tl;dr — I won’t be buying anything on offer. Here’s some of my reasons as to why.

Last Monday, 9 September, Apple introduced the iPhone 16, Apple Watch 10, and AirPods 4. The common thread with all of these new hardware releases is that they’re ready to benefit from Apple Intelligence, which if you have those items you won’t begin to use until iOS 18.1 will be released. Out of the gate, Apple Intelligence is promised but not available.

After spending a week thinking about these latest offerings, I won’t be purchasing any of them. The number 1 reason being the cost.

By the time I pick a model, and that means any of them, and select the amount of storage I need in my iPhone, the price heads up towards about $1,000. This is with any of the regular iPhone 16 models. What makes it worse with the Pro variants is that they start at $1,000 and just go up from there. What’s interesting is that an iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256 GB of storage is as expensive as my 13″ M1 MacBook Pro, and it has 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD. And a 13″ screen with a real honest-to-goodness keyboard, two USB-C ports, and a headphone jack. That headphone jack on that MacBook Pro is, as they say, a real keeper feature. No, I can’t take photos and video with my MBP, but that’s what I have a real camera for.

I’m going to stick with my iPhone 11 Pro Max, which I purchased September 2019. It still has 86% of its battery, and it’s eligible for the iOS 18 update this coming Monday. No, it won’t run any of the Apple Intelligence features when Apple finally begins to dribble them out; the only older model that will run Apple Intelligence is the iPhone 15. When iOS 19 comes out in 2025, the iPhone 11 won’t be eligible for that release, but I don’t care. I still won’t update. I’m going to ride my iPhone 11 Pro Max until it literally stops working. And then I’ll decide what brand of smartphone to purchase ahead of any particular model.

As for the other items, I’m already past any Apple Watch. My Citizen Eco-Drive WR 100 is doing just fine. The new AirPods 4 will have the ability to act like hearing aids, which is nice, but then you need an iPhone to actually use them portably, and they’re still AirPods that will only work about an hour before they have to be popped out of your ears and into their charging holder. I really am tired of that “feature.” That constant removal of the device to keep it charged is the primary reason I got tired of the Apple Watch. If I have a hearing issue I’ll go to an audiologist and get decent prescription hearing aids covered by Medicare. I’m definitely old enough for that now.

An iPhone is essentially a castrated MacBook, where the iPhone has a very small screen, no decent keyboard, and absolute limitation as to what software I can install and run on the device. Same processor architecture on both now to be sure. If I’m going to spend a solid four figures in cash on a computer then I want one that I can make better use of than an iPhone.