Truly impressive. Smaller, yet faster than the competition. Surprising how many of the chips are now internal Apple components:
1. CPU/GPU
2. Auxiliary Machine Learning/AI chip
3. NAND controller
4. IR Deapth sensor & signal processing chip
5. Power management IC (surprising that Apple is doing Analog IC design too!)
Axiom in the tech world is that "Apple is a software company that builds hardware". Above is ample evidence of Apple being a hardware-heavy innovation machine.
A software company building hardware is Google, and it's Pixel phones show
> A software company building hardware is Google, and it's Pixel phones show
FWIW Google has put a lot of effort in the hardware of their datacenters, and in that sense they're a hardware giant as well. Compared to their datacenter projects, Pixel is a funny hobbby for Google.
Not working for Google, but I think it's for multiple reasons.
- hardware has gotten a lot faster, which helps the second reason.
- Google giving away free GGC nodes to ISPs (if you meet their requirements). The distribution of these nodes has gotten a lot wider since container days.
- Google is building more smaller scale (a dozen racks or so) traditional data centers closer to ISPs.
I don't think shipping container design was never a very good idea, to begin with - it was an interesting experiment that didn't scale as well as they thought it would.
there isn't as much exotic "stuff" as you might think. they have the same ODMs build switches and line cards to their specifications, with chips from the same vendors (Broadcom, Cavium, etc) only they can easily hire a team and sign the NDA and write/optimize/perfect the forwarding plane and control plane implementations.
hell, the IS-IS implementation in Quagga is usable because of Google :)
Disclaimer: I'm an SRE at Google, my opinions are my own.
We actually release a decent amount of information, see [0]. I particularly recommend "Jupiter Rising: A Decade of Clos Topologies and Centralized Control in Google's Datacenter Network" [1].
Absolutely. The servers in their production racks are nearly 100% custom down to the silicon and involve serious amounts of engineering to make happen.
Sorry but I have to disagree. They are custom but that kind of customization is not all that difficult. Essentially it's using same HW as everyone else in a way that supports their scale better. That's it.
Now I really don't know anything about this, but I remember quite a while ago when configuring a Linux kernel build that there was an entire section dedicated to Google's server hardware. If it's really all that normal, why would it be Google-specific/why wouldn't there be other large vendors present as well? Talking about the GOOGLE_FIRMWARE menu.
But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android, and I'm even more invested in macOS. That Apple builds nice hardware is a bonus for me (but I'd honestly prefer better software right now).
I mean, on paper Apple is making more money from hardware than from software, but how do you measure hardware sales that only happened because of the software?
I'm the inverse of you I guess. I'm not a huge fan of macOS or iOS (iOS's notification story is an absolute nightmare), but their hardware is always among the best, if not the best. Apple might not appear to be the best if you're just comparing line items on a spec sheet, but the whole package always seems more solid than their competition.
I'll never buy a non-Apple laptop anymore after dealing with flaky PC laptops for years, and the only reason I haven't bailed on Android is because of how bought into the ecosystem I am... but I'd buy an iPhone in a heartbeat if I could reliably run Android on it.
Apple has been very serious about how they’re a hardware company vs a software company for like 30+ years now. Literally the first thing SPJ did after coming back was kill the Mac clones program. They’re obsessed with the feel of the hardware in every way. The software is just a platform.
They're successful because of the software only because the hardware is ancillary to their software ecosystem. Their hardware makes their software run much more effectively than most of their competitors, and therefore acts as a major barrier to entry. I don't think there's a single tech company more completely integrated and whole than Apple. That's why they can emphasize on experience rather than just specs as they're selling more than just software, or hardware.
At least it's not Windows. I'm amazed at how something as basic as Bluetooth has been completely fucked for me since I got a PC. On no other platform have my Bose QC35s, AirPods, or wireless Logitech headset had issues. On Windows 10, they hardly work at all. Ironically the only device that works for longer than a few seconds before losing audio is my AirPods, which I still have to reconnect frequently to get the audio o actually come through.
At least it's not Android, either. I don't use Windows, but for me the Android OTA upgrade to Oreo on my Nexus 6P has been disastrous for use with the QC35s. I have to reboot the awful thing several times a day to get consistent BT audio, and it will happily chew through the battery several times a day too, unless I leave it on charge for periods. Been with Android since the G1, but I'm seriously thinking about switching to iOS because I'm just so frustrated on a daily basis with this awful release, which seems barely tested. I do wonder at which point I switched from the optimist's "oh yay, an update!" to the pessimist's "oh shit, here comes a boatload of careless regressions".
Thats the problem with Windows - it still does not carry a decent Bluetooth stack and depends on the vendor shipping one. And all of them I have seen so far are more or less crap.
Linux on the other hand is exclusively Bluez which works fine... but god forbid you want to do something like BLE communications or more complex sound stuff, the docs are horrid.
The OS X BT stack is... well I dont have any issues with it per se but it, too, lacks features like a file explorer or an easy way to send files via BT.
Hmm, I've got both Bluetooth File Exchange.app and Bluetooth Explorer.app on my mac which are both from Apple and I think what you're looking for. Not sure if they came default or when I downloaded the bluetooth dev kit years ago. I remember using it to transfer mp3s onto a ZTE bar phone back in the day.
So basically, bluetooth is still a PITA nowadays :/.
If I turn the key in my car, get the electricity running though the circuit, then the phone gets connected to the car. If I turn the key one more time to ignite the engine the car system lose the bt connection and I have to manually force the connection with the phone.
> But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android
Afraid I'm completely different. I have an iphone but my computer runs linux. The reason I have an iphone is because the hardware is top-notch, and the OS is rather constricting -- I would much rather have an iphone running android than one running ios.
I'm similar, I would love to buy Apple hardware and have the freedom to put my own software on it. I'd also be happy to buy a new laptop and install 10.6.8, or buy a new iPhone and install iOS 6.
But I despise Android--I want a real Unix. I feel like Android was architected by complete idiots. Oh how I wish WebOS won instead of Android.
I'll have random daydreams of some sort of way webOS would be a distant third place, but in a decent spot with say 10% market share. I'll think of some weird merger of BB switching to webOS, Microsoft and Nokia backing webOS. Shit. WebOS was likely doomed no matter what. But it came out at the right time and was so good.
I'd prob still use it on and off if HP didn't take the store down.
Apple is making buttload of money on hardware because it does not sell any software anymore. I mean, in the mass consumer market – and they are cutting off the Pro software (which is sad). But remember the hardware sales pay for the software, too. So basically people say Apple is making $$$ on an iPhone price minus manufacturing costs and R&D but great slice of the zillion $$$ is the software part.
Anyway, not sure who said what exaclty, but Steve Jobs repeatedly said that Apple is great because of the tight interconnection between sw and hw. So Apple is not a hw company. It is not a sw company either. They do both and the result is greater than just a combination of the two.
