A lot of people aren’t going to have that $433 at the end of the lease to purchase the device outright, and so will have to roll it into another 2-year monthly payment, and another one after that.

So the goal of the program is the same as every other similar one - they want to turn a one-time device purchase into a perpetual monthly revenue stream, while keeping ownership of the asset at the end.

I think you're looking at this too much from the perspective of someone who wants to own the phone, not as someone who wants to consider a lease.

Leases are not a new invention. A lot of people, including very financially savvy and well off people, choose to lease rather than buy depending on the circumstances.

It preserves optionality. If you get to the end of the lease period and there’s a new iPhone you want or the battery isn’t holding up, you can choose not to buy it. You don’t have to deal with selling it or trading in.

If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front. I don’t understand what your argument is.

> So the goal of the program is the same as every other similar one - they want to turn a one-time device purchase into a perpetual monthly revenue stream, while keeping ownership of the asset at the end.

It’s an option. They’re not turning anything into anything. Anyone who wants to buy the device can buy it. You now also have the option to lease it for 12 or 24 months and then after that you can still buy it if you want. Or you can not buy it.

It’s options. You don’t have to use it.

That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments.

There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”.

There’s a reason Klarna is running the program for them.

You seem tilted at Apple for offering a financing option, but your real gripe is apparently with some people who have poor financial decision making skills. Those people could (and probably would) do a lot worse with traditional options like a credit card.

Oh, sweet summer child...

https://wallethub.com/answers/cc/highest-credit-card-interes...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I still make jokes, even though it results in the occasional swipe from folks with deprecated sense of humor, that feel the need to take swipes at others.

average credit card interest rate: 18-25% APR [0][1] average klarna effective interest rate:25-33% APR [2]

getting what are effectively individual lines of credit per-burrito or iphone is crazy work and I wouldn't recommend it most of the time. Save some money up, people!

[0] https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/research/current... [1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-c... [2] https://wealthvieu.com/debt/credit-card-debt/klarna-review/

> getting what are effectively individual lines of credit per-burrito or iphone is crazy work and I wouldn't recommend it most of the time.

I think this whole sub-thread has gone off track from people who aren't reading the actual terms of the Apple deal.

Nobody's talking about getting a 33% Klarna loan for an iPhone or burrito. You included 2 statistics and 3 citations that have nothing to do with the program we're talking about.

We're trying to talk about the Apple program in the link, not some other financial services complaints that people have about other things.

I thought of this also. The question is whether they will now spend even more on the phone since they won't be paying as much in interest. If so, it's savvy of Apple to suck up that difference instead of letting it go to credit card companies.

Presumably Klarna's share is lower because Apple is rumored to be able to nerf these devices if a series of payments are missed. [1]

1: https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-co...

Look, I have one camera with me and one child. As long as the camera gets better every year, I’m gonna want a better camera, every year. I don’t want to deal with carriers and trade-in shopping. Unfortunately this particular deal sucks compared tot he old one.

I’m not financially irresponsible. I value these devices highly and value my time.

This kinda sounds like, "We should make it hard for people to make poor financial decisions." Which seems like an answer completely orthogonal to the problem at hand.

How to get customers to make poor financial decisions? How to sell more phones to people that can't really afford them?

Seriously, what is the problem that is being solved?

Or they would have just bought the new phone and sold their old one for dimes on the dollar on e.g. Gazelle.

a person may reasonably make the choice that they don't need the Pro Max and buy the regular 17.

Now, when the options are: - iPhone 17 ($23/month) - iPhone 17 Pro Max ($35/month)

$12/month extra doesn't seem too bad, except the fact that after 24 months you can't afford to keep the phone and are effectively forced to upgrade to a new iPhone.

I agree that more options are generally better for consumers, but these types of leasing programs are predatory and come at a time when everything is becoming a subscription.

Same reason some people lease cars:

* want the New Thing regularly

* are happier with OpEx than CapEx (can be handy for business/accounting reasons)

But I think unlike leasing vehicles, where the vehicle has the same power (approximately and within usable limits) the new phones bring a new battery. If swappable battery was a thing everywhere; that would further depress the sale of new phones.

- from this thread: iPhone 17 pro max would be $1199 to buy (~1273 with tax) or $34.99 for 24 months totaling $839.76. So would cost 433.33 at the end of the lease to keep it

If you upgrade your phone every 1-2 years then what you pay for the phone is something like "full cost - optimistic trade-in value". I see no reason not to do if you know you going to upgrade.

