melgross

No, I don’t want a thinner phone. That boat has left the dock. The thinness wars have been over for two or three years now, and good riddance! All it did, to lose a couple of millimeters was to cut down on functionality. Smaller battery, more difficulty giving better cameras, etc. Moving to slightly thicker phones has seen improvements. Seriously, how may people really notice a millimeter, or even two, difference in thickness? Pretty much nobody. Yeah, yeah, some will claim it’s such a burden they cry over it.

but the cameras are really getting good. I want them to continue on that path. If they add another millimeter to the camera bump, then great, if it helps. Moulded glass lenses will help because, while there’s nothing special about them, other than optical glass can have greater refractive indices than the plastic lenses often used, they can be made in shapes that ground lenses can’t, because ground elements are ground on a machine that has elements on the surface of a spherical surface, the diameter of which duplicates the surface curvature of the element, one side of the element at a time. So obviously the greater the curve the smaller the sphere and so the fewer elements that can be ground and polished at once. That drives cost up dramatically, which is one reason top lenses cost so much. Aspherical elements can only be ground and polished one at a time, so mostly they’ve been molded for quite some time.

so if it’s true that we’ll “see” moulded optical glass elements next year, it’s pretty exciting. If they can stuff another element in there as a result of the thinner elements, that opens up possibilities. With periscope lenses, there is no reason why true optical zooms can’t happen. With more elements packed together, it’s more likely.

but a good 30 years ago, Phillips showed an element that changed its curvature with small electrical currents. Our eyes changes focus by muscles pulling and pushing on the lens. If someone could perfect that, we could have much better lenses.

If this is true, about three versions available quickly, at once, it mirrors what I’ve been saying. All the hard work has been dine with the M1 series. That’s where most of the R&D went and most of the design and production time and money. It became easier with M2 as they already knew how to do it and with version 3, M3, it’s pretty much a done deal, so they weren’t chewing their fingernails every time a new, higher end chip came out.

so there’s no reason why Apple, like AMD and Intel, can’t come out with several varieties of chips at once. Also, most likely, they don’t have that many types. The Extreme and Ultra are two chips with the on chip interconnects. So they can be made on the same wafer as the lower version. When tested, they would be separated by binning. If bothe chips connected are good, it’s an Extreme or Ultra. If one is good, then it’s not.

eightzero said:

NB: AAPL price falls scary fast following this event announcement.

Nothing to do with this. You might have noticed the entire market has been dropping.

mjtomlin said:

nubus said:

d_2 said:

This article jumps around illogically, M2 or M3… and misses the initial point that it would be 16 months from M2 release to M3 vs 19 months from M1 release to M2.

The cadence isn't about keeping a distance to a previous version - it is about technology being available. 3nm is available to Apple and only Apple. No reason to wait.

Actually it was not only available to Apple. It was available to anyone who wanted it, The fact is, TSMC introduced a newer cheaper process for the first half of next year and the others who wanted 3nm decided to skip the first process, specifically Intel, in favor of the cheaper process. Apple is basically one of the few companies that could really afford this first process, so they are taking 100% of TSMc’s capacity to produce wafers. They have more than enough capacity to produce both the A17 Pro and the base M3. Apple will make up the cost in volume, where others simply can’t.

I guarantee that if enough chips could be made now on 3nm, other companies would be buying them. They’re not waiting for anything other than supply.

Rogue01 said:

9secondkox2 said:

nubus said:

d_2 said:

This article jumps around illogically, M2 or M3… and misses the initial point that it would be 16 months from M2 release to M3 vs 19 months from M1 release to M2.

The cadence isn't about keeping a distance to a previous version - it is about technology being available. 3nm is available to Apple and only Apple. No reason to wait.

With Apple Silicon, Apple has the timeline squarely in their hands. They are free to push the tech, push the release timing, etc. 

Apple Silicon roadmap is a complete joke.  With Intel, and even PowerPC, Apple released faster Macs each year with newer and faster CPUs and GPUs.  What do we get with Apple Silicon?  Macs released with CPUs that are over a year and a half old and Apple calling them new.  15" MacBook Air with a year and a half old M2 CPU.  iMac with a 3 year old M1 with memory cut from 128GB to 16GB and a GPU that ran at a 1/4 of the speed of the iMac it replaced.

So stop complaining and buy a Windows machine where you’re guaranteed to get 5% every year, or maybe once every three years or so, a bigger jump. Take your 250 watt CPU and your 300 watt GPU with you.