I wrote this post a few months ago after listening to a Waveform Podcast episode discussing Apple’s iPhone lineup. It was mostly an exercise to get back into writing after a long hiatus (basically since my first and last year of college). I also wanted to try out Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s editing chops (they were okay). Anyways, there’s a lot of issues with this post but I made this simple blog site to start writing again and wanted to post something even if it’s not perfect. If you could imagine enjoying my writing style in the future hopefully you’ll stick around, thanks!

This Apple Customer’s iPhone Lineup Prediction

or How I Think Apple’s Near Future iPhone Lineup Should Look

Apple’s meteoric redemption in the early 2000’s at the behest of Steve Jobs is a longtime Silicon Valley (and Wall Street) legend. Anyone with a degree of familiarity with Apple’s history post-1999 or so will be familiar with Jobs’ quadrant approach to product, where he threw out everything Apple had been working on without him and focused the company on four key product areas: Pro Desktop, Pro Laptop, Consumer Desktop, and Consumer Laptop.

Today that pristine four-square grid has expanded into a sprawling product matrix including the iPhone (5 models), AirPods (4 models), Apple Watch (3 models), iPad (6 models), and of course the Vision Pro. While nowhere near the chaotic product catalog of pre-Jobs Apple, this expansion has simplicity purists justifiably concerned—particularly with what’s happening to the iPhone lineup.

So how did Apple’s overall product strategy get so bloated (relative to the early 2000’s-2010’s) in the first place? And why doesn’t it feel as nightmarish? I’d say you can really boil it down to two words: Vision Pro “walled garden”. This innovation has been a triumph in creating genuinely magical product experiences and an even bigger triumph in corporate cash printing. Despite having a much broader range of products than what used to feel necessary, you can rest assured that within the warm embrace of the Apple ecosystem, everything is going to “just work” with little technological fluency required. If you have an iPhone and want a smartwatch, you aren’t in the market for a smartwatch, you’re in the market for an Apple Watch.

But just because all of these devices work near flawlessly with each other doesn’t necessarily mean that any given product line couldn’t suffer from Samsung-esque bloat. Let’s review the current iPhone lineup:

• iPhone 16e ($599)
• iPhone 16 ($799)
• iPhone 16 Plus ($899)
• iPhone 16 Pro ($999)
• iPhone 16 Pro Max ($1199)

All in all, it’s really not that bad. Especially if you put the 16/16 Plus and 16 Pro/16 Pro Max into the same buckets. You either want the cheap phone, the not-cheap phone, the not-cheap big phone, the expensive phone, or the expensive big phone. It’s a system that’s worked pretty well for the last five or so years. But, if the supply-chain rumors are true, we might see a nightmarish lineup like this in the not-too-distant future:

• iPhone 18e ($599)
• iPhone 18 ($699)
• iPhone 18 Plus ($799)
• iPhone Air ($899)
• iPhone Pro ($999)
• iPhone Pro Max ($1199)
• iPhone Pro Fold ($1999)

Any simplicity purist would shudder at the thought of seven iPhone tiers. And anyone who makes a living commentating on tech would have an excellent article for readers to nod their heads along to. But it doesn’t need to be this way, Apple. Let’s consider my approach to adding the rumored Air/Fold phones to the lineup:

Assume it is September 2026, The Year of the Apple iPhone 18. The iPhone lineup now includes ultra-thin and folding models.

• iPhone 18e ($599)
• iPhone 18 ($799)
• iPhone 18 “Air” ($999)
• iPhone Pro “Fold” ($1999)

Let me explain, starting with the iPhone 18e at $599.

Apple wishes they didn’t need to make a budget phone. In a perfect Objectivist utopia where everyone values the “virtue of selfishness” and premium products accordingly, a phone such as the 18e wouldn’t need to exist, but we do not live in that world (yet). “Budget” is a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think anyone was holding their breath for a $10 Boost Mobile edition iPhone. Leaving budget debates aside, Apple’s “Greatest Price” iPhone serves two purposes: lock-in and relativity.