But there's just nothing to run on phones built in the last 5+ years that actually puts the hardware through its paces (in the phone form factor, laptops and desktops I'd be lot more forgiving on). The cameras aren't really getting better. The battery capacities seem to be mostly "the same". There's just no practical "reason" to justify the expense at this point (and I'll fully acknowledge this wasn't always the case - there was a period there in the early 2010s where phones were getting better rapidly and upgrading was a big deal).

They're basically buying an expensive piece of jewelry that they'll throw away in 24 months. Like... just buy a cheaper model and get some real jewelry. At least that could be passed down at some point instead of becoming e-waste.

Listen, whatever you do that’s your hobby I’m certain is also a giant waste of money and very financially irresponsible. And if not, learn how to have fun and stop being so boring.

They do if you don't have the money to throw away. That's the whole point - far too often, the people who throw their money away on these things are the same people who spend all their time complaining they're struggling to afford the basics, like feeding their family.

Yes it's fine if you have plenty of money to waste on what you enjoy, but the majority of people don't.

I buy more tools than I should - Wood working, electronic, and more general purpose. It's not always cost effective, but I generally pick a new project (ex - making my dining room table, installing solar panels, building my own dining room chairs, making my wedding ring, etc) and then buy a new tool for that project.

Am I saving money vs just buying a decent premade thing? Usually not really (although sometimes!). But I get to learn, work with my hands, and expand capabilities, and feel nice having made a thing.

I can get a lot of tools (or a couple very nice tools) for the amount you'd spend on a new iphone.

Since we're having the conversation - I'll make a value judgement. I think more folks would be happier with the tools than a new iphone, and I think buying one every 2 years is a perfect example of "keeping up with the jones" style behavior - compulsive consumerism that's not improving happiness (With an understanding that there are exceptions - ex: if you develop mobile applications, I'll accept that a new iphone is essentially a new tool).

Were it not for the camera, I could have stopped upgrading 10 years ago.

My point is, not everyone values the same things you do. The new Siri AI only runs on 15 Pro and higher, I think. New features do arrive in newer phones.

Value in being part of the discussion for a whole year every year too. You realllly have to care about stuff like these factors though (or hate investing your money or have too much).

My current phone (Motorola g34) runs all the games fine, and that's probably the heaviest thing people use phones for. I do take photos, but like I'm not running a photography business, and social media compresses them to shit anyway so the quality is perfectly fine.

I use my phones as GPS attached to my motorbike's handlebars. They get drenched in downpours, frozen in the winter, and baked in the summer sun multiple times a year. They don't skip a beat and only require the occasional battery change.

My current phone is an iphone 14, still on its original battery. It replaced a 7 which had its battery changed 5 years in. The 7 replaced a galaxy s5 which I stupidly forgot in a taxi, but it was still good enough for my uses.

There are uses for higher-end phones, among which "longer periods between changes".

I know this comment is deep in a thread, but to me it looks like they simply prefer to own the whole apple device payment cycle and not use partners.

BNPL has been a huge bubble outside the traditional credit bubble, this is the same. It doesn't seem like a big divergence excepting that it gives them a contact point and a stick with which to prod customer into a new phone sooner.

This is not remotely true. I buy each and every flagship iPhone every year on or near release day for cash. I have done so every release since the first iPhone came out.

Each September or October my old phone goes into a desk drawer forever, or is wiped and gifted to a partner or close friend. I do not recover any of the costs at the end of the 12 months.

In total, it is way less than $200 per month. That’s not “fucking insanely financially irresponsible” by any stretch of the imagination. $2k per year is a trivial amount of money for the most-often-used computer in my entire life. It pays for itself in the first few weeks of the year.

Separately, I spend another 10-20k per year on computer software and services, because it assists my business in making many times that in revenue. Hell, even my hobby AWS S3 account is like $35/mo and that’s like the same as the lease payment for the flagship iPhone Pro under this program.

