mjtomlin

charles314 said:

why the modem chip would optimize battery consumption while playing a video ? you don't need necessarly need a modem to play a video.
unless it's video streaming, but we are comparing streaming over 2/3/4/5G, WiFi?

The specs refer to streaming video over cellular networks.

Regarding the Ultra…

Not sure why people think the Ultra variant is so important as far as release schedule? The Ultra variant will always be the last and be released much later than all the others. They are extremely expensive in cost and are used in the lowest volume systems. Production runs are usually limited when it comes to new processes. Using those limited runs to produce an SoC that takes much more space on a platter and can possibly have many more defects early in production, before all the kinks can be worked out, is a waste of time and money.

Pema said:

Finally we are getting somewhere. Apple is at last realising that as consumer product it is doomed. But with a pro application it makes perfect sense. There is a huge potential in every segment of medicine, industry, manufacturing, education, government, military, aviation etc. etc. where the Vision Pro price wise wouldn't faze anyone and the application will bring huge productivity. 
The XR consumer segment is a whole different beast. Someone/or some team at Apple positioned this device totally and completely wrong. Apple is so used to selling to consumers that that is where it was pitched. But a year later it is just collecting bad press and dust. 
Hopefully in 2025/2026 we will see a resurgence of the XR set matched to a consumer application and at a consumer price point. 

First of all, Apple never expected it to sell in huge numbers, they even stated it is a brand new platform and as such it would take several iterations before it gained any traction.

Second, Apple is testing the market with a device with these capabilities - that no other AR headset can match as a stand-alone device… “Because of its fidelity” That’s only possible when you use expensive, high-end components, such as the displays and the inclusion of Apple’s R1 which enables real-time latency.

These articles seem to discuss the things that got Apple to where it is now. If that's the case, #1 should've definitely been the return of Steve Jobs. I remember thinking back in the mid-90's when Apple was a mess, that they if they wanted a snow-ball-in-hell's chance of surviving, they would need to somehow to get Steve Jobs back in the driver's seat. Unlike previous CEO's who just wanted to make a splash at all the trade shows with shiny new toys every year, Steve knew he had to think about the future, not next year, but 10 years down the road.

He also understood that there was no way in hell to compete with Microsoft at their own game, so instead he concentrated on hardware design to differentiate themselves from the rest of the industry - people could literally see that the Mac was different - especially after Microsoft's Windows 95 was released; which was even more Mac-like. Steve knew if Apple wasn't getting the market share, they needed to maintain a significant mindshare and so he kept up that cycle of innovative industrial design until that mindshare eventually evolved into marketshare, especially after the release and success of the iPod+iTunes. (Which ironically didn't hit "mainstream" until after Apple made the iPod compatible with Windows. Here, Apple did beat Microsoft at their own game... if Microsoft wasn't going to make their "Plays For Sure" platform available on the Mac, Apple was going to undermine them and make their iTunes platform Windows compatible. This severely wounded Microsoft's mobile device ambitions, and then the iPhone finally laid it to rest.)

Anyway, yeah, there's no doubt Apple's retail stores are a huge standout among the many ventures Apple embarked on to get to where they are now. not focusing on the product, but what the product can do was extremely innovative at the time. These stores sold customers an experience, a work flow, not just a "computer". Plus they lacked the smarmy, ignorant sales people and pressure ladened sales pitches so common everywhere else you went to buy a Mac. (except of course for smaller mom-and-pop Mac shops, which were always great and full of knowledgable, helpful Mac enthusiasts at the time.)

tomahawk said:

Between 2015 and 2020 -- half a decade -- Microsoft contentedly sat on Windows 10. In 2011 it delivered Windows 11.

That's a lot like saying Apple "contentedly sat" on Mac OS X from March 2001 to November 2020 because they didn't change the major version number. I may not be a big MS fan, but it isn't like they weren't providing significant OS updates in a roughly similar cadence to macOS. And let's also not forget that Apple is getting really good at announcing new "major" OS versions with features that won't actually be ready until multiple updates later.

Apple has exactly one WWDC a year, where they tell developers about their next major OS releases and all of their features. Those features are talked about and discussed at that time, you know, during a developer conference, even though they won't be released until sometime after launch. Do you really expect Apple to keep developers in the dark about upcoming features and API's?