While the EU is a factor, the EU's mandatory ruling came too late to affect this product. In term's of iPhone release schedules only the iPhone 17 would fall into needing mandatory USB-C.
The USB-3 controller is in the A17 chip and not a separate component, considering the lead time for chip design and production it seems Apple had the transition in mind for quite a bit longer than the recent legislation changes in EU parliament.
As a timeline: the EU Parliament only proposed making USB-C mandatory in September 2021, and then only formally approved it in October 2022, prior to that it was just the EU's serving suggestion. Enforcement only begins on new product introductions from the latest October 2024, Apple release their Phones in September, meaning both the iPhone 15 and 16 could realistically still use lightning without infringement.
However now that Apple has introduced USB-C EU member states can safely fast track the law without affecting their economies (despite certain HN fantasies, forcing a major phone supplier out of the market for lolz is not good for a country.)
Not so as the mandate only applies to newly released products sold in the EU, not existing products.
Also as the Pro's USB3 controller is in the A-series chip and not a separate component it stands that Apple had already planned the change over -before- the EU even tabled it as a mandatory requirement.
Sure you could say that they saw the writing on the wall, which is certainly a factor, but they could have just as easily switched the port without deeper integration into the device just to satisfy a legislative requirement.
On the other hand one could equally say: Apple have been transitioning their entire lineup to the type C connector over several years and now would be an appropriate time to bring the phone into the fold.
The idea that Apple bent to the will of the EU is largely overblown, it was an obvious change and their hardware indicates that they've been planning this for a while.
Do you have a source for "newly released"? Everything I can find talks about "new" only.
I am not surprised that Apple have planned this for a while, because the EU have been pushing this for a while even before making USB-C mandatory. Previously it was only a recommendation for micro-USB, and Apple was practically the only manufacturer that didn't adopt it.
If it was such an obvious change, why did it take them 5+ years longer than other manufacturers?
Bear in mind they are preempting the mandatory change by one product cycle. It’s hardly an argument for a progressive change that wasn’t directly the result of inbound regulation.
If regulation is the case, then they could have waited until iPhone 17 and implemented as nothing more than a port change.
That's not what's happened though - the USB3.0 controller is part of the A17Pro chip.
It's trivially debunked that this change is in response to EU enforcement merely by observing the timeline of EU legislation and elementary understanding of chip design and lead time/mass production.
This isn't suggesting that they didn't see the writing on the wall, but it's patently evident that the decision was made even before the EU considered making type C the mandatory connection standard.
As I said already, it's just as likely this is part of their phased transition into the type C connector.
Also these MFi arguments for lightning are nonsense, not only are the fees minimal, but they persist with type C.
The EU forcing Apple to switch to the type C connector is largely a HN fantasy. It was happening regardless.
You think Apple was dragged kicking and screaming into being able to sell the same accessories they have already developed but with a different connector?
Once the EU signaled they were going to mandate this, there was no reason to do it any sooner. When Apple changed from 30-pin, there was an uproar. “Now my iPod Alarm Clock doesn’t work with my new iPhone!”
Now gets it both ways: more sales, no blame. “The EU made us do it…”
I wonder if we could ever hope for it to get a 3.5mm port. I am rocking a pixel 5a with a broken screen, but I haven't found a good update yet. An iPhone with an audio jack would make me leave android in 10 seconds.
AirPods are not 100x better than wired. If you are not bothered by latency or audio quality, great for you. I usually don't mind audio quality, but the latency drives me insane. My wired headphones have 25ms latency. In perfect conditions airpods2 have 5x that paired with an iPhone. The only times it does not bother me is when listening to podcasts.
The DAC in the dongle I got with my iPad pro is noticeably worse than my pixel 5a.
Because I hear this less and less, your comment does stand out - what really piques my curiosity. Could you share your primary motivation for wanting an analogue audio jack? Like you do you have some great old headphones, or is there some other compelling reasons that I don't know about? No reason is silly, it's just something I'm really curious about because I come from the other side where I moved to wireless long before the jack was removed.
Not OP, but I used to use a decent pair of wired, in-ear headphones with the male Lightning to female 3.5mm adaptor since I found wireless headphone quality during that time to be subpar up until the airpod pros came out. I still had a lot of issues with this configuration however as the adapter was flimsy and would break frequently, and since the DAC was now placed in the adapter itself, the audio quality was noticeably worse than in the previous 3.5mm models. But even with good bluetooth headphones, bluetooth just doesn’t have enough bandwidth to listen to music at high fidelity.
I used to be in the same boat until i finally bit the bullet and got a phone without a headphone port, but i wish i didnt have to. I don't like using a dongle, for example its easy to lose them when you detach it from the headphones to plug them into your laptop. Charging headphones seems silly to me, wired is more convenient, you can replace the wires and you're not limited to crappy Bluetooth headphone quality
The latency drives me crazy (although some BT5 headphones are getting close to 30ms). The airpods I have tested have all had noticeable (definitely over 100ms in perfect conditions) latency. Some people don't notice it, but it drives me crazy. Especially when talking on the phone.
The audio quality of airpods is still subpar compared to $70 wired headphones.
I listen a lot to classical music and airpods 2 still makes becken (two cymbals smashed together. Don't know the English name) sound like someone throwing a rock into a pool.
I lose several pairs of headphones every year. Headphones being smaller is not a feature for me.
I have one pair of BT headphones. They have about 90ms latency, which is borderline intolerable (but better than every airpod). I use them for podcasts.
I plug my phone into speakers all the time (at work. I am a musician). A 3.5mm jack makes that a non-thinking operation.
I can barely keep my own phone charged. Yet one more thing that needs charging is a huge turn-off.
The latency on bluetooth is killer. I guess most people don't notice, but I notice. There's a irritating delay between every action, and when watching video the sound is noticeably behind.
There is often interference when in frequency-heavy zones. Busy pedestrian intersections, trains, using the microwave.
I switch between devices with regularity. My computer, my phone, my corporate phone. Keeping one set of headphones paired between multiple devices is a nightmare.
I don't like keeping bluetooth on. Why do I need to place yet one more source of power drain on my devices, and why do I need to enable yet another broadcasting signal from them?
Dollar-for-dollar, lower cost wired headphones are higher quality than wireless ones.
I am prone to losing headphones, having them be miniaturized and untethered is not a bonus. Heaven forbid they're not even bound together and are instead individual unconnected earbuds. I can count in the double digits the number of people I've seen before my very eyes lose one half of their earbuds, to say nothing of the number of people I've encountered who are just dealing with losing one of them from some prior event.
Bluetooth headphones are a product with value, but not to me. Not having a headphone jack felt, and continues to feel, like a heavy handed bitch slap straight to my face every single day.
Small (anec)data point, but I got invited last week by my local Apple Store to attend the event there and upgrade on the day. Never had that happen before, and have a history (that Apple surely knows) of buying 6 months after launch and then holding for 4-7 years.
I get the impression — admittedly having not watched the event — that Apple feel the need to work hard and drum up interest for this release.
I think the entire industry is. Many aspects have reached their peaks, more isn't always better, phone screens for example. CPU performance hasn't improved as fast as previously either. Things are faster and going to get even faster, but not in massive leaps.
I imagine they are or will start trickling "new" features. Be it USB3/4, Thunderbolt, WiFi 7 (or higher bandwidth light or UWB standards). Just because the other races aren't offering much besides better numbers.
Man, I really miss that Playstation microsite making fun of the Xbox Kinect. I think of that guy saying "WE have BUTTONS!" every time someone pretends that having buttons is a revelation.
Where's the removable battery? Is that not coming until next iPhone? What about third-party app stores? Love to see their walled garden come crashing down.
When were these things ever more than pie-in-the-sky solutions to litigation? this is apple we're talking about, the EU had to threaten to axe them from a third of the world if they didnt comply with USB-C laws.
As far as I know, laws exist because there are people in the world who are so clueless or twisted they need to be prevented from doing blatantly stupid things that harm others by force, and apparently Apple is so stupid they can't just play fair and respect your right to repair (take it to us so we can overcharge you, you damn well aint fixin it yourself or else youll break it you idiot lol!!!!), or right to own one charger for all your technology (please invest in our outdated charging standard that only made sense back when our competitors used those god-awful micro USB cables with the two teeth of death), or your right to own the headphones you'd like (buy our $150 wireless earbuds that are even more difficult to repair than our phones because headphones that didn't need batteries and were powered by two wires that worked on anything made after the 80's were ACTUALLY polluting the Earth, you could technically use those if you buy our overpriced adapter, but you're literally polluting the planet you psycho!). Their excuses for doing these things make no sense, and either go back to greenwashing, planned obsolescence or walled garden locking.
I don't blame folks for buying Apple, the software is great I'm sure (I personally hate it, but I use Windows XP with the classic theme and oldschool WinAmp almost every day so to each their own) and I respect the people who enjoy it, but everybody needs to play by the rules, and when Apple is clearly not with their hardware, f*cking people over and lying about it, maybe we do need laws to keep them in check, because Timmy Apple isn't making me buy an iPhone for my whole family because they won't implement RCS.
Every year it's a new camera, new whatever, but USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables.
Not increasing the price is nice, I guess. Will have to buy more USB-C cables, though. (Technically the low highest end phone is higher, but higher spec, too).
It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
Pre-order Friday, delivery 22 Sept. Probably going to move on it just to get that USB-C, need to see what carrier deals I can find.
Yup - finally ready to ditch the 2020 SE which, TBH, is still good enough except the battery's toast and has been for half a year at least.
(Worry not though dear mr. Cook, I'll pass it down to one of my kids so the environment won't be hurting while the new toy shows me which gate my CO2-spewing flight departs from. ;))
Even crazier - outside US its massively easier to find usbc cable compared to lightning. I hope those frequent days when some (usually the same but now always) colleague is running desperately around the office interrupting everybody looking for one will be finally over.
I don't understand this. When traveling internationally I've never had a problem locating a Lightning cable.
Though I have to mention, you shouldn't really shop for cables when you're traveling and need a new one. First stop by the front desk, they usually have a huge pile of charging cables people have left behind.
Anyone who has worked in an office outside of the USA has experienced the annoying iphone user asking everyone for a cable to charge his phone because he lost/broke/forgot it.
And not all the offices are close to a shop selling those kind of things nor do these persons feel they might be better off going shopping for one directly instead of disrupting a non negligible amount of workers.
I don't even know why people have to charge their phone midday and can't wait. Even when I am going out and extending the night until dawn, I usually have battery left until I go to bed.
I have a feeling that he wasn't carrying the USB-C cable because he expected some kind of guerilla-connector-change suddenly on the iPhone in his pocket, but it is being used with another device.
But if you know you won't need to charge them simultaneously, then you can only carry one cable.
For instance, I'm happy that my new laptop can charge on usb-c, so now I don't need you bring a charger for my switch and a different one for my laptop. I just take the smallest one and charge my laptop and switch with it (but not at the same time). I'm happy to know that I will be able to ditch the lightning cable for my next apple smartphone and only keep a single cable for my three devices.
Proper cables, yes, but generally a proper cable works with improper stuff attached to it. You can charge your iPhone and the dubious ebay air freshener or whatever with a proper cable.
If you have two different connectors you invariably need at least two proper cables.
You could go to the gaming mouse subreddit and find the latest cutting edge tech, but honestly pretty much any modern mouse will be an improvement from an ergo perspective. Finding one with a decent aesthetic is more of a challenge though.
There are always a lot of comments about ergonomics when the Magic Mouse is mentioned, but never a single citation. Been using one for 12+ years. The utility and ergonomics are great for me. The idea that something has to be shaped for a body part to be 'ergonomic' is pervasive, but I suspect it belongs with pseudoscientific claims such as using 10% of the brain.
Ergonomics is probably the wrong word to use but the magic mouse isn't a comfortable shape for most people. Less subjectively though it's sensor and tracking are terrible compared to modern sensors. All of this can be ignored for most typical work uses I suppose but what can't be ignored is the insanity of placing the charging port on the bottom of the mouse so you cant use it while charging.
Deadmau5 charging is a straight up swing and a miss but scrolling left and right hasn’t felt right on any other mouse on MacOS, and it’s something I seem to do a lot.
It's really short compared to other mice, even other ambidextrous ones. I can't really rest my hand on the magic mouse, it has to hover because of how short it is. This to me is uncomfortable long term. It also just has bad tracking and bad feet that make it bad to use.
I have big hands, the Magic Mouse is simply too small for me to hold naturally and quickly makes my hand cramp. I buy those things you stick to the sides to enlarge them, but they come unstuck within a couple of months.
As far as Logitech's quality has fallen, I'd still say they're better. I'm using a '90s wired Logitech plugged into a full-sized Apple aluminum keyboard right now, and this is pretty much the peak of Apple HID thus far.
The integration of two USB ports into the Apple keyboards of this era was an excellent innovation, which I use daily. Mouse on one side, thumbdrive on the other.
Even more innovative would be having the ports on a WIRELESS keyboard. Instead, we have various proprietary attempts at solving the mouse+keyboard problem.
God damn, it’s amazing they get away selling those. They spend so much effort on their software ux but their components for humans to interact with it are dark age’s torture devices from an ergonomics perspective. From a QoL perspective few things are more important.
Seriously. I joined Apple after they acquired our company, and our product required a three-button mouse. They wanted to show their acquisition off immediately at a trade show, but the fact that we brought proper third-party mice to our demo stations set off a minor storm of consternation and knitted brows among management. There was little they could do, however, and we ran the show with Logitech mice.
In classic Apple style, when they finally capitulated and added secondary buttons to their mice, they hid them. Actually, that was the second stupid move. The first was making the entire mouse body the button... so you couldn't keep the "button" pressed and then scroll, lift, scroll some more (because when you lifted the mouse, the button was released). So Apple's workaround wasn't to fix that stupid design, but rather to add little "wings" on the sides of the mouse that you could pinch with two fingers while somehow keeping the mouse mashed down with other fingers, in order to do multi-swipe scrolling.
The "Magic" mouse was an attempt to one-up legit mice by adding a touchpad to the back of the mouse... which you were somehow supposed to swipe sideways across with some fingers, while using other fingers to hold the mouse in place. It's just so gallingly dumb. There's not much else to say.
Oh... except the one where the charging wire goes into the BOTTOM of the mouse! I mean... you can't make this stuff up. Actually, you could, but "Polish" jokes aren't really PC anymore.
I object, sir! The Magic Trackpad is an outstanding peripheral and I will not have its honour besmirched on this fine platform.
The Magic Keyboard is what it is, which is a perfectly decent keyboard for mainstream users. I like it because it keeps the typing feel consistent between desktop and laptop. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was writing a novel or into competitive gaming, but I don't, so I like it.
The Magic Mouse is an abomination. Not because the charging port location, sure it looks funny, but it's actually not an issue in real life. The actual problem is it's an ergonomic catastrophe. (Which is par for the course with Apple. In its 40+ year history, Apple has never once made a legitimately good mouse.)
I like the gestures on the magic mouse, especially the left/right scrolling. I use a Logitech MX Master at home and scrolling side to side never works well for me.
For ergonomics, both are seem to be fine for the way I hold my mouse.
Good sir, I withdraw my complaint of the "Magic Trackpad" because I feel no true animosity toward it. I have one of them, but have struggled to find a use for it.
But the "Magic Keyboard" is trash because the "butterfly" keyboard is trash, visited by the hack Jony Ive upon Apple customers for five inexcusable years. Sure, it's consistent with Apple laptops of the era, but if I could wade through shit all day every day for the sake of consistency... I wouldn't.
Even the current Apple keyboards don't approach the quality of the aluminum era; the time when the little Bluetooth one had the curved back edge where the batteries went. I'm typing on a full-sized aluminum desktop Apple keyboard of that era right now. These were the peak of modern Apple (and, I think, chiclet) keyboards in general.
It's sad what people accept for keyboard quality now. I totally understand the resurgence of mechanical keyboards, which are nothing but normal-quality keyboards of yesteryear.
Anyway, we're mostly in agreement here. I just think Apple should give up on the peripherals game, because they're singularly bad at it.
Oh yeah, we didn't even mention the Pencil that you were (are?) supposed to recharge by jamming it endwise into a port and have it sticking out the whole time...
I agree that the aluminium wired extended keyboard (A1243) is peak Apple keyboard and for over 15 years I used them on every device I owned, including Windows PCs. The Magic Keyboard isn't as good, but honestly I perform authentications often enough that integrated Touch ID is worth the marginal (IMHO) downgrade in key travel.
I have a post-butterfly MBP and I too find the built-in Touch ID great. I thought it would be a gimmick, but I use it all the time. Touch ID is one of the big reasons I won't get rid of my original iPhone SE (with the headphone jack right behind it).
But the continued lack of a real Delete key on Apple's laptops is annoying as shit. It has always been stupid, because everybody else manages to put a Delete key on their keyboards no matter how small. But when the Eject key became obsolete, the failure to put a Delete key on every keyboard just proved that Apple hasn't abandoned the infantile pettiness that has marked a lot of its history.
Thanks! But actually... you can't. Apple put a HARDWARE delay on the Eject button. Another WTF move from Apple. Were people being killed by accidental CD ejections?
Regardless of the reason, Apple (per its M.O.) implemented a ridiculously complicated and crippling "solution" instead of simply making Eject a secondary function on some other key... like a Delete key.
So I have always had to use F12 for Delete (via Karabiner).
That's insane. And it's indicative of the Apple approach to computing: do things exactly the way Apple wants and you'll have a brilliant time. (This is my approach when it comes to providing tech support for family. I steer them towards being model Apple citizens and they get great outcomes.)
If you want a desktop trackpad, the Apple one is about the best you're going to get. The keyboard is, IMO, perfectly fine, and certainly one of the nicer-feeling non-mechanical keyboards around these days.
Yeah, I take it back about the trackpad. It's fine.
That stands in contrast to the ones on their computers, which are too big and cause spurious right-clicks and your cursor to jump to other parts of the screen while you're typing. Ridiculous.
What makes it worse is that the Pencil doesn't work on the giant computer trackpads. WHY? I would've bought that on day one. Talk about utter failure on Apple's part, year after year.
I find the trackpad isn’t necessary because the standard Mac desktop now is a laptop with external mouse keyboard and monitor. If I need the trackpad, there’s one built into the laptop.
> It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
The USB-C charging cables can also carry data at USB2 speeds. I'm pretty sure thats the limit of what the iphone 15 usb-c port can handle. (Since they explicitly called out the iphone 15 pro as having hardware support for usb3).
Considering pretty much the only use case for USB data transfer on the iphone is copying pro res video to an SSD, which can only be recorded on the pro, this seems like a good tradeoff. No point raising the cost for casual users who will never use this feature.
He's saying you're an extreme edge case that's <0.01% of the population and shouldn't expect gargantuan corps to cater for your edge case as it doesn't make financial sense.
I am sick of this "extreme edge case" bullshit when there is 20+ years of historical precedent. We did not go away and this shit did not come out of nowhere. The tech is already there and its maintenance is minimal. Just because some young shits running the numbers in the bay area are obsessed with and surrounded by the latest and greatest doesn't mean the rest of the world marches to their bullshit drumbeat. Especially when we keep seeing the things we used to own turn into rentals.
Stop shitting on the long tail!
And fuckin stand up for your rights and privacy as a consumer!
No, but people not satisfied with what Spotify has are like a tiny percentage of non-mainstream music listeners (whether one can point to X major artist not being on Spotify does not really change that. Even if it still didn't have the Beatles most users could not care less).
It isn't about "major artists". Fuck them, their music universally sucks. It's about underground artists, unsigned, or anyone locked out the bullshit distribution model that is shoved down artists' and the public's throats
While I don’t use iTunes anymore and don’t plug my phone in to transfer, I’ve uploaded 400+ GB of Phish to Apple, and I’m able to download and stream it just as well as the latest Taylor Swift album. If I wanted to load my phone up with the whole catalog (still thinking about doing it), I’d probably plug my phone in. But I’m also more than happy to stream those shows and download my favorites. It really is my favorite service/product Apple offers full stop!
Why do you hate capitalism? Not engaging in monthly services, consuming additional ads, or letting Apple sniff your data in the cloud.
I too am saddened by what feels like a deliberate tactic to further cripple the already locked down cable interface. On Android, I could trivially upload and download all of my data without an intermediary.
actually, in finder, you may enable “show this device on wifi” and…no more needing cables for syncing! :)
…
this probably is not available on windows itunes though.
But it really puzzles me how that feature needs wifi. Regular TCP/IP has everything you need to discover devices on the network and connect to them. What exactly is 802.11x adding here?
Define "everything you need". Are we talking about finding out other hosts on a LAN? Or modern devices and their capabilities?
There are lots of added protocols (e.g. Bonjour) because TCP/IP alone is not about discovery.
And of course here we're talking about syncing over wi-fi. How would TCP/IP alone, without Wi-Fi enabled, cut it? It would sync wirelessly over ...cable ethernet?
All you need for discovery is broadcast access, and TCP/IP grants that. The discoverer broadcasts, "I'm looking for devices!" And the discoveree replies "Here I am!" Boom, connection is made. This is how game server browsers worked for LAN play back in the day.
Is it really so inconceivable that a phone is connected to a wi-fi gateway on a regular LAN?
Because that is how my network is set up here at home.
I would say it's referring to WiFi on the phone side, rather than the Mac/PC side. Though you can plug an Ethernet adaptor into an iPhone it's very rarely done and so most people would understand they want to sync with their phone over WiFi, as opposed to USB cable.
Apple seems to mostly use Bonjour (mDNS) for these whether using a local network (and indeed that is the case for this wifi sync feature), but they also have a few features/frameworks that can also be setup over an Apple specific "peer to peer wifi" connection which is bootstrapped with bluetooth and switches to peer to peer wifi for fast data transfer, similar but not the same protocol as WiFi direct (according to https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/12885). This is what AirPlay2 does for example. That is one way WiFi could matter for such a feature versus Ethernet.
