year because stagnation is catching up to Apple. More of the same is making matters worse. And I think we saw that with the relative dearth of native app support for Vision Pro. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem with a new platform like VisionOS. The best way to generate developer interest in a new platform is to sell a lot of units to a lot of users who are looking for apps to use and games to play. But the best way to sell a lot of hardware units to a lot of users is to have a deep exclusive-to-the-platform ecosystem of both first- and third-party apps and games. With previous new developer platforms, like iOS and Mac OS X, Apple powered through this initial conundrum by attracting developers who just wanted to create awesome new software for an awesome new platform. That enthusiasm was tempered greatly last year for VisionOS, and I think it was a lot more about how developers feel about Apple and the App Store than how they feel about Vision Pro itself.
Howard Oakley: I’ve had no problems, but the App Store and its review process never fail to shock and disappoint.
Rosemary Orchard: They have removed the limited number of requests for each developer (company) per year; however, there are still a large number of APIs without adequate documentation. (One line!!)
Paul Kafasis: Sadly, Apple has been absolutely torching developer goodwill for several years now. App Store policies have not improved. Its malicious compliance with EU laws has been terribly disappointing to see. It knows what’s right, and refuses to do it, because it wants to protect every possible revenue source it has. It doesn’t have to be this way. How much is enough? At what point can a company say “We’ve won, we’re going to do what’s right, not what’s most profitable for the next quarter”? Sadly, probably never.
Brent Simmons: The App Store monopoly continues in most of the world, and where it doesn’t, Apple is still an enormous prick. This shocking level of greed — combined with its obsequious behavior toward the incoming administration — is burning right through the remaining developer goodwill.
Myke Hurley: Easily one of the worst years I have seen from them in a long, long time. And it’s all down to the DMA. Apple’s response to legislation is ridiculous. Using notarization as a way to stop apps from existing, the Core Technology Fee, and countless more dark spots. They should never have gotten to this step, and now they’re here I wish they would give a little more than they are.
Apple’s impact on the world
Apple executives claim that the company wants to leave the world a better place, and the company champions numerous causes. How well does Apple live up to its own standards in 2024? Consider anything you deem appropriate, including education and environmental initiatives, commitment to accessibility and diversity, treatment of Apple’s work force, and other political and policy stances.
John Siracusa: While Tim Cook’s donation to Trump may benefit Apple, its employees, and even its customers, it certainly won’t have a positive social impact.
Joe Rosensteel: I’m of two minds when it comes to Apple’s green initiatives. I think they’re great, but they do design systems where the whole thing has to be recycled instead of upgraded or easily repaired. I believe political and policy stances are really where Apple fell short in 2024. Notably with the European Commission and the trials involving the justice department. Like when we all found out how many billion dollars Google pays Apple to be the default search engine. At present, I can’t say I’m optimistic about the direction things are heading in terms of other political and policy decisions.
Jessica Dennis: For a company that pays so much lip service to being green, using so much energy on very underwhelming AI stuff is very hmmmmm. And then, of course, there’s the million bucks Tim Cook sent to the incoming president — I guess he probably had to For Business Reasons, but it’s still gross, and I hate it.
John Gruber: Apple’s efforts on the environmental front continue to strike me as extraordinary. Their accessibility features are so far ahead of the rest of the industry that I don’t even know who’s in second place. On social issues, by staying true to its longstanding, humane, common sense values, Apple’s culture has seemingly remained utterly consistent through a series of tumultuous years in our society at large, during which other companies have ping-ponged first sharply left, and now sharply right. If I stopped there, that would make for an obvious A grade. But: politics. I understand (I think) Tim Cook’s thinking and approach. I wouldn’t want his job, and I genuinely wonder at times who would. Sing-song congratulatory tweets leave a bitter taste, but I’m amenable to the argument that CEOs must play the cards they’ve been dealt, not the cards they’d hoped for. If you have to serve shit sandwiches, serve shit sandwiches — but don’t tell us they taste like pumpkin pie. Tim Cook can’t donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration slush fund when Apple donated a mere $43,200 thousand to Biden’s and expect us to do anything but laugh at the supposed justification that Cook “believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity.” That’s Tim Cook’s hoagie-sized shit sandwich to eat, and it’s disrespectful to pitch us on taking a few bites ourselves to help him get through it. I genuinely believe Cook is doing what’s best for Apple, and that’s quite literally his job. But it was true during the first Trump administration, and already is again in the second, that what’s best for Apple politically is in conflict with what’s best for the country and for the world.
