New Apple Gear (iPhone 6 / Watch)

New iPhones? Meh. Basically what you could get elsewhere a year ago. NFC payment? Google pushed on this a while ago but it seems we have Apple to thank for getting more vendors on board. Hopefully it will work with Android phones as well. New watches? Good on them for having multiple sizes and style options, but boo for the non-standard strap attachment, so you can't just buy any third-party strap. (No doubt they've patented the strap connector so third-party strap makers have to pay to play.) Google's going to need to ramp up the style points on the built-in watch faces for Android Wear, but otherwise Wear seems to be a much more useful watch.

The price is $349. I don't know, but I'm guessing that'll be too much for most people. Ok, so you can do some fun stuff with it, but only if it's linked to an iPhone. And then I don't see any benefit. If you've got an iPhone in your pocket, you might as well use that. The AppleWatch seems mostly like an expensive remote for the iPhone to me.

For those who are excited about smart watches, Apple seems to have done a good job with it. Those who were interested in the Pebble, for example, will probably find it quite compelling.

I'm not one of those people. I've been really enjoying having my expensive pocket watch instead of something on my wrist bugging me all the time. I haven't worn a watch since getting a cellular phone, and I'm not planning to change that.

Agreed about the nonstandard strap connection though. I worked in retail jewelry for several years, and if there's one thing I know, it's that people always have and always will want a wide variety of watch straps available. The watches which had proprietary strap connectors (they were in the minority, but still common) were always a hassle.

Of course, I said the same thing about dashboard DIN slots...

Yes, I'd like to know exactly what you can and cannot do if the iPhone is not around. Unless I missed it.

I don't mind the Watch. it seems the best smart watch design so far (pending the answer to my previous question). And, as far as I am concerned, very good that they made a phablet.

The protruding lens is horrible, IMO.

I'm curious about the NFC integration. Will they be using it more more than just Apple Payments? As a non iPhone user I'm hoping the entry of the iOS juggernaut pushes the adoption of NFC payments.

As far as the camera goes, I'm wondering if they were going to include that bump why not take advantage and up the specs of the chip, 8MP is OK but on the flagship device you'd think they could have improved on that.

As far as the watch it looks nice, waiting to see the battery specs. Again, as a non iPhone user it's ultimately irrelevant to me. But it's nice to see some new entries into the wearables market.

Pricing: a typical "Fossil" watch seems to clock in around $100. A Rolex Submariner of dubious provenance costs $7000. There's a lot of room in there for fancy electronic watches if they're really good.

Certainly, the Android Wear watches are all much less. The nicest one so far, the Moto 360, is $249 and sold out in minutes. A Pebble is $149 (plastic) or $249 (steel). If/when things settle down, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see one of these vendors selling "Wear movements" that other vendors put in their own cases. $2000 for a watch? There's plenty of market for it.

NFC payments have been around here (Canada) for a while now, for Android and even Apple devices. Are they not that common in the states?

Carrying a phone around with me allowed me to stop wearing a watch. I'll wear a watch again when the phone is in it, not in my pocket.

NFC payment in the U.S. is pretty rare. It's at my CVS drug store but otherwise, I don't often see it. My understanding is that all the NFC standards have done, to date, is just ship your existing credit card over, in the clear. Very disappointing. Apple hasn't announced any details, but based on what they said at the keynote, they appear to be creating one-time card numbers, for any given transaction, and feeding those over NFC. Depending on how it's done, that would be a significant security improvement over the dumb thing that happens when you have an NFC-enabled plastic credit card.

Well, MY smart watch cost less than $15. What's all the excitement about?

tanstaafl.

As a present for my first day at primary school, my Grandfather gave me a digital watch, relatively inexpensive for those days (early 80s), of some minor brand.

I loved it, as anyting with LCD looked so futuristic to me.

Then I saw that wrist watch you have, Doug, on some magazine, and THAT has been a dream for me, until my parents agreed to get me a Casio Data Bank, years later.

So, that is a dream watch to me, to this day. Well, it's first version from the early 80s.

This is it, my first smart watch.

http://image.rakuten.co.jp/onemore/cabinet/casio/db-310a-1z-a.jpg

God!, I feel old.

-jk

I'm sure Dick Tracy is older than you.

Like wise, I've not worn a watch since work gave me a pager back in 2000 or so. How long until the watch is the phone? I've no idea where the mic and speaker would go, I for one would not want to wear and ear piece all the time, and holding the watch up to my ear would be tiresome. May the iCochlear?

All this talk of digital watches reminds me of Douglas Adams:

When the iPhone was first announced and then released, many misunderstood what it really was in part because it was called a 'phone'. It was in fact primarily a mobile Internet connected computer. The phone aspect was merely a familiar function. Almost all the interesting stuff had little to do with making phone calls.

