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iPhone Air

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221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: iPhone Air

#222

It has A19 Pro. A19 Pro has matmul acceleration in its GPU, the equivalent of Nvidia's Tensor cores. This would make future Macs extremely viable for local LLMs. Currently, Macs have high memory bandwidth and high VRAM capacity but low prompt processing speeds. Give it a large context and it'll take forever before the first token is generated. If the M5 generation gets this GPU upgrade, which I don't see why not, the…

The first SoC including Neural Engine was the A11 Bionic, used in iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X, introduced in 2017. Since then, every Apple A-series SoC has included a Neural Engine.

The matmul stuff is part of the Neural Accelerator marketing, which is distinct from the Neural Engine you're talking about.

I don't blame you. It's confusing.

Re: iPhone Air

#223
post #134

> iPhone Air features an eSIM-only design that saves space internally, helping enable the unbelievably light and thin form factor. I've only ever had phones with at least one (regular/physical) eSIM, and a 'slot' for an eSIM for travel. What are the pros/cons of only eSIMs? Edit: I'm not questioning eSIMs, which I know can be handy: my iPhone SE3 is physical+eSIM. I'm curious about no physical SIM. If you can support…

I have an only esim since the iPhone 11 was released. Pros: - Super easy to get esims while traveling. e.g. in Mexico i downloaded an app while still in the airport and paid $5 with apple pay and instantly activated a 1 month esim. - You can have multiple esimss. With physical sims you are limited to the physical number of sim slots on your phone, usually 1 or at most 2. With esim there is no such restriction. - More…

> If you get a new phone, you cant just pop your physical sim in. You need to go through your provider to transfer

Which, at least with my provider, you cannot do while roaming. So if I break my phone while travelling, I cannot access my online banking until I get back home.

Re: iPhone Air

#225

It has A19 Pro. A19 Pro has matmul acceleration in its GPU, the equivalent of Nvidia's Tensor cores. This would make future Macs extremely viable for local LLMs. Currently, Macs have high memory bandwidth and high VRAM capacity but low prompt processing speeds. Give it a large context and it'll take forever before the first token is generated. If the M5 generation gets this GPU upgrade, which I don't see why not, the…

IMO it's underwhelming considering folding phones have been out for many years now and we still don't have a folding iPhone. What are the PMs doing at Apple.

Re: iPhone Air

#226
post #167

"Impossibly thin" is right in line with Patrick McGee's "Apple in China" who argues that the main reason for Apple's designs is to keep imitators at bay by introducing manufacturing challenges that only they can meet. Indeed impossible at the time of release. One generation after the other. He estimates this gains them about 6 months of headway. Tough world. (Yes, to be fair, there is more to this new phone than just…

Thinnest smartphone so far is Chinese HONOR Magic V5 folding phone at 4.1mm, though. iPhone Air is thicker by 1.5mm(1/16") at 5.6mm. Thinnest Samsung Galaxy is 5.8mm.

Re: iPhone Air

#227
post #187

Can someone that is actually interested in this explain the appeal? Thin on its own I get but thin with a giant bump 100% defeats the whole point for me. Seems clear at this point there is little hope of them engineering their way into thin cameras.

Same question here. Why would I buy this instead of folding phones that provide a tablet-like screen on demand?

Re: iPhone Air

#229
post #208

This has a couple of up sides. 1. Biggest is that Apple can finally tell if people really want a thinner phone (I don’t). Maybe once they find out the answer, they can finally start using the space more productively. 2. They mentioned local LLM in passing, but this is the biggest possible selling point of the executives actually back real work on making them consumer-level easy. Have a LLM marketplace. Let users sub-…

Sigh. I can't stand the camera bump. I would run not walk to the nearest Apple store with all my savings if they made a phone where the camera bump is made flush by adding thickness elsewhere to match, filled with extra battery. Thing would last for weeks. Ah well back to reality.

Re: iPhone Air

#230
post #167

"Impossibly thin" is right in line with Patrick McGee's "Apple in China" who argues that the main reason for Apple's designs is to keep imitators at bay by introducing manufacturing challenges that only they can meet. Indeed impossible at the time of release. One generation after the other. He estimates this gains them about 6 months of headway. Tough world. (Yes, to be fair, there is more to this new phone than just…

That was partly true when he was writing the book or doing research, but is no longer true today. China have manage to make phone that is under 5mm, and even stated the only thing that is stopping them getting even thinner is the USB-C port.
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