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Some say there are no new ideas. When it comes to the iPhone Air, maybe they are right. Announced today, the iPhone Air will debut on September 19 for $999. Its selling point? The iPhone Air is 5.6mm thick. Except for the camerathat part still sticks out. Truly amazing and unlike anything you experienced before, according to CEO Tim Cook, the iPhone Air is Apples attempt to reignite excitement in the iPhone business, which hit a 6-year low in new activations last year as people decide to stick with their perfectly adequate phones for longer. On one hand, a thinner iPhone seems to be a page right out of the playbook of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive. This is classic Apple! you might think. Thinness was a gimmick during Apples golden age, but it was a beloved one. Apple might have advertised thinness as a feature, but it didnt define the design unto itself. Thinness was but one advancement that enabled it to rethink entire product categories. [Image: Apple] Apple was always about more than thin Apple’s obsession with thinness started in 2001 with the iPod. The first iPod was remarkable compared to anything we’d seen. It squeezed a thousands songs into something the size of a deck of cards. But it was still a hefty thinga modified laptop hard drive that was still a third of a pound in your hand. [Photo: Apple/Getty Images] Over several generations, the iPod thinned out significantly, to the point where its entire effect felt less like a cleverly packaged computer component and more like a product with its own uncompromising design language. (Biased, but the third generation iPod will always be a personal favorite for its almost jewelry feel and glowing orange buttons.) [Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] Still, Apple kept going. It introduced the much smaller iPod mini in 2004 (with a unique, 1-inch microdrive hard drive). It was more diminutive, but also more expressive in candy colors. It edged toward some platonic ideal of what music in your pocket should be. [Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] That thought experiment culminated with the first generation iPod Shuffle. The iPod, at the end of the day, could be nothing more than the clickwheel control living on a clip that needed no pocket at all. But that didnt stop the release, in 2005, of a ridiculously enticing object: the thin and tall iPod nano (so much smaller thanks to flash storage). This cadence of releases was parodied by SNL, but at the same time, we couldnt get enough. Smaller, lighter, cheaper iPods democratized the platform and drove its profits to new heights. And critically speaking, you only needed to scope out the latest iPodeach a tantalizing new technological wonderto realize its justification to exist. The introduction of the Macbook Airthe iPhone Airs namesakein 2008 didnt create as long and branching of a design lineage for Apples laptop line, but it was radical all the same. Its core innovation was a smaller motherboard developed in conjunction with Intel. The new design wasnt just about a third of an inch thinner than earlier Macbooks overall: It featured an elegantly tapered edge that gave it motion and harkened to its own implausibility. [Photo: Tony Avelar/AFP/Getty Images] Oh, and it was also a full 2lbs lighter. Perceptually, the weight was what made it feel like something worthy of that Air namesake; as if we fast forwarded ten years into the future overnight. It was the difference between a 5 lb laptop and a 3 lb laptopthe difference between grabbing it with one hand or two. Like the iPhone Air, the Macbook Air’sbattery life and processing power didnt keep up with Apples bigger models. But the gulf between its standard laptop and the Air was wide. It was so wide that it wiped out the budget mini laptop market at the time (a wave of tiny-screened laptops introduced by the Asus Eee), and prompted the entire PC industry to launch a wave of ultraportable thin laptops based upon much of the same core architecture. Yes, incremental thinness drives the entire portable electronics industry. But in Apple’s hands, it’s often meant more. It’s been a tool for immediate and long term categorical disruption. [Image: Apple] The iPhone Air is engineering, not design Apple, at its best, used thinness to redefine what a product was and where it could go next. But the iPhone Air isnt defining a new category of thin phones. (Incidentally, Samsungs S25 phone already offered an ultra-thin approach to disappointing sales.) Apples most loyal fanbase is concluding that, if nothing else, the Air is a peek at the future of thinner phones, or even a preview for a folding iPhone to come. I dont mind that Apple introduced a thinner iPhone. They do so every year. This one just happens to be thinner than usual. But I do mind that it failed to release a smaller iPhone before prioritizing other ideasand that the iPhone Air does nothing to push forward the greater experience of using an iPhone. Why didnt Apple resurrect the beloved iPhone Minia phone that fits into pockets and has a smaller screen that can be easier on a thumb? I also cant help but wonder: If Apple is re-entering its gadget era, why arent we seeing explorations into the Mini/Nano/Shuffle versions of what the iPhone can be? Maybe those explorations would be silly and misguided. But at least theyd be different. And at least theyd be interesting. To me, the most notable hardware announcement of the day is that the Airpod Pro is getting a heart rate monitor, negating a major advantage of an Apple Watch, and pointing to Apples greater ambitions in what an AI-infused headphone will be in just a few more years. The second is that the iPhone’s camera has a new sensor so that you can take a landscape photo in portrait mode, so media is just media, no matter how youre holding the iPhone. With the iPhone Air, Apple did not present a concept car of the future, which challenges the status quo or ushers in a new design language for the company. It didnt imagine how AI and industrial design could merge into a radical, or even notable, new idea. Instead, it’s selling three iPhone models that are all ostensibly the same thing in different thicknesses. Even if Apple purely wanted to focus on aestheticsif it saw this as a moment to truly merge its industrial design with the UX of Liquid Glassthat could be interesting! Maybe functionally unimportant, but at least its a product with a point of view. But the iPhone Air is like so much of what we see coming out of Apple these days: not made from the heart of innovation, but responding to the demands of shareholders curious when theyll offer the same lineup of hardware we see from Samsung, Google, and Meta. With the iPhone Air, Apple feels like its cosplaying Apple.
