Apple’s SE branding did not start with the iPhone… they symbolise the evolution of the brand | Technology News

With Apple set to announce the latest iPhone SE model, we take a look back at how the SE products have matured and why Apple continues to have SE-branded products alongside its mainline lineup.

Macintosh SE and the era of expandable Macs

The Macintosh SE was nothing short of a reinvention — although at the time, many considered it a modest upgrade to the Macintosh Plus. In reality, however, the Mac SE, alongside the Macintosh II, had turned the Mac into a platform.

The Macintosh SE was pitched as the “flagship” compact Macintosh at the time. The “SE” in the name stands for “System Expansion,” which is why it was called the Macintosh SE. At first glance, the SE seemed like just a better version of the Mac Plus that Apple had introduced a few months earlier. It was compact, with a small, crisp, black-and-white screen perfect for writing without distraction, and came with the Macintosh Extended Keyboard II (perhaps regarded as one of the best keyboards ever made). Its operating system was simple and easy to use.

The Macintosh SE remains a popular Mac among collectors. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

The SE came with a megabyte of random access memory (RAM), expandable to four megabytes, and was powered by the same Motorola 68000 central processing unit (CPU) as earlier Macintosh models. Perhaps the most notable change in the SE was what was inside the chassis — an expansion slot. The addition of support for an internal expansion port (or PDS, Processor Direct Slot) was a game changer, and it was the first Mac to feature ADB (the Apple Desktop Bus) for connecting peripherals. ADB would remain Apple’s standard until the iMac G3 retired it in 1998 in favour of USB. In a way, Apple admitted that the concept of a closed, unexpandable information appliance was too limiting for its customers. That’s why the Macintosh SE was considered an exciting machine — after all, the expansion slot could be used to connect a wide variety of plug-in cards.

Available in Graphite, the iMac DV SE was sold for USD 1,499. (Image credit: Stephen Hackett via Wikimedia Commons)

Apple sold the Macintosh SE in two models: a dual-floppy model that had two 800k floppy drives and no hard drive, priced at $2,899, and another model with one 800k floppy drive and an internal 20-megabyte hard disk, priced at $3,699. In the SE’s later lifespan, in 1989, the Macintosh SE FDHD was introduced. The FDHD replaced the 800k floppy drive with the Apple “SuperDrive,” which could read and write to high-density floppies and floppies formatted by other systems, such as MS-DOS or ProDOS.

The Macintosh SE was never intended to be Apple’s most powerful Mac, like the Macintosh II (priced upwards of $3,899), but the SE showed how to maximise performance from a compact Mac.

Macintosh SE/30

Two years after the launch of the Macintosh SE, Apple debuted the SE/30 in 1989. To this day, the general perception of the Macintosh SE/30 is that it’s too similar to the SE. However, it’s much more than that. Aesthetically, the SE and SE/30 looked identical, with both featuring the classic Mac design and a 9-inch screen, but the performance (and price) difference between them was huge. The SE/30 was powered by the same Motorola 68030 processor as the Macintosh IIx, bringing the power of a beefier Mac into a compact form. But that also meant users had to pay more for the extra power — it cost $4,369 without a hard disk and $4,869 with one.

However, the point many missed when the SE/30 was launched is that it marked a shift from the Mac being just a computer to becoming a platform with a new generation of Macs. The SE/30 was a better machine in terms of specs and performance. More importantly, the SE lineup was positioned between the original Mac models and the Mac Classic product line, with Apple having perfected the compact Mac form factor. All of this explains why the SE/30 was the finest Mac Apple built at the time.

Another saved Macintosh SE/30!🥳 pic.twitter.com/gosqlb7bbj

— Mac84 🍏 (Steve) (@Mac84tv) August 17, 2024

iMac DV Special Edition

After the SE/30, Apple almost stopped launching Macs with the “SE” branding, and the initiative saw a partial revival in 1999 with the release of the iMac DV Special Edition. However, it’s important to note that while Apple previously used the “SE” name to signify “System Expansion” on the compact Macs, the company shifted its focus and began using the “SE” name to represent “Special Edition” Macs.

Long-time Mac lovers swear by the Macintosh SE/30. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

The iMac DV Special Edition was released in 1999, a year after the launch of the original iMac that saved Apple from bankruptcy and changed the world forever. The “Special Edition” iMac DV was marketed as the top-of-the-line iMac and was available only in a Graphite colour option. It featured a faster processor, a 13 GB hard drive, 128 MB of RAM, a VGA-out port, a DVD-ROM drive, and a pair of speedy FireWire ports. Think of it as a souped-up version of the original iMac, but with a bigger price tag and extra horsepower. However, like the original iMac, the DV Special Edition lacked any sort of expandability.

Later, in June 2000 at Macworld New York, Apple launched a beefier version of the DV Special Edition iMac, this time featuring a 500 MHz processor, FireWire, iMovie 2, an Apple Pro keyboard and mouse, as well as a brand new white Snow colour option.

iBook Special Edition

After the iMac DV Special Edition, Apple once again experimented with the SE brand, this time introducing a special edition iBook.

