Why Your Next iPhone Won't Be Ceramic
atomicdelights.com
atomicdelights.com
But that's probably part of why Apple doesn't do it in the Watch either. Instead, they have an entire lineup of Watches, and then use a very expensive, niche process only for an ultra premium skin. While I still consider it unlikely (Apple hasn't done this sort of thing in one of its main lines since the TAM in 1997), if they wanted to start the playing with an advanced material they couldn't get to scale quickly one way would be to just port the Apple Watch strategy and make it exclusive to a special high end model, ie., a ceramic "iPhone Edition" for $2-3k or whatever along with the normal color options. The 10th anniversary of the iPhone would be an occasion for that too. That strategy would have the standard advantages in terms of natural market forces: very high pricing simultaneously limits demand and ensures a large margin for R&D, handling issues, and scale out.
There are still plenty of downsides and again ZrO2 ceramics may just plain not be appropriate for the future of general Apple products regardless of manufacturing. But if they had a 10 year plan to do a major material shift in their product lines, simply reflecting reality and making the new material premium at launch then moving it down the stack seems like it'd be an option they could now pursue given that they've already gone some distance to getting the public used to the idea of differently priced "skins" on an identical internal hardware platform.
Um, yes. Look how much trouble Apple has with bending. Remember "bendgate". A ceramic will crack, not bend.
The other direction, flexible phones, has promise. Flexible printed circuits already exist. Flexible displays exist. Flexible batteries are probably possible. Flexible front transparent cover should be possible. Samsung has tried some things in this space, and has shipped a slightly curved phone. So far, no really flexible phones. The main problem is making it flexible while limiting the amount of bend. Maybe a stiff flat spring...
"Normal lithium ion batteries are rigid, making them susceptible to damage. When bent, they catch fire."
(Graphic of phone catching on fire)
"The new bendy battery bends, rather than breaks. This keeps you and your loved ones safe!"
This together with a bendable iPhone is marketing the iPhone to people that the TSA rather does not want to let into planes. :-)
I assume you're talking about the Note 7? To be honest, I think the details about the why and how of the Note 7 fires are lost on the general populace. Most people don't particularly care why (and they shouldn't need to), they just care that it happens.
Read more about touch disease:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/iphone-6-plus-touch-disease...
Apple probably also wants to update the iPhone SE (which was released last March), so it would coincide neatly. That would create a new cadence for iPhone updates:
- New "Series" introduction every even year in September
- New S model every odd year in September
- New Edition model and SE model every March
With the Watch, Apple has started using the Series nomenclature ("Apple Watch Series 2"). That would work for iPhones as well. So the current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is really the first two models of "Series 7", and next up will be "iPhone Series 7 Edition" and "iPhone Series 7 SE".
Second, even if Apple were to go down the "Edition" route, a schedule where the "best" iPhone comes out six months after a more "boring" phone with the same guts doesn't make sense. They'd be Osborne'ing themselves every year: "Yeah, the iPhone 9 looks great, but rumor has it the Edition will be made of carbon fiber! I'm going to stick with my 8 for a few more months."
That actually seems like the perfect outcome? Currently iPhone sales are heavily seasonal towards the end of the calendar year. Seasonality always carries risks (e.g. potential supply issues).
If a group of customers waited 6 months to buy a higher-margin luxury product instead, that would be a net gain for Apple.
Either because by the time March rolls around, they're already thinking about the newer phone due in October, or because the mere existence of the Edition (even if they can't afford it) makes the "cheaper" phone less appealing.
It's also hard to see how Apple could get terrific margins on a product that would sell at (say) 4x the price but at 1/20th the volume. They'd probably do just as well if their enthusiasts keep buying a top-end $1,000 SKU of the "regular" phone annually.
I'm still using my 3-year-old iPhone 5S. I may update to the 7, but I'm not sure I will...for exactly the reasons you state. The phone works fine, and the only thing I'm really concerned about is some future iOS update making the phone unusable. My question is: is my update cycle going to become more common (or even the norm)? How does Apple hedge against a more fragmented purchasing pattern?
The decrease on sales, specially around the world where people aren't constrained to 2 year contract renewals and stick to their phones until they die, is one of the main reasons companies are trying to diversify beyond mobile phones.
More expensive models can also boost the sale of cheaper ones among certain customers. This can give the brand a luxury image. Of course if done wrong, it might also drive some other customers away.
