Yawn Dropping: Cupertino’s Annual Apple iPhone Re-Boxing Spectacular. No Awe or Intelligence. No AI At All.
Quick Take: Apple’s 2025 “Awe” event delivers another round of recycled superlatives: thinner phones needing battery packs, a camera “plateau” that’s more chin than chisel, and “must-have” features on permanent repeat. No AI, no innovation, just another year in Cupertino, “Waiting For Godot.”
Welcome to Apple’s September Event 2025
The only show in town where the hype is so thin it needs a custom battery case just to make it to the afterparty.
Let’s be honest: Apple product launches used to change the narrative. Now, they mostly confirm what your forum group chat has already said: another “best ever,” another “groundbreaking,” another “totally-not-the-same-as-last-year” iterative promise—leaving you feeling reckless (and frankly, a bit stupid) for buying last year’s model.
Why didn’t Apple invent “vapour cooling” earlier? (No, we’re not counting the liquid-leaking G5 Mac Pros.) Why didn’t my iPhone 16 Pro Max need it? Or the 15 Pro Max, or… oh, right, my iPhone never overheated before. Apparently, the 17 Pro only gets hot when you try to run the as-yet-unreleased Apple Intelligence on-device with Siri, which won’t arrive until next year. But hey, that didn’t stop Apple spending fifteen minutes of keynote time explaining why vapour cooling is the most “sick” innovation since, well, the last time they said “it just works.”
Once upon a time, all anyone cared about was that “it just works.” Now we get the technical theatre of “why it just works” Microsoft 2005 style because, let’s be honest, something in the pipeline probably doesn’t (likely some acronym like FMF or PCC or AI or LM or even PCP).
Frankly, I’d have been more impressed if Apple had built in an actual vaping chamber. Teens and geeky Android users would be queuing round the block. And think of the consumables revenue Finally, a subscription service with some real smoke behind it.
You could almost hear Tim Cook’s voice quivering with manufactured awe as he introduced the “wafer-thin,” lighter-than-news iPhone 17 Air, the “camera plateau” (not bump, never bump, now a “plateau”), and the new “gotta-have-it” features that mostly seem to have been cribbed from last year’s “must-have” Mark Gurman predictions rolled into this year’s releases.
Apple isn’t even pretending the innovation is in the silicon anymore except for a C1X modem which is apparently “2x” as fast as last year’s! Forgive me, but I think the speed of your cell connection has more to do with your provider than your modem. The main event was, obviously, the battery case or as I like to call it, Apple’s own little admission that physics can’t be bribed with adjectives, and an A19 - basically last year’s A18 with an extra core and a larger cache which is about as much use without AI to stress test it as Siri is, well, without Perplexity to drive it. Put one in a MacBook and sell it for $699 and I’ll be impressed though.
iPhone 17 “Air”: Lightness is Next to Godliness (or Powerlessness)
Let’s start with the headliner, the iPhone 17 Air. According to Apple’s best-paid copywriters and cardboard cutout presenters, it’s “super-thin,” so ethereal you’ll forget it’s in your pocket, unless, of course, you try to use it for more than three hours without plugging in the new “Air Battery Pack,” sold separately at the exact price point combined where you could just buy last year’s iPhone Pro Max and call it a day.
Apple’s pitch:
“It’s our lightest, thinnest, most advanced iPhone ever.”
Translation:
“It’s so thin, you’ll need to buy Apple’s new battery-pack case just to get through the day, at which point your super-slim iPhone 17 Air is basically the same size and weight as last year’s 16 Pro Max, with three less cameras and no speakers, which now costs less and didn’t come with a chin that would make Peter Griffin blush.”
Not everyone has had a pair of balls this close to their face, but Apple assures us in the spirit of ED&I, there’s now a camera plateau for everyone. Progress, Cupertino-style.
The camera plateau
Apple’s latest design language for “we couldn’t get the laws of physics to cooperate,” now bulges with all the subtlety of a Family Guy cutaway gag. One could argue it’s a metaphor for Cupertino itself: always looking for a softer, rounder excuse to put a handle on last year’s tech without really offering anything new except a Microsoft style snoozefest of a product launch full of so much techno snore-dom that the iterative mentions of neverendum improvements of pretty much every apparently-important feature seems to be intended to distract rather than awe, from the admittedly meaningful but mainly utterly boring releases for Apple’s key launch event. My favourite feature? Orange. Which you’ll never see anyway because the first thing you’ll be ordering is a case to cover it up of course.
