Apple released 21 new products in 2023. Which ended up making the grade, and which ones flunked out?
Apple released 21 new products in 2023. Which ended up making the grade, and which ones flunked out?
For the second year in a row, I am doing an annual tier ranking of all the Apple products released in 2023. Last year, the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, Apple Watch Ultra, and AirPods Pro 2 took the S-Tier, while the 10th Generation iPad landed at the bottom in the F-Tier. This year, we have 21 new Apple products to rank, from the resurrected 2nd Generation HomePod to the M2 Pro Mac mini. There's no better way to put yourself in the crosshairs of controversy than to create a tier list, so let's begin.
My 2023 Apple Product Tier
F-Tier
Mac Pro
Release Date: June 13, 2023
Since the announcement of Apple Silicon in 2020, eyes have gazed towards the mountaintop to glimpse what Apple's most powerful Mac, the Mac Pro, could look like running Apple Silicon. Our minds raced when we saw Apple announce the M1 Max chip, and our hearts pounded when the M1 Ultra was unveiled with the new Mac Studio. The power inside those products only fueled our speculation about how powerful a Mac Pro could be.
During our long wait, we imagined what an Extreme M-Series chip could be capable of, simultaneously pondering how Apple would address the fixed memory peculiarities of Apple Silicon. After 2.5 years, we got our answer at WWDC23, where, for exactly 149 seconds, Apple introduced, discussed, and moved on from the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro featured the same specs and customization as a Mac Studio but cost $3,000 more than any similarly specced M2 Ultra Mac Studio. For that significant increase, you get some expandability (storage and non-graphics-related PCI expansion), lose an HDMI port, and that's really about it.
The Mac Pro was a letdown. The Mac Studio squeezed a struggling product further out of relevancy save for the most hardened studios who need their cards internally slotted directly into PCI cards inside their device. Apple still needs to create a compelling reason for the Mac Pro to exist in the era of Apple Silicon; the only purpose of this release felt like it was intended for Apple to make good on their promise to release one.
D-Tier
M3 MacBook Pro
Release Date: November 07, 2023
In late 2023, Apple refreshed their entire MacBook Pro lineup, finally nixing the TouchBar MacBook Pro and replacing it with a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a new M3 chip. It has all the display enhancements and ports of the pricier MacBook Pros (minus one less Thunderbolt port), features a smaller cooling system and is limited to the base M3 chip. While it raises the starting price to $1,599, it lowers the entry price to the redesigned MacBook Pro line by $400.
So why D-Tier? While it's a great value to get the fantastic display and ports of a MacBook Pro, the price is lowered by Apple insisting on equipping this model with a paltry 8GB of unified memory. It'll be decent for day-to-day tasks today, but the memory is the Achilles heel of this computer, one that will prematurely age it. And as soon as you even think about touching the RAM (+$200 to move to 16 GB), you are now just $200 away from an M3 Pro MacBook with more ports, power, and RAM (18 vs. 16GB).
USB-C Apple Pencil
Release Date: November 01, 2023
When Apple updated the 10th Generation iPad, it gave it a USB-C connector but only supported the first-generation Lighting connector Apple Pencil. The USB-C Apple Pencil tries to resolve some of those incompatibilities. It is a hybrid of the Pencil 2 and the original Pencil, magnetically attaching but with a discretely hidden USB-C port for charging. It also lowers the price ($79) to below the Apple Pencil 1 ($99) and Apple Pencil 2 ($129) but loses wireless charging, pressure sensitivity, and double-tap.
My beef with the product is that it still requires carrying around a charging cable to ensure your pencil can be charged, and it has a host of compromises, making it an odd device in Apple's lineup.
iPhone 14 (in Yellow)
Release Date: March 14, 2023
Hello, Yellow! Apple's spring iPhone colour was a banana-smoothie-hued yellow iPhone 14 & 14 Plus this year. It could have been a bit more vibrant, but when I looked at the iPhone 15 colours, I realized I shouldn't be complaining.
C-Tier
AirPods Pro 2 (with USB-C)
Release Date: September 22, 2023
Last year, the AirPods 2 took the top spot in the S-Tier due to their incredible sound & noise cancelling. Ounce for ounce, they're the best in-ear headphones available for consumers.