Lock-in: You may not be Apple’s preferred customer (wealthy), but they’ll be happy to take your money. Per our ecosystem discussion earlier, even if you buy the cheapest iPhone, you’re going to be more likely to buy other Apple products in the future.

Relativity: $599 sounds cheap when compared to $799, and $799 sounds premium compared to $599.

The iPhone 18e can really be summed up as the iPhone that tech enthusiasts don’t need to worry about if they don’t have a podcast. So let me that the tech enthusiasts might actually worry about, especially if they have a podcast.

If simplicity was all that mattered, Apple would just nix the idea of an “Air” model and make the base iPhone “The Thinnest iPhone Ever.” Apple knows that a large segment of the phone-buying populace has one of two motivations: “I want the cheapest” or “I want the best” without a whole lot of nuance into what “the best” even means. So why not give consumers a more interesting choice: “I want the thinnest, prettiest phone” or “I want the most powerful, capable phone” (or the “no, I actually still just want the cheap one”).

However, my lineup does not kneel to this simplicity purist agenda. This is, after all, a mix of prediction and desire, and I’d be hard-pressed to predict Apple not having a product just called “iPhone”. Which is why the iPhone 18 might be considered the “S” model of the lineup moving forward. A spec bump to the previous base level iPhone and perhaps a fun new color, much like the “S” generations in the 2010s. This phone is for the consumer who isn’t looking to impress their friends with how much money they can spend on a phone, but who doesn’t want to be humiliated by buying the budget option.

Rounding out the familiar iPhone price structure hierarchy is the “Air”. “Air” is in quotes because I have my doubts they’ll use that name, although it could make sense in the context of the MacBook lineup circa 2016/17: MacBook → MacBook Air → MacBook Pro. This iPhone would take the price slot of the current iPhone Pro models with a comparable performance delta to the iPhone 16 vs iPhone 16 Pro but with a big leg-up on aesthetics. Chief among them being, of course, thinness.

Thinness is perhaps one of the most controversial topics in tech circles (among others): “Bigger battery and better thermals” vs “thin phone pretty and aesthetic”. For me personally, I’m down to see how thin companies can push the current design paradigm because, honestly, I don’t think there’s any feature additions within the current form factor that could push the needle before we make the leap to AR-glasses and/or neural implants. So why not cram the immense power of our current devices into an impossibly thin package? It’s been a long time since it was a “cool” thing to have the latest phone; the last time I can remember anyone really noticing a new phone on the street was with 2017’s iPhone X. Maybe “The Thinnest iPhone Ever” could bring back some of that new phone awe I have a bit of nostalgia for.

But refocusing on the Air’s place in the lineup, this device is targeted at the consumer who unabashedly cares more about aesthetics than raw performance or cutting-edge features. I’d personally be hard-pressed to pick between an ultra-thin slab of beautiful glass vs a thicker but more computationally powerful/featureful device. Which is why such an iPhone would be the perfect addition to the lineup before selling consumers on a potentially $2000+ iPhone.

The new Pro iPhone is the device that only professional money spenders are going to be willing to fork out for. The iPhone Pro “Fold” (probably not what they’ll name it) will occupy an entirely new tier of iPhone for itself at double the price of the “Air”. Is $1999 an insane price to pay for a smartphone? Maybe it is, but may I remind you that a non-zero amount of people bought the $3499 Apple Vision Pro. For the tier of consumer that demands the best (sigh… me), they were sold before Tim Cook even got the chance to say “Good Morning!”

This four tiered lineup is my vision for the iPhone as an experienced philosopher of Apple-lore but I am no fortune teller. You’ll notice that I’ve done away with the Plus and Pro Max distractions in favor of a one screen-size per tier approach. This represents my bias towards imagination, for Apple has long lost the way of simplicity, how will consumers know to spend more money without a Plus or Max in the name guiding them towards the light of capitalistic grace? So while this lineup may not resemble the one we’ll see in an upcoming September, you can all rest assured that someone out there was brave enough to voice what could’ve been.