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E-Commerce
Math and reading scores for U.S. high school seniors are plummeting, according to new federal data released on Tuesday. Reading skills in particular have suffered, with test results dropping to their lowest scores since the assessments first began in 1992. According to the new data, 32% of 12th grade students performed below the assessments basic reading achievement level, which measures whether students can find relevant details within text and come away with a literal understanding of what they read. In 1992, the portion of 12th grade students falling below that basic measure of reading comprehension was 20%. Only 35% of 12th graders demonstrated a proficient level of reading skill, meaning that they could connect key points across reading samples and make more sophisticated inferences about tone, word choice, and themes. In 2024, the portion of students who demonstrated proficient reading skills dropped by 2% compared with 2019, and 5% compared with the tests 1992 baseline scores. The new test data on high school seniors was collected in 2024, making it the first set of scores to be published after the educational disruptions that students experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data is part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federal testing program also known as the Nations Report Card. Fourth grade and eighth grade students are given the assessments every two years, while 12th grade students are evaluated every four years. High school seniors also performed worse in math, achieving the lowest scores since the math assessment began in 2005. Only a third of seniors performed at a level that showed they were academically ready for college, down from 37% in 2019. These results are sobering, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) acting commissioner Matthew Soldner said. The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Unprecedented setbacks The latest scores for high school seniors show that all is not well in the American educational system. Test scores have been sliding for more than a decade, a trend made worse by disruptions to schooling during the pandemic. The new score data, published for the first time since 2020, shows that pandemic-linked performance losses for students arent fading away as time passes, like many had hoped. That trend is backed by this years assessment of 8th graders, whose reading scores fell even further in 2024, deepening a steep drop-off in scores observed from 2019 to 2022. Reading scores began dropping prior to the pandemic, but researchers and educators are still trying to make sense of why. How time spent on screens influences children is a complex issue and can trend positive or negative, depending on how much time they spend and what theyre doing. Some research has shown that deeper reading comprehension is worse when kids read on screens, but rolling back the digital revolution in the classroom isnt likely to emerge as a one-size-fits-all solution. In the U.S., adults are consuming digital media more and reading for pleasure less than ever. The way adults consume information has changed radically in recent decades, with the emergence of algorithm-driven social media, the rise of information disseminated via short-form video, and the continued deterioration of news sources. Beyond the classroom, all of those changes will continue to influence young learnerswho are plunged into a fast-paced, unpredictable digital information ecosystem, often as early as age 8. With AI now in the mix, students are doing their best to navigate a complex world filled with potent new tools that are already upending life for many adults.
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E-Commerce
Linda Yaccarinos departure as CEO of X on July 9 caught many by surprise. While reportedly in the works for weeks, the absence of leaks and the timing of her announcementone day after Xs AI chatbot Grok made antisemitic comments referencing Hitler during a prompt about Texas floodingsparked heavy online chatter. Two months later, that chatter has faded, but the executive office remains vacant, with no signs of being filled soon. (Yaccarino, meanwhile, has since taken over as chief executive of eMed Population Health, a digital health company developing a platform for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.) X declined to comment on the CEO search, and Elon Musk has only weighed in once, thanking Yaccarino for her contributions on the day she stepped down. If his past remarks are any guide, hes in no hurry. CEO is fake title. You need a president, a controller and a secretary for a C Corp, but all the chief [whatever] officer stuff is superfluous, Musk wrote on X two years ago. That echoed comments from 2021 at The Wall Street Journals CEO Council Summit, when he said president, secretary and treasurer were the only meaningful corporate titles. (To underline the point, his title at Tesla is technoking.) On prediction market Polymarket, bettors arent expecting an announcement anytime soon: 51% dont think a decision will come this year, up from 22% the day after Yaccarino left. The current frontrunner is serial entrepreneur Nikita Bier, with 19% betting hell get the job. Bier, who joined Xs product team as Yaccarino departed, has pushed for useful content and a crackdown on AI slop, which he says have boosted App Store downloads. Musk himself is second on Polymarket with 10% odds, likely reflecting the assumption hell remain the final decision maker regardless of who holds the CEO title. Other names have low odds, including White House AI policy advisor Sriram Krishnan, X CFO Mahmoud Reza Banki, and Grok itself, each at 4%. Longshot candidates include MrBeast, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, and Sheryl Sandberg. Time will tell if the next CEO makes it past Yaccarinos two-year run.
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E-Commerce
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