This wifi sync definitely works with Ethernet on the Mac side (personal experience)
If you use Apple Music, you can upload mp3s (preferably ALAC to avoid lossy transcoding because it always converts to AAC) to their servers and stream them from any of your devices. For me it's the killer app for Apple Music. It's the reason I switched to it from Spotify.
For determining whether it's USB 2 or not maybe (and even then it might not be so clear cut).
For actual use the actual practical max speed is far more important. It would be useless if you wanted something better than USB 2.0 and it only did 1.1 times the USB 2 limit for example.
My bad, I was thinking about the Pro models' 10Gbps maximum and was looking for comparisons at that speed. I replaced what you wrote with the phone I had in my head!
The people who are buying iPhone 15 don’t care about USB-C data speeds. Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
Those people that do care are probably already getting a Pro anyway.
I’m a part of general public and I agree. I’d never thought connecting my iphone to pc through a cable because it’s such pita to do so and speeds are absurd for that type of device. All connectivity goes through telegram (thanks to creators for amazing data limits, opposed to email’s 20mb no-exec nonsense).
Exactly. If you look at YouTube bitrate for a 1080p video, it's 8mbps, which is 1.67% of the theoretical max data rate of USB2 (480mbps), so there's more than enough bandwidth for CarPlay.
My Prius has wired carplay (which makes the Qi charger seem absurd, although as it turns out the Qi charger doesn’t work most of the time), so I bought a $50 box that plugs into the USB port and gives me wireless carplay.
I got a generic "ATOTO" one that was on sale. I had to upgrade the firmware since there was some audio stutter after about 15 minutes, but after that it's been just as stable as wired CarPlay for me.
As far as "not very polished UX", after connecting it's been nothing but the standard CarPlay interface. The instructions say there's a web UI accessible via wifi where you can install updates or change configuration but I had no need to use it. Just connect with Bluetooth, wait a second, and accept the "Connect to CarPlay" popup.
I was in that camp, but a recent iOS update regressed bluetooth yet again (it skips sometimes in all my cars), so now I’m using the USB iPod support when possible.
This is the first time I’ve ever used data over USB on this phone though. I wish Apple had better testing for their bluetooth stack.
Hell, professional audio interfaces from major brands like RME, with full support for 16+ channels simultaneous in/out high rate audio work fine at USB 2.0 speeds.
I was arguing against having any data connection at all (and just fixing the bluetooth stack).
The only port I want at all is a headphone jack, and that’s easily waterproofed. Since we can’t have that, I was hoping they’d remove the charge port entirely.
> Most people never connect a physical cable from their phone to anything but a charger.
This is probably more typical for iOS than Android users, because the former restricts very severely what can be accessed from the connected computer; copying data is much faster via cable.
The USB-C is tempting. The only other Apple devices I own are all USB-C - Macbook Pros and an iPad Air. Maybe this will finally get me to switch from my aging Pixel 3A. The idea of dropping $800 on it is still a bit much though.
If you are looking for an alternative because the 3A is getting a little long in the tooth, I would say look at the SE. It doesn't have USB-C, but its a damn good phone for ~$400 (with probably 7-ish years of support). When I was looking to upgrade from my 3A, its what I went to.
The 2020 or 2016? Yes stupid naming scheme. I’m super happy with my 2020 especially for the price. It’s plenty fast, not obnoxiously big, just a basic iPhone
Yea, the naming scheme is really screwed. They also have the 2022 now. I had the 2020 and got a free upgrade to the 2022. The only big difference between the two is the 2022 does have a slightly better battery life. But I love having the physical button.
Exactly. The really screwy thing with it is the naming scheme. SE 2016, 2020, and 2022. But I love still having a physical button on it. The battery life is better with the 2022, but still not anything compared to the regular iPhone or most flagship phones.
I was thinking about the price because $800-1200 seems like a lot for a "phone", but you're really getting something that's awful close to a Macbook in power and display quality, but with a great camera and many times more compact (which usually command a hefty price premium), for less money than a Macbook. It's actually not a bad deal?
I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
Looking at it from $/min you use the device or utility/$ that you get, these phones and laptops are far cheaper than many, many other luxury purchases people buy, such as restaurants, alcohol, or movie tickets.
> I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
I did drop $3.5k on my M1 Max MBP though and have zero regrets. And I plan on keeping it for 8-10 years. My previous laptop was a 2011 MacBook Pro which lasted about that long.
I just haven't ever spent more than ~$450 on a phone so far. The lag and the battery life on my current phone is starting to get pretty annoying. I might end up buying if it is a significantly better experience.
It packs lot of power, likely enough to replace MacBook, except you can't really do anything other than what Apple thinks you should do with the device. It's far more constrained system than MacBook.
iPad is more or less same, except it lets you extend to a screen (not just mirror with wrong aspect-ratio), but the window management and everything else is still shit.
Neither of those devices adapt to keyboard/mouse yet, and primarily touch only. It does makes sense that they are touch only, but "its powerful" argument becomes less and less useful every release. It may mean different to someone else who plays games, or benefits from Machine Learning things that the phone can perform more each release just because of added power.
I went from 3a to a pixel 5 on backmarket, it's a great upgrade and doesn't really sacrifice anything. I am still waiting now for a new pixel, but even the 7/8 don't look interesting enough.
Where "compliant" is defined to mean "does the minimum required by the USB spec and thus is legally allowed to carry the USB logo and call itself a USB cable".
Is there a way I can check if a particular cable or company on say Amazon or AliExpress is certified? Obviously those that aren't certified will say they are certified, so if there's like a database of USB-C certifications somewhere that would be super helpful (particularly if it includes all the misc. stuff about USB-C that fall through the cracks like data rate, PD, supported voltages, etc.).
read the reviews? if a cable doesn't work, it'll get flagged pretty damn quickly. i've bought plenty of dirt cheap USB-C cables off amazon and they've all worked fine.
you might get a charge-only cable bundled with some sketchy usb-c accessory. if you do, throw it out. but any standalone cable sold as a cable will do data transfer. the USB-C cables that only carry power and not data is an imaginary problem.
Didn't mean to give the impression that I'm worried about USB-C cables that are power only, that is indeed an imaginary problem.
It's moreso things like PD, is it 480Mbits or is it 5Gbit or is it 10 or 20 or 40. What's the voltages, does it support PD 2.0 oh wait is it 3.0 or 3.1?
To be fair, it's been a number of years since I've tried to purchase cables, so perhaps just grabbing the Anker result at the top will net you most of these features. I just remember having to dig and not getting clear answers one way or another which is the spirit of my question.
i don't have any devices that require 40Gbit, so i can't speak to that. but in my experience, buying the cheapest cable off amazon will reliably give me 20gbit, and will charge all my devices at full speed (i don't know if it's PD2 or 3.0 or 3.1, but i do know that devices pull more power from my 100W charger than my 60W charger)
in practice, in my daily life, all USB C cables work the same. a couple years ago i got one bundled with a device that didn't support some feature, and so i put it in the garbage. problem solved. since then, all my cables work all the time in whatever device i plug them into.
It's not an issue specific to USB-C. There are also plenty of USB-A/Micro-USB cables that don't have the data pins connected. Typically this is only an issue with super cheap electronics that only use USB-C as a connector for power and don't really follow the spec.
I haven't heard of a phone coming with a charge-only cable. Especially because that cable is usually used for syncing to a computer (iOS)/transferring data from an old phone (Android).
USB-C to C cables to spec need the data pins for USB 2 and to support 30W. Beyond that it is cable-specific.
Unless an included cable came with a hard disk, monitor or eGPU, you can be reasonably sure it is USB 2 speeds. If it didn’t ship with a computer either, it is probably 30W max.
I'd love one for the airport, so I didn't have to trust that the public charging points weren't hacking my machines on behalf of the local government or criminal syndicate or whatever.
This has always been possible with USB, its not anything specific to the USB-C spec. I have several power-only USB cables, in fact I even have a few USB-A to barrel cables.
No, it is not. According to the spec, all C-C cables transfer data, even if only at USB 2.0 speeds. It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies.
> It is not the spec's fault that some cheap knockoff brands violate the spec to save a few pennies
Yes it is.
The spec could have been written such that different capabilities were reflected with different physical characteristics. That is exactly what standards exist to do.
Even if we pretend spec writers wouldn't ever have predicted the proliferation of crappy cables before publishing it, this is not a new problem with USB.
It is absolutely a choice made by the USB Implementers Forum.
I suppose hypothetically you could have data capability built in to the power negotiation pairs, so that it wasn't possible to offer charging without also some amount of data... but quite some complexity to add as a trade-off, not an obvious choice.
Conveniently, that's actually the case. A USB-C port should provide no power if there's nothing plugged in, and that's sensed by the data connection pairs. However, to support A-C adapters, you can fake it through the normal connection there.
This is why some things that have a C port won't charge on a C-C cable, but will on a A-C cable, because they don't actually talk to say they need power, but the A port will provide some power regardless, but a C port won't.
Power-only cables should be specified to have a different connector. Vastly different speeds should have a different connector. It should be physically impossible to stick the wrong kind of cable in.
I think you might be missing the point. Power and data in the same cable is a huge advantage of USB-C (both Apple connectors had power and data in the same cable).
Third parties will make out-of-spec cables no matter what. Some of the ways that Apple has addressed this is the "Made for" program which goes back even to the iPod. And the devices themselves detecting and showing an "Accessory may not be supported" error message, again going back to the iPod.
There is no spec for power-only USB-C cables. Anyone making one is doing so against the spec. You can’t use a spec to solve the problem of going against the spec.
I haven’t owned an an iPhone or iPad since they dropped the 30 pin connector and headset jack to proprietary lightning instead of USB-C. I bought my first iPad once Apple finally adopted USB-C and I look forward to switching back to iPhone one the iPhone SE has USB-C. I refuse to give any company money when they are being egregious. It was a pure profit play, and I’m not interested in wasting my money on high margin, proprietary, lightning accessories that I knew would be sent to the landfill in due time. Apple held out a lot longer than I thought they would. It’s shameful really.
Nothing attracts downvotes like criticism of Apple. Their decisions are guided by the hand of the divine, so anyone that won’t follow is clearly an unworthy heathen.
An FYI, Lightning (released 2012) predates USB-C (1.0 specs published 2014) by a couple years. I'm unclear on how Apple was able to choose Lightning instead of USB-C given that timeline.
I agree that proprietary connectors are problematic but consider that Apple started selling Lightning devices almost 3 years before the first USB-C phone shipped. They couldn’t have chosen USB-C before it existed - and the industry accelerated that process due to how much better Lightning was than the older USB designs – but by the time USB-C was standardized and shipped, Apple had somewhere north of 300 million devices with Lightning connectors to support.
its $799. Also if you are an apple fanboy you probably have a 13 or 14 which you can trade in to bring your total price to <$400. Not a crazy tab for something you use 40 times a day.
I dropped $1400+ on iPhone 14 (with the apple care thing), but TBH I was disappointed, iOS/iPhone used to be ahead of Android in terms of OS and usability.
Now it just felt like the hardware is wasted on iOS.
I still have the old Android phone, and instinctively use that rather than dealing with iOS. Next device is definitely going to be an android.
I take it you're exclusively an apple iphone/airpod pro interpersonal relationship person.
No kids with android. No wife, husband, whatever with android. No friends with android. Just that trusty ole iphone and airpods.
Plus no iPad, no laptops with USB-C chargers, no battery banks with USB-C inputs/outputs, no other ereaders with usb-c, no USB-C desk fan, no USB-C headphones...
Like they said, they keep a Lightning cable in their car. They didn't say that it's a USB-A to Lightning cable. I own USB-C power banks and so forth, and use a USB-C to Lightning cable to plug my iPhone into them.
And with a phone having USB-C I can just use the same to power my phone when I want. Or power my phone from a powerbank without another cable specially made for this brand of phone.
The USB-C port (even on the non-pro) supports Display Port though, which I think can be quite useful if you pair it with an external mouse and keyboard and have apps that support "extended screen" mode [0].
For example I know of https://shiftscreen.app which is like a fake desktop environment, and the Microsoft RDP client added it last week. I think Github Codespaces or any of those services could probably make a pretty usable experience. Just plugging in the phone in your usb-c monitor and get to coding, could be pretty sweet in some scenarios.
[0]: If you just mirror the screen you'll get black bars and the resolution won't be optimal etc, but apps can render directly to the external display customising the resolution for that monitor. Like how Photos.app behave, not showing the app chrome on the external display. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/windows_and_...
Is there a reason why Apple have never offered induction charging? Isn't that the best way to charge a phone? We completely avoid the wearing out of the port itself, potentially avoiding repairs and extending its lifetime if spare USB charging boards are no longer available. I'm wondering why every single phone hasn't it.
You mean wireless charging? My iPhone 11 does it, and I'm pretty sure all of the subsequent ones do as well. Maybe not on the SE. I think the 10 might have even supported it.
iPhone 8 and later support inductive charging. But it's not perfect - my wife's phone was melted by a third-party inductive charging pad that was intended for use with iPhones.
What do you mean? iPhones support „magsafe 2“ since 2017 (?) and Qhi-Charging since forever. And no, there is no „general best“ - you at least have to deal with the energy that is lost through induction.
Every iPhone with USB C has DisplayPort alternate mode, it was not particularly hard to do because all these Apple Axx SoC have a DisplayPort output just in case it lands in an Apple TV later.
Good to know. I tried hooking on an old(er) iPad with USB-C to a docking station. It mirrored the screen to another monitor but did not give me an extended desktop. After researching, I learned this was called Apple Studio Display, a feature that comes in iPads released the following year of the iPad I had.
I hope your assumption is correct and they added this, including the mouse and keyboard capability.
not their computers, also Apple usually pushes changes forward, not backwards, in this case using lightning they just diverged from micro USB, and probably now most people have USB-C chargers
How so? Everyone I’ve seen using them just tapes the adapter to their earbuds and keeps the phone in their pocket or arm straps while jogging. Seems like you would have the same issue with a 3.5mm audio jack.
Speakers use Bluetooth or a lightning jack in a cradle.
The iPad Pro went to USB-C with no audio jack 3-4 years ago, and Apple has been selling those adaptors since at least then.
Did you know that the microphone on the wired Apple earbuds don’t work on anything other than Apple devices? Well, one nice thing about the adaptors is that they allow you to use those earbuds on any computer with a USB-C port. I’ve avoided buying new headsets thanks to them.
And then you can't power the phone. Real good on your road trip, while you're draining the battery with navigation.
USB audio adapters are barely even a thing, and the Lightning dongles often suck ass. I mean nearly-unusable sound quality, with weird hiss blasting because of some defective automatic gain function (for example; that was a Belkin).
Getting rid of the headphone jack was indefensible, but people putting up with it was even worse. Worst of all is cheerleading for that anti-customer, anti-quality move.
If your phone has that. And if you run a wire to this in your car and keep it tidy.
Oh, then you need to run another wire for the audio. Whereas with the ancient 30-pin iPod port, you got an audio line out AND power in. And the cool thing about that one is that it was a true line-out: The volume control didn't affect it, so you didn't have to dick around with the volume on two devices (the player and the car radio).
I bought the Lightning-to-30-pin adapter from Apple, and it duplicates all of that. You get the audio line out and power in. A cheap Y cable with USB for power and 1/8" plug for audio solves everything. As far as I know, it's the only solution that Apple has ever sold for a problem it deliberately created. And I doubt anyone, statistically, is even aware of it.
I think the vast majority of people just use Bluetooth in their cars. My car is from 2016 so it has CarPlay. I bought a $50 wireless CarPlay adapter and pulled the cable for a MagSafe dongle through the dash and now I can just plop my phone down so it's held in place, it charges, connects to the car console, everything is super handy.
Lots of cars don't have Bluetooth for audio. For example, we have a 2013 Mini that (somewhat inexplicably) supports Bluetooth for phone calls but has no provision at all for music over Bluetooth. But it does have a auxiliary audio input.
Neither of the other two vehicles in our household have Bluetooth at all, but they both have aux inputs. Bluetooth is a shitty workaround to intentional, anti-consumer stupidity. Just as almost every car (even cheap-O rental cars) integrated auxiliary audio inputs, Apple removed the audio output from their best-selling music player (the iPhone). And when gutless consumers allowed them to get away with it, everybody else followed suit and now we've regressed decades.
Twenty years ago I built an iPod dock into my car, into which I could plop my iPod (and later iPhone) and get power into the phone and audio directly into the stereo system. The phone charged, and delivered good audio quality. As a bonus, it did so without the need to dick around with two volume controls, since the 30-pin connector had a proper (fixed) line-level audio output that didn't vary with volume adjustments on the phone.
This is a level of convenience and performance that very few people enjoy now, and that is pathetic. Manufacturers have intentionally degraded so many of our consumer-electronics experiences with no payoff for us, and very questionable payoff for them.
You can also get straight-up Lightning or USB-C headphones. I only have a pair because Samsung's Tab tablet doesn't have an audio jack and Bluetooth latency is terrible for rhythm games.
Why does everyone like usb-c? It is inferior to lightning. With usb-c, the connector on the device can break or come loose (male), with lightning the male connector is on the cable, so easier to replace and maintain long term!
Because having a decent, workable standard is better than having a mess of incompatible cables. I can't wait until we're done with lightning. In almost all of our cables, it's not the connector that dies anyway, it's where the cable flexes at the connector attachment.
That's my point, the connector dying is a big deal, so planned obsolescence is easier with usb-c!
They should have just included a usb-c adapter. Unlike PC peripherals, phone chargers get plugged/unplugged many times every day. It's very easy with android phones for the connector stick thingy on the phone to get loose or damaged.
This feels like a government sponsored enshitification.
Why can't people just get android and let apple be. Why do some people get to force consumer standards other consumers don't like. Android can run on any type id purpose built mobile device.
So long as they are not being anti-competitive, who cares if apple uses PoE to charge phones even lol. Leave my capitialism alone!
I've been using usb-c for a few years on all my critical devices (phone, computer , tablet, raspi) and in all possible situations (car, desk, night stand, power bank) and never had an issue with the connector.
I'm sure it happens to some people but it can't be a big issue or I (as the "IT-guy") would have heard about it.
Currently my phone charges mostly with the second notebook charger I got from work or one of those cheapish Anker PD bricks.
Anegdotal evidence, but all my USB-C phones (three of them) so far have had the connector fail after 2-3 years of use, and it's not due to lint and dust in the port. Cable doesn't click into the port and falls out on its own.
I think we're all "IT guy" on HN. You are thinking with a survivor's bias. I use to have this problem with android all the time especially when I traveled
I never understood why people say things like this and then turn around and shit on the apple laptops for using usb-c for everything.
I don't think people earnestly and legitimately think usb-c should be used for everything, and the cost of doing so is incredibly high (despite it being rather convenient if all your cables are $25 10gbps/240w 3-meter cables or whatever), it's just a convenient wedge for android fans to argue against iphone.
again, ask those same people what they think of the usb-c philosophy on macbooks and boy you're gonna get an earful. the common factor is always "this guy really hates apple" not "this guy really likes usb-c". they never do, when the chips are down.
There's a distinction between "everything should have a USB-C port" and "a laptop should have only USB-C ports."
I do have a (non-Apple) USB-C only laptop for work currently and... while I'd like a handful of other ports directly on there from time to time, it's kind of a marvel how much of a "dock" situation you get out of a single USB-C port and a cheap hub with PD passthrough. One plug and I have mouse, keyboard, monitor, plus more, and it works fine on Linux, the same exact thing can get plugged into a Mac if I occasionally use one and have all the same features... it's pretty great.
Well, in the case of the person you're talking to, I'm typing my response on an M1 Macbook Pro. It's the best damn laptop I've ever owned. Three USB-C ports and I'm happy as a clam (in large part because it _also_ has an HDMI port).
I do have to use USB-C to A adapters now and then, mostly for dealing with embedded systems work, but it's not a big deal - almost all of that happens at my desk anyway.
USB-C has a real pain point when it comes to cable compatibility. It's _not_ a panacea. But those are mostly problems I encounter on bigger computers, such as "oh, my 2TB external SSD seems really slow", and not problems I encounter on my phone. I use a Pixel phone for historical reasons and I love that I can use the same charger and cable to charge my phone and my MBP. My wife has an iPhone, an MBP, and an iPad Pro. Her phone is the only device that needs lightning still. Good riddance!
In Lightning, the springs are in the device and the pads are on the cable. With USB-C, the springs are in the cable, and the pads are in the device. There are different failure modes for the springs failing vs the tongue that the pads are on failing. One approach is not universally better than the other.
I do hope the iPhone~USB-C tuple is more fluff resistant and less fussy about aborting charging than lightening. iPhone is the only device I have trouble actually charging.
USB-C is great, but honestly I'm not transmitting data via the port, nor do I care about charging speed. Then it becomes weird that I still have to carry a lightning cable for my Airpods.Would be a huge plus if I can just carry one cable while traveling someday.
I can’t believe they just released the Gen 2 AirPods without updating the charge port to USB-C, especially given the iPhone changeover has been telegraphed for over a year. It’s like they learnt nothing from the MacBook USB-C transition.
They used to sell the case, and each airpod separately (with the total for all three being the same as a new pair), but it looks like they stopped? It was very useful when I ran over my airpods case with my LandCruiser, and it got a bit wonky (but was amazingly still fully functional).
And I wish I could just trade the Type-C case with my lightning case (with at most a tiny refurbishing fee), there are a lot of people who just bought the Airpods pro 2 last or this year and not likely to purchase again in 2 yrs
That's awesome this is the first I am hearing of this. I wish Apple would produce their own home automation products. I trust them vastly more than logitech & co...
Agree - I’ve been using a set of Eve (from memory) power plugs that are thread enabled - my understanding is it doesn’t connect directly to the internet (ie you don’t connect it to your wifi) but you connect to a border hub (ie an Apple TV, or maybe now an iPhone 15.)