The Apple Watch seems to be following a similar arc. It is not a 'watch', it is a very mobile Internet connected computer. A sensor laden device to boot. Most of the interesting stuff will not have much to do with telling time.

Looking forward a few years and hardware/software upgrade cycles, it seems likely that the Apple Watch will get slimmer, better, and more capable. Feels like the iPhone original launch, but already way more polished. Should be interesting to see where Apple and the developer community can take this.

Wow, memory lane. I had one of those too. Now, looking at it, I forget how on earth you entered data into the thing. Did you have to scroll through numbers and letters one character at a time? Wow, how did we tolerate that?

Of course, even earlier I'd had more than one of the Casio calculator watches like Doug showed, too. The little rubberized buttons never lasted quite long enough.

Later I had one of the Timex Datalink jobbies that would read bar codes off your CRT. That was pretty darn amazing to me. Loved that thing. Then I got a cell phone, and a data cable for the cell phone, and software to manage my contact list on the phone, and that was the last time I ever wore a watch.

Now my phone synchs with my Google contacts wirelessly and automatically. Wow.

In general, I've found that the US banking/payments industry (at least where consumers are concerned) is about a decade behind anywhere else.

I recall ATMs being ubiquitous at banks in Canada (even in small towns), while over in the US, having an ATM at a bank merited a billboard (at least, that's what I saw it Detroit & suburbs). And over 3-5 years, those billboards gradually changed from "we have an ATM" to "we have an ATM open 24hrs." It took a few more years after that for the billboards to disappear altogether.

I think it stems from having a largely unregulated mess of competing companies, who've all created their own standards, with little regard to interoperability.

I like:

- the design
- the sapphire glass (I know I'm going to knock a watch against stuff all the time)

I don't like:

- the price
- that they didn't call it the iWatch

Isn't it bad branding to call your device such a generic term? Are they assuming that everyone will call it the "Apple Watch" every time? Or will everyone just assume from this day forth that when you're talking about a watch, you're talking about a Watch?

Also, I'm happy to see mobile payments take off, but as usual, I'm the guy who hates proprietary "standards." I don't mind having multiple players in the mobile payments game, but unless users can have the expectation that their form of payment will be accepted at every location, then we're never going to lose credit cards as the standard, which makes less of a motivation for business owners to accept any mobile payments.

Ah, yes, the stable always-works system of cre...

After the whole fiasco with Target and Home Depot, the retail side of the credit card industry is evolving rapidly. Apple appears to be supporting standard NFC credit card presentation (as Google has done for years), which is supported by many vendors, including CVS and Home Depot.

OK, then I'm fine with it. As long as whatever payment system is put in place is platform agnostic, I'll be happy.

What I'm not fine with is Apple deciding to force U2's new album on every iTunes and iOS user. I now have clients contacting me because they're worried that someone hacked their account or something. One of them only has an iPad, and it's apparently difficult to remove the content from within iOS.

I wasn't aware of the U2 thing, yep, it's on my phone. Creepy.

I wouldn't use Apple payments because I don't trust Apple. The credit card I have on file with them (to buy apps & such) is a pre-paid thing with a $100 limit. I'd never give them access to my real cards.

The U2 thing does seem to be a misstep for Apple, not sure how that made it through their internal 'appropriateness' vetting process.

Across the spectrum of large tech companies, Apple ranks near the top in trustworthiness from my perspective. Glitches and screw ups happen with all of the players but Apple seems to hew closest to 'doing the right' thing fairly consistently.

I highly distrust the companies that depend upon advertising and privacy manipulation for their core revenue. Doing the right thing often seems orthogonal to their business model.

I had to buy a new watch last year as mine wouldn't have been repaired in time for a trip. I was semi-worried because one of the points that most reviews made was the lack of sapphire glass (you can send it in to get the sapphire glass installed, but it takes a while and is an extra expense).

Even without it, I bang my watch into stuff all the time and it still doesn't have a single scratch on it. Overall, I'm happy with this regular glass so far. Although, it is nice to have the option to send it in for the sapphire once I do manage to scratch the current glass.

What watch are you referring to?

Citizen Skyhawk AT.

http://xkcd.com/1420/

Pretty much mirrors my thoughts. I wore the Pebble around for a bit, and saw the promise of some of what a wrist device could do. I see a lot of the first attempts at smart watches the same way I saw the first attempts at smart phones. It's amazing to me how quickly these things evolve now though. It took a good decade of various smart phone attempts before the modern approach took over. Watches seem to be changing much quicker.

It was clear from the Pebble that for anything to really succeed, it would need deeper integration. The Apple Watch will do just that coming from the same company as the phone. Similar to how the best of the Samsung watch only comes out when paired with a Samsung phone. The downside is more ecosystem lock-in, but the upsides could be pretty handy.

I'm personally interested in the fitness aspect. I've had an iOS 8 beta already loaded on my phone, and it was keeping track of some stuff due to the M7. The watch would help provide a deeper view into my daily activities.

Both the watch and payment systems show the more conservative side of Apple, but also their long view on some aspects. I appreciate them seeding the hardware needed to talk to the watch in their phones since 2011. The payment side will have to wait for me though, as I'm holding out for the iPhone 6s. The needed NFC bit is new to the iPhone 6, past methods that worked with an iPhone required a phone case with the right hardware. For a time it seemed Apple wasn't interested in NFC at all, and had hoped to push this via Bluetooth iBeacons. Apple Pay does apparently work across Bluetooth too, but I don't expect wide adoption there.

While all this was being announced, my 5s was in a form fitting mount leading me through some great costal areas on the motorcycle. The tick/tock cycle with the design makes more sense for me to wait to get a better accessory selection. I'm disappointed that the iPhone 6 Plus has a camera feature the iPhone 6 lacks. And I'm still on the fence about the size. I appreciate them offering options now to those who want larger phones, but I hope to keep a pocketable for me form factor around. I'll have to hold the 4.7 inch device before my opinion is fully formed there.

Form factors: one of my colleagues came into my office with cardboard cutouts of the new iPhone 6's and held them up against my Nexus 5 -- which turns out to be nearly identical to the iPhone 6 in size.

So, there's that at least.

Watches: I had a moment yesterday where I realized wow, I'm living in the future. I had Pandora going in the background (casting from my phone to the Chromecast gadget in my theater rack). The phone rang. I answered it but then I needed to mute the song. And there, on my LG G watch, was a pause button, because Pandora exports that into the Android notification bar, and thus it gets forwarded to the watch. One tap on the watch and the music stopped.

Think about how many distinct computers in how many different locations were involved in me pausing the flow of music to my stereo just because my phone rang.

It's the future, I tell you, the future.

And any kid growing up right now will just assume things have always been that way..

For those upset over receiving free things:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6439

Nice.

http://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-6-plus-camera-review-iceland

Impressive.

Nice bit of marketing.

For some reason that web page crashes my iPad Air to the desktop every time I try to view it.

iPad crashes for me are very rare occurrences.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/18/6339583/iphone-6-and-6-plus-camera-test-iceland has more info about the review trip. Made me want to visit Iceland even more.

This is not good news...

You're pocketing it wrong!

I really do wonder if this is going to turn out to be a real concern or just something that's gotten blow out of proportion. It is a little unsettling that this is happening so soon after the release, what are these phones going to look like after a year or two of use? How many people use an iPhone without a case? These larger phones really won't fit into most pockets I suppose with a case, people will have to adjust to using a belt clip or something.

How are the similar sized Android phones being carried around when not in actual use?

I almost never put my iPhone 5S in a pocket, I use a belt clip most of the time. It has also been wrapped in a simple rubberized case since day one. There are times when my belted iPhone 5S catches on car seat belts and such, I worry that the larger iphone 6 will get caught on things more often. Or simply jacks itself off my belt when sitting down or moving around.

My (not yet arrived) iPhone 6 will also be in a case as soon as I find a good one. Gravity happens.

And a new belt clip holder as soon as I find one that I like. If it turns out that the belt clip holder gets snagged too often in daily use, I don't have an alternate plan ...

iPhone 6 Plus just seems way too large to actually carry around everyday. Belt clip would likely snag frequently and I could imagine having to unclip the holder frequently before getting into a car or even just sitting down.

Pants pockets are not loose enough to cope with either new iPhone model, even my iPhone 5S can get oddly oriented in a pocket and need 'adjusting' before sitting down.

If you have a quick Google you'll see some people reported the same thing with the iPhone 5 and 5s. Though I don't remember any media coverage at the time.

There's also a follow-up test, testing the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which fares better.

Currently I'm carrying a Note 3 clone without any issues, but then I'm normally in cargo pants... I can sit with it in front pockets, but normally in the car it's in a holder and in the office it's on the desk. When otherwise out&about it alternates between front and thigh pockets.

"They don't go in pockets"

Oh, wait, that was HTC...

My iphone 5 has never had a case. If I wanted a thicker phone, I would just buy one with a decent battery life, rather than thicken the iphone...

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I'll bet this is one of those things where someone gets some buzz going about an issue, making it look like it's a new or unique thing, when it really isn't new or unique.

Is there a word for that?