Upgrading each year brings real performance benefits, despite your claim that phones don’t materially improve each generation. Whether or not that is worth replacing it before it breaks or not is a separate conversation, but let’s not pretend that upgrading annually is exactly equivalent to lighting $2k on fire. Anyone who participates regularly in US “bar culture”, for example, is spending more each month on drinks than I spend to carry the latest flagship iPhone, and nobody is claiming that eating out three times a month or going to the bar with your buddies every Friday night is “fucking insanely financially irresponsible”. Tech is so cheap now that it’s a trivial amount of money in the grand scheme of things.

(You’ll probably flip when you hear I replace my $7k work laptop every 12-24 months, too.)

Furthermore, I’m not even an extreme outlier. I know people who regularly buy the flagship iPhone for their entire family, in cash, every year. It’s a bit spendy if you’re not using it for business (but who isn’t, in 2026, where every single thing you do is an app) but it’s still simply not that much money in real terms when you consider it’s well under $2k/year/device. Hell, a nice lunch for two people at a decent restaurant even without alcohol is pushing $100 in most cities.

For the vast majority of consumers, these prices are insane.

> trivial amount of money... I’m not even an extreme outlier

It's also true that the majority of high-earners refuse to understand that they're in the top few percent for income. I'm not sure whether what I'm reading here is a sincere mistaken belief - the general psychological effect where a person believes their own sense of "normal" is normal to everyone - or a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of other commenters.

> another 10-20k per year on computer software and services, because it assists my business in making many times that in revenue... replace my $7k work laptop every 12-24 months

So those are business costs? They don't belong in this discussion.

High earner or not high earner, $200/mo isn’t a lot of money anymore, which is why I pointed out the lunch example.

And it came with AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss. I stopped using a case. I lived free.

But I wouldn’t, because I actually understand that people are different and like it that way.

Consider: your opinion is worthless when it comes to what I care about in terms of luxuries I enjoy, just as mine is worthless when it comes to what you care about in terms of luxuries you enjoy.

It’s way better when you don’t run around judging other people for liking different things than you.

My iPhone is the computer I use most every day, by a WIDE margin.

My last personal computer purchase was an M1 Pro MBP 4 years ago. I could have maxed it out and my life would be the same, but instead I bought on the low end… or somewhere in the middle if we look at Apple’s lineup as a whole.

It’s now 4 years later. This is the longest I’ve probably ever kept a laptop. It’s still running fine, I’m not hurting for more power, and will like wait another 1-3 years before an upgrade… maybe more, we’ll see.

The laptop is a glorified Chromebook for me. I do edit some photos from time to time, encode some video, and code a bit. But 95% of the time, I’m just looking at webpages. Maxing the thing out would have been a massive waste of money.

My work laptop is also a MBP of a similar generation. It’s not up to me when it’s upgraded, but it also wasn’t maxed out, and it’s still fine. VS Code and Outlook aren’t going to run fast enough to matter with a M5 Mac and 128GB or RAM. The bottleneck isn’t my laptop, it’s bureaucracy.

For some, having top end specs will matter, but that is a shrinking percentage of the overall market.

I would append "subject to diminishing returns" for your use cases.

I could afford maxed-out computers (within reason) but, for most purposes, the premiums for the very top-of-line exceeds any discernible increase in functionality I would experience.

Or at least that's how I understand why Samsung recently introduced literal first-party program for renting phones and is advertising it heavily. The flagships got too expensive.

The bet here is that Apple would much rather you spend ~$35/month perpetually than $1200 every 4 years.

This is a 'good deal' if you're already someone who upgrades their phone frequently, but I would imagine this would end up getting a whole bunch of people to pay more money in the long run to Apple.

If you don't buy it at the end of the 24 month, you've been paying for a very costly lease.

2/3 of the price for a 24 month lease whereas iphones are updated for 7, 8 years ? And the resell value is very good.

Especially financially, it would make zéro sense.

Apple clearly pay the fees for the customers loan but at the end, the only real mistake the customer can make and might regret is switching out of the Apple ecosystem.

That's clever and only mildly evil. Financial savvy people will use it as a "no fee loan" if they can't pay upfront. Less savvy will be more receptive to the commercial discourse at the end of the lease. Eco-deniers will think twice before renewing every year.

And it's actually a consolidation of existing options because Apple already offered "no fee loan" here in EU but you had to choose the option to begin with. Now it's look like this is a single contract and you choose the option at the end of the lease.

