Apple’s ‘amazing’ iPhone pipeline is going to have an amazingly high price tag

Ah, the dog days of summer. Hot, humid days, sultry nights, and very little Apple news as we are left to wait for the fall to bring new iPhones.

While we certainly will be able to talk about the iPhone 17 lineup in the fall, will we be able to afford one?

Jefferies expects a $50 price increase for iPhone 17 Slim/P/PM models to offset rising component costs and China tariffs. Other potential cost pressures from India and sector tariffs are not yet included.

Jefferies analyst Edison Lee, as reported by @DeItaone via X

Because of the Trump Administration’s tariff plan (is it still a “plan” if it changes every five minutes?), at least one analyst expects iPhone prices to go up even before Apple ships a foldable.

Even as executives use AI as an excuse to lay people off and AI actually cost great companies like The Iconfactory business, companies are raising prices. And it’s not just companies like Apple that are importing physical goods from abroad, Spotify and Peacock are raising prices, too.

The Macalope would like to assure you that you don’t have to buy a new phone. You honestly probably don’t have to buy anything.

What are we even paying for? Last year, Apple hyped the iPhone 16 with the promise that it would run Apple Intelligence. Well, yes, it will. If the company ever ships the parts of Apple Intelligence people want.

Okay, some people might have wanted the things Apple did deliver, like Image Playground. Theoretically. Seems unlikely, but it’s not completely impossible.

Speaking of Apple Intelligence, let’s head over to the AI desk to find out how that’s going. The Macalope should warn you, though: the AI desk is actually an AI-generated slop image of a desk and is a little unstable because it has only three and a half legs, but it does have a kitchen vent over top of it for some reason, and is covered in ants? Anyway, let’s head over there. But watch out for the ants because they were just regular ants, and then we asked the AI to fix all the obvious problems with the desk, and it just returned the same image, but now the ants were fire ants.

If you were hoping to use AI to justify your purchase of an iPhone 16 last year or the purchase of an iPhone 17 this year, good news! According to Tim Cook in last week’s conference call with analysts, Apple is “making good progress on a more personalized Siri”!

Oh, what, that’s too vague for you? Well, Cynical Sam (if that’s your real name), you’ll be eating crow out of the other side of your mouth when you hear that Cook went on to say:

We’re excited about the work we’re doing in this space, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see the strong momentum building.

So there! Exciting work! In space! Rewarding strong! Momentum? Building!

Aaand he also said Apple is open to acquiring an AI company that can help it out.

We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We are are not stuck on a certain size company…

We’ve got it handled! But, also, we could use some help.

But that’s not the last word from Apple on this topic because after the call with analysts, the company held an all-hands meeting in which senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said that when it came to an enhanced Siri, Apple was “in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned”.

Not just ants, but fire ants.

Personally, the Macalope hopes that simply means that not only will the company deliver an enhanced Siri, but it’ll actually work.

Tim Cook also spoke to Apple’s employees.

I have never felt so much excitement… The product pipeline, which I can’t talk about: It’s amazing, guys. It’s amazing…

While Tim is, like many of us, apparently still trying to get out of the habit of using unnecessarily gendered plural nouns, he has also been working on how he refers to the Apple product pipeline. Five years ago he said simply, “We’re excited about our pipeline.” Nine years ago, he suggested there were “exciting things in the pipeline.” These are all improvements over when, early in his tenure as Apple CEO back in 2012, he said it was simply a “pipeline full of stuff.”

“We got a lot of stuff in there. Some of the stuff I don’t even know what it is. There’s like a watch. And a speaker thingy? I dunno, it’s all in a spreadsheet Gladys maintains.”

Despite the grand words of assurance, the Macalope will suggest that when a company is likely raising prices (albeit not by choice) and not necessarily delivering on all its promises, maybe it’s time to consider whether upgrading this year is right for you.