Now, a $1,999 MacBook Pro can have a monthly payment of $38.99 over 36 months.
$38.99 * 36 = $1403.64. That doesn’t seem right.
Macrumors has a more detailed analysis (different device in their example):
If you return the iPhone 17 Pro and simply move on from the Apple Upgrade program, then your total cost to own the device would be $551.88 after 12 months, plus sales tax if applicable. While that is less than paying $1,099 upfront, the catch is that you are no longer in possession of the device after your lease ends and cannot resell it or trade it in.
Seems like it’s just designed to keep people buying new hardware regularly.
It’s the exact same thing that cars have been doing forever.
It’s meant for the people who are constant upgraders.
For the people that do it, if you paid $1099 upfront, and then sold it after a year to buy the next upgrade, how much would you get for the 1 year old phone?
That’ll help decide if it’s worth it or not, and I’m sure there will be deals that put it in your favor at times vs buying outright.
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If you buy a phone and sell it after a year, you have ‘nothing’
If you buy it outright you spend $1000 and resell it for $500 you have $500
You lease it for $500 you still have $500
But that has to be your original plan to get a new phone.
Sometimes, the lease deals work in your favor and you’ll end up with more than the resell value. Sometimes you can get a really good outright deal too.
Edit: and without a lease deal, outright usually wins.
It really only makes sense if you buy a new phone or computer every year/lease term.
This is good though, so it might not be that bad of a deal if you could use the credit anyway:
Buy the iPhone outright by paying an amount equal to the device’s retail price minus any lease payments made.
Won’t be long until you are legally the ownership of evilcorp; a slave whose only purpose is to produce enough shareholder value to survive the next 24 hours.
I know we hit rock bottom when Walmart is advertising loans for groceries. Whole lot of people need to take a moment and think about what’s going on.
Rate things are going China will have UBI in 5 years.
Love the Mr Robot reference (hopefully).
It’s no different than you subsidizing the costs through the carrier, the only difference is Apple will likely earn interest whereas carriers do this at basically 0%. Or Apple is going for vendor lock in. Right now you can “switch phone companies” and they advertise paying off balances up to a certain amount to entice the switch. Apple may not allow that.
This works for people who have FOMO and keep upgrading every time a new model comes out and have a monthly payment in perpetuity.
I just hope they don’t make this the ONLY option. I keep my phone until it dies or runs out of security updates.
The last time I upgraded was because the S22 Ultra had a 10x telephoto lens. Given the current state of phone cameras and zooms, I’m holding onto this one until it stops getting updates or it breaks.
Probably in anticipation of some serious price increases. They’d still like to get devices in people’s hands even if they can’t nominally afford them anymore.
Yeah. They haven’t raised prices for several years.
The iPhone 12 was $799 in 2020. The iPhone 17 was $799 in 2025. Inflation alone should have made the 17 $999 but they kept the price the same for 5 years.
Same for the pro lines. 12 pro was $999 in 2020. The 17 pro started at $1099 but they dropped the lowest 128GB storage tier. Same price as the 256GB model for the 12 pro. Inflation would put that at $1399 for the 17 pro.
Between inflation and AI making memory cost your firstborn, they’re going to have to raise the prices.
Think different! Yeah I think I won’t buy any Apple device and definitely won’t support this kind of bullshit. That is what happens when you let some excel fuckboy run a company and become yet another orange baby asskisser. Just sad as fuck.
“Google One”, anybody?