Good round up of bending smart phones here:

http://www.cultofmac.com/297404/get-bent-shocking-history-bent-smartphones/

This makes me think of the Xbox 360 red ring of death issue. Normally, a failing piece of electronics is not newsworthy. It's only news if there is a particularly large percentage of failures. That's what made the red ring of death a big deal, was the high failure rate.

Remember, Apple is supposed to be better than the rest, not as good as for more $. People have come to expect perfection.

No one expects perfection from Microsoft.

You have a good point. Apple's marketing and branding seems to be trying to project that very image. So it would make sense that people like to point out flaws in their products, even if those flaws aren't special.

I would imagine that aluminum would be more prone to staying bent. That said, I'd prefer the iPhone build over the build of any Samsung phone. My Galaxy Nexus was the worst-built smartphone I've ever used, and I'm going back to my Blackberry with that statement.


...then don't do that...

iOS 8.0.1 apparently turns your phone into an iPod Touch. wonder how that got out the door....

Odds are it's blown out of proportion, as usual. Apple is such a polarizing company for people. And for the media, the news gets clicks, which gets ad revenue.

Lets see, the iPhone 3GS was slammed for not being new, just because the looks didn't change. Didn't matter, still sold like crazy and worked fine for most every owner.

The 4 was slammed for the antenna issue (managed to even catch me on that one for a bit), but turns out every phone back then pretty much had similar issues. Still sold like crazy and worked fine for most every owner.

The 4s was slammed for not being an iPhone 5, but stories kinda were muted due to Jobs passing soon after to fill the media with news.

The 5 had screen layering glue that was yellow until fully dried, the 5s has a fingerpint sensor fooled by hundreds of dollars worth of equipment to replicate a fingerpint. The 6 bends.

Anyone want to take bets on what the 6s media clickbait story will be next year?

That is more interesting to me as a release engineer then bent phones due to pocket sizes.

Reports indicate it only impacted the new iPhones. I'm speculating this was due to how the phones get their final firmware before being shipped. iOS 8 for developers goes from beta 1 - 5. It's rumored there was a beta 6 only for carrier testing before the GM. Well tested and used path, and applied to multiple years worth of phones.

The iOS 8 image for the iPhone 6 followed a different path due to being developed while the phones are being finalized and assembled. Possible bad delta generation for the update, as people were also reporting a full restore via iTunes worked fine. I wonder what the iOS 8.0 build number is on an iPhone 6, anyone have one handy? For my 5s, it's 12A365.

It's similar to how new Macs after a release of OS X come with a slightly different build carrying new drivers and sometimes more. My Retina MacBook Pro went through a few Retina specific OS X upgrades before it was reunified with the general OS X updates.

All just a theory, from a more real and newsy worthy issue. Bricking people's phones is going to cost Apple more then the few that are bending, due to the support costs alone.

Same here on my 6, next theory Sherlock

Another issue that had affected previous iPhones, but that only picked up traction with a later model.

i haven't gone anywhere near iOS8 on my own devices, (no jailbreak, no upgrade!) but i have an iPod Touch for work which I run it on. Needless to say, taking an upgrade which might disable features it didn't have, wasn't a problem!

Hrm, interesting. Well, my next theory would be a build issue of some sort. Being that the phone lost cellular service and contact with Touch ID, sounds like a driver related issue. Possibly a driver missing, or a bad #ifdef still enabled to cloak the existence of the iPhone 6 during development. Or a separate branch for the iPhone 6 that wasn't integrated back properly.

I like looking into failures like this to learn how to try and prevent such in my own workplaces. I'm thankful the products I've worked on do not have anywhere near the public visibility of Apple though.

Apple came out today to announce a mindblowing, massive, widespread issue of bending iPhone 6 pluses. Err, rather they revealed a grand total of 9 users have contacted them about the issue. Big press invite day into their stress testing lab to show what tests they do perform.

40,000 were impacted by the 8.0.1 release glitch. No press tours here of their software labs to demonstrate their branching and build strategies, leaving empegbbs admins to continue to speculate

And 10 million plus people are still enjoying their new devices without issues.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6845611/inside-apples-iphone-6-torture-building

Yup, and I haven't see a raft of other "bending phones" so just the usual rubbish.

I'm interested in where they can take the iOS software now with the additional real estate. We've already seen some ideas in the first version, but there's "room to grow"!

Had my first experience with ApplePay recently and was rather impressed. Will be eager to have this capability on my own device in the future. (borrowed someone else's iPhone 6 to use it).

Oddly now that the iPhone 6 also has NFC, the Google-Apple war quieted a bit to take aim at a shared enemy, CurrentC. It's been cited as the reason CVS and several other retailers shut down NFC payments (thus also disabling Google Wallet).

