iPhone

Om Malik wrote a great dive into the A13 Bionic chip that powers the latest iPhones.

Apple’s new chip contains 8.5 billion transistors. Also, there are six CPU cores: Two high-performance cores running at 2.66 GHz (called Lightning), and four efficiency cores (called Thunder). It has a quad-core graphics processor, an LTE modem, an Apple-designed image processor, and an octa-core neural engine for machine intelligence functions that can run over five trillion operations per second.

Big numbers are amazing, and I still marvel at the fact that this chip can do five trillion operations per second. That is astoundingly fast. Five trillion seconds is 158,550 years. Just one trillion seconds ago (31,710 years) was before written history, before the pyramids were built.

Apple wants to trademark ‘slofie’, it’s term for slow-motion video clips you can now take with iPhone 11.

Apple has applied to the USPTO for a trademark on the term “Slofie” in terms of “downloadable computer software for use in capturing and recording video.” Don’t worry, it’s not trying to own the cultural landscape — rather, this is largely to prevent app developers and phone makers from ‘borrowing’ the term for their own features.

At least Apple isn’t trying to pull an Ohio State University, which was recently denied its effort to trademark the word “the.”

You wouldn’t know it because it wasn’t mentioned during the iPhone 11 keynote, but the new iPhones have a new chip. Called Ultra Wideband, or “U1” it’s a way for iPhones to figure out their position in 3D space relative to other U1 devices. Apple mentions the use-case of a person pointing their U1 iPhone at another U1 iPhone to send files over AirDrop. Jason Snell writes that this is just the beginning.

But the possible applications of UWB go way beyond AirDrop and tracking tags. Decawave’s Viot says potential applications include smart home tech, augmented reality, mobile payments, the aforementioned keyless car entry, and even indoor navigation. (And it’s not a power hog, either—Viot says that Decawave’s latest UWB chip uses one-third of the power of a Bluetooth LE chip when in beacon mode, as a tracking tile would be.)

A number of Apple products got aggressive new price points at the “By Innovation Only” event. At Wired, Daphne Leprince-Ringuet wonders if it will be enough.

For a company that is famous for premium pricing, Apple’s sudden shift to more affordable devices (even if it is its older line-up) comes as a surprise. A look at its sales performance last year might explain the change of heart: in 2018, Apple’s best-selling device was the $649 iPhone XR, meaning that its entry-level device out-performed the more advanced XS and XS Max. In other words, phone buyers are unwilling to shell out the extra dosh to get their hands on Apple’s best smartphones. Last year in China, the tech giant even cut prices for some of its iPhones, iPads, Macs and AirPods by nearly six per cent – partly in response to “lower than anticipated” iPhone sales in the country… By cutting its prices on phones and watches, therefore, Apple is hoping to supplement its iOS customer base and lure in new customers who might purchase other services within its ecosystem.