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iPhone Air

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Re: iPhone Air

#511

Post by babl-yc »

aurareturn wrote: post #58

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…

I've always been a bit confused about when to run models on the GPU vs the neural engine. The best I can tell, GPU is simpler to use as a developer especially when shipping a cross platform app. But an optimized neural engine model can run lower power.

With the addition of NPUs to the GPU, this story gets even more confusing...

Re: iPhone Air

#512

Post by moomoo11 »

matt-attack wrote: post #198
duxup wrote: post #8

Maybe this will take off like hotcakes but I'm in the "I don't think this does anything for me / anyone" camp. Granted I loved the 13 mini and that didn't sell so who knows.

It’s clear that super thinness is a technology imperative necessary to get Foldable IPhones. In order to fold, you first must solve thinness (since the final decide will be 2x once folded). Apple focusing on thinness is proof to me a foldable phone is next.

Why do phones need to bend?

Re: iPhone Air

#513

Post by ajsnigrutin »

jdprgm wrote: 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.

I'm not an apple user, not into their design choices... but if i had a choice, i'd much prefer a phone as thick as the camera with a 3x the battery capacity.

I'd even go with a millimeter or two thicker to have the backplate attached by screws and the battery easily user replacable after a few years.

Re: iPhone Air

#514

Post by Nextgrid »

qafy wrote: post #134
throw0101d wrote: post #95

> 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…

> esims can't be cloned (e.g. sim swapping attack)

This is incorrect. eSIMs are no different from physical SIMs once provisioned. The only difference is that instead of you having a physical smartcard, there is now a JavaCard-compatible card (embedded on the logic board or emulated by the modem) that gets provisioned remotely.

SIM swap attacks have nothing to do with your physical (or emulated) SIM, they were always about a social engineering attack onto the carrier's staff to replace the (e?)SIM associated with your account. eSIMs actually do make this easier because instead of the attacker having to show up in person at a store to pick up a physical SIM they can skip that step and do the whole process online.

> simply removed from a stolen phone like physical sims

If this is an attack vector you care about, you can enable a SIM PIN. In fact, this also works with eSIM if you really want to. But beware, doing so means once a phone reboots it will not have a data connection so things like Find My iPhone/etc won't work.

Re: iPhone Air

#515

Post by nerdponx »

amilios wrote: post #503
nakamoto_damacy wrote: post #465

I have an iPhone 13 mini, just replaced the battery. If you want my money, give me an iPhone 17 mini with small width and height, I don't care about it being thinner like the Air. Also, no AI ruining the image quality of the expensive camera. I saw examples of a consumer-grade digital camera vs an iPhone 16 and the latter introduced "hotdog skin" effect and other effects that made the photos look over-processed.

Unfortunately both the 12 Mini and the 13 Mini did terrible numbers sales-wise. People say they want small phones but not enough of them actually buy them when they are available. :(

The problem is that the people who want small phones also don't like buying new phones.

Also last I checked the "mini" phones weren't particularly mini, phones just got bigger.

Re: iPhone Air

#516

Post by ohdeargodno »

twiceaday wrote: post #269
jdprgm wrote: 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.

This phone has the highest screen area to weight ratio except for the Galaxy S25 Edge.

That's a great piece of marketing straight out of Apple's Big Number Book of Important Numbers, but _who the fuck cares_ ?

Aside from a tiny amount of nerds needing post hoc rationalisation as to why they blew $1500 on a gimmick, absolutely nobody will go looking for a phone and consider grams/mm² as an important measure.

Re: iPhone Air

#517

Post by megaman821 »

timerol wrote: post #419

> iPhone Air features N1, a new Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread. Congrats to Apple for finally designing out Broadcom and vertically integrating the wireless chip

I wonder if they will eventually add NFC to it. It probably needs to be certified since NFC is used for payments.

Re: iPhone Air

#518

Post by esotericsean »

I just can't imagine anyone wanting this? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but do people really want a thinner phone? I love my 16 Pro and plan to get the 17 Pro.

Definitely feel like thicker and longer battery is better. Heavier feels nice.

Re: iPhone Air

#519

Post by mensetmanusman »

“A new titanium USB-C port is 3D-printed to be thinner and stronger, fitting into the slim design while using 33 percent less material than a conventional forging process.”

Super fun. Titanium printing

Re: iPhone Air

#520

Post by caycep »

baby wrote: post #225
aurareturn wrote: post #58

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.

I dunno, I always felt folding phones added unnecessary complexity and moving parts. The slab phone seems closer to a platonic ideal and from a user/engineering perspective, has less compromises
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