The More Apple Gives, The Better It Gets
Apple's older model Macs and iPads become better deals when they continue to upgrade.
Upgrading tech devices often isn’t necessarily a new thing. I remember upgrading to every SideKick that came out after finally getting mine after almost a year of the first model releasing. The SideKick 2 was pretty sick, and the SideKick 3 was a cheap piece of garbage — but I digress.
The point that I am making is that us geeks have always wanted the new and shiny. Even if the device that we had at the time was more than good enough, if a new model came out I wanted to upgrade immidiately. Some of this is FOMO, some of it is purely (evil) materialism, but I think it also had to do with that fact that I loved using these devices, so if their was a new model that was better, I wanted it.
Fast forward to the iPhone and the revolution of having a powerhouse of a computer in your pocket, and many more of us have jumped on the train of always wanting to upgrade. Many will still wait until after their contract is up with a carrier but since Apple released its own iPhone Upgrade Plan, it is hard to not go for the option of having the newest model each year.
Now when it comes to MacBooks and iPads I think even geeks have a little more patience. MacBooks don’t change much if upgraded year over year, and even iPad Pros who have a two year hardware upgrade cycle, usually only having minimal updates to new models.
Something that has been said before by others in the tech community, I think I heard this specifically from Jason Snell at Six Colors, Apple will always want to have something new in there stores for a customer who needs something.
Meaning that even if it is merely a spec bump to a new iPhone or Mac, if someone is coming in to replace a device that is many years old, you want them to know they are upgrading to the latest and greatest. Sometimes the lottery doesn’t work out and you may pick up an iPhone 14 Pro, not realizing the iPhone 15 Pro was going to be announced a day later.
But the iPhone 7 or iPhone XS that you upgraded from is going to be a huge upgrade even if you went with a model that is a year old today. A lot of times the upgrades that Apple does each year will benefit those who haven’t upgraded their device in a really long time, or are brand new to Apple hardware and are not going to know the difference.
This leads me to Apples Scary Event coming up on Monday October 30th, and my excitement of them upgrading the MacBook Pros for the 3rd time since their revision. This isn’t only great in that Apple is moving to the M3 which will likely be on a 3nm chips which is amazing, but it will also make the used market of older M-series MacBook Pros that much more affordable.
I wrote a post months ago titled Old Apple Tech Worth Buying, which went over the 2017 MacBook Pro, Apple Watch SE (1st Gen.), and the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. All of these devices are three to five years old now but can still be very useful for whatever tasks you need to do. I still wear my Apple Watch SE everyday, and my 10.5-inch iPad Pro has become a family iPad that my wife and son use daily.
You can already find the M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14-inch with 1 TB of SSD for under $1,300 in decent condition. Which is almost a 50% discount on what it sold for brand new just three years ago. Now that many are expecting the M3 MacBook Pros to be announced on the 30th, I suspect that 50% will become a lot higher in the next few months.
Many who need a new MacBook Pro that are upgrading from a machine much older will benefit greatly buying the new M3 models. Some who have the M2 will be happy to jump to the M3 for that extra bump that their workflow will benefit from. But those of us who use older models, I think, will benefit most as Apple continues to upgrade there best laptops.