Jason Snell is back at it, for the 10th annual report card:
It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment—the “vibe in the room”—regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)
This is the tenth year that I’ve presented this survey to my hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category.
This year, Snell posted everyone’s full comments, but I’ve collected mine here as well.
The Mac: 4/5
As we round out the fourth year of the Apple silicon Era, the Mac is truly firing on all cylinders. Modern Mac notebooks are incredible; even my new M4 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro runs silently and boasts shockingly good battery life. While I could have never had a notebook-only setup during the Intel days, I’ve done just that for several years with no complaints.
The one ding on the hardware front is that the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are stuck on M2-based SoCs. It’s clear that the process used for the M3 was a bit of a dead-end and that an M3 Ultra wasn’t in the cards, but Apple’s two high-end desktops using old silicon is a bit embarrassing.
On the software front, macOS Sequoia brought my favorite macOS feature in years, which was the iPhone Mirroring. I use it daily to access iPhone-only apps while sitting at my desk. I’m thrilled that Apple continues to find new ways to tighten the integration between the Mac and the iPhone without turning the former into the latter.
The iPhone: 2/5
By tightly bundling the iPhone, iOS, and the App Store, Apple has made it impossible to untangle the iPhone from Apple’s ongoing legal woes in the European Union and beyond. And by plastering the planet with rainbow-colored Apple Intelligence ads, Apple has wound the iPhone up very tightly with a group of features that weren’t even shipped when the iPhones launched last fall.
That puts Apple’s most valued product in a slightly weird spot, but the Report Card demands answers, so let’s start with hardware.
The iPhone 16 cycle brought Camera Control, an excellent bit of hardware engineering swamped with confusing software decisions. Learning to swipe, press, and click around the tiny UI can be confusing. With visual intelligence a press-and-hold away, it’s easy to be in the wrong mode entirely if you activate the button as you pull your iPhone out of your pocket.
Apple has made it possible to simplify the Camera Control, boiling it down to a basic shutter button, but this requires delving into multiple sections across Settings.
The Action button was added to the regular iPhone 16 models in 2024, and the 5x telephoto lens from the 15 Pro Max lives on in both the 16 Pro Max and the 16 Pro. Both are great changes, as is the move to a bolder color palette for the 16.
However, 2024 was also the Year of Apple Intelligence. These loosely associated features run across various iPads and all Apple silicon Macs. However, Apple is marketing these features as a core component of its newest iPhones.
That’s unfortunate, given how mediocre much of Apple Intelligence has proven to be so far. Apple’s writing tools are good, but nothing exceptional, and the UI is quite cramped on the iPhone. When it comes to image generation, Apple Intelligence shines with Genmoji, which is a genuinely fun feature, but it also falls on its face with Image Playgrounds. The images it creates are far behind the competition, and honestly, a race I wish Apple wasn’t running. The company says it has gone to great lengths to build guard rails to keep Image Playgrounds from creating anything offensive or troubling, but it’s not hard to get it to create fictional images depicting some of history’s worst people. At least they look like cartoon characters, which is the best product choice Apple made here.
The lack of photorealism may keep Image Playgrounds out of the headlines for making fake news, but Apple’s summarization of notifications has done just the opposite. From screwing up sports scores to re-writing breaking news alerts to say the opposite of the reporting, notifications summaries don’t seem ready for prime time. Apple hasn’t yet shipped the next generation of Siri either, which raises questions about Apple feeling rushed to get these features into the market. If it’s true, it’s an unusual place for Apple to be in, and I hope the company will not make the same mistake again.
The iPad (3/5)
There’s little to say about the iPad this year that hasn’t been said. The M4 iPad Pro pushes the ole “Wow, this iPad hardware can do so much more than iPadOS will let it” adage to the stratosphere. It’s powerful and thin, with an amazing screen, but it’s still just an iPad. The new Magic Keyboard looks fantastic, but it’s still hooked up to iPad apps.
I’ve settled into equilibrium with this in my usage. My iPad mini is a great tablet for what I use it for: YouTube, TV shows, podcasts, and reading. I may hop into Slack or scroll through my mentions on social media, but I’m just no longer interested in turning the iPad into a computer I can or want to use for work.
Zooming out, the overall iPad family is still messy in places. Thankfully, the 9th generation iPad has been sent out to pasture, meaning all iPads finally use the modern gesture system for control. All iPads basically look the same, but there are still numerous differences as you move up and down the product line. The fact that Apple’s iPad keyboard page has a huge dropdown for a user to pick which iPad they have so the website can show them compatible models is not great, but Apple has been making progress. The current line of Apple Pencils is pretty straightforward, and having two models of iPad Air makes a lot of sense. I hope that the company keeps working to restore sense to the iPad hardware line while, at the same time, making iPadOS more capable for those who want to use their iPads more than they can today.
Wearables
Jason breaks down the Wearables category into three areas, which I have scored:
- Overall: 4/5
- Apple Watch: 3/5
- Vision Pro: 1/5
Apple continues to kill it when it comes to AirPods. The AirPods 4 (especially with ANC) offers incredible value, while the AirPods Pro 2 continue to become more valuable to users through some remarkable software updates. Using AirPods as a way to take a hearing test or have your hearing augmented means millions of people who didn’t even know they had hearing loss will enjoy more moments with their loved ones in conversation.
