It looks like the one feature I was more eagerly awaiting is there: It can drive a display through the USB-C cable (https://www.apple.com/iphone-15-pro, scroll down to "Gigablast your gigabits" and then click on "Explore Connectivity".
Looking forward (assuming it will work like the iPad Pro) to not carrying a laptop with me when I know there is a USB-C or HDMI (with an adapter) screen available at my destination. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and I'm set. No more syncing with the phone - I am using the phone itself.
Apple's continued focus on gaming image quality is weird (ray tracing?), since despite Apple Arcade the mobile market still is still dominated by freemium games with simple graphics / lower graphical requirements.
There are precisely two freemium games that take advantage of the power of the Apple Silicon chips: Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, which were coincidently the two released games highlighted. (it may be interesting to see what Ubisoft and Capcom put out but the I suspect they'll price their games too high)
It bodes well for a M3 Pro chip for the next MacBook Pros, though.
Sticking the 23-year-old USB 2.0 port on a device that is made in 2023 and costs $1k is inexcusable. [non-pro]
There is absolutely no excuse when we're talking about a device at this price point and this age.
It doesn't matter that it wouldn't be fully exercised by most users. These are premium products at a premium price point. It's insulting that they would cheap out like that.
I'm mostly interested in the manufacturing technology -- seems like they're doing some kind of friction/ultrasonic/diffusion welding between the titanium frame and the aluminium insides.
That's a notoriously difficult weld to make: https://doi.org/10.1177/14644207211010839
I would love to know what process they're using and how they've got it reliable!
I'm excited for the most silly pedestrian reason: Because I detest the Apple 'DRM' chip that is implicit in Lightning even when used just for charging. I call it "DRM'd Electricity."
Choices of cables we've had for the whole existence of the iPhone:
• Apple cables, $20-30, not even nice, cheap plastic with poor strain relief, work reliably until they succumb easily to damage
• Licensed (like Belkin), $20-30, nicer, work reliably
• 1,000 brands on Amazon, etc. Not licensed, 10% DOA rate, sometimes just stop working. Physically nearly always nicer than Apple. $3-12.
I'm really excited to be able to just have many of the same charging cables everywhere, and to buy them for $5 or less. Even buying cheap cables, I've never once had a USB-C (or even the terrible micro-B) cable fail to work.
Note: I actually feel just as strongly even though I only even use a cable in the car, and charge with "Magsafe" everywhere else. I just hate Lightning that much. Also, I could easily afford the Apple cables, but it would physically pain me to waste that much money knowing it's purely additional margin for Apple.
> and the thinnest borders on iPhone.
I must be the only consumer who despises the thin edges on my current iPhone 14 pro. I'd like to be able to hold my phone and not randomly trigger edge-sensitive gestures like "scroll to top" (that you can't disable!).
Does that mean that iPhone 15 Pro camera has the same physical module as iPhone 14 Pro, apart from some software changes? Or did they release a wrong data for their comparator on apple website?
The most interesting thing to me is that switching to a new SOC process node gives you the option of bumping up performance or reducing power draw, and it sounds like Apple has once again chosen to reduce power draw.
It seems like other vendors have been going the "push performance no matter what it does to power draw and heat" route for a long time now.
USB-C supporting writing ProRes video and photo files directly to external storage is something I did not see coming.
That's Apple actually undercutting their own storage upgrades... what is going on?
A consumer stereo camera in a significant portion of the populations pocket is a big deal imo. Going to make the volume of VR content much higher.
Related ongoing thread:
iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485290
> The Pro lineup is built to last, combining the strength of titanium with the toughest back glass in a smartphone and the industry-leading Ceramic Shield on the front.
The back panel is made of glass. This is a user-hostile design choice. Apple tries to gas-light us, claiming that it's a "Durable Design". This is deception. I hope FTC sues them for false advertising.
A real durable design would have a durable back (metal, plastic, or composite) and a raised lip around the screen. I would buy such an iPhone immediately and gleefully use it without a case.
Great that they finally include USB-C. I am waiting for
- Any browser engine allowed - 3rd party "app stores" allowed - Allowed to simulate iPhone without owning or having to use a Mac
before switching from Android
The best part for me that wasn't mentioned, the slightly rounded corners!
I hate holding anything since iPhone 12 in my hands, the edges are sharp and cut into your fingers.
Every time I take iPhone X I'm just amazed how comfortable it is and what a step back was the iPhone 12 design.
The reduction in weight is a major feature - my iPhone 14 Pro routinely strains my hand.
I’m interested to see what depth of field can be replicated with lenses so close together. 3d (spatial) videos is the one feature I would have bought a new phone for, but given it is not available day one I’m a bit skeptical that an unproven lense set up will replicate well to an unproven vr set up.
