Is this Apple's folding iPhone?

Making sense of crazy iPhone 17 Slim rumors.

Author

Leander Kahney
August 13, 2024

Rumors are swirling about a radical, super-thin new iPhone supposedly called the “iPhone 17 Slim.”

The handset will be razor-thin and cost a small fortune, naturally.

OK. So far, so good: Thin and expensive sounds just like something Apple would do.

But the rumors also say the handset will have a slowish processor, a meh camera, and a smaller screen than current Pro Max models.

This makes no sense. If Apple is going to charge a premium price for a new iPhone, that iPhone also should have premium specs.

The rumors seem way off base — unless there’s a key component folks are missing. Here’s our take on how to make sense of the iPhone 17 Slim rumors.

Also in today’s newsletter:

  • Opera’s new browser for iPhone actually looks pretty good. And Opera says installing it will make you six times more happy!

  • I really enjoyed watching seasons one and two of Apple TV+ spy comedy/drama Slow Horses, but season three jumped the shark by taking a completely unbelievable turn toward gun-toting action. Judging by the latest trailer, season four doubles down on the guns (groan), but there is one very bright spot concerning a new cast member.

  • Unlike Slow Horses, Apple TV+’s The Instigators is no hit with critics. But Cult of Mac Managing Editor Lewis Wallace recommends the fun action/comedy flick.

  • This multibutton remote should ship with all Apple TVs.

  • My iMac has 250GB of storage, which I thought was pretty roomy when I bought it about three years ago. Now, Western Digital is coming out with a teeny SD memory card with 8 terabytes of memory, which is astounding by any measure.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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Master Excel and the rest of Microsoft Office with this discount training bundle

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‘The Instigators’ is old-school action-comedy fun [3 Reasons to Watch]

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Find new music you'll love with Apple Music's Discovery Station

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Today in Apple history: Power Mac G4 gets a mirrored redesign

On August 13, 2002, Apple introduced the final redesign of its Power Mac G4, the "Mirrored Drive Doors" model. A flap over fan noise ensued.

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One more thing ...

❝

Thus far, we're pretty much using our computers as good servants. We ask them to do something, we ask them to do some operation like a spreadsheet, we ask them to take our keystrokes and make a letter out of them, and they do that pretty well. And you'll see more and more perfection of that -- computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as guide or agent. And what that means is that it's going to do more in terms of anticipating what we want and doing it for us, noticing connections and patterns in what we do, asking us if this is some sort of generic thing we'd like to do regularly, so that we're going to have, as an example, the concept of triggers. We're going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.

— Steve Jobs, 1985.

Today’s poll

Do you want a folding iPhone?

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Results from yesterday’s poll: How cool does the iPhone 16 Pro's camera button sound?

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