A small new detail in the 8.0.1 update glitch. Interesting to hear it was on the distribution side, though this makes me even more curious now.

Indeed. There's been a rare detente while we all focus on anti-competitive practices like this. And CurrentC's response to these issues came off as pretty scummy. Everyone involved is saying "well, there might be some way for both systems to co-exist in the future." Why wouldn't they be able to exist now? I thought they already were.

Regardless of the annoyance that ApplePay and Wallet have been blocked, it sounds like CurrentC is a pretty crappy payment method to begin with.

Doug, that upgraded model you've been waiting for is finally here:
https://twitter.com/travisgoodspeed/status/940263089982902272

Smiled a bit seeing that go across my feed this morning and thought of you

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_slow_try_replacing_your_battery/

Lol reddit, amused that link had someone called "Adolf-Intel" participating. What a wonderful place that community must still be.

Have been meaning to dig into that situation a bit more when I saw it pop up at more trustworthy sites. My old 6s had the faulty battery issue which Apple is covering for 5 years. It makes me wonder if their attempts to address that issue in software/firmware first helped contribute to this new report. The behavior my phone would have is that it would hard shut off as if the battery was unexpectedly going to lose voltage immediately. Then waiting a few moments, would still power back up and boot fine, and come back with an estimate of 40% or so.

Since the fault was happening before the 20% low power mode option exposed to users, it was occurring while the phone was likely still allowed the system to drive the CPU to it's maximum power usage. And this was a generation of processors right before Apple introduced their variant of big.LITTLE architecture. With the 6s still on sale as a new device due to Apple's amazing lead in the CPU space, it may see an update to address this in the coming month or two.

The really funny thing, is that the phones are SLOW even when on AC power.

And it also affects some (all?) laptops as well, again on AC power, even with the old battery unplugged.

Weird.

The take-away I got from it is that, if one has a an Apple product that is feeling more sluggish than before, REPLACE THE BATTERY before thinking about an upgrade to the latest shiny toy!

Or at least follow the lead from that article and check the CPU clock speeds using the free (and almost free) tools linked in the article. This is a really easy issue to verify, regardless of the web site used to publicize it.

Pure speculation on my part ...

Perhaps the underclocking (when an old battery is in use) is in part to reduce thermal stress on the aged battery. Especially in a mobile device, the heat generating components are not far from the battery mass. If heat adversely affects an old battery and increases degradation risk or accelerates aging rates then underclocking may be helpful for squeezing some residual longevity from a battery that is already declining.

I seem to recall a modern iPhone will reduce clock rates as the device internally warms beyond some level. I have had sun exposure overheat an iPhone enough that it switches to a survival mode, only showing a warning message regarding temperature.

There is enormous variation in how different individuals use their iPhones, and use the batteries. I often encounter people who regularly run the iPhone battery down to near zero before recharge. Some cannot be bothered to charge it more frequently, others think it is ‘healthy’ to deep cycle the battery level often.

Even when all iPhone batteries meet a high quality bar from the factory, variations in device usage will induce battery longevity and stamina variability.

The drive for ever improving device functionality in very compact form factors inevitably puts a stress on battery lifespan and capacity.

My understanding is that the external battery case made by Apple for the non-Plus size iPhone provides intelligent battery management of both the external and internal batteries. I suspect the overall calendar lifespan of the internal battery is substantially extended when the battery case is in use.

I will admit I am in the camp of preferring a couple more mm in iPhone design thickness to provide more battery capacity. I always use a shell case on my iPhone, another mm or 2 would not be a problem. For me. I can see that many people value device thinness, and certainly thin devices (not just from Apple) sell in huge numbers.

Sadly there is no Apple iPhone Smart Battery case for the iPhone 8 or iPhone X.

It may look goofy, but it works so much better than third party cases. I wish Apple would open up the protocols used by it to third party battery case manufacturers so that other cases could be more intelligent with managing charge.

I used to try to use my iPad to listen to music outside in the summer. It went into survival mode enough times that I quit bother trying and resigned myself to listen to whatever came on next (iPad stays inside and the playlist just plays - if I want to listen to something else, I have to go in and change it).

Apple Watch can control music playback, both from itself and from the linked iPhone (from iPad I could not say).

I don’t use my watch for music, so not sure how much control there is over track selection.

All iPhone 7 cases work on iPhone 8 devices including the Smart Battery, though Apple isn’t officially stating compatibility. Likely to avoid folks trying to mix the case and wireless charging that the phone supports, but not the case.

And agreed on wishing they’d open the Lightning charging spec a bit more, even if it’s only via their MFi program. It feels like Apple is trying to balance their conservative views on safe battery charging/usage and have been wondering lately if that factors into their proper adoption of USB-C on the Mac side only (lower volume) vs sticking to Lightning on the iOS side of the hardware house. If anything, the iPhone X could have been the transition point had they felt it was the time.