I see Apple, and the way they present their products supports it, as an appliance company. It's harder and harder to repair their devices and the software is more and more integrated with the hardware – examples: force touch and feedback, Touch/Face ID, all the camera magic, Apple Pay, MBP Touch Bar etc. So basically the sw and hw are more and more inseparable unless you lose "half" the features.
iOS is a toy OS. The notifications alone make it useless for office productivity. The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix sync. You can't watch a YouTube video while doing something else. Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen. You can't even do basic things like set a system-wide default browser.
> The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix
You can quit e easily watch Plex (can’t remember if Netflix bothered) in the background while doing other shut with the PIP.
> you can’t watch a YouTube video either.
Which is YouTube’s fault ENTITELY. They are pushing YouTube red to allow for this (which isn’t even available in a lot of countries they advertise it in....)
The limitations on background processing are exactly why I prefer iOS. When something is acting funny, the foreground app is always the culprit, and killing it fixes the problem. I don't want to do any more complicated debugging than that on a four inch touchscreen.
1) The limitations on background processing are deliberate to prevent applications from needlessly consuming battery life/mobile data.
2) It is Google's fault that you can't watch YouTube whilst doing something else. Apple provided an API which third party YouTube clients already support.
You can debate whether Android O is better or not. But I would hardly call iOS a toy just because it doesn't allow for rich notifications.
That is something I don’t miss at all from Android after abandoning Android for iOS 3 years ago (Samsung started locking down their phones with the Galaxy S5, decided I wanted no more part of Samsung bloatware and losing the ability to rid myself of it).
The reply-in-notifications go away after I've replied, they don't hang around and cover a portion of the screen all the time. And if I don't want to read them right away, then I've got this thing hanging around on my screen with a angry red number that I don't want to deal with.
They're intrusive, they're obnoxious, they cause performance hiccups on occasion. They're not a superior version of anything.
The notifications you are complaining about can be easily, and completely, disabled. In a few seconds. I don't think you've used iOS 11 on a recent iPad, either.
Of course it doesn't, but Android already does the aggregation for me so that I don't miss important notifications from other apps. It's just a better way of working.
I do think it, along with all the other ways iOS is deficient, is a deal breaker. I finally switched to Android after years on iPhone and I can't believe how much of an idiot I was for not switching earlier.
At least I wasn't enough of an idiot to use iMessage and get locked into the Apple ecosystem.
I'm typing this from an Android right now, but it definitely feels like iOS is the majority of the high end market and Android completely owns mid to low end. Apples chosen their niche and fills it well, they shouldn't be compared to a generalist in terms of who is best
It's a very subjective thing, really. I actually like my Windows phone, it's the only Windows I have.
Someone above concluded they are a product company and I was thinking 'appliance.' That's not a negative, they make devices fit for function and they, Apple, are remarkably good at it.
I can't think of an Apple product, and I type this on an iPad, that is truly the best in every aspect. However, they surely aren't the worst and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I think.
I think appliance fits for apple if you use it with the connontations that word had pre 70s. They we're amazing time saving devices and well built enough that they seemed magical. Ive talked to my grandparents and their reaction to using a TV was similar to my reaction to a smart phone for the first time. My gushing over how much time my Roomba saved me also reminded my grandmother of getting a dishwasher
Android dominates because Apple refuses to sell $50 iPhones. iOS app revenues still outpace Google Play, Android is the OS of choice for people who use it like a feature phone.
I've seen that revenue stat mentioned before, but never any evidence that this isn't due to something like Android having free options available for functionality that only paid apps have on iOS.
Name one bit of useful Android functionality that is only available paid on ios. There isn’t any. The average Android users pay far less for their phones, and spend far less on apps, that’s been true forever.
Apple targets only the top end of the market. I’m a mobile developer and that’s why native apps are almost always iOS first. We know our iOS sales will be higher, and these are proprietary apps, not system features.
I don't think Android market share is enough of a metric to determine the quality of iOS. There are so many different cheap android phones to choose from, and people do not buy them because Android is a better mobile OS.
Does Apple actually manufacture anything itself? I thought it was all outsourced. That would make them a software and hardware-design company, but not really a manufacturer.
Not doing the final assembly yourself does not somehow disqualify you from being a hardware company. There is no company in the world that possesses the manufacturing prowesss of Apple, yet they all have access to the same final assembly shop (Foxconn, basically).
The component manufacture is outsourced too isn't it? It seems they have been setting up or buying some chip fabrication facilities, but does any current Apple product contain anything built in an Apple factory?
I don’t get it. Apple makes the best mobile processors in the world. They routinely introduce low volume manufacturing techniques to the iPhone, which they then scale to 100+ million units per year. How are they somehow not a hardware company?
> Power management IC (surprising that Apple is doing Analog IC design too!)
Have you seen the tear down of the old MacBook power bricks? Check it out if you haven’t. There’s a lot of tech in there to improve efficiency (ie keep that tiny brick from melting)
And despite all that engineering their reliability was terrible due to various plug design problems with the predecessor to MagSafe or the cords getting damaged from point stress. Meanwhile, Dell and HP make mediocre stuff that somehow hardly has such a problem by using much thicker gauge wiring and tougher rubber / plastics.
I'll take a skinny MagSafe plug over a Dell or HP plug any day. A power brick costs ~$80 to replace, a laptop costs much more.
The main issue with Apple's power brick is that people wind the cord too tightly and don't leave slack. HP/Dell's main problem is that the female power adapter inside the laptop takes a lot of stress. In college, I had two roommates that broke their laptops due to the power connector.
Yea, clearly these people have never supported dell laptops in an office environment. I have more dead bricks than i can mail back, especially from older machines. Fail in the exact same way as the apple ones
No you are completely 100% wrong. This was one that came with a MacBook Pro from the Apple Store actually in the sealed box when I bought it. Don't assume I'm stupid. I'm actually a qualified electrical engineer and I know switching power supply topologies and design very well.
Don't assume that because 90% of the charger is well designed, the rest of the 10% is.
There is no or insufficient inrush protection in the charger. This results in a hefty current flowing the charge the primary DC cap in the switching power supply when you plug it into the wall (step response of a capacitor at DC is high instantaneous current if the source impedance is low such as rectified AC - derived from I=C(dV/dt), dv=350, dt -> 0, C~10mF, I->infinity in an idea model ignoring parasitics and series resistance of capacitor). This damages the pins and stresses the diodes terribly reducing the time to failure. Google inrush current protection.
You do NOT get this on decent industrial switching power supplies that actually cost less. They either have NTCs or pre-charge.
The Chinese ones are a whole different story. Some of those are absolutely abysmal and are in no way even comparable to the Apple ones.
The Apple ones certainly don't rank that high really in the scale of things, regardless of all the love spread over the Internet. If you're comparing them to a lowest bidding turd from China, then of course they're going to look good.
It did sound a lot like you were describing the common issues with the knock offs though - however with the extra detail it really cleared it up, thanks for that.
It's a reasonably complex pre-rectification stage for a consumer device. It's certainly not AC->rectifier->DC cap.
I can't explain the burn marks in the image -- stunning for a British plug. None of mine with Australian or European plugs show any significant burns. I see sparking when I plug it in, but that's standard for pretty much any SMPS.
