iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max

There's barely a lightning ecosystem left now—the only remaining products are the entry-level iPad, AirPods {,Pro, Max}, and the computer peripherals.

Yup. It's incredibly irritating to have devices from the same manufacturer require different cords. Apple should have moved all the iDevices to USB-C at the same time OR left them all on Lightning. As it is now, I have phones with Lightning, tablets and laptops with USB-C, and watches with a proprietary dongle.

Le Sigh.

The reason Apple keeps forcing us to use lightning cable while everybody else uses USB-C is, well, money. Apple gets paid for every lightning cable sold and would leave a lot of money on the table if we could simply use any of the USB-C ones available everywhere.

Life would be easier with USB-C, and that day will come, but Apple will certainly put it off as long as they can.

I almost made the plunge on the iPhone last year, but I simply cannot move backwards after USB-C. My Macbook and my Pixel charge on the same cable, it is bananas.

FYI it is spelled "SKU", a Stock Keeping Unit.

I recommend you switch to magsafe. You can buy really cheap magsafe charging stands. At this point I only have a lightning cable for my car, I basically never use one in my day to day life which rather lessens the pain.

I very recently started using Apple products and have an M1 MacBook Pro (work) and M1 iPad Pro (home). Naively I thought this meant they were done with lightning so when work put out an email for a new round of meeting equipment I picked AirPods Pro.

I can't describe how disappointed I was when I went to go charge the case for the first time during a remote meeting and my MacBook charger didn't plug in. It just seemed like such a unnecessary hassle for a product that had otherwise been good in an ecosystem that had otherwise used the same cable as everything else in the world.

They seemed like strong iterative updates to me? I also appreciate all speech recognition being done on-device

What would you improve about the iPhone or iPad? I think these products are just mature and there is very little to improve other than iterative updates. The true test of whether Apple has entered their Ballmer era will be if they fail to launch a new product category in the next 2-3 years.

> What a disappointing event: a bunch of iterative updates.

Is that not the pattern Apple has followed since the release of the original iPhone? This is an "off" year, the device would have been called the 12S but they stopped that pattern a while back.

Many small steps make one big step. iPhone releases haven't been for the people who get a new one every year for ages.

They are for the ones whose phone is so old that the latest iOS stopped supporting it.

Think about the amazing leap you get from an iPhone 6 to iPhone 13? That's not "iterative", it's damn revolutionary.

If it ain't broke don't fi it or something like that.

Apple's privacy innovations are unique, and I wonder whether Google will follow along. With Apple relay and mail protection you have TOR lite for grandma when browsing or using mail.

Yeah, I'd be so much happier if Apple switched to the Intel model and released the exact same product, only updating the part number.

I'm not defending the CSAM stuff at all because I hate it as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't say Apple is at a particularly worse area in the average consumer's mindspace than in the past.

In recent years they've dealt with some of the pain-points of iOS, e.g. starting to allow default apps, adding an app drawer so you don't need to have every app on your homescreen, etc.

And especially if we want to talk Macs, they recently released a batch of computers with their own silicon that are being rave-reviewed in terms of performance and battery life, and they're backtracking on the design flaws from their last era of laptops (getting rid of the butterfly keyboard that had a pathetic failure rate, giving up on the touchbar, rumors of potentially adding more I/O back, etc).

The whole presentation felt like a video version of some kind of a lifestyle magazine. Like, here's some devices plus some apps and services to suit your dynamic everyday lifestyle. The surrounding sceneries and the style of the presentation also gave a very "post-covid" feel in the sense that we hardly ever saw more than a few people on a single frame.

It's the M1 effect!

Most of Apple's updates are boring iterations on previous versions. Periodically, they'll come out with something that captures people's imagination for a while, then it's back to predicting the end of Innovator Apple because whatever is happening now doesn't match the excitement of the big shift.

Edit: I postulate that the disappointment effect crosses product lines

Usually they tick tock unless they missed the mark.

With the supply chain situation being what it is, essentially extending the 12 for a year is the smart move. They’ve already slipped the laptops to the point that they missed back to school and likely Christmas.

That was one of the more curious announcements. Presumably Apple will release a new SKU that has an integrated AirTag?

EDIT: Yes they did add a new SKU. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MM0Q3ZM/A/iphone-leather-...

As replies note, there's no new tech, just tracks last detached.

Weird footnote:

Requires iPhone Leather Wallet with MagSafe and iPhone 12 or later with Find My enabled in iOS 15. Not supported on Clear Case with MagSafe.

I’ve been using a 3rd party magnetic wallet and one of the challenges is that the magnet is so strong that sometimes I struggle to pull the phone out of my jeans pocket.