Reading instruction manuals or searching good sites would have revealed why. Apple has printed this in the instruction manuals for any portable Mac they made in recent history with user removable batteries:


Been this way dating back to the old Powerbook era at least.

The above statement was changed for portables that have a sealed in battery to inform folks how to monitor battery health. Modern macOS detects potential battery failures and presents the alert to folks when service is needed. Any time Apple has discovered a manufacturing fault, the entire batch of machines possibly impacted gets an automatic warranty extension usually out to 5 years for any battery issues. Or longer in the case of their iPod Nano battery recall.

I've come to understand it's part of Apple's commitment to triple bottom line practices, specifically focusing on the environmental cost of their products. Better batteries get swapped less, and it requires less wasteful tooling changes to manufacture common chargers to share among a line of laptops for several generations. Part of that compromise means that they plan on the charger hitting peak efficiency when charging the battery, instead of ensuring the charger has the output to supply the machine with efficient power during the extremely rare times a customer pushes the system full tilt. This requires pushing all the components hard to get a Mac laptop drawing supplemental power off the battery. As for how much, it's varied between every model. Several common Windows laptops do the same and have similar info out there about the practice, and I believe there's tighter integration with Windows these days to report the clock speed changes.

I think in my history of owning Apple portables, I've only had a few occasions where I've seen battery drain while plugged in. This includes times I had the old Powerbook running two instances of a game making use of the GPU, while other activities were keeping the single core CPU busy, and my professional experience of building software on various Macs.

Good to know.
In other words, they undersized the AC adapters.

I would not entirely agree with that characterization.

Upsizing the entire power delivery system in a laptop to support continuous, unrelenting maximum power drain conditions for an extended duration does not fit with the requirements most laptops are tasked with.

It would require the power adapter to be larger and heavier, which for a portable machine is not a good thing. It could also require larger and higher heat output componentry in the power management system within the laptop. More weight, potentially less efficient overall power usage.

All that just to avoid calling on the battery during typically short duration ‘max computing’ events?

Portable devices always involve trade-offs. Weight, size, heat, battery durability, power consumption. Everything affects everything.

None of the laptops I have owned have throttled performance while the battery is removed. So I guess I just find it weird when one manufacturer bucks the trend, and Thinks Different.

It is a good way to do things (undersizing the power adapter), as it can result in smaller and lighter weight gear. And for notebooks where the battery is not hot swappable (all of Apple's stuff?) it makes perfect sense.

Cheers

Also, Apple ship a range of laptop power supplies of different capacities, all of which have the same connector (for the current range of models, mostly at least).

If I plug the PSU from my old MacBook into my current MacBook, it doesn't actually have enough power to charge the battery when all four cores are running at 100%.

Underpowered power supplies is not a thing limited to Apple.

Just to be clear, my MacBook has no problem charging with the supplied PSU when running flat out. So it is at least ahead of the Surface on that

Are you speaking of Mag-Safe power supplies or the USB-C power supplies?

Interestingly, with the USB-C ported MacBook models they are able to be charged with power adapters as meager as the iPad 10 watt brick (with laptop turned off). A traveler can charge all their portable Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook) using a single rather compact power brick (such as this Anker PowerPort + USB-C) , albeit at a modest (overnight) pace for the laptop. A single aftermarket power brick sporting both USB-C and USB-A ports works well for an Apple based traveler.

I was speaking mostly of the MagSafe ones. But the same applies to the USB-C ones, Apple sell more than one USB-C power adapter for MacBooks (and that is before you start considering the ones other people make).

The USB-C PSU that ships with the MacBook is not the same as the one that ships with the MacBook Pros. The MacBook ships with a 29W one, the MacBook Pros ship with a 61W one.

My 15” MacBook Pro has an 87 watt USB-C power brick

Some great research of existing data by the folks behind Geekbench is helping to show the two situations do indeed appear related:
https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-and-battery-age/

(Amused that in the great tradition of these boards, we're discussing an iPhone 6s issue in an iPhone 6 thread, that was bumped iniitally for Doug to see a possible upgrade to his amazing smartwatch due to the years old parallel discussion of the Apple Watch announcement )

Will be curious to see what future iOS updates do in regards to this issue. Not as directly interested though as the 6s I had was sold prior to the announcement of the 8/X, though I do have one family member to look after with a 6s. No signs of the bad battery issue, and this performance gating to preserve the battery shouldn't impact them much.

https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/

Not a word about why they still throttle old iPhones even when running off the charger. And nice to reduce the battery costs for USA customers only. The rest of the world must wait another year.