The Davos ghouls are proven right each and every day:

> You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy

Back to indentured servitude we go, where by "we" I mean us, the poors, not the wealthy, nor their relatively still well-off direct servants (like many of the users here working for Big Tech).

It is not rolled forward. If they don't want to pay the $433, then they don't. They return the device and the new device's lease doesn't include that $433.

It's not like a used car loan that some people have that keeps growing with each transaction (and at insane interest rates).

But they're not actually interest in owning 2 year old phones though right?

They're just interest in you / 2ndary market not owning any?

They’re not putting it back into a box, listing it for sale, and pocketing the difference.

I'd imagine even a phone they can't fix to sell still has some value, even as scrap to them especially as the costs of every damn material that goes into any electronic device continue to soar.

And that all being said: two things can be simultaneously true at once. Leasing is a perfectly valid form of... well you can't really say ownership, acquiring goods I guess? And it also does mean Apple can now turn what may have been one-shot purchases into people who are just fine paying a monthly payment ad infinitum. And that, in turn, opens the door for keeping people on a perpetual new-phone treadmill of monthly payments that involve them never actually owning anything.

You can very easily tie this into the Samuel Vimes Boots Theory of Economics:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

They’re obviously making money on the whole purchase and program because they’re a business, not a charity.

The assumption that they’re making significantly more money on this than direct sales may or may not hold. It could be that they’re targeting a similar level of end-to-end profit as direct sales but using this to expand their market by providing more purchasing options.

Some people get angry at the prospect of a company making money, but they’re not charities. Everyone should do the math and decide which purchase options work for them. What works for you may not be appropriate to force on to the rest of the population.

One month of median US rent buys three 55" TVs.

The math has changed.

If someone can’t plan ahead 2 years for a $433 expense, they definitely should not have a top of the line iPhone. When my income was low I had an iPhone SE that cost $329.

That rich man was born into wealth, so he has no concept of the lives of poor people.

The other thing to consider, that while Apple might sell you the phone for $400 or whatever, they might re-sell it as refurbished for $700.

most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population.

Credit card statistics are heavily manipulated because it's easy to make them sound terrible. I don't know which factoid specifically you're referring to, but the studies about "X percent of Americans couldn't handle an emergency expense without putting it on a credit card" often use tricks like including anyone who would pay by credit card if they could. I remember reading some of these studies and realizing that I would have been included in the statistic because I prefer to use a credit card where I can, even though I pay it off before interest accrues.

Not by purchasing power. We're also in a weird position compared to our "peers" in that most of them have relatively easy access to much less wealthy neighbors via over-land transit or a cheap plane ride, whereas we have to travel quite a distance or pay for extremely expensive plane tickets. Which means that we're stuck here with what a USD buys in the US, instead of being able to hop over to someplace else where a dollar goes further. We also work more than our peers, so our per-hour earnings take a hit compared to theirs.

I could go on. The trick is trying to gaslight Americans into second-guessing the economic pain they've increasingly felt over the past few decades. The 50th percentile American household lives worse than the 50th percentile household of quite a few less-wealthy countries.

Median wealth in the U.S just around $100k - see Wikipedia & other databases.

how many people own houses ? & for those people that own houses - average equity in those houses is less than 45%.

ain't no factoid - but lived reality of most people. maybe on the coasts where techies and finance bros live - but the rest of america is facing a bleak financial reality.

My comment said "median" explicitly

The number was for household wealth. I think you're looking at individual wealth, which would naturally be lower because it's spread across more people.

Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/table...

The average (mean) is closer to $1 million per family, but that's not a useful number.

[0]: https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2026...

Which is primarily the market value of the home they live in. They can’t pay a bill with it.

The median American household has $8000 of liquid cash in all of their cash accounts combined.

That’s a lot of liquid cash. It reinforces the idea that the median American household has an unparalleled amount of money to burn on whatever.

And this is the median, which means that half of US households have less than this. Which is quite a lot of people who still use phones.

That's not really applicable because:

1. the study is for an "unexpected" expense. This you can see from 2 years away

2. The wording in the study was something along the lines of "would have to dip into savings", not that they literally don't have any money for it. The fed's survey of consumer finances shows the median household has between 7-13k (depending whether you're counting median income or median wealth) in their checking accounts

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...

Should people be more financially responsible? Yes

Are they today? No

In a rational world payday loans, predatory auto loans, BNPL, perpetually rolling credit card debt etc would not need to exist. Yet these sectors are rapidly growing and companies in it are thriving.