So I guess if you trust apple, you can sorta trust these devices as their access to the outside world would be through an apple device.
My home is currently all ZigBee/Z-Wave, but Thread/Matter is an open protocol that can be used entirely locally. I'm cautiously excited about the industry standardizing on it; hopefully this will mean that over time more and more mainstream smart-home devices will be compatible with my local-only HomeAssistant setup.
(I honestly don't know and was thinking Matter and Thread were somehow related and the were both good and I hope someone can confirm or explain what I am missing.)
I'm not sure. ZigBee is available and works great. I heard negative rumblings about Thread/Matter but I'm not sure if the criticisms are valid, or just anti-change curmudgeonry.
Thread is a radio protocol. It's basically next-generation Zigbee, using the same radio protocol (IEEE 802.15.4) but with higher performance, lower latency, IPv6 addressing and AES encryption.
Matter is a network protocol which provides a standard API for how smart devices talk to home hubs. By making devices truly platform agnostic, it will end the dark "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" direction which smart devices have been going down.
It's funny how they show USB-C as a giant leap forward while they were literally forced to use that port and were never interested in doing it otherwise. All that transfer speed bump they're now advertising with USB-C, would they admit that they were keeping their customers away from it just so that they could use their custom port and create an entire accessory ecosystem around it?
Apple where always good at lying err scratch that marketing i meant, snark fully intended. Steve sold many Apple inventions that actually came from other companies. Even accounting for his less than nice parts of his personality, he was still one of the best CEOs ever. Why? He thought about the products from the customer perspective.
Lightning was a very good connector when it first came around. Ever notice how the phones are showcased standing up on just the connector? Try that with micro USB.
Apple co-invented/contributed to USB-C to address their own needs, and were the first vendor to shove it down on unsuspecting Macbook users, getting rid of each and every single other kind of port.
Meanwhile they kept Lightning relevant and useful for a very long time, which I think is a good thing for a "de facto" standard. Should they have switched to USB-C earlier? Probably yes. But now is better than never (even if it's somewhat forced).
To be fair for charging purposes I find wireless charging so good I never use the cable to charge my phone these days. After moving to the Belkin MagSafe stand it got even better, I think Apple could have easily just stuck with lightning until they killed the charging port altogether.
The Pro model being able to record video directly to an external USB-C stick/hard drive is such a killer feature for anyone doing content creation, and easily the biggest reason to pick the Pro over the base model. This is the first time an iPhone has ever had extendable storage like this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it called out much everywhere.
I may get accused of being an Apple fan for this, but this is why I dread USB-C. My lightening cables always charge and have data. Having to care about this is a pain.
I could feel my social credit score rising with each nod in agreement, as the UN SDG AAA+ rated company, with WEF endorsement, told me how my consumerist lifestyle will not affect the global boiling.
The excessive use of what felt like drone cameras, or steady cam, and continual camera movement played a part. It almost feels like they were trying to pretend you were watching it in AppleVision™.
That and the lonesome father looking at photos of his (dead?) family in a dark apartment really left a bad impression from me on the headset that I can't shake. I will never "unsee" that. Sure, use it for work...but at home, no way. Baffled that Apple thought would jive well considering how much attention they put into those presos and makes me wonder how much of the headset marketing team is single & childless.
The "mother nature" sketch was... interesting. And throughout the presentation I thought well it seems this new generation iPhone doesn't bring anything new, it seems like a finished product. So not creating a new one every year would probably be better for the environment than whatever efforts and greenwashing they do engage in.
Yeah they're so type-A and "we are the best at this" that they end up being overproduced hostage videos with the presenters standing wide-legged and bug-eyed reciting very human words at the camera.
The pandemic is over, bring back the theatre stage with a live audience.
You might love the Devolver Digital E3 Press Conferences. They've done a masterful job dismantling the E3 presentation format, but I find it's generally true for all these kinds of longform corporate product ads.
I wish Apple would return to pre-COVID live keynotes. But that would mean demos would fail, wifi networks would be crowded, audible boos and gasps from price announcements. Yeah, Apple isn't going back anytime soon.
That whole presentation could have been 30 minutes shorter. It's a product announcement not an investors meeting. Show me the products. Make a sustainability PR as a separate piece. Get your name in the news twice. Seems strange
No one would watch the "Apple's getting rid of leather" video. And it would have seemed weak if their announcement was half the typical duration, signaling that there's not much new here.
Not every marketing piece is going to hit with all viewers. I'm sure some people felt emotionally affected by the opening piece about people's lives that were saved by their watch. It was just a very strange tone/vibe to open a product announcement. It's like the Sarah Mclachlan SPCA piece. It's not the thing you play when you want to pump someone up. Obviously the entire opening portion was to assuage consumer guilt in buying new about to be discussed. It just didn't sit well with me at all. So yes, in this case, the marketing was bad and failed for this member of the audience.
For the last hundred years tech journalism orgs like macrumors, the verge, appleinsider etc have been producing "the <latest> apple keynote: all you need to know in 10 minutes" videos. if you care about the presentation, watch the live stream. if you are a grumpy grumpster in a hurry don't watch it and wait for these videos to come out on YouTube shortly thereafter
I for one don't understand how sustainability and a yearly release schedule can go hand in hand. Why isn't it a 2 or 3+ year release cycle? Remove the need to upgrade, make spare parts and reuse and recycling more common. Maximize lifespan of devices.
Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea. Imagine if every year everybody tossed their television, monitor, computer, phone, tablet, headphones, speakers and all their other smart devices into a landfill and bought new ones. Now realize this actually happens with phones in some cases and batteries in almost all cases.
The Apple XS just got a new OS version. The Pixel 3 from the same year doesn't even get security updates anymore.
At the end of the day despite what the Lineage OS flashers will insist, lay-people want updated features. Give them updated features for their old phones and they will keep them longer. Keeping them longer is the most you can do when throwaway tech is the norm.
If you need empirical evidence, 5 seconds looking at any market for used phones reflects that.
They offer a (fairly generous by industry standards) trade in program.
They take thousands and thousands of perfectly working iPhones, then turn them into raw scrap, just so they aren’t floating around on the secondary market.
Apple realises that most iPhone users aren’t going to switch to android, so reducing the supply of secondary market iPhones, really helps them sell more new devices.
They also scrap a whole bunch of them too[1].
While undoubtedly many of the shredded devices are beyond repair, many of the devices destroyed in the video have no obvious physical damage.
I don't think they release any numbers on the amount of traded in devices that are refurbished and destroyed.
Just change your perspective to one of a scumbag C-level executive of a public facing company and you will quickly understand.
> I for one don't understand how sustainability and a yearly release schedule can go hand in hand
The sustainability report is more for green washing and a thinly veiled deceptive tactic to hide their lust for greed
> Why isn’t it a 2 or 3+ year release cycle?
again, adjust your perspective. The point is to push hardware sales and pump the quarterly numbers. Making the phones easily repairable means significant decrease in NEW phone sales which generate the $$$. Let’s be honest, Apple C-level execs don’t give a fuck about the environment, human rights, and any of that. It’s all a show.
> Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea
Apple C-level execs know this. Apple marketing division knows this. Consumers know this. Yet people continue to buy their greenwashing campaign every year and consumers are convinced it’s okay. Oh it’s “carbon neutral” now. Oh Apple installs solar panels at their shitty office, “I am buying into a green company guyzzz!!! save the planet one iPhone at a time”
Support right to repair. Support government regulations. Do not expect these private companies to “do the right thing”
New iPhones are announced yearly, but the average smartphone consumer keeps their device for between 2 and 3 years.[0] iPhones in particular have extended lifecycles; an informal 9to5 Mac poll in 2021 (biased towards enthusiasts) had roughly 4 in 5 people waiting at least 2 years, with almost half of polled users 3 years or more.[1]
So what's actually happening is that the yearly iPhone rush is only a small fraction of the install base upgrading. Sure, there are a few uber enthusiasts that may upgrade every year, but those are a minority, and it's not like those phones go direct to landfills - they're resold. And since there are more opportunities to upgrade, fewer are attempting to upgrade simultaneously, straining supply chains and making Apple's income fluctuate more heavily.
Anecdata: my current iPhone is 4 years old, and the previous one is in my kid's hands (7 years old at this point, and going to be replaced by my current one because lack of future updates on that one).
I agree, and I think a longer release cycle of, say, 3 years could actually have the exact opposite effect, cutting the average lifespan of iPhones.
The annual release cycle doesn't force people's hands. You can have a look to see if there's anything compelling this year and if not, just put off your purchase for another year. No big deal.
If the choice was between 3 and 6 years, most people would probably get a new phone almost automatically after 3 years rather than facing the prospect of sticking it out with a very obsolete phone.
A two year cycle would probably have the same effect, only less pronounced.
Also, I think less frequent releases would come with a far bigger marketing push and some actual innovation. This year it's "A16 Bionic for powerful, proven performance".
If they didn't put the sustainability PR in there first nobody would have watched it. Approximately nobody cares about sustainability, really (unfortunately)
I'm looking forward to the day when I need to pack only USB-C cables when we go on family vacation, but it's still going to be a couple of years until we replaced the last device with lightning port (especially iPads seem to last forever).
I've been using mostly wireless charging with my current phones; and watch (you have to there) mainly because the lightning port would usually be the first thing to die.
I wonder if they'll sell cases alone for existing AirPods.
I keep my iPhones for many years before buying a new one and never had the lighting port die. What happens though is that the port gets dirt inside and stops working. There are tiny brushes (available on Amazon) which solve it and the port starts working again.
Nevertheless still good that now only one cable is required - especially since the iPad and iMac use USB-C as-well.
Not sure what to do with the AirPods - hopefully the wireless charging directly from iPhone 15 will make it unnecessary to have to carry the cable for the pods.
They don't support wireless charging from phone to airpods. That would be great, and is available on some android devices. This was referring to being able to charge your airpods or watch by plugging them into your phone with a cable.
There is a zero percent chance that I would ever want to boost my AirPods case, (which I charge every few days) while draining my iPhone (which I charge daily). If I had an Apple Watch, I would not bring the puck charger with me anywhere. I don't think that "most people" would; a subset of iPhone users have purses, and a subset of iPhone users have Apple Watches. I'm pretty sure the intersection of those two subsets is not even close to the majority of iPhone users.
The "charge iot thing wirelessly from phone" feature on my Samsung phones for the past few generations isn't used every day but it is useful every so often. E.g. go on a trip but forget smartwatch charger. No problem the phone can do it in a pinch. Or: family member gets their phone wet causing it to not charge wired until it dries. No problem my phone can charge their phone wirelessly.
It might work without plugging in the iPhone, but I imagine most times it would be plugged, overnight or whatever.
This is honestly a pretty great feature, and actually makes me more likely to buy an Apple Watch. I don't want to have to bring another charge cable with me, and now I wouldn't have to. I wonder what the charge speed is though — I wouldn't want to have to charge it overnight.
EDIT: Thanks for clarifying, it took me a while to understand based on what they had said and what Ars reported. I can see that it's just the same as how you can plug any peripheral into an iPad and charge off its battery. Now you can do the same with iPhone...big deal.
No, I think you connect a cable from the iPhone's charge port to the AirPod's charge port.
Apple's page says this under the USB-C section:
>The new USB-C connector lets you charge your Mac or iPad with the same cable you use to charge iPhone 15. You can even use iPhone 15 to charge Apple Watch or AirPods. Bye-bye, cable clutter.
With a footnote that leads to this:
> The included USB‑C Charge Cable is compatible with AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB‑C).
I carry a cable that has USB-A/USB-C on one end and USB-C/Lightning on another. Works great, but this particular has a connector that is a bit bulky and doesn't fit some cases (not my problem tho)
Where have you seen Apple mention this ability? In the presentation they specifically called out being able to charge airpods via iphone _with_ a cable, not wireless charging between airpods and iphone.
I am surprised apple hasn't included this ability yet. My pixel 6 pro also has this ability.
Aah good catch, I misinterpreted it that way from the arstechnica liveblog. You can charge them from the phone using a USB C-to-C cable (airpods) or C-to-puck cable for the watch. Not quite as convenient, but still good to have.
This is just a very standard feature of dual-role USB devices, no?
I was also really hoping for wireless "MagSafe-out" charging for the Apple Watch, which would come in very handy when traveling – often there's limited outlets on hotel nightstands, and sometimes I just forget the watch charger.
Yeah, my solution for traveling has been a Satechi Quatro power bank, which has built in Qi and Apple Watch chargers. It's not MagSafe so lining up the phone on the charging pad is a bit fiddly, but it means I can charge my phone/watch/battery all from one USB-C plug and don't need a lightning or watch cable.
If I'm traveling with a computer too I use a 2x USB-C wall wart to fit everything in one plug. Not perfect, but beats the rat's nest of cables that it replaced.
Since the Qi charger isn't MagSafe it doesn't really work for topping up the phone from the battery on the go, so I often end up tossing a short Lightning cable in my bag anyway. Will be nice to have USB-C eventually and not worry about that (but I intend to drag this iPhone mini out for a good 5 years).
One of the features of my S10 I ended up loving is the ability to charge my (wirelessly chargeable) headphones via my S10 which can act as a wireless charger
The S10 line is long past its feature-updates timeline and may have just received its last security update, so I fear yours and my S10e are soon to be retired.
I will greatly miss the SD slot and headphone jack...
The iPhone 14 battery is considered user serviceable (but not the pro), the iPhone 15 pro has now adopted the 14's design. Basically the rear panel is now straightforward to remove, when before one had to go in through the front.
I assumed it was meant for occasional use by people on the go (like on an airplane without a charging port) who need to charge their AirPods case.
It seems unlikely that people will routinely charge their AirPods from their phone when they could just as easily use the same charger that they just charged up their phone with.
The battery inside your headphones is negligible. Each (for Airpod Pro) is ~1% of your phone's battery. The case has a little over 10%, if charged from 0-100%
This might be asking too much, but it would be neat if the phone was on a low battery (less than 10%), when you plug in a peripheral like the Airpods it will know to instead charge the phone from the plugged in device. Or for that matter, to be able to plug one iPhone from another iPhone without any risk of your phone's data being accessed.
I was searching for your comme t since 3 hours or so. Now that the event is over, do you know whether an iPhone 15 can charge another iPhone 15 directly ? A Pro?
I was really hoping Apple would tell the EU FU, and remove the port altogether. Some sort of wireless data only or some new port like magsafe, but for data.
"charging while using" is a pretty core use case. Are you expecting people to buy a bunch of cords with big dongles on the end? At that point the EU probably would still have grounds to take action since "magnetic attachment point port" isn't exactly "no port."
If you're tethered to a cord that's attached to your phone in a specific spot can you be said to not have a "port" even without part of the cable going "into" the case?
I suppose the lawyers would get paid a bunch to figure out how flexible the definition of "port" in the regulation would be. "Port" in networking is obviously purely a concept vs a physical hole. "Port" in shipping is also more conceptual, no two ports need share the same layout.
I was kind of expecting the "lowest spec" one to be magcharging only, but maybe that wouldn't really work with a "low spec" and the high end ones use USB-C for external drives and other things.
That is not their job, and they'll be happy to tell you it isn't, and they won't get fired for that. Their job is to do whatever they want insofar as the board doesn't replace them.
You mean like how AAPL drops nearly every time they have some kind of announcement? Yeah, I don't know if that's a good indicator of customer frustration.
How would you connect your iPhone to HDMI for example?
Port charging is faster and more efficient than magsafe.
The USB-C data transfer speed is great for data exchange. It is, afterall the "Pro" model.
Removal of the jack dramatically downgraded the quality if you care about it, wireless protocols are simply no match for high end audio. Suddenly ultra cheap phones sounded properly better.
Of course marketing sold it as benefit, which for some it was since they are ok with average quality. Considering thick brick that current iphones are for quite some time, space taken by port was never the issue, unlike stated originally as reason for removal.
Not all "really nice" headphones are high-impedance, and if they were a headphone amp isn't a source, it's an amp.
The source is the DAC and the DAC in that dongle is better than most audiophile DACs are. Remember, audiophile equipment is scams made by small companies and iPhone dongles have bigger R&D budgets than their entire industry.
You can't hear AAC compression artifacts. Or do you have an ABX test?
And if you could, it'd be balanced out in outdoors use cases by the lack of wired audio artifacts, namely cable telephonics sending walking impacts into your ears.
Anyway, AirPods do support lossless audio now. (Well, next year.)
The removal of headphone jack is no longer a daily hindrance to me, but it's become at best "every 3-4 days I swear at my company-mandated iPhone for not having a headphone jack" :)
If they remove all jacks, that's so many devices I own, and use-cases I have, poof gone!
I bought a lightning-headphone adapter, and may have to get a USB-C to headphone one (assuming it works). Well worth the expense, and you can just leave it connected to the headphones/stereo.
Oh I have 6. That's the minimum I need to have any hope of having one when I need it (in the car, in the home office, in the office-office, in the backpack, etc).
(I can't "leave it connected to headphones" as my iPhone is not the only device I own; I have multiple headphones and headsets ; and I move myself and my iPhone quite a bit. The nice thing about 3.5 was universal and ubiquitous. Every headphone or headset worked with every phone tablet and music device. Lightning without 3.5mm is just a constant pain in my keister :)
But, the context of this sub-thread as I understood it, is - if they discontinue all the ports completely / go wireless, one could only use bluetooth headphones. And that's the suck because:
1. I already have a number of very nice headphones I planed to last me a lifetime
2. Bluetooth headphones have built-in obsolescence (battery, new protocols, etc)
3. Lag! I like to play synthesizers / make music on computers and tablets. Or play games with Kishi. Bluetooth is a pain for such use cases.
My car is old and cheap and doesn’t have Bluetooth. Needing to swap between Lightning and USB-C dongles when my wife and I swap over music duties is annoying enough, it’d be far worse if one of those was some magnetic thing that could slide off when I try to prop the phone up in a cup holder.
Dynamic Island, USB-C and camera enhancements make me glad this is my upgrade year (I have a 12). I will probably grab the base Pro model for $200 more due to even better camera though, but I would be pretty happy with the 15 regular as well. I stopped with the big phones a few years ago... the battery bump is nice, but my phone goes everywhere and I prefer the regular size in my hand and pocket.
It takes great photos. I never use the port. Dynamic Island is an Emperor's new clothes marketing scam where they've just moved the bezel even more in the way than it was and managed to convince people it's a good thing.
I don’t quite get all the comments that are expressing disappointment- I think the camera and particularly the zoom is a great upgrade versus my 12 pro, and there’s a bunch of other nice to haves.
I’ll probably upgrade next year though not this one. Expecting major improvements and new features every year is odd to me.
These incremental gains add up over the 3-4 years that I feel is a reasonable minimum phone life.
Do people expect Apple to proclaim “our new version has incremental upgrades, only buy if your phone is a couple years out of date”?
Product launches are always a lot of theatrics regardless of the company.
I don’t think anyone actually takes them any more seriously than a mcdonalds ad implying eating their hamburger will make one more like the cool sports star being paid a million to hold the hamburger.
The cynic in me knows the real reason for them to be a carbon neutral company is so that you don't feel bad purchasing another one of their phones since it was produced "neutrally".
According to my research (1) wireless charging increases the consumption between 40 and 80 % depending on how well you align the coils.
It would be very much Apple move to take something that wastes enormous amount of energy (given the number of people who have iPhones) and claim it is eco-friendly.
12.7Wh per battery for the iPhone 14, times a billion iphones. Assume a worst case scenario of full battery usage per day per phone, which gives us 5 billion watts or 5 gigawatts.
Doubling that power use if everyone switched to low quality wireless charging (50%) would require another 5 gigawatts, or a few thousand more wind turbines.
Bigger than I thought in a worst case scenario, but still not too bad.
Especially if wireless charging prevents premature replacement by reducing port failure, as the embodied energy is estimated to to be the majority of the energy involved in the lifecycle of a smartphone.
Running an Air Conditioner in a small room for an hour (~500Wh) uses the same energy an iPhone would take in ~40 complete charge/discharge cycles. Of course, the numbers look big when you scale them up but as a percentage of total energy use, it's marginal to non-existent.
Back of the napkin: hundred million iPhones recharging their 13 Wh battery once a day every day from zero to full for a year is about 60 % the electric energy that this power plant [1] makes in a year.
Not huge amount of energy, but not negligible either.
Not negligible, but also a small cost of the total cost of the iPhone system. call it 500 megawatts for 100m iPhones, which for moderately expensive generation capacity is ~ 2million per megawatt of capacity, works out to $10 per phone in electricity. A typical power plant has expected lifetimes of ~25-50 years, which if we assume a generous 5 year phone lifespan, and a 25 year plant life...
That works out to $2 per iPhone to build power plants to charge the iphone every day for it's an entire life. Not bad for a device that costs hundreds of dollars.
Now that it's become like the USB-C port on the iPad (at least at high end) I doubt it will go away, but maybe the SE will be replaced with a watch-like "no ports" phone someday.
yes, but I've heard many, many negative things about it (lag, slow charging, phone overheating, etc). I don't think I've ever heard of anyone actually liking it.
It's orthangonal until however you're charging it can't keep up with demand. A 14 Max on a standard USB-A -> Lightning connection is already really marginal. Like, I can drive for an hour with waze running and the phone plugging in (wired carplay) and it'll charge maybe 5%.
What kind of amperage is your car putting out? Older cars really struggle to power phones. In some cars, it's possible to upgrade the USB port - otherwise, you may be better off using the 12V port (cigarette lighter) since you have wireless CarPlay available to you.
In my Fusion, I'm stuck using wired Android Auto, so I am unfortunately not able to use the 12V port for charging.
You can get an adapter to change that wired android auto to wireless. I've done this in my ute. Then with my s22 I can use the 12v port with a QC3.0 compatible charger and get above 1% per minute charge whilst still having android auto running.
