Apple Wants $2,000 for a Phone That Does Less Than What a Steve Jobs-Era iPhone Dreamed Of Doing

Thirty-five years of watching Apple's keynotes taught me to tell the difference between innovation and a price tag dressed up as one.

Apple wants $2,000, and by some estimates north of $2,500; for a first-generation foldable phone that, according to the people who've actually held it, might ship with fewer camera lenses than the iPhone you're probably using right now. Sit with that for a second before you read another word.

I've been an Apple user for 35 years. I'm not writing this as someone who just discovered a hot take on the internet last week. I've sat through every keynote since the ones that actually made your jaw drop, the ones where you left genuinely believing the device in your pocket was about to change how you lived. I remember what it felt like when an iPhone cost $600 to $900 and it still felt like a fair trade, because you were getting something that actually moved the world forward. I'm telling you this not for nostalgia's sake, but so you know this isn't reflexive grumbling from someone who just doesn't like change. I've watched every single cycle. I know exactly what real innovation from this company looks like, and I know what its absence looks like too.

A Word About the YouTubers Weighing In

Before I get into the actual argument, I want to say one thing about the wall of hot takes you're about to see flooding your feed once this keynote airs. A lot of the people telling you whether this phone is worth it are being sent it for free, and more than a few have a financial relationship with Apple or its advertisers that shapes what they're willing to say on camera. I'm not saying every reviewer is compromised. I'm saying you should know the incentive exists before you let someone else's excitement do your thinking for you.

The Debt Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here's the part of this conversation that almost never makes it into a tech review, because tech reviewers aren't usually thinking about household finance. According to LendingTree's tech debt survey, 26 percent of Americans have taken on debt, averaging $1,492, specifically to buy the latest tech products, and phones are the single biggest driver of that debt at 69 percent. Seventy-seven percent of Americans say having the latest technology is important to them. Read those two numbers together. Three-quarters feel pressure to have the newest thing, and a quarter of them are willing to go into the red to get it.

Now put a $2,000 to $2,500 foldable phone into that picture. This isn't an abstract question about whether Apple's engineering is impressive. It's a question about whether a company is comfortable pricing its flagship device at a level where a meaningful chunk of its own customer base will need to finance it, on a credit card, on an installment plan, on debt they didn't need to take on. I know the reality of manufacturing costs. Flexible OLED panels and micro-engineered hinges are genuinely expensive to produce, and I'm not pretending Apple is inventing that cost out of thin air. But knowing why something costs more doesn't answer the actual question in front of you, which is whether you have $2,000 sitting around that isn't already spoken for by rent, groceries, or an emergency fund. For most people, the honest answer is no, and the marketing machine around this launch is not going to pause and ask you that question. That's on you to ask yourself.

What Real Innovation Would Actually Look Like

Here's where I want to spend the most time, because complaining about a price tag is easy and I don't think it's actually the useful part of this conversation. The real question I keep coming back to is this; the average person isn't using their phone anywhere close to its full capability right now. So what would it look like if Apple spent its engineering effort on features that actually reduced friction or pain in people's daily lives, instead of a folding screen most people will use to watch the same videos they already watch on a flat one?

I'm talking about things like genuinely proactive health monitoring that catches problems before they become emergencies, not just step counts and heart rate graphs nobody reads. I'm talking about on-device AI that actually understands your specific life circumstances well enough to handle real administrative burden, insurance paperwork, appointment scheduling, elder care coordination, the stuff that actually eats hours out of people's weeks. I'm talking about accessibility features that could transform daily life for aging users or people with disabilities, built as headline features instead of buried three menus deep in settings. A folding screen is an impressive piece of hardware engineering. It is not the same thing as innovation that alleviates real pain in someone's life, and I think we've let the industry blur that distinction for years now.

You're Allowed to Sit This One Out

I want to be honest about where I land, because I don't think the answer here is to tell you never to buy nice things. If you have the money sitting uncommitted, if a foldable phone genuinely improves how you work or live, and if buying it doesn't touch money that needs to go somewhere else first, go enjoy it. I'd love to have one myself, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But if your honest answer is that you'd need to finance it, or that buying it means dipping into money you can't really spare, I want you to hear this clearly; sitting this one out isn't the lesser move. It's the smarter one. You are not falling behind because you're still using a phone that does everything you actually need it to do. You're not missing some technological revolution, because if I'm honest with you, after 35 years of watching this company, what's coming this September isn't the revolution the price tag wants you to believe it is. It's an impressive, expensive experiment in luxury pricing, and you get to decide, with a clear head and your own math, whether that experiment is worth your money.

➡️ Related: [Galaxy Z Fold vs. iPhone Ultra] 

➡️ Related: [Before You Buy The New iPhone Ultra, Ask Yourself What's Actually Broken] 

➡️ Related: [Can You Write Off That New iPhone?] 

➡️ Get our free Spyware and Scam Alert checklist

➡️ Join the free Tech 4 Grown-Ups community

➡️ Listen to the full podcast

Michael Routhier is the founder of Tech 4 Grown-Ups, providing honest, unfiltered digital literacy for adults 55+, and host of The Virtuous Machine, exploring the ethics and human cost of AI. Read by tech-curious readers in 50+ countries. Explore more at tech4grownups.com.