Classic Apple

Apple’s latest event showed us that they are still that company who can make a really nice design video with an English “al-yoo-mini-uhm” like the days of yore with Jony Ive at the head of the design team.

But this isn’t about the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. Those are a whole different beast. Where Apple really showed its design prowess was in the iPhone Air: the thinnest iPhone ever (well, the iPhone with the thinnest main chassis…).

There’s no getting around it—this phone is sleek. I fell in love with it the second I picked it up in the Apple store, with its incredibly smooth (and a little squeaky) titanium chassis and matte glass back; this was the phone for those who love design.

Before the phone came out, many people were—well—rather skeptical of how much of a “wow” factor this phone would have. After all, it’s not that much thinner than the iPhone 6 Plus was, but I knew it was going to be something genuinely intriguing.

You see, we’ve seen this kind of reaction before—and not that long ago. Right when the M4 iPad Pro came out, people were skeptical of how thin the new chassis would really feel. After all, it wasn’t that much thinner than the iPad Pro before it. Then people got to the store and they picked the thing up and were genuinely surprised by how thin and light it felt. I know that when I went to the store to experience it for the first time I actually said “holy shit” out loud in the store. That thing was super thin and super cool (and it still hasn’t gotten old, I love holding my iPad Pro without the keyboard case).

Like many Apple devices before it, iPhone Air prioritizes form over function. It’s got a crappy camera and battery relative to the iPhones 17, but there’s just something about it that makes it so lovable and a genuine joy in the hand. It’s a product that’s just fun to use. And that’s something that Apple has been great at over the years.

Now, for people who use their phone as a tool, it’s not going to be for them. The Pro phones can do things that the Air is physically incapable of, and those things are going to be important to people who want to use their iPhone alongside professional cameras. For people who are going to grade, cut, and otherwise manipulate the footage, that’s still going to be there for them. But there’s also another group of people who like to take photos: the Fuji x100 crowd who will lock the phone to the 35mm crop, throw a photographic style on it, shoot to JPEG, and share the photos as-is (that’s me) who iPhone Air is perfect for. So long as you can deal with the crappy battery.