With the Apple Watch, it’s more of the same good vibes. Detecting falls, car crashes, and possible cardiac issues has saved an untold number of people, and with sleep apnea detection in the newest batch of Apple Watches, users can be notified if their Watches detect a problem. This is some of Apple’s most important work.
I took the lack of an Apple Watch Ultra 3 personally, but the Series 10’s thinner and more powerful design almost makes up for it, as long as my bought-it-on-launch-day-like-a-maniac Apple Watch Ultra 1 holds on.
2024 saw the launch of the Vision Pro, and it’s unlike any Apple product launch I can remember.
The Vision Pro is an incredible feat of engineering. Just holding the thing feels nice, and the years of work that went into it shows when the screens light up. It is the only AR or VR headset I have worn that hasn’t made me feel sick after a few minutes. The Vision Pro is priced like a computer because Mac-level hardware powers its array of cameras and sensors, screens, audio system, and more.
visionOS springs to life on this hardware — after a lengthy boot process — and wraps the user in a world of their own content and apps. The floating windows feel real and stay in place as if they are made of actual frosted glass. The pass-through video feed of the outside world is by no means perfect, but it’s fast to respond to a turn of your head. A simple turn of the Digital Crown has the world fade away, dissolving into any number of landscapes that can help you focus on the task at hand.
Sadly, there are just a handful of tasks best suited for spatial computing. Text input can be tedious without a keyboard, the lack of any window management tools mean there’s a lot of fussing about needed if you want to look at more than one application at once. (Stage Manager seems like it was built for this thing.)
The App Store is quiet on the Vision Pro. The high price of the device has surely limited its adoption from both the user and developer perspectives. The new nature of the platform means users need to experience the Vision Pro before understanding it. Apple Stores have done a good job at this, but most consumers don’t know what they’d do with a device like this beyond playing games, which isn’t Apple’s strength. There’s no killer app for visionOS yet, and even if there was, you end up back at the price tag.
Home: 3/5
HomeKit continues to hum along, working better and better each year. The ecosystem continues to expand, if Matter ever really arrives, which ecosystem a particular product supports will become a moot question.
Rumors are swirling about Apple entering new markets, with cameras, locks, and even smart screens a possibility for 2025 or later. We will have to judge those offerings if/when they arrive, but I’m fascinated to see what Apple would bring to the table.
Apple TV & tvOS: 2/5
For the 2023 Report Card, I wrote, “The Apple TV hardware has been so overpriced and overpowered for so long, it feels like I’m wasting everyone’s time by mentioning it again.”
I also said, “tvOS continues to feel trapped between Apple’s vision for the platform and what it can work out with streaming giants like Netflix.”
Yup.
Services: 4/5
All in all, Apple is doing a good job with its various Services. TV+ is home to some of the best storytelling, and Fitness+ is inspiring and fun. iCloud syncs data more reliably than ever. Apple Arcade has become home to many rebooted classic iOS games, while Apple Podcasts has made the industry more accessible than ever.
There are still sore spots, but none of them are new. iCloud’s storage tiers are stingy and oddly spaced out, and the ads in News+ continue to spoil an otherwise solid experience.
Overall Reliability of Apple Hardware: 5/5
Apple has long been a leader in hardware reliability. Now, with the company publishing repair guides and making parts available to end-users and small shops, users have more options than ever when something goes wrong.
Apple OS Quality: 4/5
Even with the addition of visionOS, Apple was able to move the ball forward across most of its ecosystem in 2024. Apple continues to ship features simultaneously across the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and beyond. Bugs remain, of course, but it’s been a long time since I’ve spent an afternoon troubleshooting something.
Apple Apps: 4/5
Starting with the relaunch of Notes in the iOS 9/OS X El Capitan days, Apple has worked consistently on growing its first-party productivity apps into tools that more and more people can rely on at work. Reminders has gone from some sort of digital Hipster PDA with its card-based UI to a full-blown task manager, complete with robust sharing, a Kanban view, and integration with Calendar. Freeform came out of nowhere to take on some serious contenders from third-party developers. Safari is the true favorite child, with features added every cycle. Photos has become robust and even more useful with the launch of family sharing a couple of years ago.
My biggest complaint is the lack of consistency across Apple’s apps. Look no further than Apple’s tools for smart searching. Editing a smart list in Reminders is weirdly different than creating a new smart folder in Mail or Notes, and on iOS in particular, Apple teams seem to be working from different guidelines when it comes to design elements. The new Sports app and Journal use gradients and color in fun ways, while much of iOS is still starkly white and blue. Messages is a hodgepodge of ancient message effects and fun, new text effects that operate in different ways in different parts of the app. It’s time for some UI cleanup across the board, even if that makes the Mac user in me a little nervous that the disease that is System Settings would spread.
Apple’s Impact on the World: 4/5
The M4 Mac mini is the first carbon-neutral Mac ever made. It comes six years after Apple began using recycled aluminum in its Mac cases. The company continues investing in processes to make our world cleaner.
On the social front, things are more complex. Apple continues to support important causes and will continue its DEI efforts, even as other tech companies are rolling them back. However, Tim Cook runs a company with a bigger economic footprint than many countries, and that means that Apple will play ball with the new Trump administration in ways some of its users will find disagreeable. It’s naive to think that a company the size of Apple would do anything else, even if I hope it rubs Tim Cook the wrong way enough to bother him.