Ask yourself: If the main headline is, “Look, it’s really thin!” and the sub-headline is, “And here’s a battery case so it won’t die before lunch,” what, exactly, is the win?
A Feature So Nice, We Marketed It Twice
This year’s marquee upgrades are mostly a greatest hits of last year’s “new.” Dynamic Island gets a slightly snappier animation (be still my beating heart!), the display is brighter (didn’t you promise that in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024?), and the “all-new” A19 chip promises “up to 15% better efficiency,” just enough to eke out an extra ten minutes if you don’t mind turning the brightness down, holding your breath, and switching off Liquid Glass.
What you won’t get:
- Apple Intelligence (the Siri rebrand) actually doing anything new - “Coming in a future update.” For AI, we are still living it up like it’s June 2024 until 2026.
- Custom GPT actions. In fact, any real GPT action. Any agentic action, at all.
- Anything approaching a persistent cross-app agentic experience at all, as outlined months ago in a proposed SenseOS concept I penned.
Tommo_UK
- In fact Apple has resorted to focusing on mentioning “ML” - Machine Learning - more times than I could count and as few mentions of “Apple Intelligence” - the misnomer of the decade - they could get away with.
But…
you do get a 120Hz display on every model, which would be more exciting if the average teenager hadn’t been running the same refresh rate on their three-year-old Samsung.
The iPhone 17 and 17 Pro: Boredom, Now in Two Sizes
The regular iPhone 17 and 17 Pro arrive as the “best iPhones ever,” which is exactly what the 16 and 15 and 14 and 13 were called and, funnily enough, also exactly what next year’s 18 will be described as. “Industry-leading camera system.” “ProMotion display.” “Surgical-grade aluminium.” I would have paid extra for Apple to describe the iPhone 17 Pro as “the most iterative, professionally recycled iPhone ever.” At least it would have felt honest. “Think Iteratively,” as I hear the slogan will scream from Cupertino’s new ad campaign.
Pro Camera?
It’s still the same three-lens formation, but now with slightly better HDR and “even more natural skin tones” which is marketing speak for “we did a software tweak.” The LIDAR scanner is back, presumably so AR developers can continue to build apps nobody uses and battery life can take another gentle hit from what’s now “our biggest ever battery” which will curiously fail, as usual, to satisfy anyone without a battery pack to slap on the back.
Design?
The titanium rails are slightly shinier and ready to scratch up, and there’s a new “Sunset Orange” bouleveard, just in case you want your phone to look like it’s been left on the dashboard too long. Not that you’ll see it, underneath your protective shiny new case to protect your new piece of $1200-1800 jewellery for a phone with anything approaching a decent specification.
Battery life?
About the same as last year. Unless you have the Air, in which case: see battery pack, above.
The Return of “Breakthrough” - Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3
Not content to rest on their iPhone laurels, Apple has bestowed upon us the Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3. The Series 11 comes with - wait for it - hypertension detection! Because nothing says “revolution” like a watch telling you you’re stressed after reading a press release and then checking your battery life. Improved durability? The Watch 10 could already survive a trip through a car wash. The Series 11 just gives you the peace of mind that your blood pressure spike won’t void your warranty.
The Watch Ultra 3 is more Ultra than ever, with improved GPS and a new S10 chip that lets you run an extra loop around the block before the battery throws in the towel. Want a feature that isn’t iterative? Sorry, this is Apple, 2025. You get “modest enhancements,” a new “Marine Blue” band, and the knowledge that if you don’t use half the functions, your grandkids still might, and that new 5G modem might come in useful in the Ultra 5 circa 2028, when it’ll be the size of your forearm and finally empower you to ditch your iPhone so you can watch Pronhub on your wrist (just be careful which wrist you’re using).
You also get enhanced satellite connectivity, so as he explained on Bloomberg, the 1% of the top 1% of Apple geeks like Mark Gurman can send messages to their friends saying ”I’m hiking - my favourite pass-time - and sending this by satellite” from his watch (presumably because his new iPhone 17 Air will have run out of battery).
