The best deals of the week include all-time low prices on the 9th generation iPad and M1 MacBook Air, as well as solid discounts on Samsung monitors and Anker accessories.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
One of the most notable deals of the week focused on the 9th generation of Apple's iPad. You can get the 64GB Wi-Fi iPad for $249.99 on Amazon, which is $79 off and the best price we've ever tracked on the tablet.
Samsung is still discounting the new model of its 32-inch Smart Monitor M8, available for $599.99, down from $699.99. This monitor launched in June with updates including HDR10+ support and a portrait orientation option, and this sale price is the lowest we've seen to date. You can also save on a few other monitors, listed below.
Anker returned this week with notable discounts on its line of Bluetooth trackers, wall chargers, portable batteries, and more. You can find the full list of discounts in our original article.
This week, Amazon continued to provide an all-time low price on the 256GB M1 MacBook Air. You can get this notebook for $749.99 in all three colors, down from $999.00.
The AirPods 3 hit $139.99 this week on Amazon, down from $169.00. This is a match for Amazon's all-time low price on the AirPods 3 with Lightning Charging Case.
If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
It seems that MacBooks with decent storage and RAM never go on sale, only the base models or bumped up storage but base RAM models. It seems that Apple has a strategy and retailer pricing policy to ensure that.
The back to school promo is the only discount for the higher RAM models.
The problem is I always just want the 256GB iPad 9th gen not the 64GB one. The iPad 9th gen would be a perfect upgrade because I have the 7th gen with all the accessories and the 9th gen is identical in dimension.
The problem is I always just want the 256GB iPad 9th gen not the 64GB one. The iPad 9th gen would be a perfect upgrade because I have the 7th gen with all the accessories and the 9th gen is identical in dimension.
For me, the 9th gen iPad using lightning works out b/c it's the same I use for my iPod Touch 5. I've recently been playing some games again on there (continuing what I put on hiatus for 5+ years!!). Otherwise, I use it as a glorified calculator, flashlight, and stop watch :D It's light weight and very slim size does make it convenient for that! :)
The price difference between these two ($140 for 192gb extra) is about double the cost of a 2tb SSD nowadays:
Hard to see the 256gb as a deal when they’re marking up storage by 1000%.
[shrug]... don't know what to say, other than, that's Apple in-a-nutshell? If you buy the lesser (storage) one, then you may be more inclined to sub to iCloud+? If you get the larger storage one, then you're more likely to get into multimedia, which could mean more $$ for then, in addition to paying that markup? Either way, it's a win for Apple.
FWIW, storage on an external or internal SSD or hdd can't exactly be a 1-to-1 comparison between storage on devices, as the latter means you get that available on the device. I recall somebody brought this up for the Palm Tungsten X PDA, and they did counter that being able to buy the extra 140-something MB for dirt cheap on a USB thumb drive does those users no good. Still, your point about insane markups stand.
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I got an 9th gen iPad back in Nov. 2011. I really wanted the 256 GB model, but didn't want to pay an extra $150 for that extra storage. Really, 128 GB would've been ideal, but there was no such middleground. I ended up going for the 64 GB model b/c it was $30 off (at $300), while there was no sale on the 256-one. I estimated that would be enough since most of the video games I'd have on there were digital board games. The one curve ball ended up being the Apple Arcade free trial. Some of those games are large, and can take up 1 GB+ apiece! I ended up not renewing AA after my free trial expired. I went on vacation, got a few non-AA games on iOS, and some Android games to boot, and that ended up keeping me plenty occupied in terms of gaming.
It ended up working out anyways, as not only did I still not have interest to go back to AA (I would've done so for $45/yr via Costco), I ended up getting a Switch as a gift! All of the free time that I would've spent on AA is now on that! And while I did like some of the games on AA, and it was very affordable, the Switch is a dedicated gaming console with a strong lineup, so can't really compete with that. And that's before we count in that I'm a fan of Nintendo games! If I didn't get the iPad back then, I don't think I could see myself springing for the 9th-gen 64 GB model given such a discount. (also hard to think this is less than what I used to pay for iPod Touches! :oops: )
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