Just introduce an "Hackability Edition" of the iPhone which has many of the features that make nerds drool, as ability to allocate executable memory in apps (thus making JIT possible), ability to sideload apps, replaceable battery etc. and Apple will have completely new iPhone customers.
SCNR
If the ceramic aWatch Editionv2 is a huge success, okay, sure, maybe. But... you really think they're confident of that at this point?
A machined steel iPhone, perhaps with all the exterior dimensions 0.5 or 1mm bigger - would it be "cool"? Or would it just be the jacked-up-Hummer of the phone world?
Ceramics are interesting in that they could be the perfect material for so many things, if only a few very short limitations could be overcome - chief among them being brittleness and ease of manufacturing. As such, there are a lot of big brains working in proprietary labs, trying to gain an edge... and getting close in a lot of cases.
So Apple could have solved that and is waiting to get closer to launch to disclose through patents. Who knows?
What we DO know is that no current ceramic process can scale to iPhone volumes, and if Apple did solve that... we would have seen at least a little bit of that tech getting tested in the Edition. Since we didn't, I can't see it working out for a phone.
If I was going to re-write it, I would be a bit clearer on that and also add the possibility of a ceramic Edition. I don't know if Apple is that in love with this as a material though.
Edit: re-reading the post, I see that the site has chosen to indicate hyperlinks by coloring them #000 instead of the body text color of #666, so I missed the initial link to Quora, which contains a list of advantages: https://www.quora.com/What-will-the-iPhone-8-be-made-of
However, it does acknowledge the brittleness factor. Seeing how phones are prone to being dropped, I'd take a scuff/dent in aluminum over the possibility of a massive crack in my phone's body.
Given the number of times I've dropped my iPhone, I would probably be unwilling to purchase a ceramic model.
It's radio-transparent.
I'm weird, but the nicest part of sapphire for me was that it meant i could keep my phone in the shop without worrying about the screen getting scratched from saw blades, chisels, or carbide marking knives i put in my pocket.
Of course, i guess i'd have the opposite problem of the phone scratching those things, but ...
You are right that some are harder than pure sapphire, but it depends on the exact grade, etc, and depends on what you do to the sapphire.
Suffice to say: I have tested saw blades i have against sapphire screened watches i have. They do not scratch.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seems very cool!
If only their software had the same quality as their hardware... iOS and macOS have been degrading noticeably over the last few years. Perhaps they ought to use software tech as hard-line as their hardware tech. A device machined to within 10um ought to have a kernel to match.
Most software is still made like early firearms: each piece uniquely crafted one at a time from scratch.
We don't even know how to measure the quality of software, let alone how to systematically improve it.
I wish Apple's software was better, but I feel the same way about everyone else's software too.
I'm not suggesting that there aren't software developers who construct software with an engineering mindset. I just see so few of them.
When we write ASICs in HDLs, most commercial designs have at least 10 to 100 times as many lines of code for test harnesses compared to the actual design. I've never seen a general commercial software product with anywhere near that much test code in my life (SQlite included perhaps). Furthermore, much of what allows hardware testing is through problem spaces being enumerable (or at least approachable on a statistical basis similar to how memtest works with various bit patterns aimed at different failure modes) and with cross-disciplinary lessons (materials sciences, chemical engineering, etc.). The closest we have in software is the functional programming test ecosystem, especially with Haskell's QuickCheck. But commercial software typically just doesn't care about software reliability to the extent anyone in real world systems does, and there's probably a lot more people pumping out random code now than there are hard sciences engineers thanks to the accessibility of modern software and computers. Combined with software developers as a community being more fashion driven than Milan, London, New York, or Paris we're constantly reinventing the wheel. This is both the blessing and curse of modern software.
And there is nothing wrong with this! I'm not suggesting every line of code should be "engineered". I do think that more projects could benefit from the engineering mindset you are talking about here. Operating Systems for example.
That said I disagree that Apple's software is bad. Sure some of it is simplistic and lacks features that some third parties have adopted, but I have never found it to be lacking in either design or usability and it's always been very stable. I sometimes wish they would utilize more flourishes of their own design language in their software, but overall I find it of good quality.
Writing software is creating the design of a gun. Not the construction.
Once you understand that code is the (highly detailed)design, a lot of the reasons why software is so hard to do well makes a lot more sense. Compiling the code or running in a vm is the construction.
It explains why estimates are hard, and why software is not something pump out like manufacturing line easily.
Good plastic (glass-fiber or carbon-fiber reinforced) is generally... plastic.
This is why English is fun.
http://specmaterials.com/fra.html
There's lots of research literature on carbon nanotube reinforced aluminum.