PFC is required under EU law and is a good idea anyway from an efficiency and harmonic reduction POV. It doesn’t however establish or change startup currents.
There’s sparking when you plug it in and there’s this which is like a small explosion. Either way the sparking is entirely avoidable as well with a trivial. Little startup circuit or a couple of NTCs.
I’ve tried it on a sample of three chargers now (we have three MBPs in the house of differing ages and original chargers) and they all have it.
I’ve got a Lamba 12v 5A unit here as well which isn’t much bigger with a chopped off IEC lead on it. Nothing when you plug it in at all.
No from the Apple store. See my other post. This is poor design, regardless of where it came from. There should be a hefty NTC or inrush current limiter in the charger.
There's a lot to be said for "if you want something done properly, do it yourself". Hard to do in a connected ecosystem but Apple has the level of platform control that they can do whatever they feel they need to do without having to consider partners, competitors or exogenous forces.
Typing this from a Pixel 2 XL after having been a happy Pixel XL owner. The 2 is truly the greatest phone I've ever owned, and that includes iphones along the way. If this is what you get with a software company building hardware, I'd say keep it up.
Meanwhile the Pixel 2 XL issues with build quality and screen have been well documented. A friend of mine already RMAed his because the proximity sensor stopped working. If Google wants to charge premium flagship pricing, they need to build premium phones.
Also typing from a Pixel 2 XL after having been a moderately satisfied Pixel 1 XL owner. The Pixel 2 XL screen gamut is totally washed out with blacks. Its horrendous for watching any show or cinema. Yes, I know that each app has to have the right gamut set in the Android app manifest -- but not even Google updated their apps or launcher yet!! And they expect others to do it? At least give us the option to force a higher gamut per app... Simple solution for such an eclectic decision on a new flagship.
Totally agree on the Pixel 2 XL. The best smartphone I have ever used and I am old and switch phones a lot. People need to be careful listening to random people online and go try the phone for yourself.
If iPhones ran today's Android, they would lead the pack; but because they run iOS, they're pretty MOR in terms of everyday performance and responsiveness (and perhaps especially disappointing WRT battery life). This is quite a role reversal from the situation five years ago.
Compare last year's Samsung Galaxy to whatever iPhone was available at the time, and you'll find that the Samsung loads equivalent applications (preferably the same or same function) faster, retains them for longer, and lasts considerably longer on battery, all while charging faster.
It's not that hard, I'm sure somebody's done this on video, do the test yourself if you're not convinced, I don't have an iPhone 7 Plus and 20 hours of time on my hands.
iOS is a hog, and the A series chips are clearly not competitive in idle power consumption as configured by iOS.
I think this personification of companies as people is misleading. Whose "focus?"
Do you mean you think that the same people within Apple are working on both hardware and software, and are focusing more on hardware? Or that you think many people who write software have been re-educated, re-assigned, and are now working on hardware?
I assume that the size of Apple's teams working on iPhone are limited by more than resources, and the recruitment pools are totally separate, so it's not like they're spending too much on hardware engineers and can't afford enough software engineers, right?
I just don't really know how you can conceive of such a massive company as having an obviously zero-sum "focus" like a person has.
Quality comes from feedback control systems. Quality of design comes from management oversight and correction. Fan-in is a concern. Orphaned teams become a concern at a tenth Apple’s scale. Informal networks and approval based on trust of people rather than examination of product is a concern. Executive attention is expensive.
The hardware engineering is much more deliberate and well planned/orchestrated than the software.
IMO it’s less “focus” and more having to rely on third party manufacturers who will push back due to liability.
iOS 11 is a beta quality product. One org that I’m familiar with has a 5x increase in help desk calls and replacements, mostly around the voice phone components failing.
Most iOS updates are smooth and trouble free. Still the far best mobile platform in terms of actually receiving software updates and new features. In the case of iOS 11 I would guess all the software changes required for the iPhone X has caused a temporary a dip in quality. I don't think it's representative of the quality of iOS updates overall. Things could be a little bit rocky going forward though as Apple will continue support pre-iPhone X era hardware for the next 3-5 years. I believe this is the first time they've had to support two distinctively different flavors of iOS UI in this way at least since the iOS6->7 days.
A company absolutely has a zero-sum 'focus' just like a person. You dismiss the idea that resources are the limiting factor, but that is absolutely what the limiting factor is.
You really think that with unlimited money they couldn't have better software? They could, but they don't because it does not have enough of a return on investment. They 'focus' their resources on areas that will return them profit.
You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't easily buy your way out of technical debt, time limits, or legacy architectural decisions.
Ascribing the bugs to malice or carelessness rather than the fact that this shit is difficult is very unkind. Source: know many people who have spent last few months feverishly working nights and weekends.
Wait, what? How was I insulting the people working on the software? I am saying they aren't getting the resources they need to do everything they want to do.
I am a developer on a team, too, and I know that sometimes you can't do everything you want because you simply don't have enough time, money, and developers to get it done.
I know it is hard, that is why I was saying it is a company resource issue, not a 'bad developers' issue. Even the best developer in the world can't complete a huge project by themselves in a short amount of time. You need company support, which means ample developers, QA, support, and time.
Not sure where you ever got 'malice' or 'carelessness' from.
I am sorry if I misconstrued your comment. I thought that you said that bugs and issues are caused by the people working there caring more about return on investment than quality, and not caring about fixing issues, which implies carelessness. By extension, people developing slap-dash product to rip off users without care for how things impact them implies malice.
It felt insulting because people I know personally do deeply care, and do spend a lot of effort for things that do not necessarily have a lot of return on investment (just for one example, iOS accessibility features for visually and hearing impaired are designed deep into the system and still have no equal). Aside from that, fixing bugs and improving stability does offer return on investment by building customer loyalty (case in point, after each major release I still see people mentioning Snow Leopard, an OS release dedicated exclusively to stability and performance improvements).
I’m not saying that things couldn’t be better, they always could, but I don’t think that all problems are as easily solved as you think. To take a classic counter example, Microsoft employs at conservative estimate twice the number of engineers compared to Apple, but still has not yet made a product twice as good or with half the bugs, imho. At a certain point, the system complexity just gets too great, and we need better architectures, tools and processes to get beyond that level.
Again, I am not saying you were intending to insult anyone, and apologies if I misunderstood something in your post. It’s just how it came across to me.
I think it would be easier to have a conversation that cares about human emotions and get results, than to insult others and lose perspective of those involved. The recent flak over Node COC is a extremely good example about how "having an honest conversation even if it hurts people," is extremely destructive. [1]
This bug has been annoying me, my family and friends for several days now. Nearly everyone I️ know with an iPhone. And the suggestion is to break predictive text to fix it. I️ really wish I️ would have bought an Android.
It'll probably be fixed in a week or two at most and you'll forget it ever happened except when recounting stories of the good ole days of technology 20 years from now.
I think Apple is a Design company, as in that's their main value add. Like Steve Jobs said, design is not just how their products look but how they work - something that requires both software and hardware.
On the other hand Google seems to be more of a software company, which reflects in their general culture and hiring practices.