The 2023 AirPods Pro gets some enhancements with the change to a USB-C case and stated capability to play lossless audio when paired with Apple Vision Pro. But these enhancements are so minor Apple didn't go out of its way to rename them (i.e. 3rd generation).
If this is your first time with the AirPods Pro, these slightly updated AirPods will change your world, but compared to the previous iteration (the AirPods Pro 2 with Lightning), there's no compelling reason to update.
M2 MacBook Pros
Release Date: January 24, 2023
Apple started the year by introducing the M2 Pro & Max MacBook Pros on January 17, 2023. The M3 MacBook Pros were announced two hundred eighty-six days later, making this one of the shortest periods between iterations.
The M2 Pros featured enhancements to the HDMI (2.1) & WiFi, and the new M2 architecture was ~9-33% faster averaged across tasks and benchmarks. It increased the number of CPU cores from 10 to 12, adding two additional efficiency cores, and increased the RAM limit from 64 to 96GB. It made a fantastic computer even better, but it was incremental to previous M1 MacBook Pro owners. There was some controversy about the lower storage tiers having slower SSD speeds. Still, outside of early benchmark videos, I saw no evidence of this being a day-to-day impediment for people.
Why did Apple release this product in the first place? The narrow time gap between the two generations makes me wonder if the M2 MacBooks were planned for release earlier or if there was some uncertainty that the M3 Pros would need more time to be ready for Q4 2023.
Overall, this product would have hopped into B-Tier had it not been for the M3 Pros released a few months later. It's a fantastic product in its own right, a respectable but incremental product to the M1 MBPs, and a confusing product when looking at the M3s.
Apple Watch Ultra 2
Release Date: September 22, 2023
Listen: I know it looks the same, and we didn't get the Black Titanium Apple Watch Ultra, but it's not a nothingburger update. Granted, it's not a significant update, but some under-the-hood improvements are worth mentioning. We get a more dynamic display (100% brighter up to 2000-nits, going as dim as 1-nit), a double tap feature for interactivity, a 30% faster CPU, on-device Siri, improved dictation, double the storage (64GB), and a second-generation Ultra Wideband Chip (because we couldn't call it a U2 chip). It might not merit an update from a Series 8 for most, but it's a very respectable update.
But damn, I still wish we got a Black Titanium Ultra...
Apple Watch Series 9
Release Date: September 22, 2023
I'll echo everything from the Ultra 2 in my rationale for putting the Series 9 in the C-Tier. Several pretty good improvements over the previous iteration, not enough to warrant dashing to the store, but welcome if you are replacing an aging Apple Watch (Series 3-5). Perhaps my thoughts on the Series 9 could best be described in the recommendation I gave my wife on whether she should upgrade her watch: "If you did, there'd be some things you'd find nice, but if you didn't, you wouldn't miss it." That's C-Tier energy in a nutshell.
tvOS 17
Release Date: September 18, 2023
I needed to look up what tvOS 17 was bringing this year because I couldn't tell you what the day-to-day quality of life improvements were. Here's Apple's description:
"This update introduces the FaceTime app on Apple TV, brings a redesigned Control Center, supports finding your Siri Remote with iPhone and clearer dialogue with HomePod, lets you choose Memories as your screen saver, enhances the Apple Music Sing experience, and expands Siri knowledge support."
Outside of Control Center, I have not encountered anything with tvOS 17 that has wowed me. It's evolved into a stable platform. Zooming out, it's a media console, so I don't know what more I need. It's a bit of polish, not a revolution.
HomePod (Second Generation)
Release Date: February 03, 2023
The day after Apple introduced the M2 MacBook Pros, it did the unimaginable: it resurrected the HomePod! After a two-year vacancy, the full-size HomePod returned. It featured a similar design but tweaked internals (fewer mics & tweeters and a much faster S7 chip) and had the same $299 starting price. I'm so happy the HomePod is back. Still, Apple needs to do more to distinguish the HomePod brand in people's minds in the long term, particularly given its higher entry price.