Confession? I had a better surrounding blurb explaining takt time, because people who read my (once a year) posts get off on the nerdery, but it was clunky, so I sort of inaccurately dropped it in with a link to the real definition to let people explore the term on their own.
This is the company that put glass on the back of their phones for aesthetics we're talking about here. Nothing is out of the question.
They're also a huge variety of materials, it's like asking why plastic is a good material - do you mean silicone rubber, ABS, or Teflon?
Tell that to samsung, joking aside a ceramic case might be useful if a battery cooks off.
But very rarely are they not brittle upon impact.
This is why you don't see ceramic saw blades - carbide, even though brittle, is much less brittle than ceramics.
(this is also why they don't use diamond saw blades except for abrasive cutting - the diamonds we make are too brittle to be used to cut wood).
To clarify, "carbide" here is short for "cemented carbide", i.e. ceramic carbide particles sintered together in a metal binder. It's tougher than the pure ceramic although still somewhat brittle.
But ceramic still wouldn't work.
(at least what we are talking about here. In theory, cemented carbide can be a ceramic, depending on the exact terminology used).
The most common ceramics are strong but brittle and lightweight. I wouldn't assume that these would make good choices (for example, weight alone is a reason to choose aluminum over plastic...it weighs more and thus feels more expensive). But there are still some interesting alternatives out there that would be cool to consider. Like possibly monolithic and completely waterproof circuits with near perfect insulation that can be cast instead of printed/assembled. Or possibly structural batteries? Who knows?
Because I'm an unrepentant geek for the stuff I'm going to want a carbon fiber chassis phone eventually. Mass-production CF still isn't a reality as far as I know, but it's being tested (BMW, golf companies, etc).
So maybe even if the ceramic part of the process takes longer, they might be able to make up for lost time but cutting out steps that are further down the assembly process. To quote the patent:
"As one specific example, ceramic materials have numerous qualities that make them particularly useful for use in electronic device housings. For example, they may be highly scratch resistant, making them particularly well suited for electronic devices that are frequently subject to bumps, scrapes, and scratches, such as wearable electronic devices (e.g., smart watches, glasses and the like), mechanical watches, and other consumer products (including, but not limited to, media players, mobile computers, tablet computing devices, and so on). As a specific example, the high hardness and optical clarity of sapphire crystal (a crystalline ceramic material) may be very well suited as the cover glass for a touch-screen of a wearable electronic device. Ceramic materials may also be relatively light, making handheld or wearable electronic devices easier to carry, wear, and use. Moreover, ceramic materials may be able to achieve a high degree of surface polish making them particularly aesthetically pleasing.
However, ceramic materials typically are more difficult to form into complex geometries than plastics, and, thus, manufacturing housing components from ceramic materials can be more difficult than for other materials. Accordingly, described herein are housing components where a polymer material is co-molded with a ceramic component to form a housing component that includes ceramic and polymer material portions. (As used herein, the terms "polymer" and/or "polymer material" encompass natural and synthetic polymers, plastics, rubbers, and the like.) For example, a ceramic housing portion may be co-molded with a polymer material to form a polymer clip that is directly coupled to the ceramic material and can be used to retain the ceramic component with another housing component. As another example, a polymer material may be co-molded with a ceramic component to form a plastic coating on a portion of the ceramic component
As described herein, a polymer material forming a polymer feature may be coupled to a ceramic component by a co-molding process whereby the polymer material is molded against the ceramic component. By co-molding the polymer material directly onto the ceramic component, the polymer feature may be bonded to the ceramic material without the use of an intervening adhesive or other bonding agent between the ceramic and the polymer feature. For example, instead of separately forming the ceramic component and the polymer feature, and then adhering the polymer feature to the ceramic with glue, pressure sensitive adhesive, heat activated films, epoxy, or the like, the polymer may be molded directly against the ceramic material.
Thus, parts that include both ceramic and polymer components can be manufactured more quickly and with higher precision than would be achieved if the components had to be manufactured separately and thereafter coupled together with adhesive. In some embodiments, the polymer material is injection molded onto the ceramic component. In some embodiments, the polymer material is molded onto the ceramic component using techniques other than injection molding, such as gravity casting, or any other appropriate co-molding process. Where the present discussion refers to injection molding, it will be understood that other molding techniques may be used in such instances instead of or in addition to injection molding."
Apple could certainly prove me wrong, but I have to see it to believe it.
[0] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Apples-proprietary-cables-break...