> I think Apple is a Design company, as in that's their main value add. Like Steve Jobs said, design is not just how their products look but how they work - something that requires both software and hardware.
That's just word redefining. And I have an old iMac 20 that has all its USB ports on the back and every time I have to twist my wrist to plug something I am reminded how Apple isn't that good at functional design. The thing is pretty though.
those macs had a target user of designers/creative industry professionals. For these people the aesthetics is pretty much a part of the function. Apple's biggest innovation is probably the realization that "normal" people care about very different things than engineers, when it comes to computers.
I think Apple explicitly position themselves as the combination of hardware and software and want as much vertical integration as possible... the more hardware they control the better they can make software to run on it.
Who thinks Apple is a software company? Because they're wrong. Apple started off making hardware and they've always made hardware. They make software to compliment their hardware.
I buy Apple products because they run Apple software. I like the Apple hardware I have, but if it ran easily and bug free on other hardware, I suspect I’d end up with cheaper knock offs for the hardware itself.
Indeed, Apple is excellent at integration. But at the system level, that leaves them with fewer partners who can help with the business side of things. They had to become excellent in operations, strategy and sales, which they did as well.
Strategically, I think Apple has made a right move by internalising all the hardware designs. That said, as many have suggested, the new iPhone is no more than just another faster, smaller, and costlier.
Well shit, this thread didn't prepare me for this big a goalpost move
Edit:
That was overly sarcastic but it went from talking about italian cars, to Ferrari specifically, to implying that the Italian brand is fine as long as it has Italian owners. Discussions are pointless if everyone's going to be arguing different points
I am sorry, but I think you didn't follow properly the discussion.
The first quote I answered was exactly: "Fit and finish on many "high end" cars is actually pretty abysmal. Especially basically anything Italian."
So, as everyone can see, the discussion was specifically around high end Italian cars, unless I'm missing some tricky and specific nuance of the English language in this context. In that case please enlighten me instead of writing sarcastic comments, it will be appreciated much more.
Ferrari, if I'm not mistaken, is the archetype of high end Italian cars.
And then when someone starts bubbling about the abysmal quality of 1998 Lamborghini I duly make it clear that they were not Italian for a long time at that point and they have been just acquired by a German automaker.
I honestly can't see any contradiction in this very linear reasoning.
Please let me know what I'm missing.
The point I found missing was why ferarri was brought up if you could point to 1998 as the time is was no longer high end for a legitimate reason, the foreign ownership. Someone could have conceived a child after that point in time and the child would be able to vote by now, why use it as an example?
It seemed like either you knew what the other poster meant by Italian high end cars, the Ferrari brand, and chose to defend it despite knowing that it was bad for other reasons. Or you thought he was discussing Italian owned Italian brands when it turns out some famous Italian brands are not Italian owned.
Either way that looks like you two were using different definitions for the same words to my third party view
Ehm..
Are you aware that Lamborghini and Ferrari are two completely different car brands right?
Ferrari is Italian, Lamborghini was Italian and was sold to different parties since the 80's or something like that.
From 1998 Lamborghini is German.
In my original comment I said that I would be very surprised to find a Ferrari with a shit finish, and another user said that Lamborghini from 1998 to 2011 had abysmal paint quality.
So I don't see any contradiction in my comments.
I just re-read the thread, completely missed that 'serf replied with Lamborghini when you spoke about Ferrari. My apologies for the snark, it was uncalled for
Land Rovers are designed, manufactured and (around the corner from me in Herefordshire) tested in the UK. Jaguar Land Rover is owned by Tata. Does that make them Indian cars?
I've driven ferraris in las vegas racetracks. Affordable experience. The fit and finish was far below any luxury vehicle by far. The R8 was miles ahead in comfort and luxury details, but then those cars are not not designed as a luxury vehicle.
You haven’t used faceid yet are not convinced... Maybe wait until you’ve used it? I am using it right now, and so far there are very few times I’ve missed touchid, and I’ve been reminded of all the times that Touch ID would fail, like getting out of the shower etc...
I don’t understand the longing for an underscreen finger print scanner, does the computer in Star Trek require thumb print? Does the UI in minority report? If you imagine futuristic computer interfaces the computers just know who is using them, this is one of the first steps along that road...
As to the price, Apple price there phones where they want to price them to make sure they have high profit margins. I’m not sure why people complain about this. If they don’t do this they don’t make as much money. I do believe this phone costs significantly more to make than others, and the price fairly reflects that, though it is only £200 premium over the 8+...
How do you think Apple should price there products? A lower overall cost?
Got it today. I have to say, faceid is pretty cool. The screen however is disappointment; the hue/color temperature changes significantly to be distracting with tiny changes to viewing angle.
>That said, as many have suggested, the new iPhone is no more than just another faster, smaller, and costlier.
FaceID is a huge leap and affects how people use their phones. The phone can behave differently if you are looking at it. For example: showing sensitive info only if you're looking at it, and not playing notification sounds as loud (or at all) if you see the notification as it comes in.
1. Samsung was a semiconductor maker, that successfully moved up to make phones. Apple was a integrator of third party chips that successfully went down to own many of the chips.
2. Apple's chips are significantly better than the competition. Partly because the chip division has a captive customer whose requirements are more apparent, plus no middlemen thanks to the vertical integration
3. Samsung's components need to serve multiple segments of the phone market, and other external customers. Apple only builds for Apple's specs
4. Every new breakthrough on the iPhone has been because of a chip that Apple alone had. From the very first iPhone's capacitive touch sensors to the new IR sensor system, no one else has the access for a couple phone cycles. Apple put out a 64 bit ARM processor even before arm had finalized the instruction set
4. Is absolutely wrong in every aspect. Most "innovation" was bought tech (primesense, for instance). The ARMv8 ISA was finalized ages before the chips got designed. Middle of 2011 IIRC.
Having the foresight and capabilities to make the right acquisitions at the right times is just good business. Splitting hairs over whether the technology was internally developed or purchased is irrelevant to the point being made about the exclusivity of the hardware.
True - They bought 3rd party companies with the tech. Still doesn't change the observation that they made it better, and tailored it specifically for the iPhone. None of those sensors have drop in replacements. And Apple put out the 64bit proc prior to ARM having IP --> FACt
Samsung has a problem with adding features to their devices that are simply not well executed.
For instance, from the NY Times review of the Galaxy Note 8:
>Some of the biometrics, including the ability to unlock your phone by scanning your face or irises, are so poorly executed that they feel like marketing gimmicks as opposed to actual security features.
Samsung's screens are excellent, but their CPU/GPU performance is a generation (or more) behind Apple. Plus they are way behind in integrated functionality such as motion coprocessor, ai processing, and secure enclave.
I don't know how true this is, but I've heard that the Samsung OLED screen on the iPhone X is significantly better than the ones Samsung puts on it's flagship phones, in color fidelity especially. Partly because of Apple's attention to detail, but also because Samsung's flagship phones ship in much higher volume than the X is expected to.