[EDIT] Perhaps I found the wording in the Apple press release to be a bit confusing, and they may have instead meant that everybody gets the cheaper costs UNTIL the end of 2018. [/EDIT]

Perhaps an iPhone never ‘runs on the charger’.

The power management system is centered on the battery. The battery is the most trustworthy power source. It cannot be suddenly unplugged or decide (without warning) to reduce power delivery because another device was plugged into the next USB port on the charger.

Power from the USB charger would be used opportunistically to charge the battery and then supplement the current demand of the iPhone electronics. But that demand jumps up and down rapidly as screen comes on and cell radio powers up, plus the CPU and GPU demands, amplifier for the speaker, GPS, chip, etc.

When the battery becomes ‘chemically aged’ (Apple’s terminology) then the iPhone no longer trusts the battery to not voltage collapse without warning when power demand spikes higher, even when a charger is connected. So the revised software now avoids stressing the battery any more than it calculates the battery alone can withstand.

My take is that Apple is ‘doing the right thing’ here. Clarity, humility, and rather fair pricing on new genuine Apple batteries, installed and with an Apple battery warranty. This may cut into aftermarket replacement battery sales.

Aftermarket batteries may be of lesser quality and creating their own issues for Apple’s reputation, especially if they impair ongoing iPhone reliability more than a genuine Apple battery.

While the current policy statement says the battery replacement discount runs until end of 2018, Apple may well create an ongoing ‘discounted’ battery replacement program. It would engender goodwill and ensure the average ‘older’ iPhone continues to perform well and reinforce the brand.

Very recent models of iPhone (8, X) have had significant increments in stated run time over iPhone 6 or even 7. Apple may be increasing baseline battery stamina in part to further delay onset of performance reductions driven by battery aging.

SWMBO and I are iPhone users, used iPhone users, I with a 5S and she with a 5. The 5S is still on the original battery, which will be 4yrs old in March, and while it does get me through a typical day, it does not get me through a travel or conference day of heavier usage. SWMBO's 5 has had the battery replaced, thanks to ifixit for parts, tools, and instructions.

Both phones meet our needs, though the 5 stopped getting updates in July, and SWMBO is limited be the 16gb. Offering $29 battery upgrades (ifixit charges $20 for the battery alone) will likely be enough to sway us into upgrading to 6S by the end of 2018. Holding off that long because we're not heavy users - an out of date flagship phone does us just fine, I'm cheap, plus we hoping to build a new house in 2018 (which will be far from cheap).

I might have had a point when I started this post, but I'm not sure what it was now...

All iPhones were flagship models at some point (iPhone 5C excepted). Anything older than a 5s is running 32 bit software which means it is not getting iOS updates. No more security patches from Apple. And app updates from independent publishers may also wither away.

Stay off public WiFi and do not click on untrusted web links.

The time to sell the old iPhone 5 was much earlier in 2017 before Apple announced that iOS 11 would not support 32 bit hardware. Residual resale value in the iPhone 5 model I imagine has shrunk since.

I guess there are no third-party OS builds of any kind available for those? Android phones at least have LineageOS to keep them current with OS and security updates. It would be pretty cool if something like that were also available for the iPhones.

This is my understanding too, as it’s similar to the way Apple notebooks have also worked for a while (hence the throttling when the battery is removed or bad). Phone wise, I imagine it’s also simpler to run it this way, especially on newer phones with contactless charging via Qi. IIRC, Apple’s taking another step to replace a 3rd party chip with their own in the power management iOS side currently.

Main device difference is the size of the batteries, and Apple’s deeper control of the hardware on the iOS side. Key thing to remember here is Apple also did move to manufacturing their own batteries in both notebooks and iOS devices a while back, which likely also factors in to the situation.

Apple’s been pushing mobile CPU boundaries for a while now, and their lead in the space is exposing them to unknown risks. Risks that will take a few years to fully fix with new silicon, so software fills those gaps. I’ve heard rumblings there’s times Apple’s custom SoC can spike to 10W power draws from near idle for some tasks, and it seems like iOS 10.2.1 was one of those gap fillers.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387 has a lot of interesting details to parse, especially the “In cases that require more extreme forms of this power management, the user may notice effects” section.

Overall this is a situation Apple caught legitimate anger due to their silence or whispers. When the 6s esposed the issue, combined with a legitimate bad batch of batteries, they hinted there was more to the issue with 10.2.1. However those hints only came via one line in the patch notes, along with statements to two Apple journalists. In classic telephone game problems, those journalists didn’t relay the full context properly to let Apple’s admittance that they throttle the iPhone 6 and 6s due to battery conditions become common knowledge among owners.