The adapter plugs in to the USB port for android auto and then offers up a wireless connection. Everything is automatic once set up.
I think that's largely due to car manufacturers being shit at software. The previous generation of my current car was absolute trash when it came to CarPlay. Even the wired version of it sucked.
The 2023 model had the entertainment system massively upgraded. Wireless CarPlay is seamless and fast. The wireless charging pad isn't amazing but it does the job just fine.
Wireless CarPlay works great in our VW. What sucks is that when Apple abandoned Qi wireless standard the wireless charging pad in the car doesn’t work well or consistently with the MagSafe design.
They’re technically QI compatible but they don’t work as well with those chargers — much harder alignment issues and therefore less stable and reliable charging in my experience.
I honestly didn't know non-wireless carplay existed until you said something. Everyone I know just keeps their phone on a charging pad somewhere in the car.
It fits a use case for some but it doesn't appeal to me.
- Plugging the phone in is so easy.
- With Wireless Carplay presumbably I'd have to futz with the phone anyway if both of our phones are associated with the entertainment system
- I still have to take the phone out of my pocket to put it on the wireless charging pad. That is actually the hassle, not plugging the phone in
- If I don't care about charging my phone, I assume my phone is going to heat up in my pocket and drain the battery while I'm doing Wireless Carplay stuff
- A lot of my driving is short 10-15 min trips. Can put a pretty decent charge into my phone during that time with the wired connection. Not with inductive charging.
I had wireless CarPlay in my last car and every single iOS update would brick the connection somehow. Eventually muscle memory for just plugging in the damn phone took over.
I suspect they have a few things to work out with regards to CarPlay wireless connection(s) before they could remove ports on the device, in addition to the other comments on this thread.
My prediction is that Apple's going to introduce some sort of "MagSafe Data" protocol — some kind of high-bandwidth NFC that runs through an autonomous controller chip that comes up before the rest of the device, such that it can be used to DFU-restore / JTAG / etc. the phone, just as Lightning currently does.
Which is a lot of the people who have bought new vehicles in the last 5+ years. And I can't think of any way to work around it that wouldn't (or at least couldn't) be some horrendous kludge which probably wouldn't work very well.
I'd never say never obviously but dropping ports entirely would have to be a terrible decision anytime soon. (And one wonders what assurances Apple has made to auto manufacturers adopting CarPlay.)
There's brave as in people whine because it's pushing the envelope but it can be easily worked around (see headphone jack) and there's brave in the sense of foolhardy which I have to believe all wireless would be in the next decade. (On a phone. Seems reasonable on a watch especially one advertised as suitable for fairly extreme conditions.)
> And I can't think of any way to work around it that wouldn't (or at least couldn't) be some horrendous kludge which probably wouldn't work very well.
One could always dream of head unit updates for wireless carplay support...
Where "work quite well" means "latency". It's even a sub-header in TFA linked above. It's the reason we didn't buy a dongle for our new Hyundai Ioniq 5 (which inexplicably still uses USB-A in 2023, and no wireless CarPlay), because every single review for every single dongle at best said, "...and the latency isn't all that bad." Oh, it'll be bad for me if it's bad enough for a reviewer to notice. Grabbing the cable when I get in the car isn't nearly as annoying as waiting for my button press to register.
I don't know about spite — I feel like they were holding off on moving the iPhone to USB-C for so long precisely because they had already planned on going portless "soon", and it would have been silly to do two of these "brave" transitions in quick succession.
That prediction always seemed premature to me. Wireless charging still can't compete with USB fast charging for speed, and cables are more portable then even the sleekest wireless chargers. While I imagine Apple will ditch cables as soon as they think it's feasible, I just don't think that's going to happen for at least a few more years.
But its like fundamental physics and it doesn’t make sense to ditch wires — it will always take more energy and more loss to transport anything in a medium of distant molecules vs a tightly coupled one with interesting properties.
And for what benefit? That port is already water-proof.
recording your footage directly to external storage is kind of a dependent feature though. They are angling on the prosumer / low end commercial videography with that.
I suspect lots of people who would be happy to shoot on a phone have upgraded to blackmagic specifically because you can just swap the card and keep rolling.
It just doesn’t make sense to go wireless only, like even as the presentation showed, there are great usecases for wires, like moving data fast to external storage during video recording. Also, charging is much much slower without a cable, and then we didn’t even talk about debuggibility, servicibility, for no reason whatsoever. Apple is not hurt by usb-c, they have been using it for many years on their own dime. They just waited around so if anyone takes offense (see other commenters) they can freely point their fingers at the EU. They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
Based on an analysis of their product line up and past actions, I believe their ultimate intention was to introduce USB-C as the port for iPhone "Pro" models and remove the port entirely from the regular non pro models, in favor of wireless charging. You can see a proto version of this in the current iPad lineup: the Pro and Air (mid range model) have USB-C, while the base iPad uses Lightning.
You're right that USB-C can transfer data very fast in comparison to Lightning, but most casual users likely don't do this at all. They primarily use cloud backup solutions. This is somewhat supported by the fact that data transfer speeds on non pro models of the 15 are the same as Lightning.
Additionally, Apple had much more control over who could legally produce cables and accessories with Lightning due to owning the standard, which isn't the case with USB-C.
I really think the only reason it didn't shake out like this is because wireless charging tech just isn't where it needs to be. It's possible that Apple thought it was going to advance faster. They had one very ambitious product they were going to release for wireless charging that got completely canceled a couple years ago: theverge.com/2021/8/5/22611234/apple-airpower-wireless-charger-working-prototype
Do you know how rare it is for Apple to announce a product and then alter it at all from what they said when they announced it -- much less straight up cancel it?
They could have gone the iPad route, but part of the problem is that iPhones are a status symbol/conspicuous consumption product as well. There are plenty of people who buy the latest "Pro" model as a way of signaling status. This move would likely have caused a lot of confusion in general for less tech savvy people. It's no longer "Do you have an iPhone charger?" it's "Do you have an iPhone charger or that new new one?"
>They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
I really doubt this. Apple has never been one to shy away from making decisions that can be decried as shameless profit grabs. Example: removing headphone jack. Removing wall brick charger from phones.
They could not have predicted that the EU would introduce unprecedented legislation forcing them to this standard and they fought it vehemently.
The reason for USB-C was to adhere to a common standard. Getting rid of the port entirely and depending on a MagSafe charger is just the same as insisting on lightning, and you would have to buy special cables or devices for it.
These guys are insane. Every year the bloody product looks great (EDIT: not visually/aesthetically, looks like its got great features) and then the next year it somehow is even better. Satellite connectivity is fantastic. I believe T-mobile is bringing some of that too. If we get satellite backup calling or satellite data in the coming years it will be incredible.
I think I'll wait another year before I upgrade my iPhone 13 but this is great stuff.
At the end of everyone is a line "this is the best _____ we've ever made". well, duh. it would be insane to make something worse than the previous version.
Yeah, it feels like it's perfect as a phone. I absolutely love it. I'm actually quite surprised that they take what I think as a perfect product and still add stuff to it. Very impressed by Apple in every way. Great product. Great engineering.
Somehow they always dodge the reverse Osborne effect, haha!
Given the way those antennas work I doubt that. From what I understand they did some neat tricks to send very simple signals for the SOS stuff in the absence of that.
I can believe that. Perhaps network carriers will just place Starlink terminals with solar cells everywhere. Not having to do fiber or have sufficient connectivity in a mesh might make the whole thing fantastic!
>Every year the bloody product looks great and then the next year it somehow is even better
It's literally the same design since the iphone 11.
You need to see them side by side to notice the difference but any other user won't be able to tell at a glace that you own the 15 and not an older model.
The memes will be great on how apple's designers opened last year's CAD files, changed the radius of the corners and called it a day, and can kick back till next year while being paid boatloads.
It's not, but the improvements have been extremely incremental. The internals of the 14 were redesigned for better repariability, and the 14 pro model moved the camera into the middle of the screen.
IMO, this was a pretty weak announcement. They spent so long talking about environmental stuff, like getting rid of leather, that it felt like they were trying to pad the presentation to reach a reasonable length. There were a few new things (more optical zoom, slightly smaller bezels), but these were all leaked in advance.
I was also disappointed to hear that the satellite stuff is limited to 2 years. Is it going to be yet another subscription after that?
They won't fit new iPhones, IIUC. Third parties will still make them, but they won't be available as rapidly as Apple's cases.
I'm curious how much they're charging for this 'premium' new FineWoven material, which they pitch as a replacement for leather. Will they price it the same? Will people be willing to pay that much?
How many leather cases do you go through per phone? I think they just said they're not making any new leather products, not immediately killing all existing ones. I'm sure the sales channels will eventually dry up though.
You should take better care of your things. A leather case every 3 months is unbelievably wasteful. This type of careless behavior is killing our planet.
I appreciate that you rephrased this from your original comment, which was incredibly dismissive.
But this is still condescending and hyperbolic. I'm as surprised as the next guy that anyone would go through multiple iPhone cases per year, but I don't know anything about him, his family/habits/clumsiness, so I would not make such judgmental remarks.
And from a practical perspective, you will win zero converts by telling strangers on the internet that they are "killing our planet".
I don’t personally use leather, but I have been lead to believe that it is the longest-lasting and most repairable material. Are those people just lying to justify their purchasing habits?
Interesting. I still have my iPhone6 leather case (been meaning to throw it out) - it's a bit worn around the edges but it still holds and isn't gummy.
Currently I find otterbox cases are fantastic grip/slide ratio that I prefer to my old leather case.
The new-er leather cases are no where near the quality of the X, Xs series leather cases. My 5 year old Xs leather case was like a baseball glove from my youth. These newer ones, like the one on my iPhone 14 just doesn't wear the same.
I haven't had a case since the 6, which was nice. I could imagine that as time went on and volume went up, they had to source lousier leather. The cynic in me also wonders if they didn't keep their leather products as nice so that people wouldn't miss it as much after it's replaced by FakeLeather, or whatever they're calling it.
Small (anec)data point, but I got invited last week by my local Apple Store to attend the event there and upgrade on the day. Never had that happen before, and have a history (that Apple surely knows) of buying 6 months after launch and then holding for 4-7 years.
I get the impression — admittedly having not watched the event — that Apple feel the need to work hard and drum up interest for this release.
Super weird. I've had iPhones since day 1, but never gotten such an invite. They must know that demand will be weak. I was thinking I'd upgrade my 13 mini, but after seeing this lineup I may stay on the sidelines for now. I expect there will be some sales coming in a couple months, at least through carriers.
I recently switched from android to the iphone ecosystem; I had a 3a and then a 4a, and recently updated to a 7a, but it never really clicked with me -- just too big.
Got a 13 mini; I kinda don't like a bunch of aspects of the iphone ecosystem, but the mini form factor is really perfect.
I liked my 11 Pro before the mini, but if I'm going to go back to a non-mini phone I'll have to toss some of my jeans, whose pockets are too small for non-mini phones. I do find typing on the 11 Pro to be easier than on the mini, since the keyboard is wider. But I love to swipe-type on the mini.
You can probably find it for awhile "in the channels", i.e. 3rd party retailers like cell-phone stores for a little bit longer until their stock is depleted.
On one hand they talk about getting rid of leather, then they talk about getting something with a "suede" feeling. I hope we aren't replacing leather with microplastics-infused future garbage.
Of course that's what's happening. How else would Apple reduce its microplastic footprint come 2035, if they didn't stealthily increase it in 2023? Perhaps they'll cut down on microplastic pollution with a return to 'natural' materials. I wonder if leather might fit the bill?
I wonder how much worse accidental UI interactions will be due to smaller bezels. I alredy despise phones that I have to pick up _really_ carefully not to engage some completely unwanted gesture.
Yep, I see pretty much zero reason to go with the 15 Pro, other than to avoid the terrible colors of the 15. The Pro Max gets the better camera, but the smaller Pro seems like a lousy deal — especially if the smaller bezels result in more accidental touches.
Woah, fairly confusing. Looks like the base Pro gets the same "pro camera" according to this: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
But the zoom options are different so it's clearly not the same.
They also talked confusingly about optical-quality zoom, or some such thing, on the lower end phones. They made it sound like you can either take a 48MP photo or a zoomed 24MP photo. Sounds like digital zoom to me...
There are a lot of days I'd be strongly tempted to answer that with "Google", but that's unfair since they usually just kill the product rather than actively making it worse.
> is there a company making worse products every iteration?
Very many companies that built a brand around quality before being quietly sold to a private equity firm are doing just that, to maximize profits for as long as they can while the brand still has a good reputation.
It can be really obvious if you’ve owned a quality product for many years and then go to replace it, only to see that the current rendition is effectively a cheap knockoff.
People have had the option to use bluetooth headphones since 1999. Removing the headphone jack from iPhones wasn't some revolution. Apple simple took away a choice.
I personally know a lot of people who didn't realize wireless headphones were a thing pre-Airpods. They seriously thought Apple created that market with the first wireless headphones.
I imagine a lot of people didn't know or think about wireless headphones until Apple made it a thing.
Bluetooth audio was awful for a long time, and not a serious replacement for wired headphones until very recently. It's clear that companies remove the jack to simplify manufacturing and cut costs, but at least BT headphones are usable nowadays. So as much as I disliked the trend when Apple started it, I'm not as annoyed by it anymore. Save for the hassle of BT pairing, which can sometimes be wonky, but this isn't an issue on Apple devices, AFAIK.
I'll mention GM, since they are taking CarPlay and Android Auto out of their new vehicles so they can charge a subscription fee for worse versions of the same features your phone already provides for free.
I didn't see the announcement, but I saw this blurb on Engadget:
> The company noted that while leather is popular for things like watch straps, it has a serious impact on the environment, particularly at Apple's scale.
Is that actually true? I remember reading a few years ago that there was actually a big glut of leather: people still eat steak and hamburgers, and without a market for the cow hides then that material is wasted. That is, I thought the leather market was largely a byproduct of the beef market, and that reducing leather usage won't have a measurable impact on reducing the number of slaughtered cows.
It's hard to know for sure. The most common analysis, following the PEFCR standard, takes the carbon impact of cows and then divides it up in a certain ratio between flesh and leather products, then adds the tanning and production steps. Arguably it would be fairer to treat leather as purely a byproduct, which would dramatically reduce the resulting carbon footprint numbers for leather.
Replace killing cows with micro plastic pollution, slap Apple price on it and call it an eco improvement.
In few years full reverse, cleaning up the planet while supporting free range happy lives of cows. Really, who actually buys this in-your-face bullshit? There are proper technical improvements to talk about.
I learned recently that microplastics are primarily from fabrics. Our polyester/synthetic workout clothes shed them in the washer and they end up everywhere. Plastics also generally have a pretty low carbon footprint, ironically.
you're right, this is greenwashing. I sell into the market sometimes and the hides are basically wasted unless you try hard to line up buyers. plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere. It's true that factory-raised beef is bad for the environment though, as they eat grains that are fertilized from oil via Haber–Bosch. It's also true that tanning uses lots of nasty stuff, but there is vegetable tanning which works well and sourced from nuts and stuff.
> plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere
This totally ignores the land use issue. Cattle absolutely decimate natural areas. e.g. significant areas of the midwest/great plain that were prairie with deep roots to store carbon are now pasture. Pasture grass has comparatively shallow roots and limited ability to store carbon.
Hasn't the midwest host large herds of grazing buffalo for millenia? I think the last I read about this stuff, most cattle farmers want their grass to still be the old school deep-rooted stuff, if other grasses take over it is a symptom of overgrazing.
- Grazers improve the capacity of grass to carbon capture
- Some land is ONLY able to grow grass. The alternative is desertification, and so livestock is the only option to produce food. edit: unless you bring in fossil fertilizers.
> you're right, this is greenwashing ... plus, if your beef is grass fed for its whole life like ours, it's carbon neutral, as all the carbon that goes into the animal came from the atmosphere
Sounds like you might be doing a bit of greenwashing yourself. The carbon came from the atmosphere, but the cows make methane, which is much worse. Also they spoil the land and water. And also you're not counting the carbon used to actually raise them, like the gas in the equipment and the transport.
Now calculate the use of the agricultural machinery to get the same number of calories from plants.
I have no idea how cows "spoil land and water". Have you seen a cow?
No one ever said plant based food is carbon neutral. But it uses way less carbon than cows. And yes, I've seen a cow. Many. They spoil the land by trampling it and the water by having their excrement run off into it.
Thats not how that works, just like the water cycle there is a carbon cycle.
You can’t produce “more” greenhouse gases in a closed system, the system will ebb and flow; until you dig up megatons of carbon that has been stored for a few hundred millennia and insert it into that system.
(same story with polar ice caps and the water cycle)
The water cycle is actually the perfect analogy. The form of the water is almost as important as the amount. When you take all the water out of the ground and put it on the surface, and then a bunch evaporates, sure, we have the same amount of water. But we're still in big trouble because we don't have usable fresh water.
If you take a bunch of carbon in the grass and convert it to methane gas, sure you have the same amount, but it's a lot worse for the planet.
My current (and if I understood correctly: the current scientific) understanding of the carbon cycle does not indicate that methane is significantly more harmful than other forms of carbon release, mostly due to the fact that it does not have a significant lifetime in the atmosphere.
The issue remains, squarely, on adding to the carbon cycle. The harmful values of methane output is directly correlated with the oil based feed which GP mentions.
The water cycle is a great example because it is filtering the water as it goes, rapidly producing fresh water that rains on the land. Methane, likewise, is a short-lived byproduct of excess animal activity, and in a steady state sustainable mode, we have equality. The problem is the finger of oil on the scale, not the grass-raised beef, just like how excess bovines produce excess methane.
The land with cattle on are the most productive, as they get quite a compliment of natural fertilizer from the cattle. I would say cattle do not spoil the land, but improve it. This can't help but be the case, given the way grass responds to being eaten.
Additionally, once the grazers improve grass life, the water-table improves. The worst lakes in our area are surrounded by fertilized annual crops. Their water is polluted with nitrogen fertilizers and are very poor quality, with blue-green algae blooms, and as a result are not swimmable. My friend lost a dog to such a lake.
The land with active grazers in contrast, is very good at preventing this problem. The best lake for 200km around me is surrounded by grass-fed cattle operations, and there is absolutely no problem with algae blooms.
I think a central problem of our time is that educated elites are detached from reality, not seeing things like what I mention above, and so are acting upon their false perceptions, causing great harms as a result. The Apple announcement today about leather acts to confirm my suspicions about this.
Don't forget about the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer that is sprayed over crops that gets washed into the water. The Mississippi river and the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is an example. Where i live, cow pasture land mostly is untouched.
Also, cows have feet and digestive systems so it takes more equipment and diesel for harvesting and processing grains.
They don't kill cows to make leather. The cows are raised for meat and milk. Actually, NOT using leather is worse for the environment because now you have leather which has no use and you're creating pleather or whatever replacement.
I think what you are doing is definitely better than some of the specific agriculture feedstocks for cows that increase the enteric emissions of cows to make them grow quickly. That said it isn't carbon neutral - the digestive systems of cows produce methane from food. Methane is between 24- 29 times more impactful then carbon for global warming.
Cows still have a signifiant impact on especially as a function of how large the industry has become.
And to your point - wasting hides is also not great. Would be great if we were less wasteful in general.
I suspect that because of conservation of energy, methane is a highly reactive over the short term, but ultimately an insignificant element in the big picture IF you ignore the massive oil inputs humans are adding to the system. That is to say, methane on its own is not a reason to discourage digging up oil to make grain, which is used to feed cattle.
I'd go as far as saying that leather accessories are actually even better for environment since they easily outlast any fabric or silicone ones.
It's really just shameless greenwashing from Apple, nothing more.
There are interesting second-order effects. For example, this will tend to make wholesale leather less expensive, for producers of third-party bands and other small items (I assume that large items use a different type of leather, since they require larger swathes).
I'm surprised they're pricing these new fabric bands at $99. If they sold these alongside leather bands, would they sell at that price? Seems like they're trying to position them as a replacement for a premium product, but without any proof that they are worthy of the lofty price.
I read that article, but I disagree that the conclusion is "Leather itself is a driver of deforestation and not just a secondary byproduct."
That is, what I'd like to know is whether all those cows in Brazil would still exist even without a leather marker, but just for their beef. The linked research sort of tries to make that argument, but it doesn't really provide any convincing evidence.
In their defense, iPhones haven’t changed much, and IMO that’s a good thing. I still use an iPhone SE and haven’t experienced any issues. I have a much older iPhone which i stopped using a couple years ago but it was the same, and I suspect it might still even support the latest OS and apps
I have recently been led to believe that people eat so much beef that so a ton of potential cow hide goes to waste instead of being turned into leather because there isn't enough demand for leather (compared to beef).
Is this true or false?
If it's true - then how is leather bad for the environment?
I don't eat beef - but it's interesting to me how many people eat hamburgers and then look at someone with a leather bag like they're the devil.
As with a lot of things environmental - this seems purely idealist and not realist.
They are imagining it like an elephant killed just for its tusks. For some leather goods made from certain animals this might be true, but today almost all parts of the animal usually have a buyer and end up getting used in some way, even if it's just ground up into dogfood.
Instead of supposing something, how about you take Google for a stroll and figure out the (very interesting) answer to this yourself. Spoiler: leather actually has a profoundly grave impact, and it’s not just a „free“ by-product of meat.
This satellite thing... carriers around the world gonna love it when Apple decides its time to leave them out from the equation and will use Musk's satellites.
IMO, it's not mature if the battery life is one day. The product it is seeking to replace (a "watch") can last for years on a single battery. Most people wouldn't mind charging once every week or two, but a "watch" that has to be charged every day is not a mature product in my book. It's especially embarrassing because Garmin and various Chinese companies (Amazfit) have sleeker watches that run for weeks.
Apple could sell a lot more watches if they upped their battery life game. I guess they want a watch that can do a zillion things, one day at a time. I prefer a watch that can do a few things, for a couple weeks at a time.
