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.