iPhone 17 sneak peek

There was a time many, many moons ago when the upcoming iPhone lineup was shrouded in mystery.

Yeah, we’d get a few leaks, but they’d come late in the production cycle, mostly from the supply chain. Apple blogs would publish a blurry photo of an obscure part — maybe a SIM card tray or a battery connector — and the Apple ecosystem would lose its collective mind.

These days, we know just about everything there is to know about Apple’s new devices well before they arrive.

The company plans out the new lineup at least two years in advance, and starts prepping for the next model’s production almost immediately after each year’s handsets launch.

By this time in the cycle — just a few months before debut — enormous production lines on at least three continents are ramping up, and the leak vector is enormous.

There are thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, who are in a position to learn the details and leak them to the wider world.

Everyone blames Tim Cook and says this would never have happened in Steve Jobs’ day. But Apple’s enormous iPhone production machine was much, much smaller in the Jobs era. And so, of course, was the level of interest.

These days, there are millions of people keenly interested in what Apple’s cooking up, and even mainstream publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal publish the kind of Apple rumors that were previously the preserve of niche Apple pubs.

So it should be no surprise that the latest leak about the iPhone 17 lineup doesn’t concern some obscure internal parts. Instead, it’s a magazine-ready glamour shot that shows the entire lineup in all its glory.

No, it’s not official, but it’s based on months of rumors from multiple sources that check and cross-check with each other. Betting folks like yours truly would lay down good money that this is exactly what the iPhone 17 models will look like come this fall. And boy, isn’t that a handsome set of handsets? If this new mockup doesn’t get you juiced for the iPhone 17, nothing will!

Also in today’s newsletter:

• Now that iOS and iPadOS apps can run on macOS, there’s a raft of great iPhone apps coming to the Mac in the fall that will advance the great melding of Apple’s platforms. A bunch of them look great!

• This is super-interesting. Android manufacturer Vivo’s new X Fold 5 handset plays so well with Apple devices that you’d think it was designed by Apple itself! This may be the ultimate if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em move from an Android vendor.

• Dave “Mr Cans” Snow, our resident audio expert, loves these inexpensive but shockingly great headphones from EarFun. They rival Beats Studio Pros at a fraction of the price, which is now even less.

• Targus has a new iPad keyboard case with a unique feature — you can type in two orientations.

• Portable power stations are the new generators, swapping nasty gas or diesel for nice, clean batteries. This special launch deal on the new Anker Solix power station offers a whopping discount.

• Scheduling emails and texts to send later is a super-handy trick when dealing with a micromanaging boss or workers in different time zones. Learn how.

• To celebrate 20 years of podcasting (a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcasting”), Apple released a list of the 20 most influential podcasts of the last two decades. It’s rubbish, though. Somehow, they missed the CultCast.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

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