Probably has something to do with currency fluctuations.
Don’t they generally set a price for a given item at launch, and then hold that price? That is, it’s not “it’s $400 USD, or whatever $400 USD is in Euros” - it’s “$X Euros”, and stays fixed.
If so, they might be anticipating some future currency issues in the EU market. The Euro has been sliding in value relative to the dollar lately, so prices in Euros would logically be going up.
Specially, if you consider, that they even offer in Germany, and other countries, only a part of their product, as a lot of features are not working over here!
So we should pay a higher price, for a product with less functions…
Unless I missed it, zero mention of the processor. I wonder if that means another year with no change from the previous year. Is that three in a row now? Not that it needs it, but a sign of the times, I guess.
They did mentioned, briefly, during the SE announcement that this year’s model run on S8 SoC.
One thing that I’m not especially happy about is the removal of the physical SIM tray from the iPhone. Unless I’m missing something, that leaves no way to “recover” from a non-functioning phone.
Somehow I missed that part. But yeah, it would logically prevent you from being able to just pop the SIM into a new device. That said, did some Googling and it looks like you could activate another Apple device with the same eSIM:
Only in the USA, all other regions still have a sim.
Yes, this is correct. Price is benchmarked to USD and they try to anticipate currency fluctuations.
S6, S7 and S8 are all the same speed (based on the A13.)
Nah, I’ll be waiting for the Apple Watch Ultra Hermés edition 
They’re designing a new SoC every year though. Maybe that processor hits the (currently) optimal “sweet spot” for price/performance in the watch form factor?
Yeah, the performance of the Watch hasn’t really been an issue since the Series 4 (at least not for me). I have never wished that my S7 would be any faster than it is.
Probably because the watch is mostly a window into data that’s already there and/or is being generated by the iPhone, rather than running processor-intensive apps on-device.
If that ever changes, I would expect the processor to get revved - but the battery is probably a much bigger challenge for that use case than the processor.
I’ve been on the fence about a Forerunner 255 all summer though, at ~$500 Canadian, with multi-band GPS, it feels like the current steal of all fitness/GPS watches.
That said, the Ultra seems to be hitting the same price point as the Fenix 7, and is much less than some of the Epix or even more specialized Dive/Aviation/Marine watches.
It certainly does hit the sweet spot for them, but it’s simply worse than if they were able to deliver faster processors. :\ Being stuck on the same one for three years is lame, sorry. People want things that better processors enable (longer battery life, more hardware/software features, more frequently updating complications, more frequent health checks, more ambitious apps.)
I’m glad we can now change the volume on the new AirPod Pros using a gesture.
A few years ago I bought a very expensive remote control for my current pair. It allowed me to safely change the volume when I went for a bike ride.
It also allowed me to tell the time, which was handy.
The Exchange Rate between EUR and USD at the 14.09.2021 was 1€ = 1,1805 US$
The Prices that were announced on the Apple Event on that day were:
Converted into Euro with the Exchange Rate of that day would have result in the following (Price in Brackets incl. 16% Sale-Tax):
But the actual prices, announced from Apple on that Day in Germany were:
That means, the Price difference between the iPhone in the US and Germany, calculated with the Exchange Rate from the 14.09.2022 were:
iPhone 13 increase by 262,26 USD (134,42 USD)
iPhone mini increase by 245,39 USD (132,37 USD)
iPhone 13 Pro increase by 357,38 USD (197,55 USD)
iPhone 13 ProMax increase by 375,43 USD (199,59 USD)
That means roughly, the price in Germany was by the value of an additional iPhone SE higher, than in the US, without any obvious reasons!
Does the German price include VAT?
Because U.S. prices don’t include tax, and iirc, Apple charges sales tax is most or close to all states.
On the flip side, I am temporarily in Medford, Oregon doing some river guide work and I just realized that I won’t be paying any sales tax on my Apple Watch Ultra.
Thanks for asking, that might be the reason, you could read two prices (one within Brackets) within my post… 