mpantone

Personally I think the idea of a fixed tablet makes zero sense for today's consumer. No one wants to get up to go look at a screen. They want to do everything from their phones (or possibly an Apple Watch) since that's realistically those are the only two devices they are going to carry around with them throughout the house.

The most plausible Home Hub hardware device would be some sort of dual- or multi-function MagSafe-equipped smart charging stand that would be controlled by a software interface primarily from their phones.

A device with HomePod-like features would be okay but again but voice control only works within normal speaking distance.

One thing for sure that this Home Hub device would have to conquer would be effortless device configuration. It needs to "just work" rather going through complicated, unreliable, convoluted pairing procedures. That's like 95% software.

Also devices like iPhones and Apple Watches can indicate where the person is (living room, den, bedroom, garage, laundry room, etc.) and possibly adjust connected devices appropriately. If I need to walk up to a touchpanel to dim the lights upon leaving a room, hell, it's easier to just hit a physical light switch.

We've seen consumers push back on full touchscreen interfaces in automobiles and a return of certain physical controls (like cabin climate control). It's way easier to just turn on/off the bedside lamp by hitting a switch rather than hunt around some screen for the button that turns off that light or use voice commands which might disturb other occupants.

And speaking of software it's clear that a Home Hub device will work better if it interfaces with a Siri implementation that isn't as dumb as a rock. That means that Apple really needs to release a context-aware version of Siri with Apple Intelligence with meaningful accuracy and reliability before they will have anything really useful in a Home Hub.

Releasing any sort of Home Hub device with Siri's current capabilities will not help adoption. This is one of those types of new devices that I will not be an early adopter of. I will probably wait 5+ years before thinking about having some sort of smart home hub. I'm sure Apple has prototype hardware in its labs. It's the software that is key.

Based on what I've seen in Apple Intelligence in March 2025, I think we are still 3+ years away from having an Apple Intelligence that will make the smart home viable.

This finding was completely expected. It was mentioned elsewhere before.

When Apple creates custom silicon, one main reason is for power efficiency because the vast majority of their hardware products are portable (iPhones, iPads, AirPods, Apple Watch, MacBooks). And power efficiency is a competitive advantage because Apple doesn't sell their chips to other companies.

We have heard Apple repeatedly pound the "performance per watt" mantra, not the least in Johny Srouji's appearance in the original Apple Silicon keynote years ago.

If the performance is in the ballpark of the competition with a power savings that's an outright win. Apple doesn't try to get the top score in some synthetic benchmark, that's not what they are trying to achieve.

Apple will broaden the reach of the C-series cellular modem silicon and put it in many other devices. Something like a minor speed improvement only benefits a handful of power users in a limited number of usage cases under very specific conditions. Something like power savings benefits everyone owning that device.

sportyguy209 said:

I've owned a similar style ice maker (without the automation) and found the ice it produces to be disappointing. The ice melts quickly and is softer than refrigerator ice. While some ice is better than no ice, I wouldn't recommend it.

Yeah, the ice produced from this device appears to have lots of air which is why it's cloudy. That's probably why your soft ice melts quickly. Slow melting ice is made by freezing water slowly not fast.

For most people manually filled icecube trays put in the freezer produce the best ice.

There are two main reasons why Apple creates their own custom silicon.

The first is to have complete control over the design. They include the features that they value and jettison the rest. They aren't stuck with useless transistors or die real estate by using a general purpose chip. This justifies every single custom chip that Apple has produced, not just the A-series, M-series and this C1 comm chip.

The second is performance per watt. Apple has pounded this concept starting with the Apple Silicon announcement with Johny Srouji's presentation but reiterated many times afterward. Apple's biggest cash cow is the iPhone product line. Over 85% of Macs sold are notebook models. The iPod is a significant part of Apple's revenue mix as well as Wearables (Watch, AirPods and now Apple Vision Pro).

If Apple can produce silicon that performs comparably with the competitors' components yet does so with a power savings, that's a competitive advantage to Apple whether it be consumer products like the ones you can buy at Apple.com or now in its data centers.

Any cost savings -- if there are any (I doubt they are significant) -- are welcomed but are not the main driver of Apple's custom silicon philosophy.

I'm sure Apple is looking at other chips in its products to figure out if they are suitable candidates to bring in-house, including (but not limited to) WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC contactless transactions, etc. Clearly Apple knows that components use the most power in typical usage cases so I would expect them to prioritize that silicon for possible in-house custom design.

tht said:

For me, the order of priority for mobile computer internals is: 1) RAM, 2) storage, 3) network, 4) CPU, 5) GPU, 6) NPU.

That's great but this article is about a phone.

Most people care about the phone's display, cameras, and battery life.

Joe Consumer really doesn't care about how much RAM is in an iPhone (as long as it does its job), how many GPU or NPU cores there are, blah blah blah. That's why Apple doesn't bother putting RAM size on the technical specifications page.