iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

#491

Post by adolph » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

tonic_note wrote: post #319

adolph wrote: post #273

Is anyone else intrigued by the $129 "panel of over 50 biomarkers, aimed at enhancing preventive health insights?" This was mentioned in the Apple Health segment. [0] I checked out Quest's website and there wasn't an obvious match. [1] 0. https://www.biopharmawatch.com/news/DGX/apple-health-app-que... 1. https://www.questhealth.com/shop-tests

Yes, that felt very bizarre and glossed over. The specific details the speaker gave made me feel like it was a weird product placement, but like, _why_? Why would this multi-trillion-dollar behemoth needs to strike a brand deal with Quest?

I don't think it is bizarre since a panel of lab tests are physiological indicators that may result from the various health and fitness metrics currently measured/collected by iPhone.

There are lots of tie-ins from Apple products to other services that they don't offer: like telecom, and banking. Quest seems a reasonable partner given their ubiquity. I wonder if Apple is getting a cut and/or getting a discount for consumers on this service?

Re: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

#492

Post by brokencode » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #471

brokencode wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing how stingy Apple is, they’re probably still trying to get the expense approved. That’s partially why they’re in the mess they’re in with AI. The CFO wouldn’t let them buy enough GPUs to train their models. They needed all that money for more important expenses, like share buybacks, instead.

People will buy Macs and iPhones even if they don’t have AI. In fact at this point, based on revealed market preferences, it’s almost a value add. And if the AI capitalization bubble bursts, most people would be ok with OpenAI or Anthropic going bust. Both of them going bust would be really disappointing, but even that wouldn’t be the end of the world. And Meta going bust would almost be a side benefit of a market cr…

Yeah, it ultimately hasn’t hurt Apple much so far. Though eventually expectations may shift as AI gets better integrated into other phones.

Of course, there are a lot of AI features that we take for granted that aren’t LLMs, like speech to text, image foreground extraction, etc. Apple does tend to do this type of AI well.

Re: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

#493

Post by weezing » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

fizwidget wrote: post #374

kimseungyong wrote: post #281

I was waiting for the standard iPhone, so it’s a shame it’s coming out next year. Unless you’re using photos or videos like an expert, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to go for a heavy Pro anymore. Since last year’s promotional display came equipped with the standard model, I just can’t find it appealing. Ah, of course, since it has AI features, we’ll have to see how much the RAM difference matters, but Could it…

I don’t think you need to be taking “expert” photos to want some optical zoom. I wish they’d put a zoom lens instead of a wide angle on the standard iPhone, but alas, you need a Pro for that.

Unfortunately not gonna happen because if they introduced telephoto on base iPhone most people that buy Pros wouldn't buy Pros.

Re: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

#494

Post by Marsymars » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #68

Apple innovation truly looks dead at this point. At $1200 I expect them to be made in the USA by union workers.

How would this even be tenable? Like there's no way for Apple to stand up production of hundreds of millions of iPhones per year in the US.

Like say Apple invests billions of dollars into American iPhone production to at least produce the tens of millions to sell in the US - then what? Apple just accepts the the US market is basically a wash where profits are a fraction of the rest of the world with Chinese/Vietnamese/Indian models? And you anticipate that other countries won't mandate the same thing?