I'm saying the specific claim of "most people live on credit cards as bridge finance between paychecks. when I mean most people - I mean 50% of the population" is false.

- written on my S10

This might be the funniest thing I’ve ever read on this nerd website.

It is not like having a $1200 flagship smartphone is a requirement to earn a living like, say, having a mean of transportation is to many people not living close to their workplace. There is nothing one do in a flagship that you can't do - albeit maybe with less quality or slower - than a lower end one. All allows to make and receive calls, use messaging, have a browser, apps.

To be honest, I am clumsy and break stuff easily so I have never spent more than $200 on a smartphone, my current one is a pixel 6a running grapheneos that I bought for 180€ 2.5 years ago. It makes very good photos actually and is fast enough for everything I do. I understand people can want something nicer but it is not a need.

I don't have to deal with insurance, parking (if parking is free by you, it shouldn't be), maintenance (I work on them myself, I just pay for cheap parts), and fuel is effectively free. That's all on top of the car payment for people who haven't paid off their car.

Biking is relatively popular and definitely feasible within ten km or so from most city or town cores here in Scandinavia, not just the metropolises.

People bike all winter in Germany and the Netherlands.

Precisely what they should have done for service revenue instead of milking App Store for the past 10 years. They should also have bundled Apple Care as part of it.

It would also allow them to hike up their price for iPhone. For example I wouldn't be surprised if the upcoming iPhone Fold and next year's iPhone 20 / XX start at $1499 to $1999.

My question is how will this roll out world wide, is this going to be like Apple Credit Card, Apple Cash and other things that is US only? Who is actually paying for the interest free loan. Somewhere along the line someone has got to give.

This is all good direction that is happening in the past 12 months, MacBook Neo, Apple Upgrade. Hopefully they will also fix the software part. macOS doesn't need annual upgrade. Perhaps neither do iOS. And the last thing would be about the App Store. But I guess that will take a lot longer.

Multi-year zero-interest loans are also commonplace in high-price, high-margin specialty retail: think La-Z-Boy, Sleep Number, home improvement, hot tubs, home gym equipment, etc.

> Late fees: what to expect > Late fees may apply if your payment isn't collected after multiple attempts:

> Pay in 4: A late fee may be charged per missed payment.

> Pay in 30 Days: Be sure to pay on time to avoid late fees.

> Pay over time: Late fees and interest may apply as outlined in your credit agreement.

Unlike what a lot of people in this country think, Klarna is not free money.

Yep, which reduces the need to make new devices notably better than old ones, since you'll always have a steady stream of customers coming off their leases.

By getting people to be default-subscribers rather than purchasers who may decide to upgrade, they improve their odds of keeping a larger chunk of their hardware revenue stream.

You literally don’t own the hardware, it’s a lease.

That said, you can purchase with financing with an Apple Card, or with numerous other financing options like carrier financing. However, leasing allows the purchase prices of phones to continue climbing while still presenting a palatable monthly payment.

I think what’s going to happen with this is a lot of people will be lured in with low payments and then be surprised with the ending “keep your phone” payment, where it will feel like it makes more sense to just get the new phone and continue the same payments.

Paying a $400 payment on a 2 year iPhone will look insane as that’s the depreciated value of a 2 year old phone.

Check ebay. That's around the price of a pro series iPhone 2 years old.

If you're the person who has leased this phone, you make all your payments and get to the end and your bill to keep the phone forever is going to seem kind of high.

Obviously, that's logical. In your lease, you have only paid the price of depreciation.

Just like with cars leasing is the most expensive way to own them, but I guess there's a certain buyer who doesn't want old stuff.

But then again maybe the person doing the lease knows this already and just wants a new phone frequently.

My worry is that a lot of people will see a lower payment and not realize that they’re getting the phone at the end of the term.

It's an interest free loan for 2/3 of the price.

With a car lease, the total of payments plus residual is more than the cash purchase price. That is how the financing company makes money. But in the case of Apple, the total of the lease payments plus the residual is exactly equal to the cash price.

Apple is eating the loss on the financing, for some reason. Probably what is happening is their lease provider is being given a discount on the price, so they keep the difference. Apple probably believes they will sell more phones this way.

