Hardware

Start off with this 9to5Mac post from Chance Miller, “Report claims new iPad Pro’s A12Z Bionic chip is just a ‘renamed A12X with an enabled GPU core’”:

In its press release for the new iPad Pro, Apple said that one of the changes with the A12Z Bionic processor was the addition of an eighth GPU core. Notebook Check, however, claims that it has confirmed the A12X Bionic processor from 2018 actually features 8 GPU cores, but that one is disabled. This would imply that Apple has simply enabled that eighth GPU core and changed the marketing name of the processor.

While this may be true, it’s worth reading this thread from Quinn Nelson:

https://twitter.com/SnazzyQ/status/1243356754554961920

In a nutshell, Quinn explains that this practice is longstanding and widespread in the industry and, likely, nothing new for Apple. And, more importantly, nothing sinister.

Another take on the so-called practice of “chip binning”:

Chip binning is a common practice in the silicon industry, and the theory goes like this: For repeatable structures like a GPU core, each added core adds to a potential defect rate. By disabling one core by design, you can ship more viable dies at a given target performance.

Few people will need this, but cool to know that optical is becoming an option for Thunderbolt 3. If you need the extra cable length, optical is the path.

Ever since I was a kid, I found fiber optic cable’s ability to transmit signals over vast distances with zero degradation to be fascinating. If this interests you at all, check out this physics demo where water acts as a fiber optic “cable”.

Wesley Hilliard, AppleInsider:

Apple improves on their A-series processors every year for each new iPhone release, so a successor to the current iPhone 11 A13 chipset is expected in the fall of 2020. Each year as the iPhone flagship release approaches, benchmark scores for said to be from the new processor in the device start to populate popular benchmark tools, like Geekbench.

And:

New Geekbench testing, purporting to be from the A14 processor shows the first A-series processor to cross the 3.0 GHz mark.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro has an A12X chipset with 8 cores and scores 1110 on a single core, and 4568 on the multi-core. The scores for the alleged A14 go beyond even that.

Single core performance of the device shows a 1658 score, with a 4612 multi-core score. This indicates a huge gain in its overall performance and will make multitasking and navigating apps smoother than ever.

Just for comparison, I went to the Geekbench browser and looked up Apple’s latest, the 2019 16″ MacBook Pro. The single-core score is 1122 and the multi-core score is 6993. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but amazing to see how far the Arm chipset has come.

Keoni Everington, Taiwan News:

Apple has begun to move the production of a number of its top gadgets set to launch in the first half of 2020, according to a report by am730, which cited DigiTimes. The products listed in the report to be shifted to Taiwan include AirPods Pro Lite, iPads, and Apple Watches.

Taking this with a grain of salt. First, the Taiwan News headline did not have the word “some”. Subtle point but, to me, that original implied that all production was moving.

Add to that that the source of this is several sites removed, not direct reporting. Did a little digging, found this article on DigiTimes from a week ago, with this quote:

Apple is mulling shifting more assembly orders for its new models slated for launch in the first half of 2020 to factories in Taiwan mainly to diversify production risks associated with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, according to industry sources.

Not clear if there’s a newer article (please ping me if you know of a newer, more definitive article). The DigiTimes article uses the word “reportedly”.

Interesting that the list specifically includes the unannounced “Airpods Pro Lite”.

Science fiction, come to the Mac:

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1225199498001047552

I’ve seen a few apps do similar things, but this is now baked into macOS.

Makes me think of possibilities, of future AirPods that pick up your brain’s alpha waves, let you move your cursor, or control your iOS device with your mind.

The ability to use your mind to control a mouse has been around for a long time, but requires very specialized hardware. Imagine if Apple could find a way to embed that hardware in your AirPods or, perhaps, in an AppleHat?

The future is coming.

Great review of the Pro Display XDR from PCMag.

I especially appreciate the discussion of full-array local dimming (FALD), which Pro Display XDR uses, vs OLED, microLED, and mini LED. Well written, worth the read.

Bottom line:

Apple’s Pro Display XDR provides exceptional color accuracy and build quality at a price that’s quite competitive with those of reference-grade pro monitors. It’s exquisite enough that swallowing the wildly extravagant cost of its Pro Stand is worth it.

FastCompany:

When I looked into the user interface of Mojo Vision’s augmented reality contact lenses, I didn’t see anything at first except the real world in front of me. Only when I peeked over toward the periphery did a small yellow weather icon appear. When I examined it more closely, I could see the local temperature, the current weather, and some forecast information. I looked over to the 9 o’clock position and saw a traffic icon that gave way to a frontal graphic showing potential driving routes on a simple map. At 12 o’clock, I found my calendar and to-do information. At the bottom of my view was a simple music controller.

This is a mock-up, not a shipping product, but still, an audacious concept.

