YEP:
Here's how the game is played:
Democratic judge rules for Democrats in unprecedented, activist way: Media celebrates rule of law from obviously impartial judge protecting justice
Panel of Republican-majority judges overturn, and restore previous norm universally accepted until…
— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 24, 2025
By the time this article is published, there will only be four days to go until Black Friday, the most magical and beloved day of the year. I hope you’ve put up your decorations.
At this time of year, tech fans can pick up bargains (while avoiding non-bargains) on products that would otherwise be outside their budget. But as an Apple fan, I always feel an inexplicable sense of second-hand embarrassment. “Will there be Apple Store discounts on iPhones?” friends ask me with naive optimism. No, I have to answer. There will just be gift cards.
That’s not to say that you won’t see any discounts on Apple products: there are plenty to be had already. It’s just that the discounts will be offered by other retailers. Buy direct from Apple and you’ll pay not one cent less than MSRP, while receiving a moderately generous gift card you can use on your next purchase. It’s almost like the company wants to help out its reseller partners by pushing business their way.
This lack of direct discounts shouldn’t come as a surprise, of course. Partly because Apple always does the gift card thing, but also because it doesn’t do bargains more generally. Certainly not in the sense of sudden, time-limited, slightly panicky price drops you have to pounce on before they’re gone. It simply doesn’t feel the need to compete, either on price or for attention; after years of nurturing a sense of community, even tribalism, Apple knows that customers will come to it, rather than the other way around.
Apple doesn’t do out-and-out cheap products, either. These days, you can find a perfectly decent Android phone for less than $250, or even $200 if you’re willing to make some sacrifices, but that’s not a market Apple is interested in. This time last year, the iPhone SE sat at the top of the budget category, starting at $429 by March, but that was phased out in favor of the defiantly mid-market (and in my opinion ill-conceived) $599 iPhone 16e. It suits Apple’s purposes to focus on selling a smaller number of higher-margin handsets, knowing that each iPhone owner represents a micro-advert to their friends. Ultra-budget phones are not aspirational.
All of this might make it sound like I subscribe to the idea of the Apple Tax, that proverbial premium supposedly added on to the prices of iPhones, Macs, and the like for no good reason other than Apple customers being gullible enough to pay it. But I don’t. Apple doesn’t do cheap, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do value, as we’ve seen this past year in particular. Cupertino steers clear of the true budget market but consistently offers strong value with its mid-market products.
My favorite release of 2025, for example, is the Apple Watch SE 3, which delivers so much bang for its 249 bucks that I was obliged to advise readers to choose it over the fuller-featured Series 11. You don’t need to pay $399 to get an excellent watch because Apple has significantly raised its game at the lower price point.
There’s also the iPhone 17, which starts at the same $799 but has a slew of upgrades over last year’s model, including double the storage, a pro-caliber display, and a higher-end selfie camera. It’s a fantastic value.
This year’s M4 MacBook Air, which got a new chip and an upgraded camera, actually saw a price drop of $100 compared with the previous version, which is basically unheard of in Cupertino. Apple fans can now get the latest-generation Air for under a grand (or right now under $750 if you take advantage of Amazon’s Black Friday sale.) Don’t get me wrong: Chromebook prices these are not. But you won’t find a tax for the sake of a brand name either.
Having dispelled that particular myth, it becomes less of a surprise to hear reports that Apple is planning to release a cluster of cheap products in the spring of 2026. And by cheap, of course, I mean sensibly affordable: $599 for the iPhone 17e, $699-$899 for the new budget MacBook, and hopefully not much more than $349 for the newly AI-compliant 11th-gen iPad.
So sure: they’re not the sort of prices that make you set your alarm on Black Friday. They’re not doorbuster deals. But they’re good products at good prices, and that’s something to be praised all year round.
Foundry
Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.
Here they are: the 12 most ridiculously overpriced Apple products, ranked.
How Filipe Esposito’s first iPod touch made him love Apple forever.
Mahmoud Itani finally switched from a MacBook to an iPad Pro, and he’s not going back.
John Brandon used Google Gemini to design the next iPhone. Here are the hilarious results.
Option key secrets: Get more from your Mac with these hidden shortcuts.
The iPhone Air is doomed because one guy returned it.
Alex Blake lists 6 reasons why your new Mac needs a second storage drive.
