Marvin

tht said:

Moving heat from the SoC chip to the graphene sheet (or other heat spreader) could be a bottleneck as chips are very small while transferring heat through a conduction path with solid metal needs a certain amount of contact area. The higher the power per unit area of the SoC, the more using a solid metal (with a thermal paste interface) becomes a bottleneck. A vapor chamber can address that as it can transfer more heat per unit area. That heat still needs to get out of the phone.

The solid state coolers could be an option, either on their own or combined with the vapor chamber:

https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/xmems-ucooling-xmc-2400-airjet
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/air-cooling/xmems-fan-on-a-chip-cooling-can-reduce-ssd-temperatures-by-up-to-20-percent



If they can move air in from one side of the phone, across the CPU and out the other using the solid state fan, that should help cool it down a lot. In older designs, these options used more power than a fan but maybe these newer ones are efficient enough or Apple could try designing their own.

AppleInsider said:

The company credited strong Redmi Band 5 sales and deeper integration through HyperOS, its custom operating system. 

The fitness bands are popular as they cover most of the basics at a lower price. Apple Watch SE at $249 is a reasonable starting price but some of the fitness bands are under $100:

https://www.amazon.com/Xiaomi-Version-Display-Battery-Resistant/dp/B0D8WQ94W5 ($58)

If Apple made a fitness band, it might have to either not support 3rd party apps as the display would be smaller or have a different UI. As long as it had Apple Pay, fitness tracking, biometrics and some notifications from other devices, that would cover most things people use the watch for. If they can price it at $149, that would sell more units.

One thing that would set Apple apart is the style options. Usually the fitness bands have basic styles like on the left below. If they had styles like on the right to make the bands look more like jewellery, more people would be inclined to go for them.

jonro said:

Why bother to review headphones without comparing the sound? Seriously, features comparisons mean little without discussing the sound quality, which is the core feature of headphones. It's like comparing cars without mentioning the engine or doing a test drive.

There are some sound sites that do in-depth and consistent sound quality tests:

https://www.soundguys.com/apple-airpods-max-review-44975/
https://www.soundguys.com/sony-wh-1000xm6-review-137397/

The XM6 like the XM5 has 30mm drivers, XM4 has 40mm and some reviews rank it higher for sound quality. Smaller drivers tend to produce weaker sound, especially weaker bass but some people prefer the sound clarity with weaker bass. Airpods Max has 40mm drivers like most premium over-ear headphones.

https://versus.com/en/headphone?filter%5B%5D=driver_unit=30,90

This is mentioned in this review:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/sony-wh-1000xm6-review-hail-to-the-new-noise-canceling-king/

"When Sony moved from the XM4 to the XM5, it went from using 40mm drivers to 30mm drivers, which changed the sound fairly dramatically, and not everyone liked the change. The XM4, which remains available, is a warmer headphone with bigger, more energetic bass, while the XM5 offers more detailed sound and tighter bass. 

camber said:

Sweeney ought to be considering how many people will never but EPIC products because of his conduct!

Not enough unfortunately, Fortnite is still one of the most played games in the world:

https://fortnite.gg/player-count
https://www.demandsage.com/fortnite-statistics/

Around 30 million daily active players, 650 million player accounts. $40 billion in lifetime revenue.

This is what gave Epic the ability to lose $1b on a lawsuit.

According to a recent interview, Epic still spends more than they make though so once the one-hit-wonder game finally loses player interest, their situation will be different.

It's crazy how such a repetitive, mindless game has lasted so long and generated so much revenue.

Epic is also trying to get big game studios hooked on Unreal Engine and their store, which will tie their products to their company success. Apple has options to undermine this but they need to partner with the studios.

The likely worst outcome is that Apple is forced to lower their fee to 15% to avoid big developers processing fees externally. There's a single digit percentage that is break-even for any developer/publisher processing revenue at scale and as long as the fee is at a reasonable level, they will use Apple's setup.

Xed said:

jfabula1 said:

lukevaxhacker said:

Very simple in concept: return production to the U.S., although hasn't been done for years. Remember the Fremont plant…

It’s funny, anti-tariffs are all complaining and crying about high prices, dude open your brains, America had been ripped off for a long long time and we keep borrowing..we’re sinking fast. If Apple has to raise prices so be it. Will still gonna buy them.

So you believe that America is being ripped off by what I assume are "other countries", so you think the solution is to charge every American wanting an Apple product an extra fee?

To reiterate, American is being ripped off so let's rips off the American people? That makes sense to you?

The problem needing solved is the debt. There has been a large deficit for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:Federal_Government_annual_spending_and_revenue.webp

This has accumulated over 20+ years. When the debt is higher than a country's GDP (as it is in the US) then it's in a danger zone. There's a level where the economy collapses catastrophically.

There are a few causes. One is the population time-bomb that is affecting most countries now. When the economy is bad for younger generations due to depressed wages, higher cost of housing etc, they delay having children and have fewer children. This creates an elderly population that strains social security.

Another cause is trade deficit. The biggest one for the US is with China. The aim, as described in the following video, is to have no deficit:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v4g6pfpngEM

Vietnam offered to negotiate in response to the tariffs but their offer was rejected apparently due to still resulting in a deficit:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/vietnams-tariffs-offer-rejected-by-trump-adviser-not-a-negotiation/ar-AA1CrSiw

Some countries block foreign companies from trading at all, this isn't considered a tariff but it passes billions to other companies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China

There are ways to deal with the debt: cut public spending, increase taxes, reduce trade deficits, increase GDP, increase population (birthrate or immigration), increase retirement age.

If tariffs are left in place and have to be paid for then it's a tax on the people of the country imposing the tariffs. If countries implement measures to reduce the deficit then they bear the cost.

Some harm to GDP is from losing manufacturing to other countries, which often happens by other countries implementing harmful working conditions to lower costs significantly. Some manufacturing of military components has been moved and has become a national security risk.

Tariffs are not the end goal. The goal is to have close to zero deficit trading, domestic manufacturing, more jobs, higher birthrate. But until they get those requirements, they are planning to use tariffs as a cudgel to achieve it. It's reckless, probably won't be effective and they should try to achieve their goals more responsibly.

If the people of the country imposing the tariffs end up paying more, this actually results in paying more taxes to cut the deficit, assuming they keep buying.

I doubt it would impact iPhone sales much. People mostly pay on contract so even a 50% increase would be $30/month vs $20/month. An extra $10/month is minuscule vs people's typical monthly expenses. This is why the iPhone is such a good product for Apple because even at a premium price point, it's an inexpensive product relative to everything else.

There's a sense that they are trying to fix the debt issue urgently and it doesn't seem like it needs to be done that urgently. Although it's a critical issue to solve, they could implement fixes over the course of 1-2 years instead of 'by Wednesday, or else'.

They could also communicate their goals more effectively. They can post an official page showing the debt, what's responsible for it, their proposed fixes, projections and their success rate. Like the following site but with more accurate numbers and clearer information:

https://www.usdebtclock.org/
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny