Apple thinks the iPhone 16e target market doesn't care about MagSafe

Apple has responded to iPhone 16e critics, and says that engineering choices like a lack of MagSafe that make the device unappealing to the tech-savvy don't matter to the larger market.

There's a great line from Jony Ive, said around the time that Apple Park was first opened. There were criticisms of its design and he said he was bemused at them, because of who Apple Park was built for.

"We didn't make Apple Park for other people," he said in Dezeen magazine. "So a lot of the criticisms are utterly bizarre, because it wasn't made for you! And I know how we work and you don't!"

In the same breath, he said that he thought it was valid for people to criticize Apple products that were meant for them. But every Apple product gets criticized and sometimes it's for what seems to be the same rationale as whatever those bizarre yet now forgotten ones that were made of Apple's headquarters.

Quite possibly the most distinct example of this is what has happened with the new iPhone 16e. Across the board, reviews have been middling, at best.

The reviews are not unfair. They compare the price with the iPhone's features, and they specifically compare the iPhone 16e with all other models in the same range.

By that measure, it's true that the iPhone 16e comes up short. But as John Gruber suggests, its shortcomings don't matter. At least, not to who Apple expects to buy the iPhone 16e.

We'll never actually know who makes up that expected market, but there are clues. Such as how Apple's launch kept comparing the iPhone 16e to the 2019 iPhone 11.

Or just how Apple has specifically and directly told Gruber that its market doesn't care about MagSafe.

Charging speeds and methods do get more attention from long-term or technical users than they do from regular consumers. Nobody really cares about the difference between 7.5W and 15W, because nobody really notices — they just know their iPhone is charged up by the morning.

They do also know that the iPhone has to be charged up overnight. So if there were some tradeoff between MagSafe and a larger battery, Apple made what most of its buyers will probably think is the right decision.

If you're shaking your head now, though, it's because you've used MagSafe. Once you have and you know how convenient is to just pop your iPhone on a stand, it is very hard to go back.

Yet if you haven't used MagSafe, you can be told it's convenient and fully believe people about it, but you've no way to know just how handy it really is. And neither the iPhone 11 nor the iPhone SE 3 had MagSafe.

Then again, the iPhone SE 3 was build with the iPhone 8 chassis in mind, and there was no space for MagSafe magnets inside that design. The iPhone 16e is clearly derived from the iPhone 14, and the iPhone 14 clearly has space for MagSafe, so it isn't that factor that precluded inclusion in the new model.

It's the same with Ultra Wideband tracking and Thread radio, both of which are absent from the iPhone 16e. The former, especially, means that using Find My is less accurate when you're trying to hunt down your luggage by the AirTag inside it.

But there's accuracy and there's accuracy. What real-world users know is that even the top of the range iPhone 16 Pro Max which has Ultra Wideband tracking, can be poor at Find My in an underground car park.

It's going to be better than not having Ultra Wideband, but it isn't the thing that will make buyers return their iPhone 16e in disgust.

iPhone 16e and assorted cases - Image credit: Apple, UAG, Casetify

The iPhone 16e is a good iPhone, at least for some people. And Apple is of course aiming it at those people — because it's aiming the other iPhones at other audiences.

Although, there is one thing. It's true that buyers probably won't notice the lack of Ultra Wideband, and it's true that they may not notice the absence of MagSafe, or they'll buy a MagSafe case.

But they will notice the price — the iPhone 16e will stand or fall on that, mainly. And because of its price, users will probably be comparing it to Android sooner than they are to the more costly iPhones.