Typically, production (which is to say, low volume med/aero/optics parts) ceramic machining is limited to cleaning up datum surfaces, walls, mating surfaces, holes and (god forbid) threadmilling tapped holes. It sucks. Totally not capable of meeting iPhone scale at all.
(source: author of linked article)
I'm going to get a patent for enclosing electronic gadgets in "fuck you apple" stickers.
The post-Steve-Jobs Apple has continued to produce superb products. And it has scaled to a truly impressive level while maintaining quality and financial statement success. However, at this point it's an old story to say that Apple has recently failed to capture our imagination and "show us the magic" the way it did throughout the 2000s. I remember being blown away by the early iMacs and Macbooks, the early-gen iPods, iPhone, iPad (don't forget how impressive the iPad was when it first came out), and the Macbook Air.
When people speculate that the next generation of Apple products may be ceramic, I think I know why: they want the magic. Ceramic? That's sounds new and interesting. Maybe it's environmentally friendly. Reading Koenig's article, the case seems pretty strong for Apple's disincentive to make such a significant change. It's the same disincentive that all large, successful companies face: they do pretty well with the status quo, so why incur the massive expense to do something new and risky?
I can't really blame Apple. But I also can't help but be a little sad. The same way I can't help but be a little sad when a talented movie director goes mainstream. It's a reminder that we all have to face reality and make practical decisions; we all contribute to the massive pile of human ambition and pass our excrement to the level below us; and we all are getting older.
However, given the amount of money on the bank they still have lots of time available still, so I still look forward to whatever they might think of doing next.
What I think Apple lacks at the moment, is any new just-mature technology on which to base its 'next big thing'. That's not to say Steve Jobs didn't have a huge roll in making all their previous products a big hit, just that there is nothing new on the scene at the moment with which to craft a break through tech hit.
So, they've thought it through and decided now is not the time... why? Why not get in there while Playstation is getting in there. I guess they aren't really a games company, yet the iPhone and iPad are both great for casual games. So maybe that's not the reason. Could be that there is something better in the pipeline (hololens) or that VR isn't consumer ready yet.
From Tim Cook's statement it seems pretty clear that they're going to wait until they can do AR glasses, which also fits their anti-nerd brand strategy. AR is more social, more human.
Although when the standalone Google/Oculus headsets hit next year I suspect people will be surprised how well they sell. The mobile VR app ecosystem should hit puberty around then. Assuming Oculus/Google can hit a $600 price point I think we'll see an iPod-like growth curve in that category, which would lure Apple into the market for sure.
and that means VR will have a larger market ?
It looks like they are still working out the compelling solution to electric vehicles and so there's no reason to talk about it before they have a product ready.
If the car looks just as clunky as the Apple watch, I think people will not be very excited.
After the candy imacs i think much of their tech is bought.
Best i recall at least the iPod firmware, iTunes, the iPhone multitouch tech, and even Siri was startups Apple bought and internalized.
So what you're really saying is that Apple is waiting for other technology companies to come up with something new so that they can take that idea, put their spin on it, paint it white and announce their next big thing.
It's not over yet, but they need a cultural shift back toward the light.
What the people expect is rather a magic new product. The watch is merely a gadget. The iPod was a revolution. The Macbooks still are unreproduced on the market. The iPhone changed humanity (or at least it was the first to do so). Each wasn't an incremental improvement but a complete new line of products. Each didn't eclipse the previous line (the iPad didn't replace the Macbooks) but multiplied Apple's publicity.
At the level of Apple, innovation could be a VR tool that encompasses our life, a car, a teaching tool, or they might go to services and launch a global platform for press, privacy, work or start-ups. But the only reason I watch each keynote is that I don't want to miss the next time they innovate.
It seems a but off-topic, but I have to say it. I have a problem with this.
I know iPhone's changed the industry.
But seriously, it was only a phone. A few years ahead of its time.
You know what did change humanity?
Internet.
Cell Phones.
Not iPhones..
But none of that functionality is as important and effective as phone calls. And almost all of that is based on the foundation of The Internet.
Wait, what? Making phone calls is almost always the least efficient last resort.
> And almost all of that is based on the foundation of The Internet.
Absolutely, but the Internet is dramatically more useful when it's always on, and always with you, and tied into sensors that help decide what you need.
BlackBerry gave us smart pagers. Microsoft gave us a microscopic desktop with all the charm and utility that implies. Neither were successful with the mass market because neither were particularly relevant to consumers.