Brent Simmons: Seeking favor with fascists not only helps the fascists — it harms the world.
Steven Aquino: From an accessibility standpoint, the AirPods Pro hearing aid feature has to exemplify Apple’s ethos of making the world a better place. It isn’t perfect, but the salient point is it’s tremendously significant the functionality exists at all. And it doesn’t take into account the continued work Apple did in 2024 to make its devices more accessible to the disability community. As I always say, Apple deserves more laudation in this realm than “gee whiz.”
James Thomson: The push to ship Apple Intelligence has sacrificed a lot of Apple’s engineering focus and moral high ground in the name of boosting the stock price. Aside from many of the features not being in a functional state that should have been shipped to billions of people, Apple had a chance to lead the industry in terms of ethical training data and chose not to, damaging its relationship with the creative professionals who have traditionally been their biggest supporters. And in the end most people do not care about the actual functionality. But hey, the stock price went up.
Marco Arment: Apple’s environmental work is very strong and commendable, but their continued strong presence in and reliance on China remains damaging and strategically limiting, and their explicit support and significant funding of the incoming Trump administration is opportunistic, dangerous, appalling, and spineless.
Howard Oakley: Apple continues to champion several important issues, including the environment and privacy. However, there have been a succession of less glorious moments regarding the latter and a continuing lack of transparency.
Lex Friedman: I continue to be disappointed by Tim Cook’s kowtowing to Trump.
Alex Cox: Apple does exceed the on-the-ground bar that is “better than Meta,” but every year, they seem a little closer to the floor. Aside from all the political antics that the biggest companies in America all but “have” to do, I was most disappointed that there was no mention of how Apple Intelligence will impact their environmental goals. Most data on AI efficiency is all over the place, and I thought they’d have at least some information based on their on-device strategies. I’m no EACC bro, but as someone relatively excited about most LLM developments, it was disappointing that not even Apple felt they could address their energy use.
Allison Sheridan: I was incredibly dismayed that Apple forced all AI developers from San Diego to move to Texas. Imagine being a woman of child-bearing age working in California and having to choose between your career and your health. I was disturbed enough by this to write to Tim Cook to explain what a horrific choice he had made.
Zac Hall: Sometimes Apple reminds you that it is a corporation.
Andy Ihnatko: Normally a solid 4, I’m docking a point this year. Apple’s Intelligence isn’t going to inflict the same degree of damage on the planet as Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft’s AI efforts. However, Apple utilizes those same AI foundries to build and train its models, so they aren’t entirely free of responsibility. I hope Apple’s 2025 Environmental Progress Report is transparent about the impact Apple creates as an AI customer.
Rich Mogull: A 5 for general privacy, especially Advanced Data Protection and their partnering with Citizens Lab. 5 for environmental impact. A 1 for Tim Cook bowing to Trump. A 2 for their soft gloves with China.
Shelly Brisbin: I’ll say here, as I always do, that accessibility, in particular, should be evaluated in terms of technology, utility, and effectiveness at making platforms and software available to all. It’s not about virtue signaling or even being nice for its own sake. So here goes: Apple had a good year when it comes to accessibility. That’s especially noteworthy in the Vision Pro’s varied and clever ways of providing access to a platform whose typical operation relies heavily on the use of eyes and hands. The company continues to tweak deep accessibility features, like this year’s Braille Screen Input updates. And AirPods Pro’s embrace of its identity as an over-the-counter hearing aid should give both users and accessibility advocates within Apple a lot of encouragement to do more.
Paul Kafasis: I think Apple used to be better when it comes to global impact. I think they are now too relentlessly focused on squeezing money out of everyone and everything they can, to the detriment of everyone. They’re still better than most companies. They’re still pushing for environmental improvements, diversity, and more. But overall, they just seem much more money-grubbing to me. Brent Simmons’s post on this is worth a link. I think of it often.
Dr. Drang: Did Tim Cook give more money to the Trump inauguration than to victims of the L.A. fires?
Matt Birchler: I think it’s an overall win, although I don’t like how they treat software developers. It will be interesting to see how they play with the new U.S. administration.
Christina Warren: I’ll be the jerk that says it: I miss the stickers, and I don’t think it was worth the so-called environmental impact. I am glad that FineWoven was killed (and sorry, but you’ll never convince me that the plastic they used for FineWoven was any more environmentally sound than just using the mid-quality leather they used before), but I’m equally annoyed the only way to get an official Apple Watch band in leather that isn’t an older model is by going to Hermes. Call me a selfish jerk (or worse), but I don’t think moves like removing stickers, moving to objectively worse materials for cases and watch bands, and forgoing previously included accessories (like wall chargers) — while still selling and trying to bundle said chargers independently — is the best and most effective way to reduce environmental impact. Or, at the very least, these moves feel like ways to cheap out and raise margins but under the guise of doing it for “environmental impact.” I’m glad Apple cares about sustainability; I wish it could care in a way that didn’t feel like they were using it as an excuse to cut corners and niceties.