I really think Apple is trying to force us into this mag-safe charger instead of switching to USB-C. :( I seem to only have USB-C cables now... EXCEPT for the iPhone.

Baffling considering that they are putting USB-C in ipads.

My iPhone 8 Plus has landscape mode

I agree and apparently it's finally being removed in on the 14.

The notch is a whole lot better than a hole punch, in my opinion. If we have to wait another year or two for them to perfect under-screen FaceID or TouchID, I'm all for it.

There are far worse design compromises than the notch.

I imagine Canon RF lenses would start to seem like a bargain compared to Apple glass.

They probably could make a killer camera. But, DSLRs are pretty much dead. Canon and Nikon are both investing in mirrorless now and IIRC Canon has effectively stopped development of their SLR line. And the camera market in general isn't great - compact cameras have effectively been replaced by cell phones and mirrorless systems are largely a pro-sumer product.

FWIW, I bought my iPhone Pro specifically to replace my second mirrorless body. I'll keep one body around for "real" photography. But the phone is good enough for random snapshots.

How would that be better than current DSLR or mirrorless cameras out there?

I think the idea that they’ve been pushing for years is that you don’t need a camera anymore. You can do all this “pro” stuff on their phone.

It’s a good strategy too. Suppose they had an ILC camera . That reads “Apple isn’t confident that the iPhone is a pro-level camera”. Now that you’ve got that on your mind, Apple would need to compete for your money in a space where they definitely don’t have the upper hand in.

In other words, Apple makes more by convincing you that you don’t need Canon.

Could have made the back flat and used the extra volume for batteries.

I've had one of those designs for several years now, less than you think, I clean my phone once every couple months, and I have never found a bunch of grime of build up there.

I personally don't mind the bump because it disappears with the case so it's never bothered me.

In my personal uses, It's actually not too bad once put on a case.

It seems the lenses are sufficiently spaced that it’s not really an issue. Also the ridges themselves are quite slippery, and don’t tend to cling onto dust.

Never had a problem with it. At least once a day I wash my phone when I wash my hands

Seems to me that it's a practical form factor in response to prevailing market reality. Last I checked, every single bit of market research indicated that a super majority of phone owners use cases of one variety or another. Not all of them for sure, and I ran without for a long time myself, but the overwhelming majority. So if most are going to be adding some level of thickness and mass to their devices regardless, and that will necessarily have a hole for the camera system which would just be empty wasted volume otherwise, it makes sense to strike a compromise and try to make more use of that without making it completely unusable without a case.

But cases are the major form of physical customization most people have. Cases can provide physical keyboards, battery, environmental protection, texture, and aesthetics in a variety and individual granularity that would be impossible for any OEM to handle themselves. Fundamental to cases though is that they can only ever add, never subtract. So it seems very practical to me to design a device that is as thin and light as possible within a floor level of raw performance, since that represents the base state. Then individuals who want more battery life, more extreme environmental usage and so on can add from there, but those who don't aren't saddled with it. Cameras feed into that, if anything for many heavier duty case users it'd be more optimal if they were any even bigger bump. They represent a compromise.

My guess is that there would be an even more negative impact on sales if they would call it 12s. Lots of consumers would assume that only minor improvements were made and would choose not to upgrade.

Now I wonder if the iPhone 4 had reduced sales in China/Asian countries.

Same. 14 looks like it’s the next gen design.

I have had an X since the day it shipped and the fact that its still a decent phone for daily use is a testament to how much of a leap it was at the time.

I’m also on the X and am considering the 13 pro. Mostly because I want it to feel faster for longer.

I think it’s a pretty subjective call.

Going to be the same per month cost so I'll upgrade in January when I'm eligible

I was looking at getting a used 12 the other day, and it was hardly worth it. Almost new prices. Does Apple continue selling old models at a discount? Will the used prices crater now?

I'm probably in a tiny minority with this, but I use a lot of on-device storage. Lately I've been filling up my 512GB phone constantly... not to the point where it's hindering me but it's definitely a constant headache. For me, the new 1TB option was all I needed to make it a worthwhile upgrade. I can't wait to packrat with abandon again.

Obviously they edited the video and made careful shots to show off the feature in the best light, but it was really impressive. If nothing else, it made me curious to see it work in person.

This would be the first evidence of a single "series" of Apple Silicon with variant GPU cores.

With a new M-series expected in an updated set of MBPs, presumably they are based on A15 and have even more cores?

Probably the same dies with one GPU core disabled. My guess is the GPU cores are large (== relatively likely to have a defect) and also easy to isolate. Apple has done the same thing for previous processors and it's pretty common practice across the industry. Eventually yields will go up and they might either make a pure 4-core version for lower end products or they'll just remove that from the line entirely.

Good catch. This is the first time they have charged more for an unlocked version.

