Latest news with #JasonSnell
Tom's Guide
4 days ago
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Meet the iPhone of 2035 — it's the ‘mainframe on your body'
Artificial Intelligence | Smart Glasses | Wearable TechSmartphones | iPhones | Robots | Cars | TVs No single piece of technology has changed the world more in the 21st century than the iPhone. Apple's always-connected computer in your pocket has upended everything from the economy to society, in ways good and bad. And yet nothing lasts forever. Recently, Apple's own senior vice president Eddy Cue testified in a court case that the rise of artificial intelligence could mean "you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as it sounds." So is the iPhone on its downswing? Or can it keep reinventing itself as a relevant device for an era full of wearable technology and AI? When 2035 rolls around and the market is looking down the barrel of the latest and greatest iPhone, what can we expect? Twenty years in, the iPhone's place seems largely stable from a financial perspective. It continues to account for the lion's share of Apple's revenue — in the most recent quarter ending in March, Apple's phone business generated $46.8 billion in sales, or just under half of the company's overall revenue. On their own, iPhone sales are larger than the GDPs of several countries. It may not be the dominant smartphone platform in the world, but the iPhone's influence and success is undeniable. "I can't reasonably conceive of a world where the smartphone is irrelevant in ten years," said Jason Snell, editor of Apple-centric website Six Colors and former editorial director of Macworld. "It's so entrenched. It's so convenient in so many different ways that I have a hard time imagining it being gone or even dramatically diminished." That's not to say the iPhone's position hasn't changed over the last decade. In 2015, the device accounted for a whopping two-thirds of Apple's annual revenue. While two of the company's other prominent businesses, the iPad and the Mac, have largely remained within a couple percentage points of where they were a decade ago, the iPhone's share has been slowly eaten away by an increase in Services revenue, which grew from 9% to 28% in the same period. But from a purely money point of view, the iPhone generates far more gross sales than it did a decade ago: in 2014, it made $102 billion in revenue, which sounds like a lot until you consider that in 2024, that number almost doubled to $201 billion. So the iPhone's hardly about to fade away. More than anything, it's like an aging movie star, looking back to its youthful vigor even while socking away higher paychecks than ever before. On their own, iPhone sales are larger than the GDPs of several countries. It may not be the dominant smartphone platform in the world, but the iPhone's influence and success is undeniable. Tech is a notoriously fickle market, but there is some precedent for products that go the distance. The Mac is a great example — with a recent infusion of Apple's own custom silicon, it's going strong as it hurtles towards the half-century mark. The flip side of that coin is the iPod, Apple's once ubiquitous digital music player, which after a meteoric rise, ended up overshadowed and ultimately replaced by the iPhone. So which path will the iPhone take? "The iPhone is still a big business in ten years, even in decline," said Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who's been writing about the company since 2002. "In the same way that laptops are still a big business." Even if that decline in iPhone revenue share continued at the same rate as it has since 2015 — which is, in itself, not particularly likely — Apple in 2035 would be looking at a product that still accounted for a third of its sales. And, again, in gross numbers, it's likely to be raking in tremendous amounts of money along the way. All of which is to say that barring an unforeseen catastrophe or a major technological revolution the likes of the original iPhone itself, Apple is almost certain to be in the iPhone business in some shape or form ten years hence. But what part the iPhone plays in our lives is another question. Will that device still hold the central place it does in today's Apple ecosystem? These days folks might have an Apple Watch, AirPods, even AirTags, all of which are essentially satellite accessories to the phone itself. Could the iPhone itself be reduced to an accessory, something that merely supplements another device, like smart glasses or an AI-powered gadget? "It's still entirely possible that 20 years from now, the iPhone, is still the preeminent computing form," Gruber said. "My bull case for the phone as a form factor is that we are visual creatures and we like to look at things on screens." That form factor is important in more ways than one. Those accessory devices like the Apple Watch and AirPods are tiny, and squeezing a battery or a powerful processor into something that fits on your wrist or your face makes the iPhone's size seem like a palatial estate by comparison. Which only supports the case that the iPhone will remain — to borrow an old Steve Jobs phrase — the "digital hub" of our lives. "My bull case for the phone as a form factor is that we are visual creatures and we like to look at things on screens." "I think that the smartphone, over time, might be more like the mainframe on your body," Snell said. "It's a pretty convenient block of computing power, connectivity, and battery that you can slide in your pocket, even if you don't take it out and look at the screen as much." Inertia plays a part as well. We all already carry these tiny, incredibly powerful devices with us, and while other accessories might branch out into specific and, in some cases, overlapping uses — wireless headphones for audio or smart watches with fitness and notifications — the iPhone retains the incredible versatility and power of a computer. Why duplicate all that engineering in a device like smart glasses or even an AI necklace that might only do a sliver of what the iPhone can, when you can just piggyback on the iPhone's computing power? Of course, if the iPhone does survive the next decade, it won't do it by sitting still. Take a look back 10 years at the state of the art in 2015: the iPhone 6s. Today's iPhones might recognizably descend from that in the same way that you can see the root of the modern iMac in 1984's original Macintosh, but that doesn't mean they haven't moved forward both inside and out. The iPhone of 2035 is just likely to be instantly familiar as an iPhone, even while boasting newer and more advanced features. Its screen may truly stretch edge-to-edge, hiding front-facing cameras beneath the display. "Thinner, lighter, smaller, more powerful, more battery efficient ... And then secondarily, better at communicating to the constellation of devices." It may completely forego a charging port for wireless or magnetic-based power. Processors will continue to