Headline features Apple wants you to shout about:
- Hypertension detection: because it’s Apple’s way of telling you even your pulse is bored. Kudos to Apple for making this backwards compatible though. I wonder why this feature took filing to release when the hardware was there all along?
- “Improved durability”: read as “last year’s design, slightly less shatter-prone.”
- “Better battery management (24-48 hours)”: translation, “still not as good as the Nothing Watch at 11 days.”
AirPods: New Case, Same Old Tune
AirPods Pro 3 now come along just in time to replace battery-gasping Pro 1s and Pro 2s, now in a “re-engineered” case that still doesn’t prevent you from losing one behind the sofa. Spatial audio gets another bump, but only if you can find the right settings. Battery life? Incremental, like everything else this cycle. You can even use the AirPods to control your hypertension, by drowning out the Apple keynote and its parade of recycled adjectives.
Oh, and translation “built in” - provided you have your iPhone with you of course. Because the new Airpods Pro 3 don’t actually translate anything, that’s all done on the iPhone. In other words, a software upgrade masquerading as a hardware upgrade to force an upgrade cycle, but with two additional rubber tips for your aural pleasure, because according to Apple, those rubber tips now need to come in five different sizes to ensure a personalised fit for that pleasurable fit, something which people who say size doesn’t matter will never understand.
Let’s be clear: Apple’s much-hyped “real-time translation” in AirPods Pro 3 isn’t so much innovation as it is a late arrival to a party that Android and Samsung users have been enjoying since 2024 (no small thanks to their integrative AI). Your iPhone could already handle this last year, and did; all Apple’s done is reroute an old trick through a new price tag via a set of new AirPod Pros.
You don’t need AirPods Pro 3 hardware for the feature, but you will have to buy them anyway if you want it, just because, just to show a willingness to pay the upgrade loyalty tax for Cupertino’s favourite pastime: slapping a new label on yesterday’s tech, then calling it magic. But these days, most Apple fans would happily buy “Air” in a can if it came with a wireless charging because there’s such a lack of fresh air from Cupertino.
So What’s Actually New? A Glossary of Recycled Superlatives
“Super-thin.”
“Ultra-durable.”
“Groundbreaking health tracking.”
“The most advanced ever.”
“Industry-leading.”
“Revolutionary display.”
“Up to 15% more efficient.”
“Best iPhone camera ever.”
“Stunning new design.”
“Next-level performance.”
“Future of mobile intelligence.” (Not included in box.)
If you printed out Apple’s last five years of keynote adjectives and played a game of “iPhone launch bingo,” you’d have been out of squares by the third paragraph of today’s event.
iPhone 17 Air: Why Not Just Wait for iPhone 18?
This year, the real story isn’t the 17, it’s the wait for the 18. The iPhone 15 turned out to be a sweet spot - possibly the best iPhone since the iPhone 11. The 16 was the world’s most expensive placeholder with the failed promise of Apple Intelligence now the subject of several class action lawsuits, and now the 17 is…a “waiting room” phone. The 18, we are assured (by Mark Gurman anyway), will be the one that finally, definitely, absolutely, no excuses, delivers “Apple Intelligence” in a folding form-factor Samsung shipped last year, that actually does something more than change the weather widget. Maybe next year, maybe 2027.
Here’s the Tommo.fyi investment tip:
If you’re still holding out hope that the iPhone 17 Air is the one that finally makes “agentic AI” more than a marketing bullet point, you might want to pick up a charger for your patience. If you’re trading up from a 16, you’ll notice one key difference: a slightly lighter phone, a heavier battery case, and another Apple keynote where your pulse rate matches your blood pressure. I have no investment commentary, and haven’t on Apple, since springtime, because of their plethora of failed promises and even bigger failure to deliver on anything other than iterative improvements. Show me the money, and I’ll show you my $400 by Q4 2027 forecast written several months ago.
Tommo_UK
What’s Left To Get Excited About?
“2026 of course!”
Maybe the best new feature is the certainty that, a year from now, the 18 will be “the most advanced ever.” Maybe it’ll finally ship with that “AI assistant” Apple’s been promising since before Tim Cook’s hair went silver (That would be when Apple purchased Siri in 2011 and almost snatched the entire agentic market 15 years before anyone else even thought of the concept).