I don’t want to rob you of your excitement for this feature. Just that scrolling through these comments, it made me smile that the iPhone is now so mature that we get excited about the frames per second while scrolling.

Maybe it reflects how much we enjoy the zero-latency analog world.

There was a little bit of information on the chip, but not much:

A13: 8.5 billion transistors. A14: 11.8 billion transistors. A15: 15 billion transistors.

A13 neural engine: 5 trillion operations / sec. A14 neural engine: 11 trillion operations / sec. A15 neural engine: 15 trillion operations / sec.

A13: 4 core GPU. A14: 4 core GPU. A15: 5 core GPU.

Makes it extra curious why this phone and iOS 15 scanning all your photos were supposed to roll out together

Why does the RAM matters?

I never had an issue with an application on iPhone due to RAM nor saw any reference on App Store for an app requiring at least X ram.

When have you felt that you are lacking RAM on an iPhone?

The article you linked to and the subsequent link to apple say nothing about mopeds, they’re about ‘high-powered’ motorcycles.

If you’ve never ridden one, the vibrations from a motorcycle are several orders of magnitude from a little Vespa or an ebike.

With iPhone 12 Pro Max I expected a ton of difference compared to 12 Pro with that much larger sensor. Reviews were mostly in the "meh" area - I guess their software is just so good.

So I expect no big real-world improvement in this generational jump.

They’d need to come up with a new pairing mechanism. Currently you can only pair them by either plugging them in (the gen 1 method) or using the magnetic charging spot on the side of the later generation iPad Pros. AFIAK there’s no other way to put the Pencils into a pairing state that would work with phones for the newer ones so you’d be selling people more of the Gen 1 devices which I bet they’re looking to obsolete ASAP.

I get ~2.5Gb download speeds on my 12 mini when it has "5g UW" service. Seems real to me.

Where's that? I can't find that on the linked page, and Google doesn't return anything obvious.

Ahh: Found it. It's Sensor-Shift not SensorShip.

It's sensor-shift not SensorShip.

Edit: https://youtu.be/EvGOlAkLSLw?t=2920 Apple event, 48:40

iPhones are increasingly cameras the other features, of which the actual "phone" part is almost trivially unimportant. Personally I'm actually happy about these updates (I've skipped the last many generations) and I really hoped for and got a tele zoom.

Only thing I would have liked different was a slightly bigger phone (for a bigger display).

Don’t forget you’re on a tech-enthusiast forum. Your “old phone” is most likely less than three years old.

My mother will be thrilled with the new camera, coming from her iPhone 6.

The pro has 3 camera lenses, and ProMotion does go down to 1hz - has for many years (introduced on the first iPad Pro).

Probably not going away any time soon, it's almost a trademark at this point.

The notch works pretty well tbh. It disappears after like 2 minutes of using it and on iOS was just dead space anyway.

Jon Prosser leaked a hole punch design for next year.

It’s always remarkable to me when I remember on these launch days that Apple probably has a working beta 14, proof of concept 15 and somebody working on 16. What a pipeline.

Face ID is extremely useful, and the real depth scanning capability makes it better. It's your right to elevate subjective aesthetics over functionality of course, but a significant number of us do not agree. If Apple is able to do the IR scanning, cameras and so on through the display in the future I'm sure they will take advantage of it, but a hole punch is not it.

And short of that it's not clear what a flat out superior biometric identification system would be feasible in the near future (a return of Touch ID in-screen say would be complementary, not exclusive) in a bar form factor? Some sort of short range penetrating scanner that can read bone structure in your hand or something, if that's possible? Just hard to think of many degrees of freedom there, we have lots of other attributes to our bodies which represent useful bits of entropy, but not ones that are easy, fast, convenient and low power to gather from a bar in your hand. Wearable displays of course could jump straight to retina scanning, but that doesn't help phones. So even though I do expect the iPhone form factor to get disrupted by wearables, I don't really see Face ID ceasing to be important for the iPhone itself for a while, or Apple stepping backwards the 3D scanner.

So the notch will probably stay until/unless they can do it through the display or something genuinely surprising/cool becomes available. Would be very cool if others who follow the field more closely can point to some possibilities I'm missing though.

I would much prefer if the front-facing camera would just be embedded into the screen, so we can achieve near-bezel-less screens.

I'm probably not their target audience if they want to keep all that camera power for selfie-taking such that it can't be embedded into the screen.

When the iPhone first introduced the notch I hated it, HATED!!!

I ended up on the iPhone 11 Pro Max due to the low light photo function to take photos of my daughter, and after a day never noticed it again. I think I've come across 1 game which didn't optimize for it and caused it to overlap on the game controls, but apart from that it's not noticeable.

I think we make a lot of fuss over silly design things like this which are non-issues.