Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which brings together all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy summary. We call it apple breakfast because we think it goes great with a cup of coffee or tea on a Monday morning, but it’s great if you want to read it during lunch or dinner too.

The only way is upselling

One of the most bizarre stories we covered last week involved a simple Velcro strap.

You see, the upcoming Apple Vision Pro headset is quite heavy, and the company seems to have addressed possible comfort issues by adding an extra strap that goes across the top of the user’s head. But this strap is nowhere to be seen in the press photos and (according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman) will likely cost extra on top of the $3,499 standard price.

If you’re spending that kind of money on a product, you’re hoping comfort comes at a price. the strap will not be included, which is unfortunately compatible with Apple’s broader strategy in recent years. Apple has become the king of sales.

It all started, at least for me, with a charger. In 2020, Apple made the decision not to use the power adapter with the new iPhones, on the pretext that most customers already have one and that they will all end up in a landfill. Conveniently, the move also allowed Apple to shrink boxes and cut costs without cutting prices. And of course, Apple will still happily sell you an adapter for an extra $19 if you don’t have one. The company has also stopped including EarPods in iPhone boxes, signifying an increase in AirPods sales.

To be clear, I’m not saying that the environmental rationale was completely disingenuous. But I strongly suspect that Apple found a really worthwhile idea more attractive because it could be used to make more profit. After all, if a company sincerely wanted to cut technology waste in the landfill, it would have made its phones compliant with the global communication standard rather than a proprietary one before being forced to do so under pressure from regulators. But proprietary cables and chargers are better for upselling.

In 2022, Apple has fully implemented its upsell strategy. It wasn’t enough for shoppers to spend $799 on a new iPhone 14; the company gave this device a year-old processor and generally went out of their way to push customers who could afford it to get the $999 14 Pro instead. (We called 14 “mostly iPhone 13s” in our review.) Likewise, the Apple Watch Series 8 was barely any better than its predecessor – why bother with the Series 8 when you have an Apple Watch Ultra to promote – and the AirPods Pro are strong surpassed standard AirPods. Every company wants you to buy their most expensive models, but for Apple that year, it was an obvious and deliberate strategy never seen before.

It’s hard to argue with the decisions made by a company that just hit a $3 trillion market cap (again). But such a thing — pumping out an extra $400 for wheels when your client has already shelled out $6,999 for a Mac Pro — might not be smart in the long run. It can cheer people up by undermining your brand’s goodwill, but more importantly, your entry-level products seem a bit, well, rubbish. And those who can’t afford an iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Ultra, or Vision Strap Plus may decide to drop the idea entirely and spend their money elsewhere.

To tell your opinion

Thanks to the readers who contacted us about the Siri critique column last week. I was relieved to find that some of you are even angrier than I am at the error-prone state of Apple’s personal assistant.

Richard Raymond-Smith, for example, complained bitterly about Siri’s apparent regression. It used to be able to respond to natural-language queries about travel ETAs, he notes, but now uselessly answers something like this: “Here’s what I found on the Internet about ETAs…” That’s a big flop, Siri.

Robert Williams, meanwhile, finds it “mystifying that Apple continues to tarnish its reputation for great products by messing with a product that is SIGNIFICANTLY inferior to, say, Alexa” and ponders why any of the company’s software engineers are willing to work on Siri. , considering the embarrassment factor when revealing it in conversation. And Gus Pistolis challenges: “How do we organize a grassroots effort to get Apple to create a better, if not new, Siri?” Campaign starts here!

Email me if you have any strong opinions about this week’s part above; I can’t answer them all, but I read them. No promises, but I might include some more reader comments next week.

Foundry

Feedback Corner

Trending: breaking news

Does anyone really enjoy working at AppleMakalop asks.

Wallets, everything. Rare original iphone 4gb It is expected that at auction it will be sold for 100 thousand dollars.

Apple packaged Stardew Valley into a notable coup for Apple Arcade.

rumor mill

Apple plans to launch its biggest iMac. It can have a screen over 30 inches.

But it can be a very long wait until next new mac arrives.

next Apple Watch Ultra may arrive sooner than we thought.

You may have to pay extra to do Headset Vision Pro comfortable.

After huge junehere’s everything Apple will arrive in July.

And looking ahead, here’s everything Apple plans to release within next 12 months.

Podcast of the week

This fall, the Apple Watch will receive its first major update to its operating system. And could FaceTime drive sales of Apple TV hardware? Plus fundamental changes coming to all Apple operating systems, all in this episode of the Macworld podcast!

You can watch every episode of the Macworld podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own website.

Software updates, bugs and issues

iOS 17 finally harnesses the full potential of the iPhone 6.

visual search becomes much more useful in iOS 17.

That concludes our apple breakfast this week. If you would like to receive regular news updates, subscribe to our newsletters. You can also follow us on twitter or on Facebook to discuss the latest Apple news. See you next Monday and stay Eppley.