Marvin

MplsP said:

Xed said:

MplsP said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

gatorguy said:

Xed said:

sbdude said:

Xed said:

doggone said:

longfang said:

williamh said:

I saw the finewoven case at the Pentagon City Apple Store on Friday and it seemed not that high quality and overpriced.  I'd prefer the silicone case to finewoven.  

Honestly asking, what is the environmental issue with the leather case?   The leather cases are reusing the wrapping from my beef, it's not like cows are produced to use for iPhone cases and the meat is an afterthought is it?   Is the process of making the leather and using it worse than just composting the cow hides?  What is it?  I know my tone might seem snarky but seriously isn't there just an enormous amount of cowhide out there?  Wouldn't an iPhone case be better than tossing it?

The chemicals and water used during the tanning process would probably be a big part of it.

I agree, leather is a by product of the food industry.  It also is a natural product and ages extremely well.  I've had the Apple leather case for 2 years and it is only now starting to break up at the edges after a lot of abuse.
I will be looking for a leather case from another provider.  Any suggestions?  I saw someone mention Nomad

That isn't quote correct. The hide is a byproduct of the food industry, but the tanning process to make leather is a different story and I don't know of a single mass producer that has used so-called "natural" methods for tanning these days. Even if we did use some old-timey "natural" methods, like scraping oak bark for its tannins, that has a cost. What is the ratio of cut oak trees for its various uses in lumber to the amount of bark obtained? Is there a chemical option that can be created that would do a better job at a lower cost? What other ingredients and byproducts are created to create leather? How much of the tanned leather is wasted (something I've noticed happens so that the material is consistent for the entire piece needed)?

I can't say whether leather produced at an industrial scale is or isn't better for the environment than reusing discarded plastics, but I can't say it's better simply because one initial aspect of it is a byproduct of another industry or that someone calls it "natural". There's a lot of date to crunch to get an informed answer.

There are any number of leather purveyors that don't use arsenic, cobalt, or other chemicals in tanning. Check Bridge of Weir. The leather used in BMW i4s and Polestar 2s use natural tanning. So the argument begins to fall flat at scale.

1) You need to supply scale numbers to show that the options you mention are comparable.

2) Again, the use of "natural' doesn't saying anything except check a box for a marketing buzzword. How do they tan? What is the current overall and longterm environmental cost of using leather from start to finish v reclaimed materials?

Seriously? If BMW can do it with much more leather needed for a car interior, why would it be impossible for Apple to source cases?

BTW, look into how Horween leather is tanned. Phone cases using their leather should definitely be more friendly to the environment. 

These cases are made of 67% recycled materials. That alone makes them more environmentally friendly than any leather. 

Also, using BMW as the example of scale is misleading. 

They sell around 2.5 million vehicles a year most of which are their entry level models that don’t use leather interiors. The remainder are sold with various types leather. The two models you mentioned are EVs. I couldn’t find a world wide sales number for them but in the US they sold 15k EVs last year. This is not an example of scale. 

Are they more environmentally friendly, though? Leather is renewable and although the fabric is recycled we don’t know the cost of doing so. 

As far as BMW goes, the comparison isn’t about pure numbers - how many phone cases can you make from the leather in a single car?

1) LOL I love you say leather is renewable (nothing else added) and then drop a concern about recycled material that would even make even Tucker Carlson splooge
 in his pants. I have to wonder if you take that same argument with renewable resources over fossil fuels. I'm guessing you will talk for days about the horrible environmental costs of wind, solar, and hydro over "clean coal".

2) You say it's not about numbers and then immediately ask a "how many" question? 🤦‍♂️

The question is what the total cost of a product is. I have friends who’ve worked on recycling projects in which the materials needed to process and recycle negated any benefit of recycling. 

There are a number of factors to consider. Durability plays into this too. The last leather wallet I had lasted nearly 20 years. If someone has to buy 3x 68% recycled finewoven cases in an upgrade cycle, the recycling is negated somewhat.

https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/ive-been-using-apples-finewoven-iphone-15-pro-case-for-a-week-and-i-get-the-backlash

However, the leather production process wouldn't be able to meet Apple's renewable commitment that includes suppliers.

https://www.imore.com/if-apple-serious-about-environment-it-needs-ditch-leather

"Contrary to popular belief, leather is not a by-product of the meat industry. As a profitable business in its own right, it is at least a co-product meaning the impact of raising animals for their skin should not be left out of the conversation with some animals being raised for their skin specifically. Turning cowhide into a usable material requires a lot of energy and potentially hazardous chemicals, too.

AppleInsider said:

A section of the game will be playable for free. Resident Evil 4 is $60 since it is a new game, and that's the same price as on PlayStation and Xbox.

Resident Evil Village was originally released in 2021, so it's priced a little lower at $39.99. However, that's a little more expensive than the Mac version, which currently costs $29.99 as a separate purchase.

