How Apple tricks your brain so you'd buy the more expensive iPhone or iPad

No matter how profound and spiritualistic companies like Apple try to be, even having pretentious job titles like "evangelist", at the end of the day – they're businesses that are trying to make money.

Nothing wrong with that, it's how life works, but we're about to delve into the subject of how cleverly Apple does make a whole lot of money, by sneakily navigating you towards its more expensive products.

The iPad Air cleverly nudges you towards the iPad Pro and you don't even notice it!

Say you're on a budget, but you want a nice iPad. The base iPad is pretty great and powerful, but it has that outdated design and accessories, plus it only supports the old first-gen Apple Pencil, and its screen isn't even laminated. It's all for a reason – so you'd say "Okay, I'm willing to spend a bit more for something more modern."

The iPad Air is next – by far the most well-rounded option, at a great price for what it's capable of, and it supports iPad Pro keyboards and accessories.

But here's where Apple's trickery gets even more subtle. The iPad Air only has two storage options – 64 GB and 256 GB, which is quite a big jump.

The 64 GB iPad Air is $600, which is pretty fair, but if you're a creator, or just someone who wants to download lots of music, movies, shows and games on your tablet, you probably know that storage won't be enough at all. And Apple knows it won't be enough for you too.

So you decide to consider the 256 GB iPad Air, but it costs a staggering $750 – it's the same tablet but with more acceptable storage! And then you realize that its $750 price tag is getting pretty close to the base iPad Pro, which is just $50 more. "So why not just buy the iPad Pro, then?"

And voila, you've been tricked. You came in looking for an affordable iPad but quickly got turned around and ended up buying an iPad Pro. Nice one, Apple.

The iPhone SE (2022) still looks outdated for a reason – buy the iPhone 13

Like the base iPad, the new budget iPhone SE (2022) looks outdated for a reason, and it's not just Apple saving up on manufacturing costs by reusing a 5-year-old iPhone 8 body.

The iPhone SE (2022) is actually a beast on the inside – it's outperforming Android flagships, despite being the cheapest iPhone. So Apple's already beating the competition when it comes to performance, but it has to make the iPhone SE "worse" than the iPhone 13 series, otherwise most consumers would just buy the SE, right?

And what's the best way to make a powerful phone "worse" than the iPhone 13? Give it an outdated design, of course – make it look ancient in comparison.



This visual trickery is playing mainly on users' sense of social status, meaning those who care a whole lot about it – like kids and teenagers – would surely insist that their parents buy them an iPhone 13 instead of the iPhone SE. Even though both are very powerful and capable phones.

This "social status" trick also works on some adults too. If you're a tech enthusiast, you wouldn't want a phone that looks like it came out in 2017, you'd want something that looks modern.

So the iPhone SE is purposefully outdated-looking to clearly differentiate itself from the flagship iPhones. That way even the majority of users who don't care about flagship bells and whistles would choose to skip it, just based on its appearance.

Once again, a good mind trick from Apple, rooted in social psychology.

Storage is kept hostage under a hefty price tag

Storage in general is something Apple asks way more money for than "more storage" actually costs as a component. Like with the iPad example, storage options on the iPhone 13 are inclined to slowly move you towards the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, because it can get that expensive.