I find the Amazfit display to be very nice, and it lasts 2 weeks on a charge. I have no idea why Apple is stuck at daily charging for the AW9. I could pay $800 to get an AWU, and then use it in low-power mode for up to 5 days, but that seems absurd. The Amazfit GTR 4 is 1/4 the price and the battery lasts 3x as long (as low-power mode AWU)
Daily charging is for normal use, including > 2k nits in sun, with always on display. Low power mode gets around 3 days (all sizes I've tried).
But, you point still stands high, especially since it's also using AMOLED! I naively assume the Amazfit is using a much lower power processor. I've played 3d games, at what looks like 60fps, on my Apple watch. I...don't understand why I should be able to do that.
> I've played 3d games, at what looks like 60fps, on my Apple watch. I...don't understand why I should be able to do that.
Exactly — it feels like Apple is going with a high-power device that gives modest battery life, when what I want is a lower-power device with extended battery life.
1) Wireless reverse charge from phone - you go take a shower remove phone from your pocket and remove your watch and put on your phone - 10 min shower + 5 min shaving should be enough to charge to 100% as some android phones with 100W fast charging
2) wireless charging via some smart apple watch bands with chargers coils inside macbook on the left side and right side of touchpad - so that every time I type on macbook it charges my apple watch
But where would the marketing budget be deployed? I enjoy seeing how they produce the event but the content this year wasn't interesting enough to keep my attention
It’s just another way of increasing margins and justifying it with platitudes about environmentalism. Corporations co-opting things for profit.
It’s why you can’t get a paper bag at many grocery stores today. Those bags cost them a lot of money that’s now going into their pockets while you are forced to buy bag after bag (because who always has a bag on them?!) that only becomes a net positive after thousands of uses. Which it never will come close to.
Was it only weak because you knew about the new things in advance?
The switch to USBC seems pretty significant. As well as the 3mm chip in the pro models.
The move to USB-C is a big deal for some people, but it’s hardly a headline feature for a new phone. The new manufacturing technique is nice, but only if it translates into tangible benefits for the user (which were not apparent from the presentation).
Not strictly speaking, but in this case there were hardly and exciting leaks. Some people care about USB-C (I don’t), and some people care about the new zoom levels (I do, but not enough to buy an enormous phone).
If they actually cared about the environment they would have spent that time describing how easy they made it to replace the screen and battery on every announced device.
I really liked the Mother Nature part. It may be greenwashing but it’s encouraging to see the world’s biggest company taking these steps.
Planting forests, installing solar grids, carbon neutral offices, that all costs the company, it’s not cost savings disguised as green actions. Sure it has marketing value, but that’s hard to measure.
Smaller plastic free packaging and shipping by sea on the other hand could be made to save money without care for the environment. Being able to market it as green is just an added bonus.
Felt like I was watching a presentation made with AI actors. The long pauses, PR-driven language, it was all so sterile and politically correct. Very cringe.
Apple over the last years has made a very conscious effort to have a set of speakers with diverse backgrounds.
It’s good in many ways, but also hard to ignore just how obvious that effort is once you realise it’s there. That’s true for all presentations, including the dev talks at WWDC.
It is hard for me to push aside the impression that nowadays the speakers - regardless their background - are entirely chosen for optical reasons. My only favourite moment in a recent big presentation was the M1 chip part with Srouji. That guy is not made for the camera but man he lives hardware with every fibre of his soul.
I think that's fine honestly, if you want to maximize your talent pool you have to motivate the entirety of society to become interested and not just the groups already overrepresented. For example it's not like women are genetically predetermined to lack interest in hardware, that's a social construct.
Good summary. I can’t take huge corporations seriously when they virtue signal to this extent. Apple cares so much about diversity, while kids mine their cobalt in the Congo.
There is a whole segment of society that cannot watch a 12 minute video unless there is at least one offensive joke. They are the audience of every right-wing grift YouTuber and dirtbag leftist podcaster.
Everything else is "politically correct" according to this segment.
That doesn't mean that covid is an acute pandemic. You have to weigh risks and potential consequences for society. Hospitals aren't filling up with new cases, aren't they?
RE long covid: This is just the fallout that's being worked on. I also don't care about unverified estimations tbh. The numbers game in the pandemic was off and politicised in almost all countries all over the world.
I'm happy with this pre-recorded style by Apple. It's really high quality so it's fun to watch even I've never considered to buy anything. Though this session is a bit boring script for me.
I think the need for a special presentation for yearly iterative updates to a phone and watch is pretty minimal these days. Just put out a press release
funny how first ever 3nm cpu, ray tracing and console grade games on smartphone, titanium case and state of the art new camera crammed in thinnest case found no excitement on tech forum, but physically inferior usb-c that causing all kinds of hardware problems considered worthy.
Well, now you can swap iphones as often as android due to broken connector. Or buy apple care and off warranty repairs from Apple. Another hundred millions for Apple, thanks EU!
i had a perfectly good Air 3 essentially die on me because the lightning port wore down and the hassle of getting it fixed was outweighed by getting a 5 with USB-C. same thing with my Mini 2 before that. touchwood, all of my USB-C devices have lasted perfectly well (including a Switch that is older than the Air 3). USB-C also puts a lot more of the stress on the cable, which is much easier and cheaper to replace, and (as pointed out in the event) the switch means you can use one connector for a wide variety of devices.
Shouldn't be so surprising, just as many people (hopefully much less) are arbitrarily consooming product as are pragmatic—especially in a severely lame economic environment—when it comes to the value something brings into their life, and usb-c to any pragmatic person was probably the most relevant inconvenience to getting the most value they can out of their device.
I've never owned an iPhone, and mainly think of the phone I do have as at best a minor addition to my life, but put a battery-efficient modem in my mac and I'll be all over that, because it lets me keep my phone off almost all the time.
Aside from that though, it's always neat to see incremental innovation anyway, but it would all be superfluous to me even if I was in the iPhone game.
The linked website looks like something from a company that knows they don't even have to try at all and they're guaranteed to sell more phones than any other company in the world, and it shows.
And, yet, ~20% of the population will see this news release, and talk about how clean the lines are, and how perfectly worded every sentence is, as if it was handed to us from God himself on stone tablets.
Yeah, the psychotic robo zombies controlling the corp takes its toll. Jobs also had this cult like woooism aura, but these "people"... are straight from They Live :DD.
I'm starting to buy into these rumors that Apple might buy Disney, because they're doing the same wooden performances as the kids on Disney Channel. Lots of weird hand motions.
Yeah, the presentation style often screams "I've taken exactly 3 acting classes to learn how to present". The style is remarkably uniform too, like they're constantly remembering how to move their hands.
It's not just the announcement videos, it's also all of the WWDC recordings. Technically they're pretty good, much better than the api documentation, but just deeply unsettling.
I haven't bought a new iPhone since the 5. I typically would wait a year and buy a used year-old model for half price (with AppleCare). But I didn't do this after the XS, and now with Pro and non-Pro models it's incredibly complex to find the best value since used prices are so dynamic and there are so many models to choose from.
Might be time to just buy a new one with USB-C and use it for 5+ years.
Am I wrong or is iPhone 15 usb-c is usb2 just with a different connector. Seems to me like only the pro is getting usb3 even though usb3 was first released in like 2008.
Update: confirmed in iPhone specs page.
It’s no coincidence that Intel just released info on thunderbolt 5 spec yesterday. How much money could it really add to goto the next usb? Is there some kind of hardware design he’ll going on behind the scenes
"USB4" is really thunderbolt 3 with a few compatibility tweaks. As such, it's a very different beast from USB3 (which is much closer to the USBs that preceded it): more like "external PCIe" than "USB".
I imagine most people - especially those not using the Pro models - only care about universal charging. I think I’ve connected my iPhone to my PC for data transfer maybe two or three times since I switched ~six years ago, and even on Android I used network shares and such more often than not.
I’d agree most people can happily just use WiFi speeds for most tasks, but I’m just shocked that apple would aim to save money or force a product differentiation by using usb2. It’s fairly ancient now.
I wonder if the base A16 simply doesn’t support USB 3 and they weren’t motivated to change that - the 14 Pro/Max last year was still limited to USB 2 after all.
USB C is definitely more universal, it is used for laptops and peripherals and other random devices. Qi charging is mostly limited to phones and certain phone accessories, which usually also have USB C.
Maybe it matters to you, but I can't remember the last time I used cabled data transfer capabilities on any phone. As long as fast charging is supported (which, I'm sure it does), 99.9% of users won't care at all.
I am a bit surprised there isn't a Thunderbolt controller in the Pro, though. Seems like they already have the IP since it's part of the iPads already.
might be more popular with that crowd that doesn't backup on icloud but to their local desktop. For that non icloud folks I wonder how many use cable vs wifi.
I’m using WiFi 6 (not even 6E) for that and the limiting speed factor for me seems to be the SSD that I am writing the data to. I could throw money at that to make it faster, but I also don’t really care because I’m asleep while it’s backing up anyways, just like how you probably couldn’t tell me how long your iCloud backup takes.
that's very weird, what's the BOM savings here? Seems like a custom part regardless, is it the controller chip that's cheaper? USB C for 2.0 seems baffling I agree.
ouch, yah without some alternate explanation it kind of reeks of a deliberate caste system being created in the Apple ecosystem. Only certain folks would get it.
Actually BOM will differ because lightning can do USB2 so it’s probably reusing the same chip. USB-C needs a different chip and is harder to route too so I’m not surprised.
USB 2.0 on the 15 is kind of a joke considering it came out in April of 2000. 60hz, USB 2.0, getting a bit dated. I know a bunch of people will excuse it but at that price I think it's not ideal.
Oh and RIP 13 Mini, you'll be my phone until I can't use it anymore I suppose.
Has the EU legislation factored in the USB-*(D?) might come next? Hopefully it doesn't slow down adoption of new technology.
The main downside instead of buying a lightning cable that always work we now have to decipher the 10 minor variations of USB-C's various speeds/power now with zero consistency in naming schemes or amazon titles.
The iPhone is literally the last hold out for USB C. I'm pretty sure every modern Android phone supports USB PD and I think the EU is requiring PD charging as well, but nothing on connectivity speeds.
EU legislation has review built-in. No way it's going to be slower than switch from lightning.
Also from other commenters say Apple implemented USB 2.0, so you don't have to care about type of USB-C cable you're buying - these are for advanced features which as it seems are not present in iPhone 15.
Any suggestions? I see Best Buy has some open box minis for $630 and there are plenty of 3rd party refurbs for around $500. Feels like I'd have been better off buying a brand new one for $600 yesterday.
Can't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier. Only other authorized resellers either don't sell phones (B&H, Adorama, Staples), have a limited selection which is in-store only (Target, Walmart), which leaves only Best Buy and right now I see everything on backorder. Now that Apple isn't taking new orders there's a good chance those will be cancelled.
And then there's the roulette wheel of buying from Amazon or Newegg where you might get a refurbished phone advertised as "new" if it isn't a literal brick in a box.
Still comes down to my fault for being slow to act. I said I wished for a warning but you know what they say about wishes.
(For context of how slow I am, I'd be upgrading from a SE (2016))
Check the stores. I remember seeing old cycle products still for sale the week between announcement and the release date.
Not necessarily true this time but you might get lucky.
Just like with some car manufacturers, if you want e.g. increased safety or radar cruise control, you also need $10k of leather seats and sunroofs; by removing previous Pro models, Apple basically adds a massive price premium to the zoom lens.
As this is honestly the only thing I would need from a new phone, my wife and I stay on our iPhone XR year after year. I just can't pay $1500CAD merely to get more optical zoom than my existing phone :-/
They were selling the 13 Pro after the 14 Pro came out? I was pretty sure they always removed last year's Pro from the lineup when the new Pro comes out. Meanwhile last year's baseline models will stick around at a reduced price.
Sounds like the A16 just doesn't have the I/O block for USB 3. They are using the chip from the last generation for the base model.
Though to put this in a realistic context, I am curious what percentage of iPhones have ever, over their usage lifespan, made a data connection over USB. I suspect that percentage is low single-digit percentages, and -- again speculating -- I would wager they are almost always by users with the pro models.
Is it lame that it's USB 2.0? Yes. Will it matter at all for the overwhelming majority of users? Not in the slightest.
I have had a company mandated iPhone for about 4-5 years.
First year, I tried to transfer data via USB.
After I accepted that Apple hates me personally and does not want me to transfer any of my voice memos, photos, or videos, or documents, or files via USB (I don't have a macbook), you are indeed correct and I'm one of those people who does not make a data connection via USB to my iPhone. But while stat is true, as with all such stats, devil is in the details :).
I got around this limitation by adding my home NAS to the Files app. On the iOS side: set up the SMB connection in Files, hit the Share button on files I want to transfer, point it to a folder on the NAS, and transfer. On the PC side, I just grab the file in Explorer.
Airdrop works well for sharing files to other people's iOS devices, but I'd argue SMB is actually better for my use case. Airdrop sends files to a Mac's Downloads folder. SMB transferred files go exactly where I want them on the first try. The difference is just a couple extra taps in the 'Share' modal.
Though I must admit this isn't a solution for everyone. I doubt many iPhone users have a NAS stood up at home and would be happy to spend money on the 'simpler' solution of purchasing turnkey products and services from Apple.
Why would I use a lightning cable when getting data on or off the device is faster over Wifi. It's kind of a trick question, why don't you use this slower protocol? See no reason to upgrade it no one uses it!
It really isn't a trick question. If your needs are 100% satisfied through wireless, why would you ever care? I suspect for the overwhelming majority of iPhone users, even if the wired option was infinitely fast they would never have used it. We're long past the days of an iPhone suckling on iTunes.
The exception to this -- and there are exceptions -- tend to be "pro" users. If you're actually using the iPhone for video production in any way, USB 2.0 is a brutal limitation, and has long been a noted annoyance when you're transferring massive video files. Lucky for those people they'll be Pro buyers and will enjoy USB 3 (and maybe WiFi 6E? Not sure if this was delivered).
I'll raise my hand and say I still sync my iPhone over USB. Happy to move to WiFi, I just haven't, as my existing workflow works fine. I also have an old 2015 MBPr, so that plays into it as well.
It definitely serves as a differentiation between Pro and base, and I'm sure they'll get some additional pro upgrades by people just looking at a piece of paper and deciding that they must have USB 3.
However the lack of USB 3 IO on the existing chip from last year is a very real limitation. The Raspberry Pi 4 supports USB 3 via a separate host controller (the VL805) communicated with over PCI-e, given that the core SoC doesn't have the IO blocks...basically the same deal. That VL805 by itself is almost the size of the A16. Now of course Apple could make a USB 3 host controller dramatically smaller, but then they'd have a new SoC.
>It's not a matter of a dedicated processor block on the chip.
Yes it is. It’s just rare for any modern SoC to leave out an XHCI controller, which the Pi and countless others have in their SoC. Apple was an outlier
FWIW the A16 Bionic and earlier have a USB block, they just don't have a USB 3.0 block. They added one in the A17, probably porting over from the M1/M2.
For that matter, neither does the BCM2711 on the RPi4. It leans on an external chip -- almost as large as it -- for USB 3.0 functionality.
> I am curious what percentage of iPhones have ever, over their usage lifespan, made a data connection over USB.
It's actually a security vulnerability to do so, I'm very cautious to never click trust and I wish there was a setting to disable USB (data) entirely.
When that dialog pops up which asks if you want to "trust" the connected device, saying yes creates a token which is exchanged between the phone and the host and stored on the host. That token has special privileged with iOS and can exfiltrate some data from the phone without user interaction (this has become more and more minimal over the years, with the original iPhone as I recall it could literally take a full backup like from iTunes -- and there wasn't even a prompt on the phone to allow that). That token can also be exfiltrated from your computer and inserted into special boxes made by companies like NSO which have in the past utilize proprietary exploits to basically privilege escalate that minimal access and exfiltrate data from locked iPhones.
I sound like a conspiracy theorist and I should probably just delete this.
I'm a techie apple nerd and I've never made a data connection over usb. Just use google photos/icloud drive/air drop to transfer data to my desktop computer
Most likely, they weren't looking at the A16 needing to support USB3, since it was a phone chip (iPads now running on Mx chips instead), and Lightning didn't support USB3. The USB-C mandate was only a year ago, and I expect they probably were planning on exactly what goes into the A16 a year further back, so unless they respun a new A16x chip that had the USB3 controller, there's no point where they could have forecast the A16 actually needing to support USB3 until it was too late.
USB3 (on USBC) is actually asymmetric signaling so you need either a separate chip or digital logic to handle muxing the signals around which is extra cost Apple probably doesn't want to eat. The USB-2 pins on USBC are symmetrical so nothing extra required.
I will say the 15 Pro is a little smaller than the 14 Pro, and while it isn't a small phone per se, it's a lot smaller than most Android flagships. That's something at least.
USB 2.0 is a missed opportunity for bringing Stage Manager/screen mirroring feature from iPadOS to iPhone. This is already possible with iPad and a USB A + HDMI -> USB C adapter (plug keyboard/mouse into USB A, monitor into HDMI, and USB C into iPad).
I know a lot of people are apprehensive about the Apple Vision Pro, but seeing that I'll be able to take Spatial Videos with the iPhone 15 Pro Max was a huge feature for me. I can't see myself ever taking those videos with the headset itself, but if I can do it from my phone and re-watch the videos later, that's a massive QoL improvement imo.
That alone makes the upgrade worth it for me since I'm planning on picking up the Vision Pro!
It's software plus cameras, they're stitching together video from various focal lengths. I don't think the non-Pro Max models will ever be able to do it.
Rewatching the event video, it sounds recording spatial videos is supported on both 15 Pro models (time stamp ~1:17:30). I don't see anything on the compare iPhone models page though: https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
That was one of the more realistic complaints about the vision pro, "why would you take photos with it instead of experiencing the moment directly". A few people suggested that the iPhone will probably come into the equation, and it seems they were correct in that thinking (the timings suggest Apple had it planned this way.)
Have you been to anything involving kids performing in front of parents? Half of them are experiencing it through their phone. Very few people experience moments directly. The funny part is that unless something crazy happens very few of those videos ever get watched.
I feel that's not a reasonable comparison, filming something with a camera versus wearing a headset.
While I agree that holding up a phone in front of your face presents some degree of being disconnected from the action, I feel wearing a headset where one's entire view of the scene is a computed feed via cameras is totally disconnected.
So I do still agree that it wasn't a reasonable suggestion that people would be filming important life events while wearing their APV headset.
It's a human behaviour questions. So I don't feel my age is relevant here, since I am not everyone.
If you think it's reasonable that a person is going to be strapped into a headset at a child's birthday party, then that is indicative of what you believe would be socially normal or acceptable behaviour. I dare say other family members or guests won't see it that way.
In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
There is a not subtle difference between picking up a phone and filming something versus living an event where the only visual stimulus one receives is a second hand video feed. The discussion here seems to be pinned to an idea that this is equivalent, I can say very confidently that it is not.
Side note: I don't live in a bubble, I'm pretty accustomed to watching the stage via other people's phone screens when I don't have a direct view. I also film when I have someone in mind to share it with. However the idea that people are filming to use the footage is largely wrong, they're excited and enjoying the moment and want to capture that somehow, so out comes the phone, they might show some of it to a friend later, or a social post, but largely it's unused and not looked back upon. This behaviour is not comparable to wearing a headset.
> If you think it's reasonable that a person is going to be strapped into a headset at a child's birthday party, then that is indicative of what you believe would be socially normal or acceptable behaviour. I dare say other family members or guests won't see it that way.
> In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
which is precisely why apple is selling the concept of the curved front display, with high-res internal cameras to pass through an image of your face and eyes. if they can pull it off well, it should look like your normal face, so the appropriate social cues will be there.
>which is precisely why apple is selling the concept of the curved front display ...
This feature of the headset is so others can pop-in, or gauge when the user is unavailable (i.e. when the wearer's eyes are entirely occluded.) Which is how those features were largely demonstrated by Apple(sans one setting where everyone in a meeting was wearing one). While this makes accomodations for a person wearing a headset it doesn't "unwear" it and doesn't solve the issues around wearing a headset in public/social situations. There was significant umbrage taken to Google Glass (and still to Spectacles by Snap) and these both are relatively minor adornments in comparison. Even those wearing ordinary motorcycle helmets run into similar. It's not an old-fashioned thing, it's a human connection issue, some people don't even like speaking through protective glass shielding.
At this stage we are quite far down the rabbit hole from the original conjecture. There indeed seems to be a small number of respondents that feel singularly wearing a headset in public won't be irksome for others, or be too disconnected from reality - time will tell how this pans out. I feel there is already sufficient evidence, but a few aren't convinced.
Thus the feature from Apple to allow the recording of spatial video directly from an iPhone, without needing to adorn the AVP seems to be the pragmatic and realistic use case scenario.
Well, not anymore. You can now take a wide landscape shot of some beautiful scenery, and then go home and sit on a couch all by yourself to look at it with a VisionPro. Allegedly, it's impressive, almost like you were there ;)
I definitely try and be mindful about when I'm pulling out a camera or my phone to record versus being in the moment, but I do know in my family we tend to look at the stuff we record pretty often. Just about every other night before we go to bed one of the kids is saying "I want to look at pictures", aka lets go flip through some random spots in our lives and relive those memories together for ten minutes as we wind down in the evening.
This thread has turned into an acid test for exhibiting spectrum behaviour.
There are a few fervent voices that don't see any issue at all, neither for themselves or others around them. They're perfectly entitled to share this view, this isn't a criticism of that - it's more an interesting display of what people see as normal or acceptable.
I sit on the other side of the fence. I pay respect to the fact that in our world there are people that get upset about a simple plastic protective barrier, or someone not taking off their motorcycle helmet, or those wearing any technology that films them such as Google Glass or Snap's Spectacles, and even laws about filming others, displays or media. We have more than enough dot points to know that wearing a headset like the Apple Vision Pro in such a social setting is going to be bothersome for others (and for most, the wearer as well).