In the coming decade, it’s likely that our computing devices will become more personal and reside closer to—or even inside—our bodies. Our eyes are the logical next stop on the journey. Tech giants such as Apple and Facebook are just now trying to build AR glasses that are svelte enough to wear for extended periods. But Mojo is skipping over the glasses idea entirely, opting for the much more daunting goal of fitting the necessary microcomponents into contact lenses.

I do believe the future will see more and more augmentation, tech that brings the human body across the chasm, towards robots that are themselves trying to become more human. Will we meet in the middle? Become one giant AI, discarding flesh and bone entirely?

Fascinating read. And worth noting that one of the principals in this project is Steve Sinclair, formerly of Apple.

Mike Goril, Gadget Hacks:

In iOS 13, Apple added an important new feature to its HomeKit smart home ecosystem called HomeKit Secure Video. With it, you have a secure, private way to store and access recordings from your smart home IoT cameras.

And:

Now that we have HomeKit Secure Video, supported cameras can offer private and encrypted videos available in the cloud, viewable right from the Home app on your iPhone. You will also get object detection, with all analysis of videos performed locally on a HomeKit hub such as an iPad, and activity notifications — all without uploading any video to someone’s server.

And:

If you would like to store recordings in the cloud, you’ll also need an iCloud storage plan. The 200 GB plan is needed to store recordings from one camera, and the 2 TB plan will support up to five cameras. Recordings don’t count against your storage allotment and are saved for ten days. If you just want to stream the video, however, no plan is needed.

That last bit is important, recordings don’t count against your storage allotment.

I am in the market for a video doorbell but have been put off by the stories I’ve read about Ring/Amazon and privacy. This seems a solid path. Certainly, the article is worth reading. Lots of detail.

Neil Cybart, Above Avalon:

Apple’s newest pair of AirPods continues to make waves with “augmented hearing” entering people’s vocabulary. However, the broader implications found with Apple’s AirPods strategy are just as impressive. Apple is quickly removing all available oxygen from the wireless headphone market, and competitors find themselves at a severe disadvantage.

Spot on. With the addition of noise cancellation and transparency mode, AirPods Pro are becoming the first choice of iPhone-using wireless headphone buyers.

Though you can invest in something bigger (and bulkier) to get (maybe) better noise cancelation, and you can invest in headphones that deliver (maybe) a better audio experience, I’d argue that there’s nothing on the market that can compete and give you better noise cancelation and audio in this form factor, all with the incredibly tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem. No matter the price.

[VIDEO] Every so often, I get one of these WILL IT WORK videos sent over (embedded in main Loop post), showing some contraption connected to an iPhone, accessing ancient files stored on some obsolete media.

This one is like a set of nested Russian dolls, with a thing, connected to a thing, connected to a thing. But all of it new to me. Fascinating that this stuff “just works” after all these years.

This is an article more about supply chain than end users, but it does paint a picture of phenomenal potential for AirPods Pro.

A few tidbits, Yujing Liu from South China Morning Post:

“True wireless stereo will become the next big thing in consumer electronics,” Zhongtai Securities analysts wrote in a new report. It will become the next product that could “create a growth miracle” after the smartphones

And:

Investors believe they are witnessing the emergence of a massive market for AirPods – which sells for as much as US$249 for the high-end version – and other brands of earbuds, with consumer demand worth billions of dollars barely tapped yet.

And:

“There are about 900 million to 1 billion iPhone users worldwide, so the saturation ratio of AirPods among the existing users is not even 10 per cent.”

There’s lots more detail in the linked article, but you get the idea. As big as AirPods have been for Apple, a much bigger wave seems to be coming.

[VIDEO] I absolutely love the sequence of WILL IT WORK videos, connecting various devices to an iPhone. But this one takes the cake. Connecting an original old-school Macintosh keyboard and mouse to an iPhone? Ridiculous. No way.

But watch the video, embedded in the main Loop post.

Ars Technica:

Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are vulnerable to attacks that use lasers to inject inaudible—and sometimes invisible—commands into the devices and surreptitiously cause them to unlock doors, visit websites, and locate, unlock, and start vehicles, researchers report in a research paper published on Monday. Dubbed Light Commands, the attack works against Facebook Portal and a variety of phones.

The article is fascinating, no doubt. But I had to laugh at the idea of shining a laser at Siri. She’s both immortal and invincible.

Kidding aside, the exploitable tech here is the MEMS mic. Interesting read, not a thing to worry about, at least for most mortals.

[VIDEO] There’s a lot of interesting detail in this video (embedded in main Loop post). For one: I always thought noise cancelation was mathematically perfect, but some sounds are harder to cancel than others.

And the point about foam being a better solution for sealing off noise than the tips Apple created. Not sure I buy that Apple over-engineered their solution when cheap foam would have been better. I’m interested in an audio engineers take on this.

Take a look, well presented.

[H/T Loek van der Helm]

For most of us, this is just never something we’d ever consider. But read the linked post, learn from this Redditor’s mistake.