I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers

These are my thoughts exactly. I've seen a bunch of people who don't value thinness or lightness in a phone getting dismissive or outright angry at the existence of the Air, and I want to grab them and shake them until they get it. I don't want the Air at all, and that's exactly why I'm thrilled it exists: it will split the Pro buyers into form-valuers and function-valuers, so the function-valuers like me can get an iPhone with a huge battery and a vapor chamber in it.

If you're one of those people who goes "why can't they make the phone thicker and heavier with more battery life", you should be overjoyed at the Air, because now that those buyers are peeled off to a different SKU, the product line for you doesn't need to find a happy medium with them.

> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.

I'm not a apple fan (been windows most of my life till moving to a new company that is Mac only, and have been on android for about 13 years at this point) but the airpods pro are maybe apples greatest product in a while (other then the M1 macbooks).

The audio quality+noise cancellation+transparency quality made them a super easy buy and I would buy the app3 as soon as my app2 die that's how much I love them as a android user. This is coming from someone who owns multiple iems and very expensive over the ears.

From everything reported so far, the app3 look like a solid spec bump at the same price, there isn't many products that keep that formula.

Edit: I am disappointed that the OP didn't talk about how all the iPhones now have "pro-motion" aka high refresh rate screens.

This is (personally) one of the biggest step up in quality, I would never buy a baseline iPhone because 60 Hz just looks gross to me now, it's immediately noticeable.

Apple is a hostage of its own marketing.

A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.

A convertible Macbook Air with a touch screen? It would be sold out.

Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.

A best-in-class TV powered by Apple TV? Would probably sell well.

But all of these products would cannibalize sales of some other expensive iDevice.

I want that speculation to be true, but I also don't think that the Air is a stepping stone towards that. The risky parts on a folding phone are the bending screen and the hinge and the software features.

The iPhone Air tests none of those things.

> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.

The number of people who might actually like this is very tiny. Most of them do product reviews. But their audience is not going to care. Think about your older uncle. Your niece in her 20s who loves to paint and read but doesn't want to replace hardware. That's what most people are like.

Those are the people who Jobs focused on impressing and enabling to do things they wouldn't do otherwise. That is the focus that has been lost without Jobs, IMHO, and it's the focus that makes the products better for people who want to get the most out of their products per unit of time invested in learning how to use it.