get more and more powerful. And, if rumors prove true, Apple may follow the path of some of its competitors with foldable phones and debut an iPhone Flip or iPhone Fold. But at this stage in its existence, the future of the smartphone seems — as the old chestnut goes — more evolutionary than revolutionary. "I imagine it'll go in that direction of just what we already have seen, which is thinner, lighter, smaller, more powerful, more battery efficient," Snell said. "And then secondarily, better at communicating to the constellation of devices." Perhaps the biggest limiting factor to changes in the size and shape of the iPhone, though, is what is perhaps its most important feature: the camera. "I think if you laid out every year's iPhone in chronological order on a bench in front of you, the first thing that would stand out is they've overall gotten bigger," said Daring Fireball's Gruber. "But the second thing you would notice is the protuberance of the camera. The whole camera module of the phone continues to grow in scope and size where it becomes way more obvious that it is a camera with a screen than a phone with a camera." The iPhone camera is a place that Apple does seem to push the envelope every year, but physics plays a part. "There are certain theoretical limits to how good image quality can be based on the size of the lens and the distance from the lens to the sensor and the size of the sensor," Gruber pointed out. Still, those theoretical limits may also be part of what helps the iPhone hold on to its place in our lives. Even though other devices, such as Meta's AI glasses, have embedded cameras, they're generally even smaller, meaning they aren't as high quality — or as ergonomically convenient — as having a camera in your pocket. "There is an argument to be made that if you've got that slab, that that's the best place to have a high quality camera," agreed Snell. One big question for me, as someone who chronicled Steve Jobs's design philosophy of the late 2000s: Will the iPhone of 2035 have physical buttons? For a long stretch of time, Apple seemed devoted to eradicating those pesky moving parts, such as with Apple's much lambasted buttonless iPod Shuffle or the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar. But in the past two years Apple has added two new buttons to its iPhones. First, the configurable Action Button that rolled out with the iPhone 15 Pro; then, the physical and touch-sensitive Camera Control button that was added across the iPhone 16 line. "My guess would be fewer buttons because I think that over time you're probably doing more things with voice and also gestures and body movement" Snell said. Gruber has a different take: "I don't see them going to fewer buttons. I don't see how they do it. And I'm glad, I think it's great that they added the action button." Finally, there's another question that's been bugging me: with Apple having gone through many naming schemes for its phones — and now jumping forward from IOS 18 to iOS 26, as it changes its software naming convention to reflect years and not versions numbers — what is the iPhone of ten years hence going to be called? Will Apple keep marching along to the iPhone 27? Will it switch to years, and dub its 2035 release the iPhone 35? Or will it come up with a fancy new moniker, à la this year's rumored iPhone Air? We'll have to wait and see. "I just hope they don't go with Roman numerals," says Snell. The iPhone XXVII, anybody? • Artificial Intelligence • Smart Glasses• Wearable Tech• Smartphones • iPhones• Robots• Cars• TVs
Gizmodo
02-07-2025
- Gizmodo
A ‘Cheap' MacBook With an iPhone Chip Could Bring Battery Life Like We've Never Seen Before
There's an Apple rumor going around that I can't stop musing about. (No, it's not about a foldable iPhone.) It's for a low-cost 13-inch MacBook that could cost hundreds of dollars less than Apple's current $999 13-inch M4 MacBook Air. Noted tech analyst and supply chain sleuth Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities said on Sunday that Apple is working on a 13-inch laptop powered by an A18 Pro chip. The tech blogosphere immediately erupted with skepticism that Apple would use a chip that powers the current iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max in a MacBook. It would be an insult to consumers who expect a desktop-class chip inside of laptop, not an equally powerful processor made for phones! Except, it wouldn't be stupid. While I would love Apple to revive its discontinued, two-pound 12-inch MacBook with an M-series chip (even with a five-year-old M1 chip), selling a low-cost MacBook with an iPhone processor makes a whole lot of sense. Former Macworld Editor-in-Chief and independent Apple pundit Jason Snell put it into perspective best with his handy charts on his blog Six Colors: As Snell notes, Apple's A18 Pro chip is '46% faster than the M1 in single-core tasks, and almost identical to the M1 on multi-core and graphics tasks.' For general laptop tasks like browsing the web, watching videos, and messaging, the iPhone chip would be more than sufficient. Besides potentially costing less than the $999 M4 MacBook Air—many believe this new low-cost MacBook could replace the $650 Walmart-exclusive M1 MacBook Air—there could be some major upsides to using a phone chip inside of a laptop. Allow me to get nerdy for just a second: The A18 Pro chip is built with a 3-nanometer (nm) process compared to the M1's 5nm. The newer node process means there are more transistors on the chip. More transistors mean more performance; the newer and smaller process means lower power efficiency. Put them together, and you get a killer combo for good-enough performance with potentially even longer battery life. For most people who don't need a beefy GPU for heavy workloads like gaming, 3D modeling, or AI, laptop performance has been offering diminishing returns for years now. What people want most is longer battery life so that they don't need to plug in as frequently. Imagine for a minute if Apple decided to tout class-leading battery life with even longer hours than its own M4 MacBook Air. What if such a MacBook had a full day of battery life or days of battery life from a single charge? And if Apple can package that in a clamshell design that's even thinner and lighter and costs less? And then sell them in more fun colors like 'silver, blue, pink, and yellow,' as Kuo says Apple is considering? Oh man, you've got a recipe for a laptop that would crush sales. And crush sales, Apple reportedly needs to do. Kuo says that this low-cost MacBook could help Apple return to its peak of shipping around 25 million MacBooks annually. Snell does note one downside to using the A18 Pro chip if Apple decides to go that route: the laptop would likely only support USB-C data speeds and not faster Thunderbolt. That's just the limitation of the A18 Pro chip spec versus an M-series chip. The tradeoff for incredible battery life and an affordable price would be worth it, though.
