Hacker News Reader

Comment by jagger27 | Hacker News Reader

The coolest part to me is that they're using the S5 watch SoC to power it. Pretty cool that Apple's various hardware teams can just grab a part off the shelf to use in a completely different class of device.

I'd love to see them reintroduce AirPort routers powered by an A-series chip.

View on HN

I'd love to see them put AirPort tech inside their smart speakers. That's one great way to differentiate from Alexa devices. We're still running AirPorts at my house, though I know eventually they'll die and we'll have to find something else.

In the meantime, they're super convenient for having my Time Capsule back up my Mac, and for piping audio via an Airport Express to the speakers I use with my projector setup.

Oh yes that would be nice. A bunch of PoE HomePod minis with WiFi 6 would work great in my house to replace my 802.11ac UniFi setup.

I'm really dreaming big now, but some sort of AirPort central base station with SFP+ for my FTTH connection and 4xPoE to power and feed a bunch of HomePods would be brilliant.

Not so sure on PoE (great for technically inclined folks, not the general public, and if you're really set on PoE you could use a reverse injector to take power off the ethernet and break power/data out at the device) but it would be smashing if HomePods had WiFi mesh support (802.11k/v/r) and Apple used them to challenge Google Next Wifi and Amazon's Eero offerings (because the UX on Nest Wifi and Eero is so good, but I'd rather give my money to Apple).

802.11s is the mesh technology you would want. The others are, I think, for roaming devices (literally mobile radios). A bunch of access points already have this, though most all implement mesh in their own, proprietary standard.

You're right, thanks for the correction. The standards I listed are on the mobile devices for seamless roaming between access points, 802.11s is the mesh standard proper [1]. OpenWRT supports 802.11s [2], so I assume this protocol is trivial to support in wifi silicon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11s

[2] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/80211s

eero is a great mesh system and the closest to a spiritual successor to the AirPorts.

This is such a great idea! HomePod / HomePod Mini Acting as WiFi Mesh system.

May be Apple TV in the living room should take the job of Routing as well. ( They said the AirPort Extreme team were folded into Apple TV team. )

I want a WiFi 6 AirPort Router.

This is the weirdest part about working in big tech. So many teams can reuse world-class tech in other products with very little barrier to entry.

It seems like with Apple, any piece of tech with exactly one use tends to wither away and die. Now that the processor for the Apple Watch is on another device, it may show up somewhere else. Since this is wall powered, I don't think that bodes well for my hope that they release an Apple Watch that is smaller or has longer battery life (smaller often means smaller battery).

It seems like they always bring a new SoC in under their last commoditized SoC. What's the next smallest thing for them to stuff a new SoC into? Airpods?

AirPods already have their own special SoC called the H1. It's in AirPods (gen 2), AirPods Pro, and a few Beats products.

Watch SoC on speaker looks cool and the use existed chip makes sense, but is it practically differ than just buying Broadcom or MediaTek chips?

Agreed. I wonder what the cost is on that chip.

Apple Watch S5 - Sensors + Speaker + Markup = $99

I'm having a hard time finding out which node it's on and the die area. The S5 is essentially a re-badged S4 which as far as I can tell is made on standard TSMC 7nm. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the BOM is dominated by the casing and speaker hardware. That chip has been in production for about 2 years now.

Display + restrictions on internals/construction due to size constraints will make up a large part of that cost as well. I'd imagine that the chip itself is a pretty small percentage of the price of an Apple Watch.

You mean like the MacBook team grabbed that T2 security chip and now instead of desoldering some miniature flash chip with a BIOS in it a MacBook can be owned by merely plugging something into the USB-C port that accesses its magic debug wires?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com