Thus the myth of “Apple intentionally slows old phones to force upgrades” grew a bit since they were unintentionally doing so after being backed into a corner with their batteries. When folks were running benchmarks, they could induce one of the rare behaviors that exposes the throttling so clearly. With a lack of clear communication before, it blew up into the ad revenue clickbait news cycle. Apple plays it too conservatively at times, and their reactions to situations like this I feel can still improve a lot.


Agreed. And it’s already having an impact on aftermarkets. iFixit dropped their battery replacement kit to $29. This also includes phones older then the iPhone 6, so any do-it-yourself types have a good quality 3rd party source for older units still in use.

I feel under Jobs, they’d keep the $29 battery program for 5 years up front. Under Cook, I’m not so sure and feel they may extend it once but ultimately return to the old $79 cost sometime in 2019. I feel Cook’s old operations side gets in the way at times, especially when Apple’s sitting on the massive cash horde they continue to grow.

I’m amazed at how long the 5s has lasted, it was such a great step forward for the lineup. And Apple’s gotten a lot of usage out of the lines to make the iPhone 5s/SE series. Both have been cranking out some great refurb and new units in growing markets like India.

If you two still like the smaller form factor, the SE is a wonderful upgrade to the 5 and 5s. They have the internals of the 6s minus the force sensative screen and new vibrational motor. Same upgraded camera, CPU, Apple Pay support, etc. Rumors are saying it may see a bump this spring, but hard to tell for sure.

Congrats on the new house too!

Checking Glyde they are within $30 of each other, I'm fine with that, I got my nickles worth already, I think we paid $150 for it. It might become an iTouch for my 10yr old (that's her in my avatar, where did the time go???).



Thanks for reminding my about the SE. I though it was based on the 6, but you are correct it is (mostly) a 6S in a 5S case. I'm fine using a "retro" iPhone for a few more years


The house is scary. Well the price of it is. Houses in MA are expensive, not San Fran expensive, and we need a good school district - my daughter is gifted & ASD, and we have a chance to get access into the Harvard town schools for low $500k.

I'll start a separate thread when things start moving - I'll have many questions to ask the empeg hive mind.

The SE made me so happy when it was announced to see that form factor live on. My impression coming from a 6s was that iOS feels squished on the screen at time though it’s still very functional and easy to use. I ended up buying one as a backup phone to have between my partner and I, and to ensure we have a device always charged in case of disaster. The cost of them was low enough it’s cheaper then buying phone insurance between us.

It also let me pass along my 6s shortly after the free battery swap. And all it still takes is swapping a SIM and restoring from a backup. I found I didn’t like the smaller screen as much for use on transit for reading long form items, though that old retro feel was still there, with all the modern niceties. The form factor I think was the peak of the iPhone design of that era, and I’m curious to see what evolutions of the X look like.

I’m also wondering if the iOS split on the iPhone will lead to the SE continuing on for a while, and potentially helping to keep the iPod Touch market going. There’s a few major differences in how I work with iOS split between an iPad Pro, iPhone X, and an SE due to their form factor differences and accessories. It in a way reminds me of how adaptable Windows 10 is UI wise to several environments.

Gah, someone should have called me to this thread



The charger, even back to phones I worked on, could never supply enough power for current peaks to the CPU, GPU, DDR, NAND, camera (AF voice coil), flash, etc. Phone chargers - especially the ones people use (random things from china) are widely variable, and generally you're not getting more than 15W from them best case. We had to do all sorts of dynamic tricks to deal with them browning out so people would still get a reliable charge.

Come the iPhone 4S we had to up the battery protection trip point, because we could draw 4A out of the battery (at nominally 3.7v) - 15W - in a peak power scenario. Today's phones are likely 2x that. With ~150mohm battery impedance when new, that's 0.6v headroom gone right there.

Right from the iPhone 4S, Apple moved to multiphase bucks - like you see in PCs - in order to supply the current needs of the CPU, because a single phase would have meant the inductors were ridiculously sized. Instead, they ran either two or three phase allowing use of multiple smaller inductors. This was a first in the phone industry, I remember looking at Qualcomm teardowns in the years after I left and they were still single phase - multiphase is hard, especially when you want to add and drop phases to maximize efficiency as loads change.

As I remember, the peak currents - back then - were middling single digit amps just for the core. NAND could draw a couple of amps if 8 die were busy simultaneously too, I think my name is on a patent about scheduling these to try to reduce worst case draw...

Summary: average powers are dominated by the amount of heat the device can radiate, but are almost unrelated to peak powers.

ISTR a black body radiator the size of the 3.5" screen phones could dissipate 1W per 10C rise, so sustained you were at 2W max (so operation at 35C, the top end of the spec, didn't put the metal parts of the phone beyond 55C, which is the UL safety spec for metal/human tissue contact).