This week, Apple unveiled its new Apple Upgrade program, which replaces the former iPhone Upgrade program. As the name implies, one change is that the program now applies to more than just iPhones. This program lets you lease a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. You can select a 12- or 24-month lease for iPhone and Apple Watch, or a 24- or 36-month lease for iPad and Mac. The word “Upgrade” is in the title because the idea is that at the end of that period, you give back your device and start a new lease for a new one. Juli Clover of MacRumors lists the details of the program. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac emphasizes that this is a lease and not financing, so at the end of the period, you don’t own your device. However, you can pay a buyout fee at the end of the period to purchase the device, and there are no extra fees for doing so; if the device cost was $1,000 and your monthly payments over the period added up to $600, just pay the additional $400 at the end, and the device is yours. John Gruber notes that if you get an iPhone through this program, you are required to use one of the big three carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon, but other than that, he says that “there seemingly is no catch with the new Apple Upgrade program,” so it is worth considering if you don’t want to (1) pay the entire cost up front or (2) finance the purchase over 12 months using an Apple Card, which Apple lets you do with no extra fees. There are other options that can often reduce what you have to pay for a new Apple product: you can trade in an older device (and Apple sometimes gives you a pretty good value for that), or you can look for sales at stores like Amazon or when Apple offers very occasional sales, such as Black Friday, or you can often find a good price when you purchase a device from a cellular carrier and you agree to stay with that carrier for a period of time. Even so, the Apple Upgrade program looks like something that will be a good option for many folks. Paying over time is often easier than paying up front, and being able to do so without paying any fees is fantastic. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- This past Sunday, my wife and I decided to start watching the Apple TV show Lucky, but when we selected the first episode, there was no button to play the episode. Indeed, there was no button to play anything. It was almost like I wasn’t an Apple TV subscriber. It turns out that Apple was having a widespread outage affecting lots of different Apple services. And as Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac reports, Apple had a second, similar outage on Wednesday, July 29. Apple’s network services have been so stable for so long that this really surprised me when I saw it on Sunday—I assumed that I was doing something wrong or experiencing some error on my end. Hopefully, Apple has now figured out the problem, and it won’t happen again.
- My daughter is about to start college. To help her keep track of her items, I purchased some Find My products for her. First, I purchased a four-pack of Apple’s AirTag (second generation) (my review), which is currently at an all-time low price on Amazon of $89.00. Second, for her wallet, I purchased a eufy SmartTrack card (my review), which is also at an all-time low price on Amazon of $16.88. If you need Find My devices, whether for yourself or someone else, these are great deals on great products.
- As Apple prepares the CEO transition from Tim Cook to John Ternus on September 1, a number of people are hoping Ternus reverses Apple’s decisions to add advertising to many of its services. John Gruber of Daring Fireball discussed this a few weeks ago. This week, Jason Snell of Six Colors shared an interesting analogy to hotels that choose to offer the “good soap” because they know that, in the long run, it is better to offer customers a higher-quality product even if they give up some short-term profit. And Gruber noted this week that ads in software are like the Intel stickers on laptops: something that Steve Jobs refused to allow because it degraded the customer experience, even though Intel surely would have paid money to Apple had it included them. Leadership transitions provide an opportunity for change, and like Gruber and Snell, I hope that Ternus makes this change.
- When iOS 27 comes out later this year, it will let you use AI to give you answers based on information on your device while keeping that information private. Similarly, app developer Joshua Langberg reached out to me this week to tell me about a new app he created called Bibliome. It is a Mac app that uses on-device AI to organize and answer questions about your PDF library, and it is private because it runs entirely on your device. It also has an iPhone app that can scan documents and add them to the library. While I haven’t used this app, I like the idea of what it is doing, and I hope to see more products like this in the future that take advantage of AI to surface useful information while preserving privacy.
- For the improved AI in iOS 27 to understand what is on your iPhone, the information on your iPhone is indexed. This week, Apple released iOS 26.6, and as Zac Hall of 9to5Mac notes, one feature is that it is starting to index your iPhone now. That way, when you upgrade to iOS 27, the index will be ready, and you won’t have to wait to take advantage of the improved AI. What a clever idea.
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider shares the story of a Cincinnati man whose life was saved due to the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature.
- Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reviews the Twelve South Valet mini, a good-looking leather-lined tray that can hold and charge an iPhone along with other items: keys, a wallet, etc. It is $129.99 on Amazon.
- Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac recommends the Aecooly USB-C Phone Fan, a device that connects to your iPhone’s USB-C port and uses a fan to cool you off. It is $12.99 on Amazon.
- Season 4 of Ted Lasso begins in a week, on August 5th. But the premiere was held this week in Los Angeles, and as Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports, it was attended not only by the actors but also by Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, and its CEO starting next month, John Ternus. Cook said that he plans to watch this season just like he watched the last season: using his Apple Vision Pro. Ternus stated: Season 4 of Ted Lasso begins in a week, on August 5th. But the premiere was held this week in Los Angeles, and as Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports, it was attended not only by the actors but also by Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, and its CEO starting next month, John Ternus. Cook said that he plans to watch this season just like he watched the last season: using his Apple Vision Pro. Ternus stated: “There’s so much great content on Apple TV, and now is just the perfect time for us to keep the momentum up, keep bringing in incredible storytellers and creative folks to keep making it better.” Ternus added that he is looking forward to his new role: “I’ve been at Apple for 25 years, I love Apple, and to have this opportunity is beyond words.”`
- And finally, here is the new trailer for Season 4 of Ted Lasso. Not really many spoilers here for those who have any idea what this next season is about, but if you want to watch something with zero spoilers, you can instead watch a video showing every shot on goal from the first three seasons of Ted Lasso. The trailer: