I would love to see on device models become really good. As in tool use good. As it stands in 2026, the best models I can run on M3Max 64GB aren’t tool use good. I play a lot in this space. On my Mac local models: Qwen 3.7 27B (?) is good enough to write a short shell script in a very narrow context.
If this is the best a high end Mac can do, the phones are years and years away. I suspect the ‘L’ LLM is killing us. I wonder about the possibilities of Small LM. The problem is that is years of research.
My iPhone 17 Pro arrived on Friday. Our carrier (Videotron) gives us a discount for BYOD, so I don’t worry about carrier financing. FWIW In the past those deals have tended to better for the carrier than the purchaser (at least in Canada.)
Apple has been marketing “private and secure” for years so that is probably top of mind for much of the public. But on-device may always be the most expensive option due to increasing hardware requirements. And on-device does risk exposing our data because our devices could be lost, stolen, or confiscated.
I’ve been mobile only since I retired and started using an iPad as my primary computer. So I’ve been using on on-device and cloud. IMO there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
But unless something changes I expect to use my iPhone 16P, and M2 iPad Air, for another two or three years.
It depends on what you use it for. If you think you’re going to want to push on what AI can do, then upgrade. But for more general use cases I’d consider replacing the battery.
Last year my wife upgraded her iPhone 13 Pro to the iPhone 17 Pro. She is more of the photographer so the upgrade made sense. My iPhone 13 (non-Pro) was getting short on battery life, so I took the opportunity to get a new battery in her iPhone 13 Pro and now I use that. It’s more environmentally-friendly and if I’m honest I do the same things I’ve been doing for years on the 'phone: Safari, Maps, Notes etc.
One last win for the 17 Pro. I just did my first long ride of the year. 60km on my new bike. Including stoppage the phone display was on for 3 hours. I bet the battery only dropped 10-15% in that time. Even when brand new, my 13 Pro Max wouldn’t have lasted well with 3 hrs of screen on time.
Gratious selfie pic, from the best bridge in Ottawa (William Commanda Bridge)
I’ve been on a two-to-three year cycle for a while and had been planning to wait until October (or November or December) and replace my 15 Pro with an 18 Pro, but decided to pull the trigger now and get a 17 Pro while it’s still affordable (and while my 15 Pro was still worth $410).
If the rumored improved camera in the 18 Pro turns out to be irresistible, I’ll be sad…but there’s always the 19 Pro to look forward to!
After musing on this thread for a few days, I made the same call. I just ordered the 17 Pro in blue, while I can get it at a reasonable price. If current trade in values for the iPhone 15 are any indicator, my 16 was likely going to lose another $140 in trade value once the 18 Pro comes out.
