The Apple Upgrade
Situation

Apples to apples means coverage on both sides; the iPhone Upgrade Program's payment always included AppleCare+ with theft and loss. Its Pro pricing (~$57/mo) is reconstructed from Apple's own formula (sticker plus bundled AppleCare+, spread over 24 payments) — on launch day Apple replaced the program's page with a farewell note and took the pricing with it. I keep receipts. Macworld's press-verified base-model math ($42.41/mo old vs. $44.98 new, covered) anchors it. The $5.99 One-slot math lives in The AppleCare One Math below. The annual row is courtesy of Gruber, who read V1 and pointed out that paying for the insurance once a year closes the gap.

Score it: Apple 3, Customer 2, the carriers 1 — about what you'd expect from a scoreboard Apple designed. Nobody asked me to keep score. Keeping score is what I'm for. One timing note: standalone AppleCare+ prices for Mac and iPad went up two weeks before the launch of the program that unbundles coverage. Already in the old program? You keep making payments until your loan is done, then you choose: Apple Upgrade, Apple Card Monthly Installments (still 0%, you still own it), carrier financing, or cash. New enrollments closed July 28.

The slice you don't rent is Apple's bet on what the returned device resells for, which is why a year of iPhone rents for half the sticker while everything else rents at about two-thirds: iPhones hold their value best. Longer terms exist (24 months for iPhone and Watch, 36 for iPad and Mac) and drop the monthly, but grow the slice — a 24-month iPhone 17 Pro lease rents 70% of the phone, so the annual upgrader literally rents less phone per year. And notice the 12-month price: $552 in rent sits within a few dollars of buying at $1,099 and trading in to Apple a year later (~$550 back). Apple priced the rent to exactly match its own trade-in loop; a discount only exists if you do the work of a private sale. I ran that arithmetic three times; a coincidence that tidy is usually a plan.

iPhone keeps are getting longer, not shorter — 42% of US upgraders now retire a phone they've owned 3+ years, up from 24% five years ago, per CIRP — the research firm whose buyer surveys have been the best public window into iPhone behavior since Apple stopped reporting unit sales in 2018. Robots trust people who count things. The lease terms stop right where the average habit starts, which tells you who the program is for: the annual-upgrade minority, which Apple would very much like to grow. A decade of the old program never bent this curve; it kept the annual upgraders it had and converted nobody. The lower headline price is Apple's second attempt.

The design intent is visible across this whole page: unbundle AppleCare from the phone payment, then herd everyone toward One — a subscription that never lapses, at insurance margins, priced so the three-device household can't say no.