Apple needed to demonstrate the feature and did so accordingly, but just because it's Apple doesn't mean it's now socially normal. It seems clear that the primary use case will be filming spatial video on an iPhone and then using/experiencing that later. Especially as this means multiple angles can be captured spatially without special equipment.
Oh, yeah, I agree I don't know I like the idea of going to a kids dance recital and seeing people with the Apple Goggles on. I was mostly addressing this idea:
> The funny part is that unless something crazy happens very few of those videos ever get watched.
I do agree some percentage of people definitely just shoot long videos and take a million pictures that nobody looks at, but in my household we look at them all the time. But I'll only take like one or two photos and a short 10 second video of my kid going down a slide, not try and record the entire trip to the playground every time.
Then you're going to the wrong concerts. Lil Pump? Maybe. (Not to say anything against hip hop as a genre, but i've seen insta stories and as you say they're just seas of phone screens in the crowd. Disgusting)
At good jazz or alt rock concerts people take their phone out to take a few videos and pictures and then enjoy the rest of the show. For the really good concerts they make you put a sticker on the camera of your phone.
I regularly go back through my videos of my kids and watch them, and show them to my wife next to me. We then both feel emotional seeing how small they were.
And since the Photos app introduced the memories feature, where it creates montage videos of themes like "baby years" or "summer 2022", you don't even need to go back yourself.
Well I see Vision as just a secondary computing platform like using an iPad. Something you throw on, on the couch after work, and chill for an hour or two messing around, while messaging people in the Vision (sending photos back/forth).
So basically you wouldn't need to put it on to watch them but you'd regularly already have it on, instead of, say, watching TV. VR googles for those videos aren't exactly a hard requirement either if you're on the go.
If it stops being a novelty like "see this amazing experience in VR" where you hype yourself up and put work on doing it just for that - sure - it's not very amazing. But when it comes normal and integrated into a computing platform you already use daily it's definitely a plus.
I don't think so. The metaverse is the obvious endgame for entertainment. The only question is how long it takes to get there. Zero marginal cost everything is just a continuation of what made software so succesful so I think it should be clear to HN users why the idea behind the metaverse is so powerful.
I am absolutely baffled that Apple (and others) haven't updated their smart assistants with a competitive LLM. With Apple's privacy shtick and their mobile GPU efficiency, I was convinced we'd see something today. What am I missing?
I think Apple missed the boat on LLMs and was surprised by the success of ChatGPT.
They are no doubt working on an LLM-based Siri now, but they don't rush things, and they don't preannounce things, so we'll only hear about it once it is ready. And they are probably going to use a different term for marketing it rather than using a generic term like LLM.
I don't think they missed the boat, I think they recognize that LLMs aren't Apple-ready yet.
They don't roll out half-baked products, and they won't be comfortable placing the big disclaimers that ChatGPT relies on. They'll incorporate LLMs if and when they can guarantee that what Siri says will be consistently accurate and extremely difficult to abuse.
Agree that Siri isn't very good, and have been quite stagnant. It was released in 2011, that's 12 years ago!? Sure it's probably better now, but not 12 years of development better?
But, at the same time. ChatGPT and the likes have a very different failure mode, that feels even less Appley. Like saying actual fake stuff, or saying it understand that you want to turn the AC on when your son leaves school coming home - but then just not doing it, or doing something completely different. With current Siri the failings are at least very obvious…
LLMs as they are now are not a drop-in replacement for what people use voice assistants for.
If you ask it a question it doesn't know the answer to, "I don't know" is better than making up a bullshit answer. That could be potentially hazardous at iPhone levels of scale, giving everyone easy access to what appears to be a very intelligent AI chatbot without them understanding that it shouldn't be relied on for a lot of information people will ask it.
They would get an immediate benefit from using an LLM for intent recognition - i.e. knowing that a user wants to search or set a timer, etc. Current Siri is really bad at this. I'm sure even a fine-tuned Llama 7B would be a massive improvement over Siri.
It is phone voice assistant and if you learn how to use it, it works great as intended. The problem is when you want too much interaction. ChatGPT can fake it, Siri - cant.
No half-baked products? Have you ever tried using the translation feature in the book app? That is the most infuriating, dumb piece of software I have seen in a long time.
They definitely missed the boat in my eyes. The speed at which others have been able to produce meaningful assistants with LLM is astonishing. Considering Apple also have an approach where they announce and release in November / early the following year, to have nothing revealed seems like a missed opportunity to me.
Apple has consistently missed the boat on every major technical advancement, when compared to android. But when they do catch up, the quality is unmatched! Hoping the same with LLMs. I am sure they’re already working on it.
When they talked about Siri on-device on Apple Watch 9 they briefly said Siri had a ‘new transformer model’ and talked about improved dictation accuracy.
Honestly was half expecting more along those lines as part of the new chip announcement for the iPhone 15 Pro, but apparently not.
Siri in its current form is constantly "hallucinating" all sorts of stuff as it is. "Hey Siri, turn off the lights in the kitchen." -- "Sure, now playing a continuous stream of U2 on all of your speakers!"
Not going to happen until Apple can fully control the bounds of the output generated by the LLM (which no one is capable of doing right now). A handful of instances of it spouting...unfriendly stuff is enough to dent Apple's reputation, and so they aren't going to take the risk.
There is a rumor that Apple is working on an "embedded" "SiriGPT". Imagine "ChatGPT" but on device, no API calls, no extra latency. And all apps on your device can use this "SiriGPT" instantly to enrich the user experience.
it will be more profitable if they sell the Siri entry point to the one who bothers to do the research , the same way they sell the search box to google.
LLMs can't guarantee factuality. They're great for the conversational component, but they're a seriously bad and responding with reliably factual information. More important that its ability to deal with complexity would be an assistant's ability to respond to a request correctly.
That's abusing a turn-of-phrase to provide a counter-argument. Of course no one can guarantee universal factuality. But relative to information we're seeking from an assistant (schedules, email data, messages, music preferences) it is very easy to obtain highly accurate data. But LLMs don't work like that.
The conceptual model behind LLMs utilizes frequency to generate a reasonable response to a query. But that's a bad fit when you're looking for data accuracy that isn't represented by the model. If your model says most dental appointments occur on the 15th and responds so but my appointment is on the 17th, it's not only useless to me it's detrimental.
2,053 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 414 ms ] threadThe USB-3 controller is in the A17 chip and not a separate component, considering the lead time for chip design and production it seems Apple had the transition in mind for quite a bit longer than the recent legislation changes in EU parliament.
As a timeline: the EU Parliament only proposed making USB-C mandatory in September 2021, and then only formally approved it in October 2022, prior to that it was just the EU's serving suggestion. Enforcement only begins on new product introductions from the latest October 2024, Apple release their Phones in September, meaning both the iPhone 15 and 16 could realistically still use lightning without infringement.
However now that Apple has introduced USB-C EU member states can safely fast track the law without affecting their economies (despite certain HN fantasies, forcing a major phone supplier out of the market for lolz is not good for a country.)
Also as the Pro's USB3 controller is in the A-series chip and not a separate component it stands that Apple had already planned the change over -before- the EU even tabled it as a mandatory requirement.
Sure you could say that they saw the writing on the wall, which is certainly a factor, but they could have just as easily switched the port without deeper integration into the device just to satisfy a legislative requirement. On the other hand one could equally say: Apple have been transitioning their entire lineup to the type C connector over several years and now would be an appropriate time to bring the phone into the fold.
The idea that Apple bent to the will of the EU is largely overblown, it was an obvious change and their hardware indicates that they've been planning this for a while.
I am not surprised that Apple have planned this for a while, because the EU have been pushing this for a while even before making USB-C mandatory. Previously it was only a recommendation for micro-USB, and Apple was practically the only manufacturer that didn't adopt it.
If it was such an obvious change, why did it take them 5+ years longer than other manufacturers?
Source: The European Parliament website.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220930IP...
> Do you have a source for "newly released"? Everything I can find talks about "new" only.
Respectfully the only place you need to be looking for this information is the EU parliament website.
> By the end of 2024, all mobile phones, tablets and cameras sold in the EU will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port.
That's not what's happened though - the USB3.0 controller is part of the A17Pro chip.
It's trivially debunked that this change is in response to EU enforcement merely by observing the timeline of EU legislation and elementary understanding of chip design and lead time/mass production.
This isn't suggesting that they didn't see the writing on the wall, but it's patently evident that the decision was made even before the EU considered making type C the mandatory connection standard.
As I said already, it's just as likely this is part of their phased transition into the type C connector.
Also these MFi arguments for lightning are nonsense, not only are the fees minimal, but they persist with type C.
The EU forcing Apple to switch to the type C connector is largely a HN fantasy. It was happening regardless.
Once the EU signaled they were going to mandate this, there was no reason to do it any sooner. When Apple changed from 30-pin, there was an uproar. “Now my iPod Alarm Clock doesn’t work with my new iPhone!”
Now gets it both ways: more sales, no blame. “The EU made us do it…”
You aren’t wrong about being able to make money and claim the high moral ground while doing so…
Otherwise, AirPods are 100x better than wired.
The DAC in the dongle I got with my iPad pro is noticeably worse than my pixel 5a.
The audio quality of airpods is still subpar compared to $70 wired headphones.
I listen a lot to classical music and airpods 2 still makes becken (two cymbals smashed together. Don't know the English name) sound like someone throwing a rock into a pool.
I lose several pairs of headphones every year. Headphones being smaller is not a feature for me.
I have one pair of BT headphones. They have about 90ms latency, which is borderline intolerable (but better than every airpod). I use them for podcasts.
I plug my phone into speakers all the time (at work. I am a musician). A 3.5mm jack makes that a non-thinking operation.
The latency on bluetooth is killer. I guess most people don't notice, but I notice. There's a irritating delay between every action, and when watching video the sound is noticeably behind.
There is often interference when in frequency-heavy zones. Busy pedestrian intersections, trains, using the microwave.
I switch between devices with regularity. My computer, my phone, my corporate phone. Keeping one set of headphones paired between multiple devices is a nightmare.
I don't like keeping bluetooth on. Why do I need to place yet one more source of power drain on my devices, and why do I need to enable yet another broadcasting signal from them?
Dollar-for-dollar, lower cost wired headphones are higher quality than wireless ones.
I am prone to losing headphones, having them be miniaturized and untethered is not a bonus. Heaven forbid they're not even bound together and are instead individual unconnected earbuds. I can count in the double digits the number of people I've seen before my very eyes lose one half of their earbuds, to say nothing of the number of people I've encountered who are just dealing with losing one of them from some prior event.
Bluetooth headphones are a product with value, but not to me. Not having a headphone jack felt, and continues to feel, like a heavy handed bitch slap straight to my face every single day.
They are $10 each. They can be attached to the end of your headphones and forgotten about.
Even worse: cheap usb c headphones all have shit DACs and will perform worse than cheap 3.5mm headphones.
I get the impression — admittedly having not watched the event — that Apple feel the need to work hard and drum up interest for this release.
I imagine they are or will start trickling "new" features. Be it USB3/4, Thunderbolt, WiFi 7 (or higher bandwidth light or UWB standards). Just because the other races aren't offering much besides better numbers.
Apart from incremental bumps there isn't anything you can add that will move the needle.
The next battle now moves onto AR/VR.
I don't blame folks for buying Apple, the software is great I'm sure (I personally hate it, but I use Windows XP with the classic theme and oldschool WinAmp almost every day so to each their own) and I respect the people who enjoy it, but everybody needs to play by the rules, and when Apple is clearly not with their hardware, f*cking people over and lying about it, maybe we do need laws to keep them in check, because Timmy Apple isn't making me buy an iPhone for my whole family because they won't implement RCS.
The law about third-party app stores will become effective in spring 2024. According to rumors, Apple will limit it to EU customers though.
Every year it's a new camera, new whatever, but USB-C is going to mean I can get rid of all these lightning cables.
Not increasing the price is nice, I guess. Will have to buy more USB-C cables, though. (Technically the low highest end phone is higher, but higher spec, too).
It comes with one USB-C to USB-C charging cable - not sure if it is a data cable, also.
Pre-order Friday, delivery 22 Sept. Probably going to move on it just to get that USB-C, need to see what carrier deals I can find.
If we can extrapolate from last years update and this years update, then next year iPhone 16 will get the A17 and also get USB 3.
(Worry not though dear mr. Cook, I'll pass it down to one of my kids so the environment won't be hurting while the new toy shows me which gate my CO2-spewing flight departs from. ;))
that's something i never cared about. whether i carry 1 usbc and 1 lightning or 2 usbc, it's still 2 cables.
Though I have to mention, you shouldn't really shop for cables when you're traveling and need a new one. First stop by the front desk, they usually have a huge pile of charging cables people have left behind.
And not all the offices are close to a shop selling those kind of things nor do these persons feel they might be better off going shopping for one directly instead of disrupting a non negligible amount of workers.
I don't even know why people have to charge their phone midday and can't wait. Even when I am going out and extending the night until dawn, I usually have battery left until I go to bed.
For instance, I'm happy that my new laptop can charge on usb-c, so now I don't need you bring a charger for my switch and a different one for my laptop. I just take the smallest one and charge my laptop and switch with it (but not at the same time). I'm happy to know that I will be able to ditch the lightning cable for my next apple smartphone and only keep a single cable for my three devices.
If you have two different connectors you invariably need at least two proper cables.
The integration of two USB ports into the Apple keyboards of this era was an excellent innovation, which I use daily. Mouse on one side, thumbdrive on the other.
In classic Apple style, when they finally capitulated and added secondary buttons to their mice, they hid them. Actually, that was the second stupid move. The first was making the entire mouse body the button... so you couldn't keep the "button" pressed and then scroll, lift, scroll some more (because when you lifted the mouse, the button was released). So Apple's workaround wasn't to fix that stupid design, but rather to add little "wings" on the sides of the mouse that you could pinch with two fingers while somehow keeping the mouse mashed down with other fingers, in order to do multi-swipe scrolling.
The "Magic" mouse was an attempt to one-up legit mice by adding a touchpad to the back of the mouse... which you were somehow supposed to swipe sideways across with some fingers, while using other fingers to hold the mouse in place. It's just so gallingly dumb. There's not much else to say.
Oh... except the one where the charging wire goes into the BOTTOM of the mouse! I mean... you can't make this stuff up. Actually, you could, but "Polish" jokes aren't really PC anymore.
The Magic Keyboard is what it is, which is a perfectly decent keyboard for mainstream users. I like it because it keeps the typing feel consistent between desktop and laptop. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was writing a novel or into competitive gaming, but I don't, so I like it.
The Magic Mouse is an abomination. Not because the charging port location, sure it looks funny, but it's actually not an issue in real life. The actual problem is it's an ergonomic catastrophe. (Which is par for the course with Apple. In its 40+ year history, Apple has never once made a legitimately good mouse.)
For ergonomics, both are seem to be fine for the way I hold my mouse.
But the "Magic Keyboard" is trash because the "butterfly" keyboard is trash, visited by the hack Jony Ive upon Apple customers for five inexcusable years. Sure, it's consistent with Apple laptops of the era, but if I could wade through shit all day every day for the sake of consistency... I wouldn't.
Even the current Apple keyboards don't approach the quality of the aluminum era; the time when the little Bluetooth one had the curved back edge where the batteries went. I'm typing on a full-sized aluminum desktop Apple keyboard of that era right now. These were the peak of modern Apple (and, I think, chiclet) keyboards in general.
It's sad what people accept for keyboard quality now. I totally understand the resurgence of mechanical keyboards, which are nothing but normal-quality keyboards of yesteryear.
Anyway, we're mostly in agreement here. I just think Apple should give up on the peripherals game, because they're singularly bad at it.
Oh yeah, we didn't even mention the Pencil that you were (are?) supposed to recharge by jamming it endwise into a port and have it sticking out the whole time...
But the continued lack of a real Delete key on Apple's laptops is annoying as shit. It has always been stupid, because everybody else manages to put a Delete key on their keyboards no matter how small. But when the Eject key became obsolete, the failure to put a Delete key on every keyboard just proved that Apple hasn't abandoned the infantile pettiness that has marked a lot of its history.
https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements
Regardless of the reason, Apple (per its M.O.) implemented a ridiculously complicated and crippling "solution" instead of simply making Eject a secondary function on some other key... like a Delete key.
So I have always had to use F12 for Delete (via Karabiner).
That stands in contrast to the ones on their computers, which are too big and cause spurious right-clicks and your cursor to jump to other parts of the screen while you're typing. Ridiculous.
What makes it worse is that the Pencil doesn't work on the giant computer trackpads. WHY? I would've bought that on day one. Talk about utter failure on Apple's part, year after year.
The USB-C charging cables can also carry data at USB2 speeds. I'm pretty sure thats the limit of what the iphone 15 usb-c port can handle. (Since they explicitly called out the iphone 15 pro as having hardware support for usb3).
Stop shitting on the long tail!
And fuckin stand up for your rights and privacy as a consumer!
When did tech become so conformist?
I too am saddened by what feels like a deliberate tactic to further cripple the already locked down cable interface. On Android, I could trivially upload and download all of my data without an intermediary.
But it really puzzles me how that feature needs wifi. Regular TCP/IP has everything you need to discover devices on the network and connect to them. What exactly is 802.11x adding here?
There are lots of added protocols (e.g. Bonjour) because TCP/IP alone is not about discovery.
And of course here we're talking about syncing over wi-fi. How would TCP/IP alone, without Wi-Fi enabled, cut it? It would sync wirelessly over ...cable ethernet?
Is it really so inconceivable that a phone is connected to a wi-fi gateway on a regular LAN?
Because that is how my network is set up here at home.
Apple seems to mostly use Bonjour (mDNS) for these whether using a local network (and indeed that is the case for this wifi sync feature), but they also have a few features/frameworks that can also be setup over an Apple specific "peer to peer wifi" connection which is bootstrapped with bluetooth and switches to peer to peer wifi for fast data transfer, similar but not the same protocol as WiFi direct (according to https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/12885). This is what AirPlay2 does for example. That is one way WiFi could matter for such a feature versus Ethernet.
This wifi sync definitely works with Ethernet on the Mac side (personal experience)
You can get a breakout board for few bucks yourself and that's still going to be more than Apple would have to pay.
The actual answer is that they used last year's SOC which had only USB 2 support.
For actual use the actual practical max speed is far more important. It would be useless if you wanted something better than USB 2.0 and it only did 1.1 times the USB 2 limit for example.
My girlfriend's Pixel 4a can transfer about 4x USB2's real world maximum. Just tested it.
USB 3 isn't new, it dates back to 2008. Every Pixel phone except the original Pixel 1 (USB 3.0) and Pixel 3a (USB 2.0) supports USB 3.1.
Those people that do care are probably already getting a Pro anyway.
Any evidence besides you just decided it?
Carplay? Or is a cable optional for that? IIRC it was sending some data over the cable because I get promoted for carplay stuff after plugging it in.
https://slickdeals.net/f/16869551-carlinkit-5-0-cpc200-2air-...
As far as "not very polished UX", after connecting it's been nothing but the standard CarPlay interface. The instructions say there's a web UI accessible via wifi where you can install updates or change configuration but I had no need to use it. Just connect with Bluetooth, wait a second, and accept the "Connect to CarPlay" popup.
It’s been in use for a year with not a single issue. I set it up with my phone and have been able to forget about its existence ever since.
This is the first time I’ve ever used data over USB on this phone though. I wish Apple had better testing for their bluetooth stack.
The only port I want at all is a headphone jack, and that’s easily waterproofed. Since we can’t have that, I was hoping they’d remove the charge port entirely.
This is probably more typical for iOS than Android users, because the former restricts very severely what can be accessed from the connected computer; copying data is much faster via cable.
None of this Face ID nonsense. A camera which takes pictures. What exactly are you missing? My only gripe is it’s too thin - the battery sucks.
I suppose you could argue in the other direction that Macbooks are way overpriced. :-)
I did drop $3.5k on my M1 Max MBP though and have zero regrets. And I plan on keeping it for 8-10 years. My previous laptop was a 2011 MacBook Pro which lasted about that long.
I just haven't ever spent more than ~$450 on a phone so far. The lag and the battery life on my current phone is starting to get pretty annoying. I might end up buying if it is a significantly better experience.
iPad is more or less same, except it lets you extend to a screen (not just mirror with wrong aspect-ratio), but the window management and everything else is still shit.
Neither of those devices adapt to keyboard/mouse yet, and primarily touch only. It does makes sense that they are touch only, but "its powerful" argument becomes less and less useful every release. It may mean different to someone else who plays games, or benefits from Machine Learning things that the phone can perform more each release just because of added power.
But.... with an adapter? They're a few dollars online.
I'm puzzled by your recommendation to use bluetooth on a wired earphones instead of replacing them.
This is why USB-C is a user-hostile spec.
you might get a charge-only cable bundled with some sketchy usb-c accessory. if you do, throw it out. but any standalone cable sold as a cable will do data transfer. the USB-C cables that only carry power and not data is an imaginary problem.
It's moreso things like PD, is it 480Mbits or is it 5Gbit or is it 10 or 20 or 40. What's the voltages, does it support PD 2.0 oh wait is it 3.0 or 3.1?
To be fair, it's been a number of years since I've tried to purchase cables, so perhaps just grabbing the Anker result at the top will net you most of these features. I just remember having to dig and not getting clear answers one way or another which is the spirit of my question.
in practice, in my daily life, all USB C cables work the same. a couple years ago i got one bundled with a device that didn't support some feature, and so i put it in the garbage. problem solved. since then, all my cables work all the time in whatever device i plug them into.
I haven't heard of a phone coming with a charge-only cable. Especially because that cable is usually used for syncing to a computer (iOS)/transferring data from an old phone (Android).