Carolina Milanesi: Apple continues to lead in sustainability, privacy, and the latest stand on not ending DEI programs.
Philip Michaels: Given the current state of affairs in our new kleptocracy, I imagine this score will be very different in a year.
Glenn Fleishman: I’m not in love with Apple’s current direction. The mandate to return people to the office seems counter to its environmental aims and discriminatory against employees of varying abilities, some of whom relocated. Apple’s adoption of AI, particularly partnering with OpenAI, seems shortsighted without specific plans in mind, given the impact on power usage.
Michael Gartenberg: Apple’s impact on the world has gotten the attention of the DOJ and the EU, which is not exactly the impact they might have been aiming for, which is probably why Cook sent a $1 million gift to the new administration’s inauguration, including himself in the pantheon of tech CEOs all under scrutiny and all in attendance in Washington hoping the new administration will let them continue to have the impact on the world as they see fit.
Matt Deatherage: if A.I. fits in with Apple’s pledge to be carbon-neutral in five years, they’re not making that well known when a lot of AGI opposition is about how much energy it takes.
Casey Liss: Tim Cook donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration. Apple still relies deeply on China. Apple continues to think it operates above the law. Gross. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about Apple when this is how it behaves. Its move toward carbon neutrality is the only thing that kept this from a 1.
Peter Cohen: Apple lives up to its standards. Tim’s personal ones left me puzzled.
Myke Hurley: Carbon-neutral products are great. I am really happy they are able to do this with more and more. But storm clouds are swirling around: AI, legislation, and more. Apple is too big and too complicated to be a pure good force in the world.
Michael E. Cohen: I’d rank this higher, but Cook is attending Trump’s inauguration, so….
Dan Moren: Apple continues to improve its environmental impact, but as with many of the other big tech companies, it’s feeling an inherent tension between reducing its footprint and increasing its reliance on AI, a technology that seems to be extremely energy voracious. I’d like to hear a little more about that when the company announces its next Apple Intelligence features.
Nick Heer: This could be an essay. Scratch that — this could be several essays. This year, Apple made a big deal about its repairability and environmental bonafides, but it also continued to fight right-to-repair legislation, and we learned data center emissions are likely many times higher than claimed. Apple made contact sharing more private, but enabled by default a feature to remotely analyze users’ photos. I put my complaints about Apple’s European-centric measures in the Developer section, but they could easily go here, too.
Stephen Hackett: The M4 Mac mini is the first carbon-neutral Mac ever made. It comes six years after Apple began using recycled aluminum in its Mac cases. The company continues investing in processes to make our world cleaner. On the social front, things are more complex. Apple continues to support important causes and will continue its DEI efforts, even as other tech companies are rolling them back. However, Tim Cook runs a company with a bigger economic footprint than many countries, and that means that Apple will play ball with the new Trump administration in ways some of its users will find disagreeable. It’s naive to think that a company the size of Apple would do anything else, even if I hope it rubs Tim Cook the wrong way enough to bother him.
Last words
If you’d like to leave a comment about anything else, leave it below!
Alex Cox: I think, finally, people are breaking away from feeling like they need to be a super fan of everything Apple does and every policy it has in order to appreciate the things they still do remarkably well.
Eric Linder: This may be a bit meta, but there is something special about Apple that brings about a positive community that is critical at times, but only because of the love of Apple’s platforms and devices. I continue to applaud Apple’s environmental objectives and hope that as they continue to succeed, they really do continue to underpromise and overdeliver, not only with regard to the impact of its products and services but on their positive impact on the world.
Andy Ihnatko: FREE CHARLIE BROWN!
Howard Oakley: In 2024, the high point has been the release of the Mac mini M4, just months before the mini’s 20th birthday. At a time when Apple looked as if it was becoming obsessed with high-end experiments like Vision Pro, and AI, the redesigned mini is convincing many who have stuck with old Macs running High Sierra and Mojave to take the plunge and upgrade. The spirit of 2005 isn’t dead yet.
