Ok, so I set up the purchase in the Apple Store app for Friday. Prp Max in natural titanium. I was thinking the blue, but I have the blue from last year, so I figured match my watch. 512GB storage. It’s a good upgrade, despite what some think. Is it a stunning upgrade? No. That won’t happen unless Apple comes out with a folding phone (I don’t think much of rollout screens).
Surprised we’re going to get Vision Pro stills and video this year. That really was unexpected. Pretty much all the rumors were for next year. I’m really curious about how they will present them on a regular screen.
pleasantly surprised at the large increase in performance for the Neural Engine. And also surprised at hardware ray tracing. This also means that the M3 should have that. Apple has been criticized for not having that.
disappointments;
no Thunderbolt despite some rumors, 10Gbs is fine, but not what I hoped, maybe next year, 5x tele. The rumors were for a 5 to 6x tele. No credible rumors for a zoom. Hoped for that little bit more and maybe, just maybe that the rumors were right about the zoom.
otherwise, pretty good. After the trade in for my 14 Pro Max it will cost $750. You can do better turning it in elsewhere, but it’s just too much bother.
Ok, so I set up the purchase in the Apple Store app for Friday. Prp Max in natural titanium. I was thinking the blue, but I have the blue from last year, so I figured match my watch. 512GB storage. It’s a good upgrade, despite what some think. Is it a stunning upgrade? No. That won’t happen unless Apple comes out with a folding phone (I don’t think much of rollout screens).
Surprised we’re going to get Vision Pro stills and video this year. That really was unexpected. Pretty much all the rumors were for next year. I’m really curious about how they will present them on a regular screen.
pleasantly surprised at the large increase in performance for the Neural Engine. And also surprised at hardware ray tracing. This also means that the M3 should have that. Apple has been criticized for not having that.
disappointments;
no Thunderbolt despite some rumors, 10Gbs is fine, but not what I hoped, maybe next year, 5x tele. The rumors were for a 5 to 6x tele. No credible rumors for a zoom. Hoped for that little bit more and maybe, just maybe that the rumors were right about the zoom.
otherwise, pretty good. After the trade in for my 14 Pro Max it will cost $750. You can do better turning it in elsewhere, but it’s just too much bother.
I like the optical stabilization that they have engineered for the Periscope lens, and that in itself might have a significant impact on sharpness. We could expect to see increased zoom in the future, and that would be great, but I'm really interested in the rumor of a 48 Mp wide angle lens for the iPhone 16.
This is our first look at next generation Apple Silicon, and clearly CPU performance with +10% is disappointing. However the GPU is outstanding.
I guess we will see A17 (not Pro) in iPad Air this year and iPhone 16. M3 will deliver fantastic GPU performance from next year. It will take the Mac to a new level. Perhaps even Apple TV will move to gaming.
Oh... and I guess Apple introduced a phone as well...
Not surprised about the spatial video feature as i called that one out as very likely in other threads on this forum.
Overall this is year is a clear positioning year for Apple to rejig the product mix into a new hierarchy. This means that some of the upgrades will feel less wow and more oh.
Raytracing acceleration is insanely cool on a phone and i am wondering if the USB3 speed will enable the iPhone to drive a 4K UHD TV which could enable a Nintendo Switch like experience for iPhone users - from mobile to TV screen with external Bluetooth controllers. Is Apple maybe gunning for Nintendo here? Next year this tech may drop down to the base iPhone model and thus the tech is mainstream.
For me the 15 Pro Max is a no brainer despite already being on 14 Pro Max. Camera upgrades are good. I keep messing up the portraits when taking pictures of targets that are not very still.. shutter speed improvements will be magic for me as will improved low light photos. Try taking portraits of kids in low light conditions.
ummm, i think ima sit on the sidelines for this upgrade. I have the 14 Pro Max and the Ultra, I REALLY didn't see anything worth upgrading to. I've upgraded every year since the first iPhone... It was kind of sad actually.. I was honestly looking for the >> button 🥱
Nobody is expected to upgrade every year. In the early years there was much to be gained, but that hasn't been the case in a long time. Enthusiasts may, normals don't. Incremental improvement is the name of the game -- whenever you do come in years down the line, it will be much better than what you had.
Interesting that the periscope telephoto zoom actually seems to be a fixed focal length 120mm eq.. Like the brushed titanium finish, and the new action button.
