Tong Family

Well, (more distraction from the elections), but if you are up now, you are a true nerd. The Apple Store opened about 5:05AM and as usual, the iOS store opened first. The web version even at 5:20AM is just starting up, so some tips, if you want to be first in line, have your iPad out and ready while refreshing your screen.

I’m sure demand for these things isn’t super awesome (like the iPhone 12 and the 12 Pro), but I was impressed at how fast the site was and Apple Pay worked like a charm!

It does seems like Apple has an incredibly fresh product line right now with the iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Mini and 12 Max. I was actually pretty tempted by the Mini, but trying the Max and it’s huge camera seems like an interesting experiment in getting rid of my big heavy dSLR use cases even more than before.

Of course with all the UHD video, the 128GB base model is going to seem small. Even today, I regularly fill my 64GB phone because I like to have all my iCloud photos with me 🙂 And there is actually no way to do a selective download anyway.

In terms of what to get the Pacific Blue seems nice and the 256GB is $100 more (the prices are still outrageous, but hopefully this thing will last a while).

Also there is an interesting option for $10/month for AppleCare forever vs $199 for AppleCare for two years. So it’s quite a bit more to get the monthly plan, but you can stop it when you want to. If you also have an AMEX card, the $199 will carry you out three years and by then the phone will have amortized a lot (sadly). It is kind of tempting to get the theft protection too, but I have not had a phone stolen yet, so I guess I’m self insured.

The other things that were interesting is the first HomePod Mini and these are available too to try at $99. We definitely have an inversion today where the HomePod and the iPad Pro both need refreshes, so I’d avoid those until they had the ultra wide band to the HomePod and the iPad Pro gets the A14 processor like the iPad Air has today.

Finally, Christmas in November continues with next week’s announcement where we should see the Apple Silicon versions of the MacBook, MacBook Pro. And perhaps the new Apple AirTags (so I don’t keep losing stuff). I’m excited and distracted for a bit too!