>>> I don't know how true this is, but I've heard that the Samsung OLED screen on the iPhone X is significantly better than the ones Samsung puts on it's flagship phones
I can't believe that. I just can't.
All iPhone X reviews mention the screen tech difference, all of them say how they don't notice a difference.
Most reviewers (and people) don't appreciate color fidelity. Jon Gruber was just talking about how Google spent the time/effort to make the colors of the Pixel display more accurate and natural, and then people complain they don't "pop" and look as good as the super-saturated colors on other android phones.
The colour reproduction on Samsung phones is just awful after spending so much time on MacBooks and iPhones. Over saturated and as you increase brightness it washes everything out.
I spent time with the iPhone X today so can comment on the screen first hand.
What makes the screen different is that the colours aren't oversaturated like Android phones. It was identical to the iPhone 8 screen (LED) only significantly brighter.
From what I've read what makes it better are things like the reduced blue-shift that occurs when moving the phone and the significant reduction in burn-in effect. But what most people will think is that it is the colours that make it better. Even though that could largely be software.
I can believe it. The quality is all about cost. What level of rejected units can you accept for price $X? If Apple can pay more (due to cost, scale, or just where the price of the phone is allocated between parts) they can buy a better screen.
Yeah the S8 and S8 Plus had (has?) significant top/side edge colour shift.
(Speaking as the owner of the Plus, who has his first replaced and the second is somewhat better but not perfect. Wife's S8 is also affected but she doesn't see it or doesn't care. I would still take that slight imperfection over the horrid notch though).
Basically, yeah, they don't make the OS. I think the parent comment was more aimed at software companies. Though, you could look at it from the opposite point of view as well.
This is an engineering masterpiece. The electrical engineer in me is mind-blown. I love the inter-PCB BGA-style interface. Standoff, connector and shield all in one component. And the component density is stunning.
Clean internal layout, relatively serviceable, structured light 3D scanning built in. You can debate whether or not Apple have made good UI decisions, but the hardware design execution here is superb.
I'm just wondering, how does it compare to let say a samsung galaxy S8 in terms of engineering? on paper, they seem to be pretty similar devices but Samsung doesn't get nearly as much praise. Is Apple really ahead there?
Typing this on a Fairphone 2 right now and I'm a pretty happy customer. It's like the phone equivalent to a thinkpad design where everyone else is using ultra books. It's interesting to see how these phones prioritise different things.
Their service is pretty good too by the way. I had a broken bottom module and when I contacted them was sent a new one the same day. Took a week to get here because international shipping but that's hardly their fault. Repairs really was just power down, open phone, unscrew component, put in new one, fasten screws, boot up phone. Took me fifteen minutes, which felt awesome.
I'm not going to deny that the newest iPhone is both more advanced technology wide and just gorgeously designed, but in all honesty, smartphones hit a level of "good enough" a few years ago and it will take quite a fundamental leap in features for me to really want and upgrade.
The only issue is that the camera in this thing is still frustratingly sluggish to the point where it feels like a downgrade compared to my iPhone 5s. Maybe the software is partially to blame, I've been looking on fdroid for replacement apps but none seem faster.
Pity about the point 'n shoot frustrations. I wonder is that the camera hardware or software or a combo of the two. Kind of surprised you went iPhone to Fairphone, I would have thought that most would be Android refugees.
I refused smartphones for years until a hand-me-down 4s was forced on my by my GF, and later was offered a repaired 5s for 100 euros by her brother, so I'm not the typical iPhone user to begin with ;)
I will admit that the iPhone is a good phone though!
Part of me thinks it's absolutely stunning that such engineering is even possible, and frankly, in a way, how much you get for your money. The future is here.
Then I realize, the only reason this is remotely possible is due to volume. So it almost says less about technical progress and performance per cubic inch per dollar coming down, and more about how volume makes the above possible.
The LG V30 teardown is pretty impressive too. I watched it first, a couple weeks ago, so the iPhoneX teardown didn't do much for me. If I had watched them in a different order, maybe I'd find the iPhone one more impressive.
Though most impressive ever for me was a Panasonic cassette player (walkman style) in the 90's. The thing was barely larger than a cassette itself. My young mind was blown out.
Amazing to see everything shrink (except for the battery). Reminds me of a quote referencing Blackberry falling behind the iPhone: "Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it."
I'm sure they investigated designing simply L-shaped battery but for some reason they decided to go with two batteries instead.
I wonder if its because one is supplying power to some critical circuits while other one isn't, or since display and battery are #1s replacement on these phones, they simply run some stats and decided that splitting cells into two separate battery boxes will help them cut the costs down the line when it will come to battery replacement.
The most impressive thing to me is how similar the iPhone X is to the original iPhone (shown side by side in the second picture).
Ten years ago, Apple totally nailed the design. Same buttons, same speaker design, same full panel display. Even design work by a company as talented as Apple, you might expect that a new model ten years into the future may look quite different, but it looks the same.
"The most impressive thing to me is how similar the iPhone X is to the original iPhone (shown side by side in the second picture)."
It makes the original iphone seem impressive, perhaps, but now ten years on we see that there has been no real innovation in the phone form factor since then.
They're all just (iphones).
I personally always liked the qwerty slate form factor of the Moto Q / Nokia E71 / Blackberry Classic. But there were many other different and interesting form factors (Nokia communicator, Helio Ocean, that square phone from Motorola that opened out a keyboard like a knife...).
It's interesting and fun to browse through this nice visual history:
Looking at only candybar phones is pretty disingenuous. Plenty of smartphones before the iPhone were almost all screen, e.g. the Sony Ericsson P800 that Steve Jobs was said to have used https://cdn2.gsmarena.com/vv/pics/sonyericsson/snp800_00.jpg
The Nikon CoolPix S80 line of cameras were full-panel displays. That was probably the first full-panel device.
This turned out to be less than useful. It's hard to hold the thing stable when taking a picture without touching the touch screen.
> The most impressive thing to me is how similar the iPhone X is to the original iPhone (shown side by side in the second picture).
And really, how similar every non-notebook/desktop Apple product has been to each other one. Design-wise, the iPhone was just an iPod with a bigger screen; iPod touch/nano/other variations are obviously just an iPhone in different sizes; the watch is just the iPod nano on a wristband; iPad is a bigger iPhone. Apple hasn't released a fundamentally new design idea in over a decade.
On the one hand, the consistency of physical design is its own type of branding and creates solid brand recognition. On the other hand, the UI/UX that transformed interacting in the digital world from using keyboards and mice to using our fingers on touch screens is already old. Apple really has no need to be creative since they are still profiting from their slight modifications. But the next big, real revolution in personal computing design and usage will need to be more than a glass rectangle with slightly better curved edges.
> Design-wise, the iPhone was just an iPod with a bigger screen
That's revisionist at it's best, and ridiculously untrue at it's worst. iPods in 2007 were about 1/3rd screen, and 2/3rds clickwheel. They were shaped like, and as thick as, a pack pf playing cards, made of plastic and metal (not glass), and basically shared nothing with the iPhone's design. When that device was released, we'd never seen anything like it.