The addition of Spatial Video was a surprise, as was reverse charging the Watch and AirPods.
That is NOT a periscope lens. It appears Apple bailed on the periscope, and went with some other fixed focal length zoom technology. What a shame. At least with the 14 PM you had 0.5,1,2,3x zoom, 15PM leaves a big gap between 2 and 5x.
Ok, so I set up the purchase in the Apple Store app for Friday. Prp Max in natural titanium. I was thinking the blue, but I have the blue from last year, so I figured match my watch. 512GB storage. It’s a good upgrade, despite what some think. Is it a stunning upgrade? No. That won’t happen unless Apple comes out with a folding phone (I don’t think much of rollout screens).
Surprised we’re going to get Vision Pro stills and video this year. That really was unexpected. Pretty much all the rumors were for next year. I’m really curious about how they will present them on a regular screen.
pleasantly surprised at the large increase in performance for the Neural Engine. And also surprised at hardware ray tracing. This also means that the M3 should have that. Apple has been criticized for not having that.
disappointments;
no Thunderbolt despite some rumors, 10Gbs is fine, but not what I hoped, maybe next year, 5x tele. The rumors were for a 5 to 6x tele. No credible rumors for a zoom. Hoped for that little bit more and maybe, just maybe that the rumors were right about the zoom.
otherwise, pretty good. After the trade in for my 14 Pro Max it will cost $750. You can do better turning it in elsewhere, but it’s just too much bother.
I like the optical stabilization that they have engineered for the Periscope lens, and that in itself might have a significant impact on sharpness. We could expect to see increased zoom in the future, and that would be great, but I'm really interested in the rumor of a 48 Mp wide angle lens for the iPhone 16.
Yeah. The 3D stabilization is a good upgrade. I wasn’t expecting that. But you need better stab as the focal length increases. A 48MP sensor for the wide would be great. But I’d also like to see 24MP for the tele. That would be as good as a longer lens as you could crop. But a longer tele would be nice. I’ve seen long shots taken from the S23, and as they get longer than what Apple is now offering, the picture IQ drops rapidly. Sure, you get nagnjfication, and even a bit more detail, but it looks like crap.
Interesting that the periscope telephoto zoom actually seems to be a fixed focal length 120mm eq.. Like the brushed titanium finish, and the new action button.
The addition of Spatial Video was a surprise, as was reverse charging the Watch and AirPods.
That is NOT a periscope lens. It appears Apple bailed on the periscope, and went with some other fixed focal length zoom technology. What a shame. At least with the 14 PM you had 0.5,1,2,3x zoom, 15PM leaves a big gap between 2 and 5x.
Do you know what a periscope lens is? It’s not necessarily a zoom. It’s a lens that’s bent, optically, by 90 degrees. That’s exactly what this is. Apple uses several prisms to shrink the length of that lens within the camera. That gives more room inside the phone for other things, such as a bigger battery. Maybe next year we’ll get true optical zoom as well.
I’ve only ever understood “zoom” in a lens context to refer to a continuously variable focal length lens, which can be entirely wide angle, telephoto, or spanning both. The folded optical path lens announced today is a fixed focal length 5x telephoto lens, correct? That will be a great improvement over the 2x telephoto on my Xs Max, but I was thinking the rumors were referring to a true zoom, so it is a minor letdown. Still, I’m upgrading.
Doesn’t justify the price increase. disappointing really. Mrs entropy is ready to upgrade her old machine, which was top of the range back then. She reckons going for the non pro plus the price sweet spot for her.
also, cracking AUD$2000 for base config of a phone?
I would expect even Larry Ellison might pause at that, let alone any other Apple friends.
I have the 14PM now, and definitely getting the 15PM. I think I’ll keep the 14PM though (white/silver) as the polished stainless doesn’t look to be ever coming back. I still have the 13PM is Sierra Blue too. So I’ll have three PM iPhones — good grief, I could probably start my own production company!
ummm, i think ima sit on the sidelines for this upgrade. I have the 14 Pro Max and the Ultra, I REALLY didn't see anything worth upgrading to. I've upgraded every year since the first iPhone... It was kind of sad actually.. I was honestly looking for the >> button 🥱
Nobody is expected to upgrade every year. In the early years there was much to be gained, but that hasn't been the case in a long time. Enthusiasts may, normals don't. Incremental improvement is the name of the game -- whenever you do come in years down the line, it will be much better than what you had.