The Thanksgiving holiday is this week in the U.S., so we spent the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast talking about things to be thankful for.
You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
Best of 2025-2026: Must-have products for Mac, iPhone & iPad tested by Macworld.
Cosmic Orange gift guide: 30 gifts to match the ultra-bright iPhone 17 Pro.
Apple may finally let users switch from Siri to another voice assistant.
Apple Fitness+ might get cut and rolled into a bigger Health+ service.
Don’t expect the Apple Watch to change much for the next two years.
Tim Cook is going to retire at some point, but probably not next year.
What was your first ever Apple product? And which one made you feel like an Apple person? For Jason Cross it was the Apple IIe–but we want to hear from you. Join the conversation on TikTok or Instagram.
Watch out for this clever and dangerous new ‘Apple Support’ hoax.
These new AI features are coming to macOS Tahoe 26.2 and Mac Studio.
PSA for Apple fans: It’s time to update your keyboard and trackpad.
Apple hit with massive fine over Apple Watch dispute.
And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
The Age of Woke may go the way of the pager, the 8-track tape and Pauly Shore.
Or, it could stick around, less potent but still holding sway over the powers that be. Some, like the Legacy Media, won’t give up the woke ghost.
Why Does ‘The Wizard of Oz’ Still Cast Such a Wicked Spell? Because It’s the Movie That First Flipped the Patriarchy on Its Head https://t.co/ztr526FSR2
— Variety (@Variety) November 23, 2025
Still, comedy appears to be rebounding after a stifling decade of Cancel Culture threats. Comedy roasts are back. Cancellations are happening less frequently, although some comics are still under alleged attack by their peers.
If you’re curious what Comedians who want internet clout will post when you were nothing but cool to them here’s an example of a text between me and a Cincy comic named Andrew J Rudick and then here’s what he posted about me 3 days ago. pic.twitter.com/1ifuDBITlU
— Jeff Dye (@JeffDye) November 21, 2025
Now, Variety has graced us with the 100 top comedies of all time. The exhaustive list has plenty of films that are beyond reproach – “Blazing Saddles,” “The Naked Gun,” “Elf” and “Bringing Up Baby.”
What’s missing? Films from the last decade.
Yes, 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” made the list (number 87), but it’s hardly a typical comedy. The one true comedy from the past decade, 2023’s “Poor Things,” is both hilarious and original.
That’s it. Now, compare that to the number of ’80s films on the list – 20. The 1990s has 18 films.
What changed?
We know the answer, of course. Woke blossomed over the past decade, forcing comics to self-censor lest their careers crumble as a result. Big-screen comedies became safe, avoiding material that might be outrageous or offensive.
RELATED: JOE ROGAN CONFIRMS WOKE KILLED MOVIE COMEDIES
Comic actors like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Will Ferrell shifted to broader projects, while comedy auteur Todd Phillips of “The Hangover” fame left the genre to direct 2019’s “Joker.” He has yet to return.
The director said he couldn’t make comedies in a woke era. And he wasn’t alone, apparently.
Yes, some modern comedies have threaded the needle and made us howl. “Schitt’s Creek” comes to mind. Ryan Reynolds found the funny in the video game era with 2021’s “Free Guy.” Larry David, joked “Curb Your Enthusiasm” co-star Cheryl Hines, got grandfathered in on that classic HBO show.
Once-great sitcoms like “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” went woke in their later episodes, genuflecting to the cultural winds. Others, like ABC’s “Modern Family,” bowed out in 2020 while resisting the urge to follow the far-Left playbook.
That atmosphere is less restrictive today, but the woke hangover isn’t over. The director of the fourth filmin the “Meet the Parents” franchise admitted he’s hamstrung by what can, and can’t be shared while assembling the film’s upcoming sequel.
Maybe a future movie list will chart the genre’s revival.
NOTE: Among the classic movie comedies that deserved a spot on the list but didn’t get one?
The post Variety (Accidentally) Confirms Woke Killed Movie Comedies appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
If you’re looking for rich, thought-provoking cinema, a James Bond movie is probably not what you’re going to watch. Both Ian Fleming’s original novels and most of the twenty-five 007 films convey a general theme of heroism and patriotism, focusing on the defense of Western freedom and the British way of life from Soviet and other threats. Beyond that, however, they’re generally straightforward action and adventure stories.
