Apple’s Ozempic Era


Which would you say is thinner: the new iPad or Kim Kardashian’s waist? Because honestly, I can’t decide:
Promoting unrealistic body standards is something I’ve (sadly) come to expect from events like the Met Gala. But her waist is seemingly tinier than her neck! She’s BARELY breathing. I don’t know how it’s physically … possible? Which, maybe it’s not: "Where’d Kim put her internal organs?" one Instagram user asked The Cut. It’s as if she got a sneak peek at Tim Cook’s latest product launch — a 13-inch iPad Pro with a depth of just 5.1 millimeters — and told him, "hold my beer."

But unlike Kim’s overly-cinched waist, the thinnest Apple product ever is a welcome innovation. The last significant update to the iPad Pro happened over five years ago in 2018. "This is a chance for a revival of a product that shows great promise but has always felt artificially constrained," Dave Lee writes (free read).

By "artificially constrained," he means that Apple purposefully built its tablet to be sliiightly inferior to its computers so customers would still be tempted to buy MacBooks. It sounds sneaky! And slightly evil! But unless Apple considers "minutes spent watching Peppa Pig reruns" as a KPI, the strategy kinda backfired: "If you ever see an iPad ‘in the wild,’ it’s just as likely to be in the clutches of a toddler rather than a businessperson or student," Dave explains. As much as we love to observe the strange behavior of Gen Alpha’s iPad kids, they are not money makers for Apple. And the reason for that is obvious: Parents have little need to update these devices from one kiddo to the next.

Today’s announcement is Apple’s attempt to shift the narrative and tell people that these iPads are the Honey Nut Cheerios (not the Trix!) of consumer tech: a crowd-pleaser for adults and kids. But even if the thinnest product yet does spur sales (which, let’s be real, it will), Dave says "the mass appeal of the iPad will remain sorely lacking until Apple throws off the shackles and creates a genuinely portable computer — the device that Jobs envisioned in 2010." I wish I could say the same about the mass appeal of a certain snatched celebrity, but alas.

Bonus Apple Reading: The Magnificent Seven’s performance propelled the S&P 500 despite setbacks from Tesla and Meta. — John Authers

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