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Apple products are expensive. Even the cheapest laptop costs a thousand dollars, and even if you settle for an older iPhone 12, you’ll have to shell out at least $699. The cheapest Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Series 3, still costs $199.
But if you buy an Apple Watch Series 3 from the Apple Store now, it will be obsolete in about three months. Apple has announced that watchOS 9, due out sometime this fall, will only support the Apple Watch Series 4 and later, although Apple still actually sells the Apple Watch Series 3.
That’s not a great look. As an Apple writer, I know better than to spend $199 on a four-year-old piece of tech, but the average consumer looking for a bargain probably isn’t. That’s why Apple is still selling it: For those who don’t want to shell out $399 for an Apple Watch Series 7, or even $279 for an SE, there’s the Apple Watch Series 3.
It may be a “budget” device, but when you buy an Apple product, you expect it not to become obsolete immediately. However, this is basically the case with the Apple Watch Series 3.
And other relatively new devices are also hitting the compatibility hackblock this year. On the iPhone side, the iPhone 7 sold through 2019 won’t get iOS 16. The same applies to the 1.8 GHz Core i5 MacBook Air 12-inch MacBook, which was also sold in 2019. And while the Apple TV HD escaped obsolescence this time around, it likely won’t be able to support the next tvOS update in 2023.
An unrelenting pace
One can argue – particularly on the Mac side – that the pace of innovation is to blame. Apple’s silicon shift has resulted in a massive leap in the performance and capabilities of Apple’s Macs, so it’s not very surprising that lower-end Intel chips from just a few years ago can’t handle the same operating system capabilities. And the Apple Watch has seen several big changes since Apple introduced the Series 3 in 2017.
But for a company that cares deeply about the longevity of legacy devices, the lack of support is worrying. Someone buys an Apple Watch Series 3 from the Apple Store somewhere and outside of a watchOS 8.7 update, which is likely to arrive later this month, they won’t get any new features, updates or security patches as long as they own it.
It’s an erosion of the trust Apple has nurtured for years. Apple doesn’t offer an explicit upgrade guarantee like some manufacturers do, but users expect their device to be supported for as long as they own it. A Mac bought in 2019 or an Apple Watch bought in 2022 not getting the latest OS update is hardly reassuring to someone buying an older iPhone or SE device.
For the Mac, the transition to a new processor clouds those waters a bit, but Apple supported PowerPC chips for six years after Intel announced the transition. We’re two years into the move to Apple silicon and Macs are dropping like flies. As things stand, macOS 17 will not support Intel Macs in 2025, including those still sold (Mac mini and Mac Pro). And when it comes to the iPhone and Apple Watch, the Apple silicon transition doesn’t hold water since they’ve been using Apple silicon all along.
And then there’s the iPad Pro. While iPadOS 16 thankfully supports every iPad Pro model ever released dating back to 2015, the most intriguing new feature, Stage Manager, can only be used on three models: the latest 11-inch iPad Pro, 12 .9-inch iPad Pro and iPad Air with the M1 processor.
That means the iPad Pro, released almost two years ago in 2020, is already behind the times. Apple states that Stage Manager requires “large internal storage, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O” which requires an M1 chip, but that’s not very reassuring for people who are paying more than a thousand dollars for an iPad spent Pro just 18 months ago.
So how are we supposed to know that the next round of hardware will be longer than a year or two before Apple declares it obsolete? Apple TV HD, iPhone 11, ninth-generation iPad, Intel Mac mini: all of these devices are now available for purchase from the Apple Store.
Will they get the updates for next year? Maybe. But I’m less sure than I was a few weeks ago.
