melgross

faster still, in real-world use, adds up to no discernible upgrade. Asking consumers who already are facing substantial price increases to pay more for essentially nothing doesn't appear to be a good grasp of what will best serve consumers. In the end, the key to success does lie in making your customers happy. Charging more with nothing to show for it is not how you do that. As the price of acquiring the latest and greatest goes up, it motivates consumers to think hard about upgrading from a working iPhone. So if Apple goes to a higher price point with its iPhone line, it will not end well for Apple. The only way this would work would be if there was compelling functionality added to the iPhone experience as a result of a processor upgrade. Current processors are so capable that it seems unlikely this will happen. 

half-baked features.  They already blundered with Siri, unless they try and do damage control and more promises of features that won't be ready with iOS 19.

I miss the days when Apple released new software and the features they previewed at WWDC were actually in the release version.  Instead all we get are 'coming soon' and then 'maybe next year'.  I stopped watching the videos because they were nothing more than reading press releases and spec sheets.

design team appears to be among the strongest teams in the company, and among the best silicon design teams in the world (if not the best). 

I wonder if Apple will buy or build their own fab so that they are both designing and manufacturing their chips. I know what the knee jerk reaction to that suggestion will be, but TSMC margins are steadily going up, which means that's profit Apple is missing out on. Time and time again, we have seen Apple identify suppliers with fat profit margins and then take over that business themselves. 

Maybe a way to start could be a joint venture with TSMC or Intel to build an Apple fab in the US. Apple could finance and own the fab and pay their partner some patent licensing and management/operation fees. Eventually Apple could then take over the management and operation. 

A modern fab costs up to $25 billion, and rising. It also takes years of experience to get the fab up to optimal performance. I doubt Apple will be willing to spend that money and take years to get it running properly. Then there are the risks of having a problem as fab companies gave. So now, 2nm is a year late from tank and others. But these companies have a number of favs. The build a new one and one by one, upgrade their older ones. How could Apple do that? They would have to have a fully functioning 3nm fab and build a 2nm fab.

no. Apple decided to not do that, and they’re right.

I know of a company that has shiny new leading-edge fab in Arizona, is struggling financially, has been selling/spinning-off various parts of its company and now has a new CEO.

I’m not saying Apple would buy Intel fabrication business. Not only am I not saying that, but I’m darn-near positive that Apple would never, lol.

BUT (just to speculate wildly): If Apple did want to get into fabrication (which it doesn’t), there is a quick way to skip all the time consuming parts that you mentioned. It would just require a large sum of money (which Apple has), Intel’s willingness to sell (which it might) and some government approval (since Intel took CHIPS Act money that requires Intel to not sell their fabrication business for some time).

Again, I’m not at all saying this is something that would happen. And it wouldn’t never be as simple as that. Just having fun speculating about something that definitely won’t happen, lol.

spotty coverage, vs a Qualcomm modem ?

It’s doubtful that any user end tests are reliable, or, that the those anecdotes can be applied everywhere. Apple will have actual measured performance data where they have control of both a “cellular tower” model and the phone, but obviously that’s going to be proprietary data. 

I repeat, any end user test is unreliable if they don’t have control of the tower.

Some reviewers and vloggers have measured bandwidth and power consumption. For those, I think all you can say is that it is about the same iPhone 16, 16 Pro models. Who knows if those tests were actually using the same bands across phones.