Chance Miller: Apple’s 2024 leaves us with a lot of unknowns. Will Apple Intelligence live up to the expectations? Will Apple remain committed to Vision Pro? There are looming changes to the App Store in the EU, the DOJ case in the United States, and various other regulatory battles around the world. There’s a lot of uncertainty as we head into the new year, which is rare for a company as established as Apple.
Rosemary Orchard: Developer relations are critical, especially with the integration of AI such as ChatGPT as a focus. Extending this to native iOS integrations (Siri intents please!) would be greatly appreciated.
Allison Sheridan: It’s such a fun time to be an Apple fangirl. The speed and low power consumption of its laptop lineup are unsurpassed in the industry.
Andrew Laurence: Apple’s Enterprise Workflow teams continue to do the Lord’s work. They bridge the gap between a remarkably difficult customer base and internal development priorities in which “the enterprise” is likely an afterthought, if it exists at all. We have become accustomed to new features having little to no available controls, and those that appear seemingly hastily bolted together. Apple is a customer-forward company but has yet to embrace the notion that the end user may not be the customer; that the customer may have primacy over the user, and the user is a risk being managed.
Robert Carter: As I blind Apple user, I am pretty happy with the features that Apple added to accessibility this past year. I hope they will continue to use Apple Intelligence to enhance accessibility.
Craig Hockenberry: WHEN ARE WE GONNA GET BETTER KEY BOARDS
Zac Hall: 2024… not the year that Apple caught up in AI.
Marco Arment: Apple Intelligence summary: Hardware is great; developers enjoy TV; missing vertebrae.
Charles Arthur: The question I’ve really been asking myself towards the end of the year, and the one I want to ask Tim Cook, is: How would we know if Apple was becoming sclerotic? By which I mean that if the organisation has become unwieldy, unwilling to allow change, incapable of letting good ideas percolate rapidly upwards, how could we tell? We keep hearing and seeing how slow change is: it took an age for accessories to all get USB-C. The AirPods Max and the Pro Display XDR have gone years without being touched. Again and again it feels like it takes forever for even the simplest product upgrades to get out of the door. New ideas like the Vision Pro are hopelessly over-engineered, instead of being designed with a buyer in mind, which reminds me badly of the G4 Cube, which people loved as long as they didn’t own it; if they if did, they discovered the limited memory and some, the manufacturing stress cracks. But at least that Apple saw the problem and moved rapidly: the G4 Cube didn’t survive a year. Now it feels like a bad idea gets polished endlessly until it’s good enough to put out, and then is essentially abandoned. I worry about this. Of course, I might be wrong. But my question remains: how could we tell? What distinguishes a sclerotic Apple from one which is functioning fine, but incredibly deliberately?
Kirk McElhearn: I think that 2024 was the year that I finally realized that the Apple of Steve Jobs is truly gone. The Tim Cook bot in interviews and presentations feels like an AI programmed by the marketing department; I get no impression that he really cares about products. At least the pre-recorded product announcements include many more Apple employees, but they all tend to have that same tone. I miss Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller talking about new products with perceivable love for the technology and what it could accomplish. I think Apple is so big right now that they can’t take chances. We grew up with a company that was constantly pushing the envelope, but now, at a time where there aren’t many new hardware features to add to these devices, we have discovered a company that pretends that things are “magical” too often. And you didn’t ask about Apple Intelligence. A half-baked bunch of mainly useless features in an attempt to catch up to a trend that Apple didn’t see coming. None of Apple’s AI features are original, and some, like Image Playground, are just childish. Apple is increasingly out of touch with what people really want to do, it seems, and I don’t see this changing until Tim Cook retires.
Federico Viticci: I’m genuinely curious about what Apple is going to do with Apple Intelligence this year. Their first wave of previously announced AI features still hasn’t fully rolled out, and it’s fairly clear that the company is more or less two years behind its competitors in this space. While OpenAI is launching Tasks and Google is impressing the industry with their latest Gemini models and promising AI agents living in the browser, Apple is…letting you create cute emoji and terrible images that are so 2022, it hurts. That being said, I believe that Apple is aware of the fact that they need to catch up – and fast – and I kind of enjoy the fact that we’re witnessing Apple being an underdog again and having to pull out all the stops to show the world that they can still be relevant in a post-AI society. The company, unlike many AI competitors, has a unique advantage: they make the computers we use and the operating systems they run on. I’m convinced that, long term, Apple’s main competitors won’t be OpenAI, Anthropic, or Meta, but Google and Microsoft. The Apple Intelligence features we saw at WWDC last year made for a cute demo; I think 2025 is going to show us a glimpse of what Apple’s true vision for the future of computing and AI is.
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.