There are, however, a few exceptions. A small number of Bond movies deliver much more interesting stories and explore important topics. Chief among these is 1995’s GoldenEye, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year. It revived what many thought was a dead franchise after a six-year hiatus punctuated by the fall of the Soviet Union, the franchise’s traditional enemy faction.
Rather than sidestepping the elephant in the room, GoldenEye addresses it directly with a storyline built around the dying days of the USSR. The opening title sequence (which, in a Bond movie, is always an elaborate, abstract music video) features the destruction of Soviet iconography such as Marx and Lenin statues and hammer-and-sickle monuments. The story opens with Bond seeing his partner Alec (Sean Bean) get summarily executed during a 1980s raid on a Soviet facility. Then, after the title sequence, it jumps forward to the 1990s to follow the theft of a new European military helicopter that’s flown into Russia by a mysterious criminal organization.
As these two seemingly disconnected events come together, the story explores the clash between ex-Soviet personnel and politicians and post-Soviet Russia’s (unfortunately superficial and short-lived) attempt to adopt a market economy and more Western style of government. For example, Russian General Ouromov (Gottfried John) longs for the “glory” of the Soviet Union’s former power and pursues deals with criminals to try and become “the next iron man of Russia,” bringing him into conflict with a patriotic minister of justice keen to expose his corruption.
The richest part of the story, however, is its exploration of the British mistreatment of the Lienz Cossacks, who were forcibly repatriated to the USSR to suffer in Stalin’s camps after helping the British during World War II. The film’s main villain turns out to be the orphan of two of these Cossacks, raised by a surrogate British family from an early age, who harbors a deep-seated sense of resentment towards a country that betrayed his parents and whose intelligence services tried to hide his true origins from him.
Released at a time when Bond films were increasingly seen as an outdated remnant of 1960s spy mania, GoldenEye goes to great lengths to update the franchise for 1990s audiences without compromising on the its core identity. Bond’s British patriotism is preserved intact, but his characteristic womanizing (some of which was controversial even in the 1960s) comes under heavy fire from M (Judi Dench), the new female head of Mi6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency. She chides him for being “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War,” which is a direct acknowledgement of how many at the time regarded the franchise itself. Similarly, the movie’s “Bond girl” Natalya (Isabella Scorpio) dresses Bond down for his seemingly cavalier attitude toward killing that previous Bond girls had tended to overlook or even find appealing:
Natalya: You think I’m impressed?! All of you! Your guns, your killing, your death . . . for what?! So you can be a hero? All the heroes I know are dead.
Bond: Natalya, listen to me . . .
Natalya: How can you act like this? How can you be so cold?
Bond: It’s what keeps me alive.
Natalya: No. It’s what keeps you alone.
GoldenEye’s Bond, however, is still fundamentally Bond—he’s suave, composed, romantic, and ruthless when he needs to be. The film’s success in modernizing the character without changing his essential qualities is thanks in large part to actor Pierce Brosnan, who achieves a near-perfect balance of the past actors in the role—the severity of Timothy Dalton, the humor of Roger Moore, and the sophistication of Sean Connery. By successfully updating the Bond franchise for the 1990s without fundamentally compromising his Bond’s character, the film demonstrated that the essential values of heroism, courage, and defending freedom are timeless.
No discussion of a Bond movie would be complete without talking about the film’s action, and GoldenEye certainly doesn’t disappoint in that regard. It opens with a breathtaking real-life stunt: a 720-foot jump off Switzerland’s Verzasca Dam that kicks off a consistently impressive spate of practical stunts throughout the film. Most impressive is the scene in which Bond chases the villains, who have kidnapped Natalya, through the streets of St. Petersburg in a stolen tank, casually destroying various structures and monuments along the way. The fact that the film, despite its less-than-favorable depiction of the Russian military and government, succeeded in obtaining permission to film the sequence on location in the city is remarkable, and this helped further cement the film as a post-Soviet installment in a series that had always featured other locations standing in for the Soviet Union in the past.
GoldenEye is, in many respects, Bond at its best. The film’s willingness to directly address the changed global context and tackle important subjects set the stage for its outstanding follow-up Tomorrow Never Dies to broach the modern issues of China’s territorialism and media manipulation of world events. GoldenEye belongs on any best-of list of Bond movies and spy movies in general.
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