So many comments, so little reading the article…
This is a weekly summary article by Mark Gurman. It’s not “oh duh, there will be an M4”. It’s pointing out the status and challenges of several things Apple is working on, and who at Apple is responsible for it. That includes:
- A-Series and M-Series
- Modem
- WiFi & Bluetooth
- MicroLED displays
- Noninvasive glucose monitoring
- Custom batteries
- Camera sensors
That’s just one section. The full article covers:
Apple’s quest to replace every major part of the iPhone with an in-house design. Also: The company is finally embracing the RCS texting standard; Apple’s revenue share from the Google search deal is revealed in court; and one of its health executives heads to Oura.
Yeah idk why people aren’t even clicking the link. There’s a couple things in there like the glucose monitoring that would be a huge leap forward
There’s no doubt that Apple’s hardware will continue to be the best. I hope that advances in AI will also lead to significant improvements on the software side.
For example, it is impossible to manually rewrite and improve the entire code of macOS or iOS, but it may be possible with future AI.
Wait, if Apple is able to pull off their own cellular modem chip, they might put it into a Mac as well? That would be sick.
The problem with the cellular modem is that Apple has to hit a moving target. Qualcomm has had significant performance increases in their last few modem releases. Apple needs to be at least almost as good as Qualcomm’s modem in any given year and Qualcomm keeps hitting big performance jumps.
If you can put a cellular modem on an iPad. You can definitely put one a MacBook.
That’ll be another $200 upgrade for a cellular model knowing Apple.
it would, but I don’t know if they would do that.
It would be a fair bit of overhead for a function many would not use, and cellular tech makes more sense in a phone, because people are more likely to have that with them than a laptop.
They could have it as an option, but then it would further fragment their laptop line.
Personally, I wouldn’t do it if I was them. Almost everyone has a phone, and the network connection can be shared, it’s really not a hassle.
I believe you miss the turning of the technological clock… the future is 5G to the home. It’s here now and offers as fast or faster speeds than many traditional broadband plans.
Have an iMac which is designed for someone who “wants it to work out of the box” - a cellular connection makes this useful in places that broadband is tough but cellular is not impossible. Adding their own cellular silicon would cost little and greatly expand use cases for existing models and alter the value prop of the consumer laptop market. Work across devices anywhere.
Add an access point to the device and now your Mom only needs an iMac and an AppleTV - no cable, no broadband, virtual switch/router in the cloud. Just a new cellular bill that is just a bit less than a broadband package and you have a winner. Have an Apple Watch? Buy a bundle - phone, watch, and computer.
Adding their own cellular silicon would cost little
They’re kinda struggling there from the sounds of it.
I think anyone with access to fiber to the curb internet access would be crazy to opt for 5g instead. Unless you really don’t care about consistent and reliable internet access. Which so people don’t and that’s fine. If I only streamed movies, and browsed, I certainly wouldn’t.
But the upstream speeds on cellular are garbage. It takes more electricity to run, generates more heat, and it’s still half duplex right?
future is 5G to the home. It’s here now and offers as fast or faster speeds than many traditional broadband plans.
Wired > wireless. Always, no matter how technologically advanced we are. By the time mmwave is available to everyone we’ll have 20gbps fiber at home.
As someone who works in IT an always online MacBook is nice. As it is it causes a few problems when you can’t connect a not signed in MacBook to a new wifi network. Makes find my obsolete for laptops unless the person who finds/steals it goes to wipe it and signs into wifi on the recovery screen. For support this has other implications because it means we have to physically have the machine or tell a user our admin account password if they get locked out in a place they’ve never been. There are plenty of other implications this has but for business users on the move it would make my job easier.
This is why (the pro laptops especially) should have some internal slotted expansion slots. There should at minimum be 1 M.2 slot, and to be honest if they included 2, then having a chip you populate one of the sockets with for Cellular would be awesome. Just include the antenna layout in all designs so it just needs to be plugged in. Then it can be configured or added later if someone desires.
Lmao, not happening with Apple. They limited a fucking hdmi port to the pro models.
eww.
That would come in a MacBook Pro ultra gps pro 😅
I mean they haven’t added cellular to Macs thus far, I don’t see why they would start after making their own chips.
They’d rather sell you an iPhone so you can tether that to your Mac.
meh, you can already create an hotspot from your phone.
Call me when they run out.
Fuck Bloomberg.
Their ‘journalists’ are judged on whether their articles ‘move the market’, so they’re incentivized to make any company look invincible or doomed regardless of reality or if there’s even a basis for an article in the first place.
So we get this constant stream of drivel, about how Apple is one false step away from disaster.
what part of the article made it seem like “Apple is one false step away from disaster”?
That’s it we’ve designed our chip, we can shut down the department and all get new jobs. No new chip will ever need to be designed, that’s just how technology works.
Apple wants its own cellular chips so they can put it in the vision headset.
An obvious thing is if they want to beef up their neural engine to better handle AI stuff ? If they are going to add ‘on device’ LLM runtime support ?
LLM, emphasis on the Large. A standard LLM will take up A LOT of storage space to the point where the user won’t have much left. Let alone the continuous processing power needed.
Siri + local “Small” Language Model. It could have full access to on device data, but more generalized quires are done remotely.
That does seem farther more likely, I would agree.
What does this mean, it’s too technical for me
It’s a garbage article. Apple is working on their own cellular modem, and Bloomberg wants to paint a picture of high stakes drama, that either Qualcomm or Apple is doomed (or both), and that Apple is going to have to make newer, better versions of the chips that they’ve been making better, faster versions of for 15 years, otherwise, again… doomed.
Apple: “Oh shit I didn’t think of that, guess we should keep trying to improve things”
“I’ve got laurels that need to be rested upon!”
Like making Siri work? Anybody had that idea yet?
Here I was thinking that they finally did it. They completed the job. Time for them to go home. Shut the doors and turn in the keys.
Bloomberg is garbage nowadays when reporting anything Apple. Sensational and clickbait headlines with no substance.