At Macworld Tokyo in 2000, Apple gave the iBook its first SE makeover, launching a special edition of the popular consumer notebook. The iBook Special Edition was pitched as the top-tier model (priced at $1,799) among the iBooks, featuring a faster 366 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, the same as the one found in the iMac DV Special Edition, along with double the memory and hard drive, and was exclusively available in a Graphite colour enclosure.

The launch of the iMac DV Special Edition and iBook Special Edition demonstrated that consumers were willing to buy more premium devices with better processors, and there was an appetite for exclusive colours. Perhaps this helped Apple keep the SE branding alive during that period, signalling the consumer demand for exclusivity and high-end tiers within consumer devices.

I do not remember this. Here’s why…

2004 – U2 iPod
2014 – U2 free iPhone album

— mark hamilton (@MxHamx) November 19, 2023

iPod U2 Special Edition

In the two decades its music player enjoyed cult status, Apple created different types of iPods. However, there was one iPod model that remains special to this day — the U2 iPod. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called the iPod U2 “the only special edition iPod in the known universe.” The first-generation U2 iPod is well-regarded by many. Apple essentially took a 4th-generation iPod, added a black body and a red click wheel, and had the signatures of the band members engraved on the stainless steel back of the device. The iPod was a 20 GB model that sold for $349, a $50 premium over the standard 20 GB 4th-generation iPod. Not many are aware that there were three U2 iPods, ranging from 2004 to the fall of 2007. Today, the U2 iPod ranks highly among vintage Apple collectors, and a brand-new, sealed U2 iPod can fetch thousands of dollars.

iPod shuffle stainless steel

One of, if not the rarest- iPod

— iPOddities (@iPoddities) February 6, 2025

When Apple launched a new iPod Shuffle in 2009, something was different about the music player. It was half the size of its predecessor, had no buttons, and was so small that it was practically unnoticeable. But six months later, at its annual fall music event, Apple debuted a 4GB special edition polished stainless steel model, available exclusively through the Apple Store. Priced at $99, it was much higher than the aluminum models, but it showcased Apple’s industrial design prowess. The result? The iPod had a mirror-like finish, making it a luxury device.

iPhone SE and the return of SE products

If history tells us anything, it’s that the SE products have had their moments over the years. While the “SE” in the Macs of the late ’80s referred to expandability, in later years, Apple used the SE brand for special edition products. However, we never saw Apple fully commit to the SE brand by creating a fresh lineup that exists alongside the mainline products. This has to do with how SE products were generally perceived by consumers in the early 2010s, as Apple never fully clarified what the SE branding stood for. In fact, for years, there was confusion over whether the “S” stood for Steve Jobs, Speed, or Siri, and whether the “E” stood for Standard Edition or Student Edition. However, in 2016, Phil Schiller, then Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, clarified that the “SE” stands for “Special Edition.”

Apple iPhone SE 2022 is one of the most affordable 5G capable iPhones from Apple (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

But when the iPhone SE (review) was launched, the SE brand started to take shape, and the word “SE” made a lot of sense. The first-generation iPhone SE had the look of the flagship iPhone 5s from the past, with its classic design and the same shades of space grey, gold, silver, and rose gold as the rest of the current iPhone line, but it was Apple’s lowest-cost iPhone. On the inside, though, it was almost entirely a new phone, based on the same technology as the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. For $399, it was the lowest price for a brand-new iPhone, opening the iPhone to newer markets and demographics.

A similar playbook was used by Apple when it launched the new iPhone SE 2 (2020) at the beginning of the pandemic: a new $399 iPhone that could be mistaken for an iPhone 8 with its design, home button, and bezel frame, but with the hardware from the iPhone 11, all packed into a smaller package at a lower price. The story continued with the iPhone SE 3 (2022), which retained the look of the iPhone 8 but featured the powerful processor of the iPhone 13.

An entry point to the Apple ecosystem

Since Apple started to refocus on SE products, it has expanded the SE brand to the Apple Watch with the release of the Watch SE in 2020, creating a market for affordable products in the Apple way. However, unlike its mainline products like the iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Series 10, Apple doesn’t upgrade the SE products every year. This shows that Apple sees the iPhone SE and Apple Watch SE as entry-level products with the aim of bringing new consumers into the Apple ecosystem, spurring growth, and enticing consumers to switch from rival brands.

This is why Apple refreshes the iPhone SE only occasionally and not every year, giving the indication that the mainline iPhone is what Apple intends to sell most, thus increasing the average selling price (ASP) to remain profitable as trends show more consumers are opting for premium products. Still, there is an audience for the iPhone SE who have been desperately waiting for Apple to launch an affordable iPhone and are okay with settling for an older design with modern technology. And with that low price, it will be people (not enthusiasts or early adopters) who want to get an iPhone but can’t afford the asking price, even after cashback and EMI schemes, whether in the US, Europe, or emerging markets such as China and India. That’s where the meaning of “Special Edition” makes more sense, but Apple’s efforts need more consistency.