Unless an included cable came with a hard disk, monitor or eGPU, you can be reasonably sure it is USB 2 speeds. If it didn’t ship with a computer either, it is probably 30W max.
Finding a truly power-only USB C cable is difficult but not impossible. It's a special order.
Yes it is.
The spec could have been written such that different capabilities were reflected with different physical characteristics. That is exactly what standards exist to do.
Even if we pretend spec writers wouldn't ever have predicted the proliferation of crappy cables before publishing it, this is not a new problem with USB.
It is absolutely a choice made by the USB Implementers Forum.
And the cheap knockoff brands would have just violated the spec written that way like they violate the current spec.
This is why some things that have a C port won't charge on a C-C cable, but will on a A-C cable, because they don't actually talk to say they need power, but the A port will provide some power regardless, but a C port won't.
Power-only cables should be specified to have a different connector. Vastly different speeds should have a different connector. It should be physically impossible to stick the wrong kind of cable in.
Third parties will make out-of-spec cables no matter what. Some of the ways that Apple has addressed this is the "Made for" program which goes back even to the iPod. And the devices themselves detecting and showing an "Accessory may not be supported" error message, again going back to the iPod.
Edit: Lol, eternally fascinated by what causes some people to downvote on here
Nothing attracts downvotes like criticism of Apple. Their decisions are guided by the hand of the divine, so anyone that won’t follow is clearly an unworthy heathen.
An FYI, Lightning (released 2012) predates USB-C (1.0 specs published 2014) by a couple years. I'm unclear on how Apple was able to choose Lightning instead of USB-C given that timeline.
Now it just felt like the hardware is wasted on iOS. I still have the old Android phone, and instinctively use that rather than dealing with iOS. Next device is definitely going to be an android.
And wireless powerbanks for when going outside.
And no data option with them.
No kids with android. No wife, husband, whatever with android. No friends with android. Just that trusty ole iphone and airpods.
Plus no iPad, no laptops with USB-C chargers, no battery banks with USB-C inputs/outputs, no other ereaders with usb-c, no USB-C desk fan, no USB-C headphones...
Must be interesting.
> no USB-C desk fan
Are you, uh, powering a desk fan off your phone?
No, but I power it with a USB-C cable.
And with a phone having USB-C I can just use the same to power my phone when I want. Or power my phone from a powerbank without another cable specially made for this brand of phone.
He could just be single...
For example I know of https://shiftscreen.app which is like a fake desktop environment, and the Microsoft RDP client added it last week. I think Github Codespaces or any of those services could probably make a pretty usable experience. Just plugging in the phone in your usb-c monitor and get to coding, could be pretty sweet in some scenarios.
[0]: If you just mirror the screen you'll get black bars and the resolution won't be optimal etc, but apps can render directly to the external display customising the resolution for that monitor. Like how Photos.app behave, not showing the app chrome on the external display. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/windows_and_...
The iPad Pro is like that and their extended desktop is called Apple Studio Display. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102286
Every iPhone with USB C has DisplayPort alternate mode, it was not particularly hard to do because all these Apple Axx SoC have a DisplayPort output just in case it lands in an Apple TV later.
I hope your assumption is correct and they added this, including the mouse and keyboard capability.
Why not a USB-A to USB-C cable? The vast majority of existing chargers and computer/console/car ports are USB-A.
Seems like this is forcing people to buy USB-C chargers.
(Current) MacBooks don't have USB-A.
IDK why Apple supplies these tbh. They are crap, break easily and are far too short.
Invest in good 6ft kevlar braided cables with stainless steel pins. They'll last you years.
Speakers use Bluetooth or a lightning jack in a cradle.
Did you know that the microphone on the wired Apple earbuds don’t work on anything other than Apple devices? Well, one nice thing about the adaptors is that they allow you to use those earbuds on any computer with a USB-C port. I’ve avoided buying new headsets thanks to them.
USB audio adapters are barely even a thing, and the Lightning dongles often suck ass. I mean nearly-unusable sound quality, with weird hiss blasting because of some defective automatic gain function (for example; that was a Belkin).
Getting rid of the headphone jack was indefensible, but people putting up with it was even worse. Worst of all is cheerleading for that anti-customer, anti-quality move.
It doesn't fit a charger, but it should be able to use hubs now.
Qi/MagSafe helps with this
Oh, then you need to run another wire for the audio. Whereas with the ancient 30-pin iPod port, you got an audio line out AND power in. And the cool thing about that one is that it was a true line-out: The volume control didn't affect it, so you didn't have to dick around with the volume on two devices (the player and the car radio).
I bought the Lightning-to-30-pin adapter from Apple, and it duplicates all of that. You get the audio line out and power in. A cheap Y cable with USB for power and 1/8" plug for audio solves everything. As far as I know, it's the only solution that Apple has ever sold for a problem it deliberately created. And I doubt anyone, statistically, is even aware of it.
Neither of the other two vehicles in our household have Bluetooth at all, but they both have aux inputs. Bluetooth is a shitty workaround to intentional, anti-consumer stupidity. Just as almost every car (even cheap-O rental cars) integrated auxiliary audio inputs, Apple removed the audio output from their best-selling music player (the iPhone). And when gutless consumers allowed them to get away with it, everybody else followed suit and now we've regressed decades.
Twenty years ago I built an iPod dock into my car, into which I could plop my iPod (and later iPhone) and get power into the phone and audio directly into the stereo system. The phone charged, and delivered good audio quality. As a bonus, it did so without the need to dick around with two volume controls, since the 30-pin connector had a proper (fixed) line-level audio output that didn't vary with volume adjustments on the phone.
This is a level of convenience and performance that very few people enjoy now, and that is pathetic. Manufacturers have intentionally degraded so many of our consumer-electronics experiences with no payoff for us, and very questionable payoff for them.
Finally Apple's switched to USB-C so that we can cut down on cable waste!
No longer have to think about a separate cable for phone charging, can plug your iPhone in for some juice wherever.
That’s basically all that really matters.
They should have just included a usb-c adapter. Unlike PC peripherals, phone chargers get plugged/unplugged many times every day. It's very easy with android phones for the connector stick thingy on the phone to get loose or damaged.
This feels like a government sponsored enshitification.
Why can't people just get android and let apple be. Why do some people get to force consumer standards other consumers don't like. Android can run on any type id purpose built mobile device.
So long as they are not being anti-competitive, who cares if apple uses PoE to charge phones even lol. Leave my capitialism alone!
I'm sure it happens to some people but it can't be a big issue or I (as the "IT-guy") would have heard about it.
Currently my phone charges mostly with the second notebook charger I got from work or one of those cheapish Anker PD bricks.
I don't think people earnestly and legitimately think usb-c should be used for everything, and the cost of doing so is incredibly high (despite it being rather convenient if all your cables are $25 10gbps/240w 3-meter cables or whatever), it's just a convenient wedge for android fans to argue against iphone.
again, ask those same people what they think of the usb-c philosophy on macbooks and boy you're gonna get an earful. the common factor is always "this guy really hates apple" not "this guy really likes usb-c". they never do, when the chips are down.
I do have a (non-Apple) USB-C only laptop for work currently and... while I'd like a handful of other ports directly on there from time to time, it's kind of a marvel how much of a "dock" situation you get out of a single USB-C port and a cheap hub with PD passthrough. One plug and I have mouse, keyboard, monitor, plus more, and it works fine on Linux, the same exact thing can get plugged into a Mac if I occasionally use one and have all the same features... it's pretty great.
I do have to use USB-C to A adapters now and then, mostly for dealing with embedded systems work, but it's not a big deal - almost all of that happens at my desk anyway.
USB-C has a real pain point when it comes to cable compatibility. It's _not_ a panacea. But those are mostly problems I encounter on bigger computers, such as "oh, my 2TB external SSD seems really slow", and not problems I encounter on my phone. I use a Pixel phone for historical reasons and I love that I can use the same charger and cable to charge my phone and my MBP. My wife has an iPhone, an MBP, and an iPad Pro. Her phone is the only device that needs lightning still. Good riddance!
In Lightning the sturdy bit is the cable and the wobbly bit that grabs it is in the device.
In USB-C the sturdy bit is in the phone and the wobbly bit is in the cable.
It's the wobbly bit that breaks.
USB-c ports are less durable and cables more durable.
It’s about which end has thinner pins
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/12/apple-adds-usb-3-speeds-to...
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MTJV3AM/A/airpods-pro
Even as an Android user, I looooove those Airpods. They're so much more comfortable than the Android ones
Different colors and lossless audio, there’s the home run
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are the first smartphones with this protocol built-in.
[1]: https://www.evehome.com/en-us/thread
So I guess if you trust apple, you can sorta trust these devices as their access to the outside world would be through an apple device.
The Apple TV 4k 3rd gen and the new HomePods can be Matter hubs (both have Thread hardware).
(I honestly don't know and was thinking Matter and Thread were somehow related and the were both good and I hope someone can confirm or explain what I am missing.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)
Matter is a network protocol which provides a standard API for how smart devices talk to home hubs. By making devices truly platform agnostic, it will end the dark "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" direction which smart devices have been going down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)
Apple co-invented/contributed to USB-C to address their own needs, and were the first vendor to shove it down on unsuspecting Macbook users, getting rid of each and every single other kind of port.
Meanwhile they kept Lightning relevant and useful for a very long time, which I think is a good thing for a "de facto" standard. Should they have switched to USB-C earlier? Probably yes. But now is better than never (even if it's somewhat forced).
"killer feature"... get off my lawn!
I may get accused of being an Apple fan for this, but this is why I dread USB-C. My lightening cables always charge and have data. Having to care about this is a pain.
The pandemic is over, bring back the theatre stage with a live audience.
The first one is here from 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKgEsuEBhqI
Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea. Imagine if every year everybody tossed their television, monitor, computer, phone, tablet, headphones, speakers and all their other smart devices into a landfill and bought new ones. Now realize this actually happens with phones in some cases and batteries in almost all cases.
At the end of the day despite what the Lineage OS flashers will insist, lay-people want updated features. Give them updated features for their old phones and they will keep them longer. Keeping them longer is the most you can do when throwaway tech is the norm.
If you need empirical evidence, 5 seconds looking at any market for used phones reflects that.
They also scrap a whole bunch of them too[1]. While undoubtedly many of the shredded devices are beyond repair, many of the devices destroyed in the video have no obvious physical damage.
I don't think they release any numbers on the amount of traded in devices that are refurbished and destroyed.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUXiYecGZs8
> I for one don't understand how sustainability and a yearly release schedule can go hand in hand
The sustainability report is more for green washing and a thinly veiled deceptive tactic to hide their lust for greed
> Why isn’t it a 2 or 3+ year release cycle?
again, adjust your perspective. The point is to push hardware sales and pump the quarterly numbers. Making the phones easily repairable means significant decrease in NEW phone sales which generate the $$$. Let’s be honest, Apple C-level execs don’t give a fuck about the environment, human rights, and any of that. It’s all a show.
> Yearly upgrades of consumer electronics is a pretty non-sustainable idea
Apple C-level execs know this. Apple marketing division knows this. Consumers know this. Yet people continue to buy their greenwashing campaign every year and consumers are convinced it’s okay. Oh it’s “carbon neutral” now. Oh Apple installs solar panels at their shitty office, “I am buying into a green company guyzzz!!! save the planet one iPhone at a time”
Support right to repair. Support government regulations. Do not expect these private companies to “do the right thing”
So what's actually happening is that the yearly iPhone rush is only a small fraction of the install base upgrading. Sure, there are a few uber enthusiasts that may upgrade every year, but those are a minority, and it's not like those phones go direct to landfills - they're resold. And since there are more opportunities to upgrade, fewer are attempting to upgrade simultaneously, straining supply chains and making Apple's income fluctuate more heavily.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphon... [1]: https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/18/poll-how-often-do-you-upgrade...
The annual release cycle doesn't force people's hands. You can have a look to see if there's anything compelling this year and if not, just put off your purchase for another year. No big deal.
If the choice was between 3 and 6 years, most people would probably get a new phone almost automatically after 3 years rather than facing the prospect of sticking it out with a very obsolete phone.
A two year cycle would probably have the same effect, only less pronounced.
Also, I think less frequent releases would come with a far bigger marketing push and some actual innovation. This year it's "A16 Bionic for powerful, proven performance".
There's no need to upgrade yearly. They can release whenever they want, but I'm only upgrading every few years at most.
I'm looking forward to the day when I need to pack only USB-C cables when we go on family vacation, but it's still going to be a couple of years until we replaced the last device with lightning port (especially iPads seem to last forever).
I wonder if they'll sell cases alone for existing AirPods.
Nevertheless still good that now only one cable is required - especially since the iPad and iMac use USB-C as-well.
Not sure what to do with the AirPods - hopefully the wireless charging directly from iPhone 15 will make it unnecessary to have to carry the cable for the pods.
But I'll be carrying around a USB-A to Lightning cord when I'm traveling anyway, since hotels/airplanes/airports are still on USB-A.
EDIT: Looks like I was confused by this brief description, and they were just saying that you can plug the peripherals into the iPhone. NBD.
EDIT: yep, per Ars Technica, you can now charge your Apple Watch or AirPods off the iPhone 15: https://live.arstechnica.com/apples-september-12-2023-wonder...
This is honestly a pretty great feature, and actually makes me more likely to buy an Apple Watch. I don't want to have to bring another charge cable with me, and now I wouldn't have to. I wonder what the charge speed is though — I wouldn't want to have to charge it overnight.
EDIT: Thanks for clarifying, it took me a while to understand based on what they had said and what Ars reported. I can see that it's just the same as how you can plug any peripheral into an iPad and charge off its battery. Now you can do the same with iPhone...big deal.
Apple's page says this under the USB-C section:
>The new USB-C connector lets you charge your Mac or iPad with the same cable you use to charge iPhone 15. You can even use iPhone 15 to charge Apple Watch or AirPods. Bye-bye, cable clutter.
With a footnote that leads to this:
> The included USB‑C Charge Cable is compatible with AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB‑C).
iPhone 15 will charge your watch and airpods from the back of the phone, so you don't even need to travel with the watch charging cable anymore.
Samsung did this already (branded as "PowerShare") so it's the year of iPhone catching up on charging features.
I am surprised apple hasn't included this ability yet. My pixel 6 pro also has this ability.
I was also really hoping for wireless "MagSafe-out" charging for the Apple Watch, which would come in very handy when traveling – often there's limited outlets on hotel nightstands, and sometimes I just forget the watch charger.
If I'm traveling with a computer too I use a 2x USB-C wall wart to fit everything in one plug. Not perfect, but beats the rat's nest of cables that it replaced.
Since the Qi charger isn't MagSafe it doesn't really work for topping up the phone from the battery on the go, so I often end up tossing a short Lightning cable in my bag anyway. Will be nice to have USB-C eventually and not worry about that (but I intend to drag this iPhone mini out for a good 5 years).
https://satechi.net/products/quatro-wireless-power-bank
I will greatly miss the SD slot and headphone jack...
I don't want more cycles on a battery that isn't user serviceable
It seems unlikely that people will routinely charge their AirPods from their phone when they could just as easily use the same charger that they just charged up their phone with.
its like 30 minute job, maybe less for pros
p.s. if you don't like the feature - don't use it!
One can charge a range of devices, including other iPads from a USB-C iPad. One can even change the charge direction between the two devices.
Charging on these devices is independent from data access. The user is prompted to allow data access which requires authorisation.
https://a.co/d/fxsaZ58
I suppose the lawyers would get paid a bunch to figure out how flexible the definition of "port" in the regulation would be. "Port" in networking is obviously purely a concept vs a physical hole. "Port" in shipping is also more conceptual, no two ports need share the same layout.
This is a really insane thread.
So was removing the CD drive. Or shunning Java on the original iPhone.
Also the Macbooks still have it while the M1 didn't have magsafe, so maybe let's not use Apple's decisions as indication of obsolescence.
Of course marketing sold it as benefit, which for some it was since they are ok with average quality. Considering thick brick that current iphones are for quite some time, space taken by port was never the issue, unlike stated originally as reason for removal.
The source is the DAC and the DAC in that dongle is better than most audiophile DACs are. Remember, audiophile equipment is scams made by small companies and iPhone dongles have bigger R&D budgets than their entire industry.
And if you could, it'd be balanced out in outdoors use cases by the lack of wired audio artifacts, namely cable telephonics sending walking impacts into your ears.
Anyway, AirPods do support lossless audio now. (Well, next year.)
https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/
If they remove all jacks, that's so many devices I own, and use-cases I have, poof gone!
(I can't "leave it connected to headphones" as my iPhone is not the only device I own; I have multiple headphones and headsets ; and I move myself and my iPhone quite a bit. The nice thing about 3.5 was universal and ubiquitous. Every headphone or headset worked with every phone tablet and music device. Lightning without 3.5mm is just a constant pain in my keister :)
But, the context of this sub-thread as I understood it, is - if they discontinue all the ports completely / go wireless, one could only use bluetooth headphones. And that's the suck because:
1. I already have a number of very nice headphones I planed to last me a lifetime
2. Bluetooth headphones have built-in obsolescence (battery, new protocols, etc)
3. Lag! I like to play synthesizers / make music on computers and tablets. Or play games with Kishi. Bluetooth is a pain for such use cases.
etc :-/
plugged in the back into the unused cd changer port behind some carpet
took 2 mins to install, wish I had done it years ago
It was this!
https://www.tindie.com/products/aaafnraa/serial-adapter-rebo...
It takes great photos. I never use the port. Dynamic Island is an Emperor's new clothes marketing scam where they've just moved the bezel even more in the way than it was and managed to convince people it's a good thing.
I’ll probably upgrade next year though not this one. Expecting major improvements and new features every year is odd to me.
These incremental gains add up over the 3-4 years that I feel is a reasonable minimum phone life.
I think that has to do with Apple's own presentation/marketing. They make the announcement into a big thing.
Product launches are always a lot of theatrics regardless of the company.
I don’t think anyone actually takes them any more seriously than a mcdonalds ad implying eating their hamburger will make one more like the cool sports star being paid a million to hold the hamburger.
Some people predicted that new iPhone will be completely portless and allow wireless charging only, just to not having to support USB-C out of spite.
I guess we'll need to wait a year or two more.
I found it amusing that they tried to spin Magsafe as eco-friendly too... because, uh, you can't use leather cases anymore(?)
It would be very much Apple move to take something that wastes enormous amount of energy (given the number of people who have iPhones) and claim it is eco-friendly.
(1): I looked on Wikipedia for 30 seconds
Doubling that power use if everyone switched to low quality wireless charging (50%) would require another 5 gigawatts, or a few thousand more wind turbines.
Bigger than I thought in a worst case scenario, but still not too bad.
Especially if wireless charging prevents premature replacement by reducing port failure, as the embodied energy is estimated to to be the majority of the energy involved in the lifecycle of a smartphone.
Interesting. I wasn't aware this was a common problem? It's not something I'm used to hearing about as an Android user.
I'd be more interested in whether Magsafe or USB-C wears the battery out sooner.
Not huge amount of energy, but not negligible either.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agua_Caliente_Solar_Project
edit: I see someone else did the math as well.
That works out to $2 per iPhone to build power plants to charge the iphone every day for it's an entire life. Not bad for a device that costs hundreds of dollars.
Slow charging though... that seems orthogonal?
In my Fusion, I'm stuck using wired Android Auto, so I am unfortunately not able to use the 12V port for charging.
The adapter plugs in to the USB port for android auto and then offers up a wireless connection. Everything is automatic once set up.
The 2023 model had the entertainment system massively upgraded. Wireless CarPlay is seamless and fast. The wireless charging pad isn't amazing but it does the job just fine.
I love wireless CarPlay now. :)
https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/10/carplay-wireless-carplay-adap...
- Plugging the phone in is so easy.
- With Wireless Carplay presumbably I'd have to futz with the phone anyway if both of our phones are associated with the entertainment system
- I still have to take the phone out of my pocket to put it on the wireless charging pad. That is actually the hassle, not plugging the phone in
- If I don't care about charging my phone, I assume my phone is going to heat up in my pocket and drain the battery while I'm doing Wireless Carplay stuff
- A lot of my driving is short 10-15 min trips. Can put a pretty decent charge into my phone during that time with the wired connection. Not with inductive charging.
I suspect they have a few things to work out with regards to CarPlay wireless connection(s) before they could remove ports on the device, in addition to the other comments on this thread.
I'd never say never obviously but dropping ports entirely would have to be a terrible decision anytime soon. (And one wonders what assurances Apple has made to auto manufacturers adopting CarPlay.)
I think you meant brave decision.
One could always dream of head unit updates for wireless carplay support...
But according to some wireless carplay adapters do work quite well so that might be an option: https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/10/carplay-wireless-carplay-adap...
Apple could even release an official one.
Not that CarPlay is a necessity of life but glitchy CarPlay would be a pretty big negative for my experience with a vehicle.
Maybe $199?
And for what benefit? That port is already water-proof.
Resistant.
I care. It's a safety / insurance feature.
I suspect lots of people who would be happy to shoot on a phone have upgraded to blackmagic specifically because you can just swap the card and keep rolling.
It just doesn’t make sense to go wireless only, like even as the presentation showed, there are great usecases for wires, like moving data fast to external storage during video recording. Also, charging is much much slower without a cable, and then we didn’t even talk about debuggibility, servicibility, for no reason whatsoever. Apple is not hurt by usb-c, they have been using it for many years on their own dime. They just waited around so if anyone takes offense (see other commenters) they can freely point their fingers at the EU. They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
You're right that USB-C can transfer data very fast in comparison to Lightning, but most casual users likely don't do this at all. They primarily use cloud backup solutions. This is somewhat supported by the fact that data transfer speeds on non pro models of the 15 are the same as Lightning.
Additionally, Apple had much more control over who could legally produce cables and accessories with Lightning due to owning the standard, which isn't the case with USB-C.