But this is great for you the buyer, because it means instead of spending your cash now, you spend it over three years. And since the money has less buying power after three years because of inflation, it's technically cheaper for you to spread out the payments.

Especially if you put the rest of the money in the bank and earn interest on it!

Is a 3 year upgrade cycle for a MacBook Pro unreasonable? Would you get a lower spec machine since you were not trying to maximize the life of the machine? I know I always tend to overspec my machine to keep it for as long as possible.

My M3 MBP with 36GB of ram (looks like it was about 2500 3 years ago) would get me $945 in trade in credit. May be able to get more on eBay but I can't argue with just doing trade in is easier. A bit less than I would "save" by just upgrading at the end of the lease and this already is not the base model so the number does shift.

Especially when I look at the payment options right now I could finance that MBP about $250 on my Apple Card for 12 months no interest, or $57.99 for 36 months. and then I get a new one.

Would probably depend on what it is I was doing with the machine, am I doing tasks that would actually benefit from better and better machines like video editing and similar tasks or am I just using my computer fairly basic in a way that even an M1 machine still handles just fine.

For a personal machine? Yes that’s something I see as unreasonable, MacBook Pros have a very long lifespan. M1 laptop are still pretty awesome machines. For a business an upgrade every 3 years could make sense

Is that threshold for using a Pro machine 3 years, I don't know probably not for most people. My M3 Pro from almost 3 years ago is still running beautifully. I could make the argument that more power would benefit what I do with this machine without a doubt, is it worth the upgrade? I don't know, but I would be lying if I have not been thinking about it.

But I also think about the mentality I had when I bought this machine, and the mentality I had when I was looking at possible upgrades just a few weeks ago. Possibly paying more to overspec the machine compared to my current use case assuming that I want to continue to use it in 3 to 4 years.

I don't know if that calculation is necessary as cut as dry.

This is probably the case for a lot of people, but Apple is smart with their lineup and there are several what I'd call "not pro" features that are gated by the MBP (and iPad pro) which is unfortunate.

Primarily, 120hz screen, SD card reader, HDMI port. None of those are really "pro" featuers, they're just basics I'd expect on any premium laptop.

That being said, 3 years is a tad on the aggressive side for an upgrade cycle for a laptop. I just upgraded my M1 last year, and this M4 Pro will easily last a year or two longer before I feel a compelling need to upgrade, outside of getting RAM constrained. Use case is photo+video production. So for me, a 5 year cycle would be about right.

But also depends on how you spec it out. If you are just buying the base model, then 3 years makes sense. If you spend extra to max it out, you'll be able to hold onto it for 6+ years.

Apple will benefit in two ways. They will make 125% of what they used to make on every phone they sold because they can sell it twice and more people will be forced into the two year upgrade cycle (because they can’t afford the buyout at the end) increasing their overall sales numbers in general. If you’re a consumer, you should just treat this as a 24 month interest free loan and then buy the phone outright at the end of that period. If you put the outright cost of the phone into a bond (say 7.5%) during that period, you will even get 3 months payment free and only pay for 21 out of those 24 months.

Considering the cost of a battery replacement, it's not the worst value proposition in the world.

From: https://www.sellcell.com/blog/how-often-do-people-upgrade-th...

That's precisely why they set it up this way, honestly leasing always made more sense for businesses. I prefer to keep my phones, peace of mind knowing, if I lose something that somehow did not make it to the backups, I can just turn on my old phone and find it.

Far beyond the actual/original cost of the item which is why it’s not a good deal for an individual.

Once again, taking advantage of short term thinking.

They are also dumping a weird risk premium on the end user. I literally get a new phone every year with the upgrade program, there’s no way I’ll be doing that going forward, at least through the lease. I’ll just buy it with cash and wait for a deal.

That is my big problem with leasing portable things. I never get AppleCare because I can self insure. But if I lose the phone 8 months into the lease I am deep in a hole.

The flip side of this, Apple gets more control of the resale market, pushing more buyers into the new device market.

In theory it lets them solve any market problems that emerge where independent resale markets let high quality devices cannibalize sales of new devices.

This also pushes term completion with early termination charges (discourage selling before term ends).

And they know money will be tight for their consumers, they can't lower prices anytime soon so give out 0% loans.

Following their tradition of screwing the frugal, cheapest options seem to be excluded.

Its a subscription model for Apple hardware.