The iPod team was given first shot at making the Apple phone. They lost to the Mac team. Design-wise the iPhone was just the (secret) Mac tablet with a smaller screen.
Why do you want them to design their products differently from previous models just for the sake of it? Apple iterates on their designs. Few/no changes mean Apple thinks their product is close to perfect (in the context of the available technology and intended usage).
I much prefer Apple’s iterative and proven designs than other manufacturers’ products that are seemingly designed without experience from previous generations.
Not to mention the equivalent in software, designers forcing new UI's on us with each major release. Looking at you, MSFT. Especially when those changes are largely w/r/t what's now trendy, such as the recent iteration in design towards everything flat.
Not intending to start a design-related flamewar..
> the UI/UX that transformed interacting in the digital world from using keyboards and mice to using our fingers on touch screens is already old.
The pencil is already old too. So?
It's not clear to me that for things to be usable the way they get used has to change at some particular rate. On the contrary, the most usable user experiences (UXs) seem to be quite stable.
I've owned various iPhones (starting with the 4 in 2010) and I'm going to take a serious look at the Pixel 3 in 2018.
Performance is a feature, and I don't see a compelling reason why I should upgrade my 6S. I have a suspicion that Apple will keep the '6' chassis they've stuck with since the release of the 6 (6/6S/7/8) at 2GB of memory, and will continue to do so with the 9 next year. Pixel 2 performance with 4GB of memory is impressive. And I will not pay $1000 for a phone, that's absurd.
Features I focus on when evaluating a phone - how quickly does the device unlock? Does it have a fingerprint reader? How quickly can I open the camera app? How are the photos? (I really hope Android device makers diverge from Apple and pursue a under the front glass fingerprint reader instead of facial recognition). I could care less about AI assistants/animojis. Get the basics down.
Google _still_ has significant QA issues nearly six years after designing their first phone (Nexus 4) for OEM manufacturing.
RCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services) still needs to get off the ground. Until then, iMessage will still rule. My family is familiar with the built in messaging app, and I'm not asking my parents to use a separate app for texting. RCS will be able to replace iMessage for us.
Apple is a $875 billion dollar company because they figured out how to do customer service/QA/hardware and designed an easy to use OS.
I'm not asking Google to focus on ease of use for the OS, just get QA/service/hardware correct, at a $650 price point.
Reminds me of the attributed quote from Ford saying "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse"
Fingerprint reader is just a mean to an end to provide secure login. How quickly people forget that a few years back people were asking Apple to introduce gesture-based pin entry like on Android phone. Fingerprint reader made that requirement obsolete.
Also, there are new workflow that are enabled by FaceId. For example, it is completely reasonable to require authentication before popping out the keyboard, before sending any message, change any option, or switch to another application, ...
That's huge. There was no way back to pin code to me once fingerprint allowed me to remove the grace period for no authentication on the lock screen. The workflows I mentioned above (if practical in reality) similarly would change the game and remove any interest to fingerprints reader. (well assuming FaceId works as Apple demoed - that's a big if in the first gen of the technology)
edit: side note - fingerprint working on the whole screen would allow the same workflows that I mentioned. That would be a competing technology worth looking at.
>It really should have shipped with 4GB of memory.
Why? The iPhone 8 doesn't even have the 3GB that the X has and it's been deemed the fastest smartphone ever tested. That sounds like a case of valuing specs more than the actual usage.
I have an X right here, and it usually rests on my desk. It will unlock from a VERY oblique angle, way beyond what i expected it to be able to handle. The only failures i've gotten with the scanner were when a pillow was covering part of my face and i was in bed. Basically any position that i can reasonably read the display from that isn't a joke or a test will unlock the device if i'm glancing at it.
I have some complaints about the device, but this feature rocks as far as i'm concerned
My comment pertains to the hardware issues Google has had with Pixel - OLED bleeding, phones shipping without an OS, etc. Mostly hardware defects, not OS design choices.
The SIM card holder's size shows its age. It is literally as big as the A11 package.
Such archaic things need to evolve or disappear. What's the status on electronic SIM? We don't need a piece of plastic that holds a numeric key and takes up EXPENSIVE real-estate in one of the most densely packed electronic devices in the world.
Apple doesn't have the leverage to sway the standards?
the sim is no piece of plastic. SIM cards are computers! they have a CPU. they have memory, a file system. they run applets, yes Java applets. sims are one of the most secure pieces of technology out there, part of the Secure Element standard. the sim is responsible for a lot of your phones security. lots of encryption keys live on the sim and nothing can access them at all. I am much much happier to trust the hardware than software for some of this. smaller form factors are always coming out for sim, but it's worth the space
>I am much much happier to trust the hardware than software for some of this
Most SIMs I know are black boxes, with 0 public documentation. Taking into account that they are issued by telecom companies I don't trust them at all.
the reason there are multiple sim manufacturers and SIM cards interop seamlessly into any device is because they are built entirely on published standards. there is tons documentation, usually in the form of giant specifications. look for Secure Element. Java card. global platform. UICC.
The standard is out there if you're willing to pay ETSI (or whomever - though the CDMA2000 specs are open and online) the money to get at it. They're not black boxes by any measure of the word.
On a dumb phone yes contacts are stored on your SIM maybe using some kind of weak crypto, yes. On an iPhone X, it’s completely unused for crypto or security, or for any other purpose other than carrier authentication.
carrier authentication is huge! do you want someone to be able to subscribe to a network with your phone number? receive your calls? texts? or call or text as if they are you? yes the sim has little relevance to device security for most smartphones. contacts on sim are a great example of supporting legacy features for BC only. but the network is still very important to secure.
sims are used for more than just phones. the chip on your credit card is a Secure Element. the chip in your passport is too. these are some of the most physically and technically secure pieces of hardware ever made
Carrier authentication is not huge. The vast majority of communications services today are secure without a SIM, even ones that are tied to your number. Ever notice that iMessage keeps working without a SIM? The SIM card is mostly a relic that is useful to the carrier oligopoly because it increases network switching friction.
you wouldn't be able to authenticate on the data network without a sim. unless you exclusively use wifi the carrier network is still a huge part of everyone daily phone use
Because the SIM is universal, its designed to be architecture independent, the SIM is also open, when the secure element that apple is using for apple pay is not.
Its funny that in the old days the main selling point of GSM/SIM-Cards were that you could physically change from phone to phone and kept your line (and contacts), now we the recent race to get things as little as possible and that virtually no one is using by default any of the extra-GSM functionalities has (contact backup), coming back to a non-physical identity as the solution (like in the CDMA days) that will force you to go to carrier every time you need to change yout phone and depend on 3rd party online services for the extra functionalities.
Completely agree -- the magic of SIM cards is that they allow you to quickly switch providers. I find it ridiculous that people are clamoring for eSIMS, which as you point out is not moving forward, but moving backward to the old CDMA days when you had to plead with your carrier to reconfigure your phone.
Proper eSIM and eUICC implementations should allow remote flashing - there is a bootstrap IMSI and allow overloading of additional. Apple SIM (sans ATT on iPad) is an early non standard implementation.