Yep exactly...today's iPhones are so much better there's only so much Apple can do YoY with it. Back when it first came out it was a hell of a lot easier to do massive improvements as it wasn't a mature product and now it is. We have to realize in 2027 the iPhone will be 20yrs old!!! Damn 20yrs old and it's still going very strong.
As far as exciting upgrades go, all, or at least most of, the low hanging fruit has been picked. It’s more a matter of incremental improvements now. Maybe nothing for the intelligentsia to get excited about, but for the average person upgrading every three or even four years, there’s plenty to get excited about. Times have xganged folks. The days where Apple improved SoC performance by 100% a year are long over.
this year Apple seems to have hardly spent much time of the CPU at all. Mostly efficiency gains. I think that these SoCs, including the M series are off in a different direction. They almost doubled the performance of the Neural Engine. That shows that Apple expects more of the work going through the chip to be machine learning tasks rather than straight CPU tasks. With the new hardware ray tracing and shader architecture we’re going to see the same thing. What went through the CPU and standard GPU cores will now go through those new functions. I believe that the way app,EU is going, the CPU will continue to be of less importance in the chip. Unfortunately, third party benchmark software isn’t designed to work that way, so we’ll continue to see the results charted in the same way. Using gaming and other software will show proper performance as long as 1. It doesn’t need to be updated to use the new frameworks, or 2. Developers do update it to use them.
Comments
Surprised we’re going to get Vision Pro stills and video this year. That really was unexpected. Pretty much all the rumors were for next year. I’m really curious about how they will present them on a regular screen.
pleasantly surprised at the large increase in performance for the Neural Engine. And also surprised at hardware ray tracing. This also means that the M3 should have that. Apple has been criticized for not having that.
disappointments;
no Thunderbolt despite some rumors, 10Gbs is fine, but not what I hoped, maybe next year,
5x tele. The rumors were for a 5 to 6x tele. No credible rumors for a zoom. Hoped for that little bit more and maybe, just maybe that the rumors were right about the zoom.
otherwise, pretty good. After the trade in for my 14 Pro Max it will cost $750. You can do better turning it in elsewhere, but it’s just too much bother.
Overall this is year is a clear positioning year for Apple to rejig the product mix into a new hierarchy. This means that some of the upgrades will feel less wow and more oh.
Raytracing acceleration is insanely cool on a phone and i am wondering if the USB3 speed will enable the iPhone to drive a 4K UHD TV which could enable a Nintendo Switch like experience for iPhone users - from mobile to TV screen with external Bluetooth controllers. Is Apple maybe gunning for Nintendo here? Next year this tech may drop down to the base iPhone model and thus the tech is mainstream.
For me the 15 Pro Max is a no brainer despite already being on 14 Pro Max.
Camera upgrades are good. I keep messing up the portraits when taking pictures of targets that are not very still.. shutter speed improvements will be magic for me as will improved low light photos. Try taking portraits of kids in low light conditions.
Should I pay almost $au 2800 for a 15 Pro minus about $au 1000 trade in for my 14 Pro?
$1800 for iterative improvements?
I don’t think so.
Do you know what a periscope lens is? It’s not necessarily a zoom. It’s a lens that’s bent, optically, by 90 degrees. That’s exactly what this is. Apple uses several prisms to shrink the length of that lens within the camera. That gives more room inside the phone for other things, such as a bigger battery. Maybe next year we’ll get true optical zoom as well.
disappointing really. Mrs entropy is ready to upgrade her old machine, which was top of the range back then. She reckons going for the non pro plus the price sweet spot for her.
also, cracking AUD$2000 for base config of a phone?
I would expect even Larry Ellison might pause at that, let alone any other Apple friends.
this year Apple seems to have hardly spent much time of the CPU at all. Mostly efficiency gains. I think that these SoCs, including the M series are off in a different direction. They almost doubled the performance of the Neural Engine. That shows that Apple expects more of the work going through the chip to be machine learning tasks rather than straight CPU tasks. With the new hardware ray tracing and shader architecture we’re going to see the same thing. What went through the CPU and standard GPU cores will now go through those new functions. I believe that the way app,EU is going, the CPU will continue to be of less importance in the chip. Unfortunately, third party benchmark software isn’t designed to work that way, so we’ll continue to see the results charted in the same way. Using gaming and other software will show proper performance as long as 1. It doesn’t need to be updated to use the new frameworks, or 2. Developers do update it to use them.