I really think the only reason it didn't shake out like this is because wireless charging tech just isn't where it needs to be. It's possible that Apple thought it was going to advance faster. They had one very ambitious product they were going to release for wireless charging that got completely canceled a couple years ago: theverge.com/2021/8/5/22611234/apple-airpower-wireless-charger-working-prototype
Do you know how rare it is for Apple to announce a product and then alter it at all from what they said when they announced it -- much less straight up cancel it?
They could have gone the iPad route, but part of the problem is that iPhones are a status symbol/conspicuous consumption product as well. There are plenty of people who buy the latest "Pro" model as a way of signaling status. This move would likely have caused a lot of confusion in general for less tech savvy people. It's no longer "Do you have an iPhone charger?" it's "Do you have an iPhone charger or that new new one?"
>They only were waiting around for a scapegoat.
I really doubt this. Apple has never been one to shy away from making decisions that can be decried as shameless profit grabs. Example: removing headphone jack. Removing wall brick charger from phones.
They could not have predicted that the EU would introduce unprecedented legislation forcing them to this standard and they fought it vehemently.
That wouldn't pass muster in the regulation.
I think I'll wait another year before I upgrade my iPhone 13 but this is great stuff.
Well, this is the company that brought us the butterfly keyboard.
Somehow they always dodge the reverse Osborne effect, haha!
Given the way those antennas work I doubt that. From what I understand they did some neat tricks to send very simple signals for the SOS stuff in the absence of that.
It's literally the same design since the iphone 11.
You need to see them side by side to notice the difference but any other user won't be able to tell at a glace that you own the 15 and not an older model.
Things look the same when you don't look for the differences. Brilliant.
I was also disappointed to hear that the satellite stuff is limited to 2 years. Is it going to be yet another subscription after that?
which reminds me, i need to buy extra leather cases.
in any case, this is what happens when you've got nothing to present.
I'm curious how much they're charging for this 'premium' new FineWoven material, which they pitch as a replacement for leather. Will they price it the same? Will people be willing to pay that much?
no, i'll be buying them for my current iphone.
one every 3 to 6 months, depends on how long i'm travelling for (as that's when i usually drop/scratch/etc my case the most).
But this is still condescending and hyperbolic. I'm as surprised as the next guy that anyone would go through multiple iPhone cases per year, but I don't know anything about him, his family/habits/clumsiness, so I would not make such judgmental remarks.
And from a practical perspective, you will win zero converts by telling strangers on the internet that they are "killing our planet".
Currently I find otterbox cases are fantastic grip/slide ratio that I prefer to my old leather case.
Was waiting to see if they had a new mini, and obviously they do not so glad I grabbed it.
Xs, 13, 14, 15, it’s all the same to me except a mini feels so much easier to handle.
Got a 13 mini; I kinda don't like a bunch of aspects of the iphone ecosystem, but the mini form factor is really perfect.
Very much too bad that it's now dead.
Very many companies that built a brand around quality before being quietly sold to a private equity firm are doing just that, to maximize profits for as long as they can while the brand still has a good reputation.
It can be really obvious if you’ve owned a quality product for many years and then go to replace it, only to see that the current rendition is effectively a cheap knockoff.
I imagine a lot of people didn't know or think about wireless headphones until Apple made it a thing.
Apple wouldn’t say the same at a SE release event
I'll mention GM, since they are taking CarPlay and Android Auto out of their new vehicles so they can charge a subscription fee for worse versions of the same features your phone already provides for free.
> The company noted that while leather is popular for things like watch straps, it has a serious impact on the environment, particularly at Apple's scale.
Is that actually true? I remember reading a few years ago that there was actually a big glut of leather: people still eat steak and hamburgers, and without a market for the cow hides then that material is wasted. That is, I thought the leather market was largely a byproduct of the beef market, and that reducing leather usage won't have a measurable impact on reducing the number of slaughtered cows.
In few years full reverse, cleaning up the planet while supporting free range happy lives of cows. Really, who actually buys this in-your-face bullshit? There are proper technical improvements to talk about.
https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s435...
https://www.leather-dictionary.com/index.php/Brain_tanning
/s
so to do that we really wanted to get inside a cows brain.
we figure dok now that we're here, let's explode it out onto the platter of dead skin of that same animal to capture it's essence.
so without further adieu
I present to you
iBrainSplatStainedWatchStrap"
This totally ignores the land use issue. Cattle absolutely decimate natural areas. e.g. significant areas of the midwest/great plain that were prairie with deep roots to store carbon are now pasture. Pasture grass has comparatively shallow roots and limited ability to store carbon.
Only because humans killed all the megafauna at the end of the last ice age.
The question now is if populating it with millions of cows for us to eat is the right thing to do.
- Grazers improve the capacity of grass to carbon capture
- Some land is ONLY able to grow grass. The alternative is desertification, and so livestock is the only option to produce food. edit: unless you bring in fossil fertilizers.
Sounds like you might be doing a bit of greenwashing yourself. The carbon came from the atmosphere, but the cows make methane, which is much worse. Also they spoil the land and water. And also you're not counting the carbon used to actually raise them, like the gas in the equipment and the transport.
You can’t produce “more” greenhouse gases in a closed system, the system will ebb and flow; until you dig up megatons of carbon that has been stored for a few hundred millennia and insert it into that system.
(same story with polar ice caps and the water cycle)
If you take a bunch of carbon in the grass and convert it to methane gas, sure you have the same amount, but it's a lot worse for the planet.
The issue remains, squarely, on adding to the carbon cycle. The harmful values of methane output is directly correlated with the oil based feed which GP mentions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7725657/
https://meteor.geol.iastate.edu/gccourse/alumni/chem/carbon/...
Additionally, once the grazers improve grass life, the water-table improves. The worst lakes in our area are surrounded by fertilized annual crops. Their water is polluted with nitrogen fertilizers and are very poor quality, with blue-green algae blooms, and as a result are not swimmable. My friend lost a dog to such a lake.
The land with active grazers in contrast, is very good at preventing this problem. The best lake for 200km around me is surrounded by grass-fed cattle operations, and there is absolutely no problem with algae blooms.
I think a central problem of our time is that educated elites are detached from reality, not seeing things like what I mention above, and so are acting upon their false perceptions, causing great harms as a result. The Apple announcement today about leather acts to confirm my suspicions about this.
Also, cows have feet and digestive systems so it takes more equipment and diesel for harvesting and processing grains.
Cows still have a signifiant impact on especially as a function of how large the industry has become.
And to your point - wasting hides is also not great. Would be great if we were less wasteful in general.
Citing is much preferred to saying.
perhaps not as true when they are phone accessories. ;-)
I'm surprised they're pricing these new fabric bands at $99. If they sold these alongside leather bands, would they sell at that price? Seems like they're trying to position them as a replacement for a premium product, but without any proof that they are worthy of the lofty price.
Why alternatives to leather matter:
Nowhere to hide: how the fashion industry is linked to amazon rainforest destruction [0]
[0] https://www.stand.earth/publication/forest-conservation/amaz...
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29433500
I read that article, but I disagree that the conclusion is "Leather itself is a driver of deforestation and not just a secondary byproduct."
That is, what I'd like to know is whether all those cows in Brazil would still exist even without a leather marker, but just for their beef. The linked research sort of tries to make that argument, but it doesn't really provide any convincing evidence.
Every 10 dollar knockoff from AliExpress had better quality than this.
Not selling these anymore is not a big loss.
Is this true or false?
If it's true - then how is leather bad for the environment?
I don't eat beef - but it's interesting to me how many people eat hamburgers and then look at someone with a leather bag like they're the devil.
As with a lot of things environmental - this seems purely idealist and not realist.
The main answer I get is that leather is a by-product of meat, but some claim it is a co-product.
Apple could sell a lot more watches if they upped their battery life game. I guess they want a watch that can do a zillion things, one day at a time. I prefer a watch that can do a few things, for a couple weeks at a time.
This would certainly require a display tech change. What do you have in mind?
Daily charging is for normal use, including > 2k nits in sun, with always on display. Low power mode gets around 3 days (all sizes I've tried).
But, you point still stands high, especially since it's also using AMOLED! I naively assume the Amazfit is using a much lower power processor. I've played 3d games, at what looks like 60fps, on my Apple watch. I...don't understand why I should be able to do that.
Exactly — it feels like Apple is going with a high-power device that gives modest battery life, when what I want is a lower-power device with extended battery life.
2) wireless charging via some smart apple watch bands with chargers coils inside macbook on the left side and right side of touchpad - so that every time I type on macbook it charges my apple watch
3) eink technology while Not in use
It’s why you can’t get a paper bag at many grocery stores today. Those bags cost them a lot of money that’s now going into their pockets while you are forced to buy bag after bag (because who always has a bag on them?!) that only becomes a net positive after thousands of uses. Which it never will come close to.
Does being leaked in advance have anything to do with their presentation? "Oh that was leaked, I guess we shouldn't bother mentioning it".
Planting forests, installing solar grids, carbon neutral offices, that all costs the company, it’s not cost savings disguised as green actions. Sure it has marketing value, but that’s hard to measure.
Smaller plastic free packaging and shipping by sea on the other hand could be made to save money without care for the environment. Being able to market it as green is just an added bonus.
Happy to see USB-C on the iPhone (thanks EU) and no price hikes.
It’s good in many ways, but also hard to ignore just how obvious that effort is once you realise it’s there. That’s true for all presentations, including the dev talks at WWDC.
It is hard for me to push aside the impression that nowadays the speakers - regardless their background - are entirely chosen for optical reasons. My only favourite moment in a recent big presentation was the M1 chip part with Srouji. That guy is not made for the camera but man he lives hardware with every fibre of his soul.
Everything else is "politically correct" according to this segment.
RE long covid: This is just the fallout that's being worked on. I also don't care about unverified estimations tbh. The numbers game in the pandemic was off and politicised in almost all countries all over the world.
Looks over to me.
It's like coke: "Why advertise Coke? Everyone drinks it."
I've never owned an iPhone, and mainly think of the phone I do have as at best a minor addition to my life, but put a battery-efficient modem in my mac and I'll be all over that, because it lets me keep my phone off almost all the time.
Aside from that though, it's always neat to see incremental innovation anyway, but it would all be superfluous to me even if I was in the iPhone game.
And, yet, ~20% of the population will see this news release, and talk about how clean the lines are, and how perfectly worded every sentence is, as if it was handed to us from God himself on stone tablets.
Cultism is a very interesting thing.
Some middle ground between Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer would bring more excitement into the game, and make it a little more human!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NBw0TzFczi4
And now, back to Tim.
Might be time to just buy a new one with USB-C and use it for 5+ years.
I am a bit surprised there isn't a Thunderbolt controller in the Pro, though. Seems like they already have the IP since it's part of the iPads already.
I had my first taste of this with the macro support only showing up on the Pro model. It's such an old feature I was baffled the other device we bought didn't have that capability. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/453470/is-there-a-...
Oh and RIP 13 Mini, you'll be my phone until I can't use it anymore I suppose.
The main downside instead of buying a lightning cable that always work we now have to decipher the 10 minor variations of USB-C's various speeds/power now with zero consistency in naming schemes or amazon titles.
Also from other commenters say Apple implemented USB 2.0, so you don't have to care about type of USB-C cable you're buying - these are for advanced features which as it seems are not present in iPhone 15.
I wish I had been warned so I could have grabbed one before it was gone.
Can't buy an unlocked phone from a carrier. Only other authorized resellers either don't sell phones (B&H, Adorama, Staples), have a limited selection which is in-store only (Target, Walmart), which leaves only Best Buy and right now I see everything on backorder. Now that Apple isn't taking new orders there's a good chance those will be cancelled.
And then there's the roulette wheel of buying from Amazon or Newegg where you might get a refurbished phone advertised as "new" if it isn't a literal brick in a box.
Still comes down to my fault for being slow to act. I said I wished for a warning but you know what they say about wishes.
(For context of how slow I am, I'd be upgrading from a SE (2016))
I wonder if they had a lot of 13 Pro purchases after they discounted it last year, which they felt could have been 14 Pro purchases.
Just like with some car manufacturers, if you want e.g. increased safety or radar cruise control, you also need $10k of leather seats and sunroofs; by removing previous Pro models, Apple basically adds a massive price premium to the zoom lens.
As this is honestly the only thing I would need from a new phone, my wife and I stay on our iPhone XR year after year. I just can't pay $1500CAD merely to get more optical zoom than my existing phone :-/
Though to put this in a realistic context, I am curious what percentage of iPhones have ever, over their usage lifespan, made a data connection over USB. I suspect that percentage is low single-digit percentages, and -- again speculating -- I would wager they are almost always by users with the pro models.
Is it lame that it's USB 2.0? Yes. Will it matter at all for the overwhelming majority of users? Not in the slightest.
First year, I tried to transfer data via USB.
After I accepted that Apple hates me personally and does not want me to transfer any of my voice memos, photos, or videos, or documents, or files via USB (I don't have a macbook), you are indeed correct and I'm one of those people who does not make a data connection via USB to my iPhone. But while stat is true, as with all such stats, devil is in the details :).
Actually, you're exactly the person they love. Just enough annoyance to consider a macbook and iCloud.
Airdrop works well for sharing files to other people's iOS devices, but I'd argue SMB is actually better for my use case. Airdrop sends files to a Mac's Downloads folder. SMB transferred files go exactly where I want them on the first try. The difference is just a couple extra taps in the 'Share' modal.
Though I must admit this isn't a solution for everyone. I doubt many iPhone users have a NAS stood up at home and would be happy to spend money on the 'simpler' solution of purchasing turnkey products and services from Apple.
The exception to this -- and there are exceptions -- tend to be "pro" users. If you're actually using the iPhone for video production in any way, USB 2.0 is a brutal limitation, and has long been a noted annoyance when you're transferring massive video files. Lucky for those people they'll be Pro buyers and will enjoy USB 3 (and maybe WiFi 6E? Not sure if this was delivered).
THIS is a trick question.
And the raspberry pi has USB 3.0 for god's sake! It's not a matter of a dedicated processor block on the chip.
<english is a second language to me, this is intended as humourous, not aggressive>
However the lack of USB 3 IO on the existing chip from last year is a very real limitation. The Raspberry Pi 4 supports USB 3 via a separate host controller (the VL805) communicated with over PCI-e, given that the core SoC doesn't have the IO blocks...basically the same deal. That VL805 by itself is almost the size of the A16. Now of course Apple could make a USB 3 host controller dramatically smaller, but then they'd have a new SoC.
Yes it is. It’s just rare for any modern SoC to leave out an XHCI controller, which the Pi and countless others have in their SoC. Apple was an outlier
For that matter, neither does the BCM2711 on the RPi4. It leans on an external chip -- almost as large as it -- for USB 3.0 functionality.
It's actually a security vulnerability to do so, I'm very cautious to never click trust and I wish there was a setting to disable USB (data) entirely.
When that dialog pops up which asks if you want to "trust" the connected device, saying yes creates a token which is exchanged between the phone and the host and stored on the host. That token has special privileged with iOS and can exfiltrate some data from the phone without user interaction (this has become more and more minimal over the years, with the original iPhone as I recall it could literally take a full backup like from iTunes -- and there wasn't even a prompt on the phone to allow that). That token can also be exfiltrated from your computer and inserted into special boxes made by companies like NSO which have in the past utilize proprietary exploits to basically privilege escalate that minimal access and exfiltrate data from locked iPhones.
I sound like a conspiracy theorist and I should probably just delete this.
That alone makes the upgrade worth it for me since I'm planning on picking up the Vision Pro!
While I agree that holding up a phone in front of your face presents some degree of being disconnected from the action, I feel wearing a headset where one's entire view of the scene is a computed feed via cameras is totally disconnected.
So I do still agree that it wasn't a reasonable suggestion that people would be filming important life events while wearing their APV headset.
If you think it's reasonable that a person is going to be strapped into a headset at a child's birthday party, then that is indicative of what you believe would be socially normal or acceptable behaviour. I dare say other family members or guests won't see it that way.
In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
There is a not subtle difference between picking up a phone and filming something versus living an event where the only visual stimulus one receives is a second hand video feed. The discussion here seems to be pinned to an idea that this is equivalent, I can say very confidently that it is not.
Side note: I don't live in a bubble, I'm pretty accustomed to watching the stage via other people's phone screens when I don't have a direct view. I also film when I have someone in mind to share it with. However the idea that people are filming to use the footage is largely wrong, they're excited and enjoying the moment and want to capture that somehow, so out comes the phone, they might show some of it to a friend later, or a social post, but largely it's unused and not looked back upon. This behaviour is not comparable to wearing a headset.
> In my opinion the idea of any person walking around with a headset on in social settings is not realistic.
which is precisely why apple is selling the concept of the curved front display, with high-res internal cameras to pass through an image of your face and eyes. if they can pull it off well, it should look like your normal face, so the appropriate social cues will be there.
This feature of the headset is so others can pop-in, or gauge when the user is unavailable (i.e. when the wearer's eyes are entirely occluded.) Which is how those features were largely demonstrated by Apple(sans one setting where everyone in a meeting was wearing one). While this makes accomodations for a person wearing a headset it doesn't "unwear" it and doesn't solve the issues around wearing a headset in public/social situations. There was significant umbrage taken to Google Glass (and still to Spectacles by Snap) and these both are relatively minor adornments in comparison. Even those wearing ordinary motorcycle helmets run into similar. It's not an old-fashioned thing, it's a human connection issue, some people don't even like speaking through protective glass shielding.
At this stage we are quite far down the rabbit hole from the original conjecture. There indeed seems to be a small number of respondents that feel singularly wearing a headset in public won't be irksome for others, or be too disconnected from reality - time will tell how this pans out. I feel there is already sufficient evidence, but a few aren't convinced.
Thus the feature from Apple to allow the recording of spatial video directly from an iPhone, without needing to adorn the AVP seems to be the pragmatic and realistic use case scenario.
There are a few fervent voices that don't see any issue at all, neither for themselves or others around them. They're perfectly entitled to share this view, this isn't a criticism of that - it's more an interesting display of what people see as normal or acceptable.
I sit on the other side of the fence. I pay respect to the fact that in our world there are people that get upset about a simple plastic protective barrier, or someone not taking off their motorcycle helmet, or those wearing any technology that films them such as Google Glass or Snap's Spectacles, and even laws about filming others, displays or media. We have more than enough dot points to know that wearing a headset like the Apple Vision Pro in such a social setting is going to be bothersome for others (and for most, the wearer as well).
Apple needed to demonstrate the feature and did so accordingly, but just because it's Apple doesn't mean it's now socially normal. It seems clear that the primary use case will be filming spatial video on an iPhone and then using/experiencing that later. Especially as this means multiple angles can be captured spatially without special equipment.
> The funny part is that unless something crazy happens very few of those videos ever get watched.
I do agree some percentage of people definitely just shoot long videos and take a million pictures that nobody looks at, but in my household we look at them all the time. But I'll only take like one or two photos and a short 10 second video of my kid going down a slide, not try and record the entire trip to the playground every time.
At good jazz or alt rock concerts people take their phone out to take a few videos and pictures and then enjoy the rest of the show. For the really good concerts they make you put a sticker on the camera of your phone.
And since the Photos app introduced the memories feature, where it creates montage videos of themes like "baby years" or "summer 2022", you don't even need to go back yourself.
We might be the unusual case, but we exist!
It needs to be like VR 360 video where you can look around to be worth it.
So basically you wouldn't need to put it on to watch them but you'd regularly already have it on, instead of, say, watching TV. VR googles for those videos aren't exactly a hard requirement either if you're on the go.
If it stops being a novelty like "see this amazing experience in VR" where you hype yourself up and put work on doing it just for that - sure - it's not very amazing. But when it comes normal and integrated into a computing platform you already use daily it's definitely a plus.
https://www.whathifi.com/news/new-godzilla-series-hints-vr-m...
This could be a big push towards making the metaverse more compelling.
What are the TikTok implications?
They are no doubt working on an LLM-based Siri now, but they don't rush things, and they don't preannounce things, so we'll only hear about it once it is ready. And they are probably going to use a different term for marketing it rather than using a generic term like LLM.
They don't roll out half-baked products, and they won't be comfortable placing the big disclaimers that ChatGPT relies on. They'll incorporate LLMs if and when they can guarantee that what Siri says will be consistently accurate and extremely difficult to abuse.
Perhaps even quarter baked. and has been sitting there in the turned-off-oven for YEARS.
But, at the same time. ChatGPT and the likes have a very different failure mode, that feels even less Appley. Like saying actual fake stuff, or saying it understand that you want to turn the AC on when your son leaves school coming home - but then just not doing it, or doing something completely different. With current Siri the failings are at least very obvious…
If you ask it a question it doesn't know the answer to, "I don't know" is better than making up a bullshit answer. That could be potentially hazardous at iPhone levels of scale, giving everyone easy access to what appears to be a very intelligent AI chatbot without them understanding that it shouldn't be relied on for a lot of information people will ask it.
Just like the apple keyboard on iPhones.
You’re not imagining it; it is actually worse.
This is the first ever integration with iPhone after acquisition, it never got better than this https://youtu.be/SpGJNPShzRc?si=a5JgHgnK6Nf2p7BY
You must be really young if you don't remember when they rolled out Apple Maps.
Such a feature would be included with iOS 18 and that's not going to be talked about until next June's WWDC 2024.
Honestly was half expecting more along those lines as part of the new chip announcement for the iPhone 15 Pro, but apparently not.
I really hope that when they release something, the responses will be 5% of the endless stream of words ChatGPT & others produce.
“Sure! I will try to be succinct.
[4 paragraphs]”
Apple isn't the sort of company to rush something out just to be competitive.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/06/apple-conversational-ai...
The conceptual model behind LLMs utilizes frequency to generate a reasonable response to a query. But that's a bad fit when you're looking for data accuracy that isn't represented by the model. If your model says most dental appointments occur on the 15th and responds so but my appointment is on the 17th, it's not only useless to me it's detrimental.