The problem with saying iPhone was a few years ahead of its time is that iPhone defined the future. Without it we might still be divided between 10-20% of the user base with stylii and physical keyboards and WAP web browsers and the rest of us with feature phones.
Right. The nuances of a voice conversation is less efficient than what? A text message with some emoji? A Facebook poke? Tagging someone? If you're going to tell me that all these apps are the communication method of choice...
"The problem with saying iPhone was a few years ahead of its time is that iPhone defined the future. Without it we might still be divided between 10-20% of the user base with stylii and physical keyboards and WAP web browsers and the rest of us with feature phones."
Eh, my phone had a HTML web browser before the iPhone was a twinkle in the eye.
I can't remember the last time I used my phone to actually make a call. In fact, in 2012 making a call was only the fifth most-used feature of the average smartphone, following after internet, social media, music, and games. I'm guessing that in 2016, with the plethora of messaging apps and the huge push by Facebook and others to drive adoption of those apps, making calls is even less of a priority for people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/9365085/...
>Eh, my phone had a HTML web browser before the iPhone was a twinkle in the eye.
I bet it was a total piece of shit though.
The smartphone would have come to us eventually, but the iphone hastened it's arrival by more than a few years.
Apple's major contribution is making consumer-grade technology look at once both cool and friendly, such as by putting an icon of a smiling, happy computer on the boot screen of a Macintosh. Their greatest strength is in making objects that might otherwise seem intimidating or ostentatious into something hip and approachable.
That isn't to say they don't innovate. They clearly do. But that is not where their profits come from. Those clearly derive from brand image and network effects.
The technology learning curve is less steep with an Apple product, but the capabilities of the device eventually hit a wall, unless you are willing to undertake the additional effort of learning to jailbreak. Competing devices have a steeper learning curve, but they go all the way up to the hardware ceiling without such a big discontinuity. Rooting or re-flashing an Android device is still a leap, but it is much less of a shock to someone who has gone to that point. In comparing Apple and Android devices, I'd say that stock Android is more capable, but Apple is more user-friendly. Carrier-crippled Android devices reduce the functionality to that of an Apple device or less, without the mitigating factor of the superior user experience.
It turns out that doing all your user hand-holding with soft, warm hands has significant market value.
That seems like a relatively simple and common thing to do for an Internet-connected device. Is the hardware capable of doing that? Is the software capable of doing that? Does Apple corporate policy allow customers to do that on the devices they own?
Ok, granted, the average mobile user does not block ads. But how about moving photos off the device, or loading existing music files onto it. Can I plug in a standard USB cable and mount even a portion of the local storage of the phone as removable storage on the desktop computer?
The problem with this line of thinking is it ignores the needs of the vast vast majority of current consumers. Most don't ever hit that wall you insist is inevitable. The ability to hit the hardware ceiling, via the investment of a steep learning curve is not attractive or necessary for most people. You are not a model consumer.
I've been a user of Android since Eclair. It wasn't good the. So I went back to iOS. I have many friends who are android only or iOS only. I prefer to use whatever is best at the time.
I'm currently typing this from a 6S+. I was looking forward to the Pixel but I'm not impressed. So I'll see what happens after the Pixel.
I really wanted the Note 7 but you know the story...
My point is that familiarity need not breed love.
I'm also not sure in what way they continue to regress. Back when Jobs was alive, the only Apple product I liked enough to buy was a MacBook Pro. I greatly preferred Android phones back at that time; the early iPads weren't that great; the original MacBook Air was incredibly expensive for the hardware you got; I could never even take the old colorful iMacs seriously.
Now with Cook at the helm, in addition to the MacBook I also have an iPhone 7 Plus, Apple Watch, Apple TV (4th gen.), I subscribe to Apple Music, I use and love a 5K iMac at work, and I'll probably be getting the new MBP whenever it's finally available. To me, Apple's product line is far stronger than it's ever been before.
For a long period no other laptop manufacturer could top Apple when it came to build quality and durability. The MacBook Pros have definitely fallen behind in the past 4 years. I'm really looking forward to the rumored refresh at the end of the month.
Their aluminum build is utter Chinese trash, built to the lowest common denominator of pennies per square inch. Yes, the iPhone 4 was smaller and a heavy clunker; but it was a sturdy device compared to their pathetically fragile materials as of late. And it's done to save maybe $10-20 on what could have been a quality build. Apple used to be about good hardware, but they've fallen into the same unapologetic Chinese manufacturing bullshit as everyone else.