Apple’s 3 biggest wins and 3 greatest failures of 2025

The tech industry has endured another turbulent year, buffeted by the continued rise of artificial intelligence and the economic threats posed by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Even the most prominent companies encountered challenges they never imagined they’d have to face. As 2025 comes to a close, here are Apple’s biggest wins and greatest failures of the year.

Apple’s biggest wins of 2025

iPhone 17 series

Without a doubt, Apple’s biggest win of 2025 is the iPhone 17 series, which includes the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Myriad reports suggest that iPhone 17 series sales have exceeded both Apple’s and investors’ expectations.

Apple redesigned the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro this year, giving the former a much-improved display, a vastly better camera system, and longer battery life. The Pro versions got an all-new unibody design, the best cameras in an iPhone ever, and up to 39 hours of battery life.

While these improvements are mainly iterative, they ticked the boxes that consumers care most about in their phones: camera and battery life. And those consumers have rewarded Apple for it. iPhone 17 sales have surged in the U.S. and, more importantly, in China, the world’s largest smartphone market after the USA. Apple’s iPhone sales were a key factor in the recovery of the company’s stock, after it got hammered earlier this year due to its possible exposure to Trump’s tariffs.

Liquid Glass

After the iPhone, Apple’s next most important product is iOS, the operating system that powers its handsets. This year, Apple made the rare move of completely revamping the look of that operating system with the introduction of the Liquid Glass design language in iOS 26. It was the first time the company had radically changed iOS’s look since 2013. 

While iOS 26’s Liquid Glass faced early criticism, as most visual overhauls do, Apple has continued to tweak the look and feel of the new design language. As a result, much of the online furor over the changes seems to have died down. More importantly, iOS 26’s new design gives Apple’s smartphone software a distinct look that immediately distinguishes it from Android. In the end, the software’s ability to mimic the way light bands and warps through glass has brought a level of fun and playfulness to Apple’s flagship product not seen since the days of Steve Jobs.

Apple’s simplified branding

The final big win for Apple in 2025 is not a product or feature, but a branding strategy. As Apple’s product lineup has grown in recent years, its product names have become confusing, particularly when it comes to software and services. But this year, Apple decided to simplify things.

Previously, Apple’s operating systems were branded with different version numbers (iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, etc). Now they’re named after the upcoming year: iOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26. This streamlined naming structure makes it easy for users to determine whether their device is running the latest software.

And Apple didn’t stop there. The company also mercifully decided to drop the overused plus sign from its streaming service’s name, too.

Apple’s greatest failures of 2025

iPhone Air

While the iPhone 17 series may have been full of iterative updates this year (which consumers seem to have loved), Apple swung for the fences with another 2025 iPhone: the all-new iPhone Air. At just 5.6 millimeters, it is Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever. Yet multiple reports say that there has been hardly any demand for the company’s newest smartphone.

The main problems with the iPhone Air seem to be its subpar camera system and relatively short battery life. As the success of the iPhone 17 series teaches us, those are the two things customers care about most. Demand for the new device is so weak that Apple has reportedly cut production by more than 80%. Still, Apple may have already gotten what it really wanted: proof of concept that it could make an iPhone so thin that it could join two together to create the first dual-screen iPhone foldable.

Apple Intelligence

2025 may have been a year of continued artificial intelligence progression across the tech industry, but Apple’s AI system, Apple Intelligence, hardly added any new AI features—not worthwhile ones, anyway. The company added some useful Live Translation features, but other than that, it mainly just enhanced Apple Intelligence with gimmicks that other AI systems have long been capable of, such as on-screen image recognition and new AI slop filters.

Those hoping to see a revamped Siri that could compete with the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini will have to wait until 2026—or later. Yet I question how much consumers care about Apple lagging in the AI space, given that they can already run nearly any third-party AI app on their iPhone. Still, the lack of innovative AI advancements is a bad look for the company, which is otherwise the de facto innovation leader in the industry.

Apple Vision Pro M5

One area in which Apple has undoubtedly innovated in recent years is augmented reality, thanks to its groundbreaking Apple Vision Pro headset. In 2025, Apple announced the successor to the original Vision Pro, updated with the M5 Apple Silicon chip, which enables higher resolution and other display enhancements.

Yet Apple didn’t address the myriad other issues with the technologically impressive device, notably its heavy weight and eye-watering $3,499 price point. Because of this, the headset remains a niche product that is unappealing or financially out of reach to the average user.