B-Tier
macOS Sonoma
Release Date: September 26, 2023
A respectable release. There are dozens of quality-of-life enhancements in the 4th version of macOS in the Apple Silicon era. There may not be a tentpole feature that defines this release, but many features included in Sonoma have been enjoyable. Widgets on the desktop are better than inside the notification pane (but please make them like Dashboard Widgets), the moving screensavers are delightful, the swipe to reply is excellent, the autocorrect and predictive typing are very impressive, and the auto sorting grocery list in Reminders is a beautiful thing.
Stability (for me) has also been rock solid with this release of macOS. After several months, I haven't encountered any weird battery, sync, or compatibility issues, which is a feather in Sonoma's cap.
15-inch MacBook Air
Release Date: June 13, 2023
The 13-inch M2 MacBook Air might be one of my favourite computers in decades: quiet, powerful, insane battery life, and gorgeous design. To quote Dwight from The Office, it's Perfectenschlag. Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air builds on the Air, offering additional screen real-estate for $200 more (starting at $1,299). This finally gave people prioritizing screen size a tempting laptop without breaking the bank by going up to the 14 or 16-inch MacBook Pro.
The challenge is that the decision-making around laptops becomes muddled with the introduction of M3. For $100 more, a person looking at a 512GB 15-inch Air can get a 14-inch Pro with a faster processor, improved speakers, additional ports, and a significantly better display. The 15-inch MacBook Air slips into B-Tier because its value is more complicated than Macs like the 13-inch Air. The M3 MacBook Pro is still D-Tier relative to the Macs in Apple's lineup. However, I'd strongly encourage people to consider it, particularly if they are thinking of a 15-inch Air with any increase in storage over the base 256GB.
M3 iMac
Release Date: November 07, 2023
It's a modest update, but the iMac has an M3 that'll double this computer's performance and give you a desktop for years and years to come. They didn't refresh the colours (no complaints there), and the 24.5-inch size is more than sufficient for most. The iMac is a very accessible computer for people who want to plop down one thing on their desk (or, as Apple would like you to believe, haphazardly placed in the middle of your kitchen prep space) and have it work for years to come.
A-Tier
iOS 17
Release Date: September 18, 2023
iOS 17 finds itself confidently in A-Tier as a very stable iOS release with several improvements that have added value to how I use my iPhone. I enjoy the stickers and the excellent interactive widgets; the AirDrop features & animation are fantastic, and I love the polish they've done to display contacts. Still, my five favourite enhancements have been Mail verification codes, offline maps, StandBy, AirPod device switching improvements, and texting.
On that last point, I recall hearing that Apple is using some language model to refine text input, which has dramatically (!) decreased the number of typos I create. No more ducking; the accuracy has been fantastic. At least a dozen times per day, I benefit from one of the many features introduced in iOS 17, making this release very much deserving of A-Tier.
iPadOS 17
Release Date: September 18, 2023
Featuring most of the enhancements introduced in iOS 17, iPadOS 17 also features a redesigned (but slightly janky) lock screen with Widgets, Live Photo lock screen animations, the Health App, and improvements in Stage Manager windowing. Again, I'm impressed by its stability, how many new features I regularly use, and the value they add to my workflow.
M3 Pro & Max MacBook Pros
Release Date: November 07, 2023
More than any previous year, the MacBook Pros are beginning to get more and more fragmented. Before, the differences between Pro & Max came down to differences in the number of GPU cores. This year, Apple has created a wide range of MacBooks with various core options: The M3 Pro comes with up to 12 CPU cores (six performance, six efficiency), although a binned 11-core option is available (with five performance cores), while the M3 Max comes with a 14-Core (ten performance, four efficiency) or 16-Core (12 performance, four efficiency) option. Rather than the Max being a step up from the Pro, these are becoming different computers for different use cases. This also extends to the RAM options, varying from 18 GB to 128GB depending on the processor chosen and whether you chose a binned or non-binned version.
These Macs have shown themselves to be incredibly capable, with reports indicating a fully specced M3 Max rivalling the performance of the M2 Ultra released earlier this spring. But to get that jump in performance, going from a full M3 Pro to a fully specced M3 Max now costs $900. They're exceptional computers with an increasingly high price to entry.