Tommo_UK
Or maybe, just maybe, the 18 will be even thinner, the battery case will be even thicker, and the camera bump will start to look like less like a Minion, and more like Kate Moss, who famously once said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” something the iPhone 17 Air’s designers might have kept in mind when they designed it with a boob tube ”plateau.”
But until Apple learns to ship an idea rather than just a design tweak, the only “must-have” feature is a yawn you can set your watch by.
Because real artists ship.
Tommo_UK
Conclusion: Meh? Why Bother.
What do you call a product cycle where the most-discussed upgrade is a battery case and the camera bump now deserves its own nickname - a “plateau?” At .fyi, we call it a yawn-drop. Not a hate crime, just an observation. See you at the iPhone 18 launch (foldable $2500 edition, recycled from Samsung’s 2024 edition). I’ll be the one in the back, holding up a sign: “Real Artists Ship.”
But Wait! There is an upside…
(credit where it’s due - the bait and switch this year is…just like last year’s!)
Except it’s iterative - because it’s the only way, like the iPhone 16, Apple can guarantee to shift enough units to make this release worthwhile.
Let’s not kid ourselves: these iPhones will sprint off the shelves, not because the world has suddenly fallen in love with the Peter Griffin “balls-on-his-chin” look of the Air or a battery-pack that undoes its own “Air” diet, but because Apple is running the same carrier-subsidy playbook it used to try (not very successfully) to juice iPhone 16 numbers. The trick? Trade in your iPhone 13 (or anything newer, in “any condition,” which is polite code for “as long as you can find the remains”) and the carriers will “give” you an iPhone 17 for “free.” Free that is, so long as you shackle yourself to another two-year contract whose tariff might just leave you feeling less like an owner and more like a hostage. And that deal, is even better than last year. In fact it is… wait for it…
“Our Best Ever Trade-In Deal, Ever.”
(imaginary Tim Cook Quote).
“At Apple,” he might continue, “we believe in democratising ownership of our best products, so if you bring in any of our previous best ever products going back four years, we’ll give you this year’s best ever product - for free!” Well even Becky Quick on CNBC said she was sold on the idea so that’s a win for Team Tim.
Call it Cupertino’s take on universal basic income: Apple as the great equaliser, ensuring that even the “cost-of-living crisis” crowd can get a slice of this year’s iterative magic, no questions asked. Well, one question: whose margin is getting gouged? Are carriers taking the hit to keep Tim’s quarterly slide deck purring? Or is it the customer, paying through the nose in “airtime” and bundled add-ins and extras they don’t need, for a phone whose main innovation is how quickly it needs to recharge?
And you can be sure Apple wants this flood of upgrades. The company’s “on-device AI” [future] bold narrative only works if the base layer is a fleet of modern iPhones ready to chew through those workloads like a hungry Vision Pro burning through battery packs at a developer demo.
By the time Apple Intelligence actually ships, you can bet Tim & Co. want as few iPhone 13s and 14s and 15s left in the wild as possible. AI as a concept for the many, not the few or at least, for anyone willing to sign away their next two years for the privilege of getting the “future” today.
Even if the software to make it fly won’t be out until 2026. Or 2027. Meanwhile Apple is downplaying AI and talking up ML (Machine Learning) all over again in a repeat of 2018-2022 as the excuse for all its woes, while it tried to work out what to even do with AI let alone what to call it. Personally, I’ve shifted most of my workflow to Perplexity’s Comet agentic browser now. Safari is just so lost in the wilderness at this point it’s embarrassing (and also bug ridden).
So Apple is not doomed. Expect sales to be robust. AirPods Pro 3 will fly off the shelves too; mostly because owners of the Pro 2’s batteries have pretty much died a death by now. So it’s not as much customer excitement, as clever it’s ecosystem management. The kind of logistics and operational genius Tim Cook excels at, even if he’s lacking that “Apple Vision” thing for much else. Apple gets to boast about “record upgrades” while carriers pray their margins don’t vanish faster than the iPhone 17’s battery at 5G speeds. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
But… is it exciting?
Would you stand up and clap at this if you were at a real keynote not surrounded by CGI cityscape shots and cardboard cutout presenters, at any of these products or features?
I doubt it. In terms of excitement, as the Germans might say, “Supergeil? XXX-Kino war das nicht.
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— Tommo, London, Tuesday 9th September 2025
X: @tommo_uk | Linkedin: Tommo UK