But getting carriers to support the interchange is hard. Device manufacturers would love to remove the SIM card and make eSIM proprietary to lock their phones into a walled garden - “Pay to add your IMSI to this device.” Carrier do not love. Also carriers are telcos, not tech companies.
One exception : IoT. Distributed sensors that have 10 year lifespan need flexibility; and eSIM is a bigger push there.
Citation : Run an MVNO that is wary of the future of eSIM.
Since then, Apple has been pushing for carriers to support a new standard for an embedded chip in the device to hold the data currently stored on one or more removable SIM cards.
>The Apple SIM supports wireless services across multiple supported carriers, which can be selected from a user interface within their operating systems, removing the need to install a SIM provided by the carrier itself.
They did it with their most recent Apple Watch, which could be a first start to also bring it to the iPhone. They probably want to first get the adoption going, before making it available globally.
> don't need a piece of plastic that holds a numeric key
Doesn't a SIM include a small micro-controller and firmware (ref#1)?
It isn't just a numeric key holder.
In addition, wouldn't having an apple designed electronic SIM reduce what 3rd party firmware (hardware SIM card) is running on their devices? Seems like a good deal to me.
It doesn’t matter. My argument still stands regardless of what’s inside the chip holder and the card. The point is - it’s a relatively simple thing compared to the complexity of the rest of the phone. It needs to be eradicated.
It would be great if you could attach service providers to your iPhone in iTunes or your Apple account page or something. You could set up service in another country before you even arrive and it will "just work" when you land.
Technically this is already supported via the GSM standard. For example here is a Lithuanian company that lets you roam while there on their network without changing your SIM or paying your providers roaming fees:
The issue is that getting phone providers to co-operate is basically impossible. Not just politics, but everyone has their own way of doing things, so you need a custom implementation for each provider.
(Source: I used to work at an company who ran an SMS gateway)
Wrong question. You should be wondering how walled off it is going to be.
I mean it won't be that hard to make it so that you can easily load a different esim when traveling. It will have many slots, since it can just emulate more and more.
But is that in everybody's interest?
The Pixel is a great example of how Google is trying to cast off the constraints of Android's distribution model. I really think they can do it, but it's going to take a long effort. Eventually all the cheap phones will be Android and Google/Samsung/Apple will fight for the premium market. And it's unclear how long Samsung will remain in the fight given their lack of control over the OS and hardware integration.
Will Samsung even want to stay in the fight if they can get themselves as the screen manufacturers for every phone? They make money on every iPhone already selling parts, not sure if they do so for Pixels. No sense digging for gold if you can sell the shovels though
TL;DR: I see that Apple is doing great engineering, but where is this engineering better than Samsung's? Or is it not?
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This was fascinating, but I am not very knowledgable when it comes to hardware and I have a burning question.
Everybody here seems to think this was a great feat of engineering. I am looking also at the teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S8. Where is Apple doing a better work than Samsung? Is it just the fact that Apple are "doing it themselves" that is impressive? (not implying it isn't.)
The only thing I can see is that the iPhone X seems to devote much more space to battery, by cramming up all of the components tighter together. Does this mean the iPhone X will have a better battery life?
I truly have no dog in the fight, and have no interest in starting a flame war. I'm just curious.
PD: Yeah, the A* CPUs are fantastic, no doubt. But that doesn't show in this teardown.
Basically, this "cramming up all of the components tighter together" is worth being impressed with. We're at the point in manufacturing where every square millimetre of space saved on a logic board, or within a collection of components, is bringing us ever closer to the limit of what we are capable of producing based on our current understanding of physics.
Aside: I'm excited to see how far technology advances in my lifetime. The general consensus seems to be that we are approaching some supposed limit. I'm hoping this turns out to be wrong, and that our technology continues to experience "horse => car" types of leaps. All I've been reading is that we only have "faster horses" in our future. With any luck, this kind of narrative is short-sighted and naive, and we have some incredible technological advances to look forward to.
Biological brains are much more energy efficient (up to 100,000x depending on who you ask) than our current offerings, and beyond that one can make an entropic argument as to how much energy information processing should require, to which the answer is "not much".
What makes you believe that we are only destined for incremental improvements?
Do you really need to hold it up to your face like I've been seeing? The reviewers look so awkward and uncomfortable. I was hoping it would see your face laying on the desk and whatnot.
Yes and no. I've got the "attention detection" on which is supposed to ensure you're looking at it, and in the first, what, 12 hours of having the phone, I've had 0 problems unlocking it. One of my first tries was swiping up while riding my bicycle. I glanced down as I did so, and it was unlocked in the time it took me to take a glance down. TOTALLY seamless. Even with a bike helmet on, on a moving bike, with the phone at a totally non-optimal angle.
I've also found, with it sitting on my desk on a stack of cables I brought in to ensure I could sync and power everything during the transition (lightning to USB, lightning to usb-c, apple watch magnetic charger, you get the idea), that it would unlock just from a swipe, without even having to tilt it towards me.
After I've played with it a bit, I find you can be off by far more than you expect -- maybe 20-30 degrees from 'face to face' with the phone. And you don't have to be close.
It doesn't work in the lying-flat-on-my-desk use case, but if i pick it up and swipe up, it's unlocked. Period. I don't even have to think about how it's angled, or if i I'm looking at it, or what the angle is, or what the light is.
I'm VERY impressed. I thought the #1 thing I'd miss would be pressing the home button while it lies on my desk, but it hasn't been an issue yet. and the transition to swipe up instead of home button press took 0 minutes. I thought it would take me days or weeks.
You have to point the sensor towards your face and look at the screen.
So far feels pretty natural, 70-80% time the phone is unlocked before I think ‘is the phone unlocked’ the rest of the time I forget I need to glance (literally glance with your eyes) at the phone, which I think comes from muscle memory of from unlocking with touchid and not looking at the phone while it unlocks...
Passive security, will become standard across screen based interfaces in the next 5-10yrs...
If iFixit’s characterization is correct, then the authentication process happens in stages, each of which is more energy expensive (and likely uses different hardware) than the previous stage. If true, then it stands to reason that there is at least a conceptual path to minimizing overall energy budget.
Battery usage is good so far, supposed to last 2hrs longer than the iPhone 7/8.
It periodically scans for attention, not battery intensive, and can actually be battery positive as it aggressively dims the screen and then turns it off if it finds it is not being looked at.
I can't tell if you're being passive aggressive or not.
Many, many people have pointed out that looking directly at the phone (as needed by Face ID), is NOT the only way to use a phone. Sometimes one just wants to glance down at the screen to see a notification. Watch Nilay's review and you'll see what I mean.
You look at the phone to unlock it; notifications still display when the phone is locked. I believe waking up the phone just involves raising it a bit (like in the Watch), along with some light-sensor heuristic (like in the AirPods.) Or, y’know, pressing the sleep button.
You can also wake the phone up now by tapping the display(similar to the watch). Also it might be configurable in settings but the notification content is hidden on the X when the phone is locked, after FaceID they become visible.