Assassin's Creed Mirage launching on iOS shows that Apple is taking gaming seriously. A large part of the presentation was talking about the new GPU and the newly developed shader architecture. It will be interesting to compare the numbers once the devices are available.
> Beginning September 18, iCloud+ will offer two new plans: 6TB for $29.99 (U.S.) per month and 12TB for $59.99 (U.S.) per month.
Finally. I mean, 2TB is enough for me for now, but I know people with 5 people in their Apple Family with the 2TB tier absolutely maxed out.
AV1 HW decoder on Apple A17 means it's also coming to M3 MacBooks. My only wish is that AV1 HW encoder will be added to M3 MB Pros. So far no reason for many people to upgrade from M1
The EU prices of iPhone make them luxury objects, there is barely any meaningful pricing difference between the cheapest iPhone 15 (950EUR) and iPhone 15 Pro (1200EUR).
Hoping this inspires Android manufacturers to finally adopt the fantastical technological innovation of "another button".
Oh good, 128GB base storage, for 48MP camera + 4k@60 Pro Res video.
This really compliments the Apple Vision Pro! When they debuted the vision they demonstrated that it could also make content to be viewed on the vision, which was a disaster! It was clear there should be a dedicated device for recording. The iphone 15 pro is that!
I don't get the logic of removing the mute toggle switch. It is very convenient to put the phone in silent. Didn't have to open the phone. Plus it was easy to check if the phone was silent by just looking for the orange marker.
They should have first turned the volume buttons to action button. I dont use the volume button.
No details on that USB3 external storage. Any specifics? Can I -for example- attach an USB3 NVMe enclosure (RTL9210B) and transfer (move) photos / videos from the internal storage?
That's one of the few remaining reasons for carrying around a laptop when going on vacations with family (to dump photos from the phones when they fill up).
TL;DR:
1. USB-C. Yay!
2. New colors. Apple repeatedly refers to the colors as "stunning," but they look like regular colors to me.
3. Incremental hardware and software improvements. Pretty much what you expect every year. (Yes, we're all spoiled.)
For the gpu: Really gonna need fps limiters. So many games run hot and are unplayable without them.
Low power mode helps but a cpu limiter like when jailbroken would be good.
I missed the presentation but with talk of these new stereoscopic cameras did they mention anything about Apple Vision Pro? Ever since that keynote with the kind of dystopian example of wearing a headset during the kid's birthday, I assumed the future would be the next iPhone taking the "memories" (as I think they called them). Was that mentioned at all today?
edit: oh, neat, yeah I missed it at first but it's right in the linked press release:
> Coming later this year, iPhone 15 Pro will add a new dimension to video capture with the ability to record spatial video for Apple Vision Pro.
What time on September 15th can you pre-order? I forgot what time I had to wake up early for my iPhone 14 Pro. I think it was 6am Eastern?
The whole thing felt they were milking it to last 90min.
But the part where they compared their new GPU accelerated ray-tracing to be 4x faster than software ray-tracing was the most hilarious part. I thought software rendering was a thing that mostly stayed in the 90s, but apparently I was wrong enough that even deserved to be mentioned in a multi-million dollar Apple presentation.
New iPhone, better than the old one. OK cool.
Anybody know what Titanium color of the Pro devices match the Ultra watch?
No AV1 encode?
1 gram lighter!
Haven't watched it yet, but I bought a 14 Pro just two weeks ago (well aware of the imminent 15 on its way). I guess secretly I was hoping that the difference is not huge. ;)
Any details about USB-C? I bet this USB-C implementation is not standard compliant in a typical Apple way.
COOL! It looks exactly like my iPhone 14 Pro!
Still can't install uBlock Origin or any other firefox add-on? Deal-breaker. Sorry Apple, that's one more $1200 phone you're not selling me.
The most interesting part of this to me isn't the titanium or the camera (impressive as it looks), it's the GPU.
They made a point of saying that the GPU had been completely ground-up re-designed, and I assume they're intending to keep scaling that up over the next few iterations.
They didn't talk about it for very long, but that the phone is able to convincingly run AAA games, even at playable if not great frame-rates, is really impressive. This puts the iPhone up against devices like the Switch and Steam Deck for a lot of users. Granted, they don't have Nintendo's games, and they don't have Steam's massive back catalogue, but looking forward it does make a dedicated handheld gaming system harder to justify, or at least makes the phone easier to justify if you're not buying both.
It also makes me really interested to see where Apple is going with Apple TV and the Mac. With the game porting toolkit already announced (and the results people are already getting just using it directly to run Windows games), it seems like Apple really could eat at least some portion of the gaming market by already having a handheld (phone), console (Apple TV), and gaming PC (Mac) ready to go in the next few years.
I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really heavily into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully) announce a lot more support from big studios to bring more games to the Mac.