I think they will struggle to sell at that price on mobile but it's understandable why they'd price it like that. Mario Run had over 300 million downloads and they said about 5% of people paid, which is a standard IAP purchase rate. The price was $10 so they get $7 = $105m (over multiple years). For Nintendo who makes $10b+ per year, that's not much. Capcom makes around $1b per year so that result would be ok for a port.

They won't get 300m+ downloads for Resident Evil because it's only compatible with newer phones. By the time it launches next month, there will only be around 10m iPhones capable of playing it and only a fraction of those will buy it. If half those devices download it with 5% paying x $60 * 0.7 = $10m.

Over the course of a year, it will grow to around 70m capable of running it, 35m downloads x 5% x $60 * 0.7 = $73m.

iPads and Macs capable of playing it will be around 100-200m so they might drive more sales than iPhone initially. 1m purchases on both would be $120m x 0.7 = $84m.

In general, I think big publishers should price mobile games at half of what the desktop/console version is and if people want to cross-purchase, charge the difference. If someone buys on iPhone, charge $30, then if they want to play on Mac, deduct $30 off the $60 Mac price. The mobile gaming audience is much bigger than other platforms at 3 billion and are more willing to buy in-game items than upfront items. They can have purchases for the in-game currency for weapons, health etc, $1 = 10,000 credits.

Maybe they will launch with a half-price Halloween sale just for that launch week to see what the numbers are like. Hopefully they won't be put off by the low initial sales on mobile due to the limited amount of hardware capable of running the games. In a couple of years, the capable iPhone devices will reach over 250m.

Toortog said:

But isn't one of the main reasons for wanting 3nm Apple Silicon is because it was suppose to run cooler.   Maybe the 3nm design used isn't as efficient as the 5nm so the new chips are having to work harder to do the same task and in turn generating more heat.   

There's a thorough thermal test done here and the 3nm chip were expected to be running cooler than this:



The iPhone 15 series measured 2C hotter than the equivalent 14 models (15:46). They increased the clock speeds to get faster performance but CPU only really gains from the clock speed increase as shown in the test.

The performance is still good, at 18:09, they test Resident Evil Village vs PC GPUs at the same settings and it starts at 1/2 an Nvidia 1060 then throttles to 1/3, while consuming around 4W of power without MetalFX. It performs almost the same as a Steam Deck at under 1/3 the power.

At 19:00, they say that the iPhone thermal dissipation isn't as good as it could be. They obviously don't want to use heavier heatsinks though nor rare materials in such a high volume product.

It's not good having such high temperatures regularly because it can damage the battery, if people are gaming on these, they'd be best to have a special cooling case. Gaming will probably increase with the new capability, performance and new higher-end games:



The USB-C video out can be plugged into the TV (8:00) and it works with the Steam Deck dock.

M68000 said:

imnotarobot said:

Just a test to see if no comments are a result of AI or a lack of interest in yet another overpriced phone. Frankly, I'm so sick and tired of iOS and the lack of a competitive landscape in phones and phone OS's, I could care less about this amazing new product.

You seem pretty upset.   But, there is competition.  You can go use Android phones if you want, there are plenty of them out there.  The top Androids have great hardware, even if people on this forum refuse to agree or think they are inferior because some of those people are loyal to anything Apple..

It's nothing to do with loyalty, Apple's products are objectively better in nearly every metric: better cameras, chips, display, design, software performance, security, reliability, software support, resale value. All Android devices have ever offered is occasionally a better camera, more software options but mainly a lower price.

Smartphones are just becoming a mature product category like Macs. They don't break much, don't need upgraded much and don't really need many new features.

The only remaining hardware component that can get a meaningful upgrade is the battery. If they can get a solid state battery with <10 minute charging, it will change the whole form factor and weight. Other than this, there's not really anything left to do. iPhone 16, 17, 18, 19, 20... will look almost identical. The performance gains will be to service gaming so will continue to drive sales for a while there.

The focus will shift to AR soon, it will start slowly because people have higher expectations now but in a few years, it will be more widely used.

Mcnaugha2 said:

20-bits? Where did that come from? I’d get 24-bits as that’s what most major artists release their lossless tracks in, but 20-bits? That’s a weird downscale. They’d be better off running with 16-bits. I could see them doing 24-bit/48Khz as most content is either 24/44.1 or 24/48. But nothing is 20/48. Is that a typo?

It says 20-bit on Apple's site too:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/09/apple-upgrades-airpods-pro-2nd-generation-with-usb-c-charging/

"AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB‑C) will enable Lossless Audio with ultra-low latency to deliver the perfect true wireless solution with Apple Vision Pro. The H2 chip in the latest AirPods Pro and Apple Vision Pro, combined with a groundbreaking wireless audio protocol, unlocks powerful 20-bit, 48 kHz Lossless Audio with a massive reduction in audio latency."

The bit depth can be whatever size, it's just a data encoding same with color. 16-bit = 65536, 20-bit = 1.04m, 24-bit = 16.7m, each increase is 16x more info.

The lossless wireless method doesn't need to be compatible with Bluetooth, both the Vision Pro and Airpods will have special chips that can send this kind of data and other devices with revert to Bluetooth without lossless.