Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

A seasonal color refresh arrived today for a variety of Apple accessories, including iPhone cases, Apple Watch bands, and the Crossbody Strap. All of the accessories in the latest colors are available to order on Apple.com starting today.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced the new iPad Air featuring M4 and more memory, giving users a big jump in performance at the same starting price. With a faster CPU and GPU, iPad Air boosts tasks like editing and gaming, and is a powerful device for AI with a faster Neural Engine, higher memory bandwidth, and 50 percent more unified system memory than the previous generation. With M4, iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than iPad Air with M3, and up to 2.3× faster than iPad Air with M1. The new iPad Air also features the latest in Apple silicon connectivity chips, N1 and C1X, delivering fast wireless and cellular connections — and support for Wi-Fi 7 — that empower users to work and be creative anywhere. [...]

With the same starting price of just $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch model, the new iPad Air is an incredible value. And for education, the 11-inch iPad Air starts at $549, and the 13-inch model starts at $749. Customers can pre-order iPad Air starting Wednesday, March 4, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

So much for my theory that Apple would separate its announcements this week with separate days for each product family (e.g. iPhone 17e on Monday, iPads on Tuesday, MacBooks on Wednesday.) Maybe an update to the no-adjective iPad isn’t coming this week?

Aside from the M3 to M4 speed bump, there are very few differences between this generation iPad Air and the last. Same colors even (space gray, blue, purple, and starlight). Here’s a link to Apple’s iPad Compare page, preset to show the current M5 iPad Pro, new M4 iPad Air, and old M3 iPad Air side-by-side.

One interesting tech spec: the new M4 iPad Air models come with 12 GB of RAM, up from 8 GB in last year’s M3 models. With the M5 iPad Pro models, RAM is tied to storage: the 256/512 GB iPad Pros come with 12 GB RAM; the 1/2 TB models come with 16 GB RAM.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced iPhone 17e, a powerful and more affordable addition to the iPhone 17 lineup. At the heart of iPhone 17e is the latest-generation A19, which delivers exceptional performance for everything users do. iPhone 17e also features C1X, the latest-generation cellular modem designed by Apple, which is up to 2× faster than C1 in iPhone 16e. The 48MP Fusion camera captures stunning photos, including next-generation portraits, and 4K Dolby Vision video. It also enables an optical-quality 2× Telephoto — like having two cameras in one. The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display features Ceramic Shield 2, offering 3× better scratch resistance than the previous generation and reduced glare. With MagSafe, users can enjoy fast wireless charging and access to a vast ecosystem of accessories like chargers and cases. And when iPhone 17e users are outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, Apple’s groundbreaking satellite features — including Emergency SOS, Roadside Assistance, Messages, and Find My via satellite — help them stay connected when it matters most.

Available in three elegant colors with a premium matte finish — black, white, and a beautiful new soft pink — iPhone 17e will be available for pre-order beginning Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting Wednesday, March 11. iPhone 17e will start at 256GB of storage for $599 — 2× the entry storage from the previous generation at the same starting price, and 4× more than iPhone 12 — giving users more space for high-resolution photos, 4K videos, apps, games, and more.

The main year-over-year changes from the 16e:

• MagSafe, the absence of which felt like the one bit of marketing spite in the 16e.
• An additional color other than black or white.
• SoC goes from A18 to A19, the same chip in the iPhone 17, except the iPhone 17 has 5 GPU cores and the 17e only 4 (same as the 16e). No big whoop.
• Improved camera with next-gen portraits. I found the 16e camera to be surprisingly good.
• Ceramic Shield 2 on the front glass.
• Base storage goes from 128 to 256 GB, while the price remains $600.
• The 512 GB version drops from $900 to $800.

That’s about it. Here’s a preset version of Apple’s iPhone Compare page with the iPhone 17, 17e, and 16e.

My thanks to Sentry for sponsoring last week at DF. Sentry is running a hands-on workshop: “Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry”. You can watch it on demand. You’ll learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. It’ll show you how to:

• Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue.
• Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash.
• Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing.
• Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analysis.

I know so many developers using Sentry. It’s a terrific product. If you’re a developer and haven’t checked them out, you should.

Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss the 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card, MacOS 26 Tahoe, Apple Creator Studio, along with what we expect/hope for in next week’s Apple product announcements.

Sponsored by:

• Notion: The AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together.
• Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.
• Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits.