It’s an exciting time to be an Apple user. What was expected to be a spring event has turned into a string of announcements spread out over five days in February and March bringing a slew of new products: A new app! A new iPhone! Two new iPads! A new chip! Two new Macs!
But aside from the strangeness of the launches, Apple also made a few decisions that have us scratching our heads. While there is definitely a bunch of great stuff–the MacBook Air price cut, the iPhone 16e’s processor, the Mac Studio’s RAM limit–the announcements are littered with some truly strange decisions that leave the lineup in a weird place for the next 12-15 months. Here are five moves that have us wondering what Apple is thinking.
iPhone 16e: No MagSafe
When Apple launched the iPhone 16e, it cleared up a ton of questions within the iPhone lineup. The SE and its very old design are gone, all models now have USB-C, and there’s a new lower-end model with a clear upgrade path. But while we expected a fair amount of sacrifices to get to the lower price, we didn’t expect Apple to leave off its proprietary MagSafe charging tech. MagSafe is one of Apple’s best iPhone features and it’s even made its way over to AirPods cases and Android phones via the Qi2 standard. So for Apple to skip it on the newest iPhone 16e—even a budget model—is very odd.
You can get a MagSafe puck to stick to the iPhone 16e if you try, but make no mistake—it’s not MagSafe.
David Price / Foundry
iPad Air: Just an M3
When Apple updated the iPad Air in 2024 after more than two years, it was somewhat worth the wait. There was a new 13-inch model, a faster M2 chip, a landscape front camera, faster Wi-Fi, and support for the Apple Pencil Pro. But this time around, not so much. Apple’s latest iPad Air update arrives less than a year after the last one and brings the one thing no one needs, a slightly faster M3 chip. And that’s it. No OLED screen, no new colors, no C1 modem, nothing.
iPad: No Apple Intelligence
If the iPad Air was an unnecessary update, the 11th-gen iPad is even unecessarier. We weren’t expecting much, but Apple couldn’t even clear that bar. Instead of an A17 Pro chip or A18 chip to bring Apple Intelligence support, we got an A16 chip that’s only marginally faster than the A14 in the previous model and doesn’t support Apple Intelligence. It’s still a great deal at $349—especially with double the storage— but why would Apple release a device in 2025 that doesn’t support its marquee feature?
Every new device in Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and Mac lineup is built for Apple Intelligence—except the A16 iPad.
Apple
Mac Studio: M3 Ultra
The new Mac Studio is a ridiculously powerful machine for its size. (Or any size for that matter.) The high-end chip configuration has a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, 80 graphics cores, and support for up to 512GB of RAM. The only strange thing is that the chip is part of the M3 family, not the M4. Reports say the reason is that the M4 chip doesn’t have the UltraFusion packaging architecture needed to fuse two M4 Max into one Ultra, but if that’s true, then we ask: Why didn’t the Mac Studio arrive last year with an M3 Max and M3 Ultra?
iPad: Apple Pencil
Oh Apple Pencil, we’ll never understand you. Even with a new iPad lineup, Apple still sells four Apple Pencils, two of which are still listed as compatible with the new iPad: the USB-C Apple Pencil and the 1st-gen Apple Pencil, which was released nearly a decade ago. It has none of the newer features in the USB-C model, including magnetic charging, wireless pairing, or Apple Pencil hover. Yet it costs $20 more.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor, Macworld
Michael Simon has been covering Apple for more than 20 years. He started covering rumors with Spymac when the iPod was the iWalk, and has owned nearly every iPhone Apple has ever made. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, son, and far too many gadgets.