I've been critical of Apple's choices in the past, mainly the headphone jack removal, as an Android/Windows/linux guy. The iPhone X looks stunning, and I think the design decisions they've made (aside from not bringing back the headphone jack) are actually very future-looking and cool. My vision of the future is one in which we use the screen a lot less, and use our voices and AR more. Once the gestures are learned by the user base, using the phone should actually become a less frustrating and time-intensive experience. That said, I've not experienced notifications on the X, but again, as an Android user, I do sometimes just hit the power or main button to see what's on the screen. To do so, I typically do have to move the phone anyway, so as long as the X gives you some notification previews when you tap the phone or something, that's a compromise I could happily make.
I'm still on the fence about whether this is a great phone or not because I use every one of my phones a significant amount when not directly looking at it.
But this hardware is absolutely incredible. I wish there was a clear casing to the phone. Apple has always done a great job design the internals and clearly this is no exception.
IMO it’s even better suitable than previous iPhones for that situation. A tap on the display will wake it up and you can start looking at notifications, swipe to get the camera.. or if you refer to Siri, it’s still a button press.
Hardware company or Software company, we can always debate about it and choose whatever we want to say.
In few years Apple will be a "Trillion dollar company" and there won't be any debate or doubt about it.
The "jelly roll" is just one packing technique. You can pack flat sheets, so in theory can create an L shape.
Another guess is with an L shaped battery, thermal expansion makes it tricky because the L shaped compartment has a sharp inner corner which runs this risk of stressing the battery when it expands. A square compartment does not have that issue.
In any event, Apple knows how to produce weird shaped batteries. Just look at the Macbook. But it's in a nicely shape space.
TL;DR - putting the cells in parallel without changing their C-rating does nothing for charging them faster. You're limited by the C-rating of the cells, which is usually determined by the quality of components and the anode/cathode design.
Putting batteries in parallel maintains the voltage of one cell but multiplies the current by the number of cells in the pack.
E.g. if you have two Lithium Polymer cells in parallel, the nominal voltage will be 3.8V. At 5W, the current would be ~1.3A
Putting batteries in series adds the cell voltages while keeping current the same for the pack.
e.g. if you have two Lithium Polymer cells in series, the nominal voltage of the pack would be 7.6V and at 5W the current would be ~0.66A. Notice compared to the parallel example: voltage is doubled, current is halved.
What you need to compare here is the so-called "C-rating" (capacity rating) of the cell. All the C-rating means is that if you provide this much current, the cell is full in an hour. A C.10 rating would be the current over 10 hours. C.20 current over 20 hours, etc.
e.g. you have a 3.8V LiPo cell that's 2000mAh. A C-rating of 1 means you charge or discharge at 2A and it's full/dead in an hour.
So, putting batteries in parallel keeps their voltage the same but "doubles" the current.
However this entire time we've been talking about current, when we should be talking about power.
If your 2000mAh battery has a C-rating of 1, meaning you can charge it at maximum at the capacity of the battery, then in parallel you have 4000mAh (2x2000mAh) at 3.8V, meaning you can safely charge it at 4000mAx3.8V = ~15W
Put the same two cells in series. Now you have 2000mAh at 7.6V. How fast can you charge it? 2000mAx7.6V = ~15W.
Consumer electronics don't need a high C-rating because the cells don't need to charge/discharge at extremely high rates (as they would in a quadcopter, for example).
The main benefit of putting cells in series is that you raise the voltage, which lowers the current and thus means you can use smaller (and cheaper) wires to carry the same power.
Putting the cells in parallel would increase the current for the same power, but it does not change the C-rating and thus the amount of power you can safely put into the cells.
Hmm, this is what I thought as well. Just like if I have a splitter plugged into the wall and two USB cables attached I can charge those two devices as fast as if there was one item plugged in. So why wouldn't this be faster?
> Just like if I have a splitter plugged into the wall and two USB cables attached I can charge those two devices as fast as if there was one item plugged in. So why wouldn't this be faster?
Because with your method you are doubling the power.
Imagine you have one charger with a fixed output of 10W (2A @ 5V). Now you have a USB splitter cable which allows you to plug two devices into the same charger.
What happens? Most likely both devices will charge at 1A (5W) instead of a single device charging at 2A (10W). The power output of the charger doesn't magically increase to 4A (20W) because you plugged in a USB splitter cable.
Increasing the number of battery cells is equivalent to adding more splitter cables to the charger. The input power doesn't change, but the power to each cell (device) is decreased proportionally to the number of cells (devices) drawing power.
- Cheaper to produce / higher yields than an L shape?
- LiIon batteries have a power density <-> energy density tradeoff. Perhaps the batteries have different chemistries so as to get the best of both worlds.
That’s my assumption. It’s probably much easier to fab two batteries to fit the space available in the phone than to use just one and leave empty space or have it made in an ‘exotic’ shape like a non-rectangle.
> If the back glass breaks, you'll be removing every component and replacing the entire chassis.
oof, sounds like this is in part because of the "camera nub". I know a number of people who have had the back glass panel replaced on their iPhones, almost as many as the front. Sounds like X owners may want to opt for a case or some extra protection for the back glass and chassis to save the pain of getting this replaced/repaired, it sure isn't likely to be a DIY project for most.
It seems this is the second times after the Apple Watch 3 in september that the Wifi/BT module is branded with the Apple name. Does someone knows if they have designed their own Wifi/BT chipset or if it is licensed from somebody else?
It is interesting to observe that this teardown has been carried out down under (in Australia). Maybe it had something to do with the timezones and release date.
I don't understand, when they got rid of the audio jack and added wireless charging, why does the phone have ports at all? Couldn't they make a port-less phone?
I personally would not want to have wireless charging only for this device. Given the number of different places in which I want to charge my phone over the course of a week, and how few of them have wireless charging stations, that would be a big problem.
CarPlay is also probably a limiting factor. There are a few options for wireless CarPlay, but it seems the vast majority of implementations still rely on the cable. I doubt Apple would be willing to effectively kill such a feature with so much investment and partnership, and without an effective and equivalent alternative available.
Sounds a lot like the headphone jack now that I type it out, but I guess ‘if you want to listen to music, buy Bluetooth headphones if you haven’t already, or use the adapter’ is easier on the consumer than ‘if you want to keep using carplay, buy a BMW.’
We (developers) can already build and run wirelessly since a year or so ago, and iTunes will back up your iPhone wirelessly, too.
It does need to be plugged in once and then enabled, but after that you're off to the races. We're actually pretty close. It wouldn't surprise me if the next iPhone had no ports, although they'll probably save that for a non-S year.
I heard somewhere, (but have not been able to back it up) that Apple guarantees a certain lifetime for their connectors to accessory manufacturers. This would explain why Apple hasn't switched to USB-C or no port at all.
As I understand it, Apple committed to X years of the lightning port to certain MFi vendors, which (if true) is just another checkmark in the "why have ports" column.
Axiom in the tech world is that "Apple is a software company that builds hardware". Above is ample evidence of Apple being a hardware-heavy innovation machine.
A software company building hardware is Google, and it's Pixel phones show