Space Black is beautiful, but Silver will always be king...
M2 Mac Studio
Release Date: June 13, 2023
The current Mac Studio has enough power to go toe-to-toe against a Mac Pro while costing several thousand dollars less. I kept the Mac Studio in A-Tier for 2023, given how much Apple improved the M2 Ultra GPU scaling compared with the M1 Ultra speeds from 2022, and for how ridiculously capable this stout little Mac has shown itself to be. I still believe that computers of this calibre deserve the option of post-purchase expandability.
Mac mini
Release Date: January 17, 2023
Pound for pound, the Mac mini remains the most affordable way to get into the Apple ecosystem, and the M2 Mac mini introduced in January is a quality enhancement with tons of ports (including integrated ethernet, HDMI, headphone jack, and a pair of Thunderbolt and USB-A ports) all for $599.
The icing on the cake was that Apple also introduced an M2 Pro Mac mini that significantly upped the power of Apple's diminutive coaster computer, providing a generous spread of desktops with understandable price segregation.
watchOS 10
Release Date: September 18, 2023
Liberated from needing to support the Series 3, watchOS 10 has added a fresh coat of paint across many of its native apps. Apps like Weather feel like full-fledged applications, and the splash of colour across apps like World Clock, Stocks, Activity, and Home mature the platform, making it feel very capable. The added watch Faces, rudimentary mental health mood tracking, and widgets have been much appreciated. Some UI aspects are beginning to feel a little Janky (differentiating between widgets, complications, and apps, for example), so I wouldn't be surprised to see a clarification of these elements in future watchOS versions.
S-Tier
iPhone 15
Release Date: September 22, 2023
I waffled on whether the iPhone 15 should sit in A or S-Tier but ultimately decided on S-Tier because it was one of the best-entry iPhones in years. This year, the iPhone 15 gains the Dynamic Island, a USB-C port, and a 48MP camera with 2x optical zoom on top of all the features of previous iPhones, including water/dust resistance, optical image stabilization, 4K video, OLED display, and on and on. Apple usually has the Pro phone getting all the bells & whistles, with features trickling down to lower tiers over time. Still, this year, Apple has made some additions that help this iPhone feel like a generational step over previous years and very premium to most users.
Those colours (or lack thereof), though...
iPhone 15 Pro
Release Date: September 22, 2023
Finally, we end our tier list and find ourselves finishing off with the iPhone 15 Pro. This year, the iPhone 15 Pro refined an established design with softly rounded corners, giving it a much more pleasant hand feel when gripped without a case. The brushed Titanium has a wicked finish, and the weight reduction feels significant. Months in, I'm still shocked by how light this phone feels after years of using the stainless steel iPhones. The camera upgrades, particularly the 5x on the Pro Max, have been a killer feature on this device, with the quality that the camera produces being stellar (unlike the gimmicky ultrawide when it was first introduced). The Action Button is a non-factor for me, though I get why some people like it, and the inclusion of Log video recording makes this iPhone a phenomenal video capture device. Trim the bezels, add a USB-C port, and feature the ability to plug in tons of peripherals and record to local storage, and you have a very impressive iPhone update for 2023.
In Sum
2023 was a Mac-heavy year, with a couple of MacBook Pro updates, a new 15-inch MacBook Air, and refreshes to many of Apple's other Macs. And after 2.5 years, Apple finally announced that it had completed the transition to Apple Silicon. Products like the Mac Studio, MacBook Pros, and even the Mac mini continue to get meaningful updates and have become some of the best Macs in ages, while the iPhone 15 lineup was the best we've had in years. MacOS & iOS updates have been stable on the software side, with meaningful upgrades across most platforms. But amongst these strengths, oddities remain, like the budget Apple Pencil, Apple's baffling memory stinginess, the confusing Mac Pro, and lingering thoughts about the future HomePod. 2024 is shaping up to be another thrilling year of releases, with new products like the Apple Vision Pro, the tenth series of the Apple Watch, and significant updates to the iPad lineup all rumoured to drop.
