2019 Apple Gift Guide

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's my 2019 Apple Holiday Gift Guide.

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So I don't know about you but I don't like a lot of the gift guides that appear online. They throw things like MacBook Pros and the new iPhone 11. My family prefers not to break the bank every year so we don't give gifts that are that expensive. However each year that goes by Apple seems to offer more and more at lower price levels. Things that make good gifts too.

So I want to start off with the iPhone battery case. Now if you don't have one of these or never looked at one you may think what's the big deal. But those that have them really love them. Basically what it is is it's a cover that fits over the iPhone. The iPhone slides into it. It has a bump on the back that's the battery.  So it significantly increases the weight and size of the iPhone. But a lot of people don't care about that. They just want their iPhone battery to last all day. Now if your iPhone battery gets through the day and doesn't even get to 50%, like me, then this isn't for you. But a lot of people use apps like games or SnapChat that drain the battery very quickly. Having the extra battery is fantastic. Plus the official Apple battery case integrates really well. You actually see two battery indicators all in your iPhone in iOS. It works kind of seamlessly. It just becomes part of your phone.

Plus the new iPhone 11 battery cases have a new feature. A camera button on them. So it turns the iPhone basically into a point and shoot camera. Point it at something. Press the button and it takes a picture. Hold the button and it takes a video. The iPhone doesn't even need to be unlocked for that to happen. So ask those in your family if they're happy with their iPhone battery life. If they're not you may want to consider one of these at $129 as a great holiday gift. 

Next we have AirPods. I love these. They work better for me than any other in-ear headphones I've ever gotten. A slightly newer version of the original go for $159 which makes it a pretty reasonable gift. For $249, of course, you can get the new AirPods Pro which have the noise canceling feature. So if you have a family member that still sporting little wires coming out of their ears all the time then you may want think about getting this as a gift for them.

For a lot of people Apple Watches cost too much for a reasonable holiday gift. But Apple is still selling, brand new, the Series 3 Apple Watch for $199. That's a really good entry point for somebody you want to get a gift for that's been thinking about an Apple watch. Now if you already know someone with an Apple watch and you're looking for something a little cheaper you can get new bands for an Apple Watch at all sorts of different price levels. You can find them at the Apple site but if you search Amazon for them there are hundreds of them.

If you know somebody with an iPad but they don't have an Apple Pencil that makes a good gift too. The older Apple Pencil sells for $99 and the newer one for a $129. Make sure you check to get the right Apple Pencil for the iPad that they've got or maybe they may have an iPad that's too old to use either Apple Pencil.

Apple has a lot more services this year than ever before. If you want to gift somebody one of these services, like say a one year subscription to Apple TV, Apple doesn't make it easy. You're supposed to buy it yourself. You're supposed to add it to your own account. They don't seem to have the option to send it to somebody as a gift. But you can still do it, of course. You can still wrap up a piece of Apple TV promotional material or something like that and then give them an App Store/iTunes Gift Card for the right amount and say that's for Apple TV+. Of course if you're a parent getting a gift for your child and it's all going to be in your family shared account just wrap something up that tells them that they now have access to this service for the next year.

Now related to that is getting a device that will actually play Apple TV+ on a TV. Of course that main thing to do that would be an Apple TV device. But those are fairly expensive. However, Apple TV+ is available on devices like Roku. You can get a Roku for as cheap as $30. It's weird for me to suggest a Roku TV box as a gift for Apple lovers but if you have a new Roku TV box you can get Apple+ on it.

However there's a huge advantage to having an Apple TV box. That is you can play Apple Arcade games on it. You can, of course, give somebody enough iTunes credit to get an Apple Arcade subscription for a year but you can also do something like get them a controller because most of the games played in Apple Arcade work great with a controller. Apple has a whole bunch listed at their site. One of these can make a good gift. My advice though is maybe not buy these directly from Apple because the exact same controllers are often available at places like Amazon much cheaper. That's where you can actually get a Playstation 4 or Xbox 1 wireless controller and those will actually work on your Apple TV now. I'm actually using an Xbox 1 controller for my Apple TV to play Apple Arcade games.

Now if you do want to give somebody a gift card Apple has this handy page that explains that there are two different types of gift cards. One is for the App Store in iTunes. I use this to buy all my digital products. For instance you can buy songs, you can buy books, you can buy apps. It basically gives you credit on your iTunes Store account for all of those things.

The other gift card is an Apple Store Card. This is to buy hardware. You can use it in an Apple Store to buy a physical product or online at apple.com to order a physical product there. When you buy these gift cards at an Apple site you have the option to send it to somebody by email or have a physical one sent to them. You can even include a message. 

Now there are tons of Apple related gifts you can get somebody. You can look for iPhone, iPad, and MacBook cases, sleeves, all sorts of different accessories for them. There's the HomePod which is a tad expensive but if you have an audiophile in your life and they've been thinking about a HomePod that could be a good gift too. Keep in mind that the fairly cheap Amazon Echo devices can now actually stream Apple Music. So it's kind of like the Roku idea. It's not directly related to Apple but it's a great gift as it gives somebody another way to listen to their Apple Music subscription.

I'd love to hear your ideas for great Apple related gifts. Leave them in the comments below.