Author: reneritchie

The lawsuits are over. The drama has ended. It’s 2020 and Apple and Qualcomm have finally buried their legal hatchets — at least enough to work together on bringing 5G modems to the iPhone 12 this fall.

Almost certainly. We think. Look… listen.. it’s complicated. And here’s why.

Apple

Now, to understand the iPhone, you need to understand one very important thing about Apple.

Ok, a couple of very important things, but only one of them really matters right now:

Apple is super conservative when it comes to battery life.

That might sound obvious, but its effects are both subtle and frustrating. Because, it means anything that affects battery life in any way. Anything that radiates. Light, like the display. Heat like the chipset. And, yeah, radio waves like the… radios. Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, all of them.

Are just beyond super tightly controlled.

It’s why, once Apple got to Retina, they became far less aggressive about display density and started focusing on the more energy neutral aspects of display quality.

It’s why they started making their own chipsets, so they could balance performance with efficiency cores, and make the graphics wider instead of just faster.

It’s why they adopt new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards so quickly, so they can maintain low-energy states as much as possible, and better race to sleep when it just isn’t possible. Which means transfer as fast as they can and then shut down as fast as they can to save as much power as they can.

But it’s also why they’re slower to adopt new cellular standards. Because the early versions of those modem chips are typically bigger and run hotter, on networks that have far less deployment, that if hit by hundreds of thousands of iPhones suddenly coming online all at once, would just fall over like Megatron hit by Optimus Prime in full on Mack truck mode.

Now, I know what you’re already typing, why doesn’t Apple just make up for the extra power draw by making the iPhone twice as thick and squeezing double the battery cells into it like… a jelly donut?

Well, that’s the second really important thing to understand about Apple, and if you want to see a video on that, let me know in the comments below.

Infineon

Never mind 5G in 20-20, the original iPhone didn’t even support 3G in 20-oh-7.

It used modems by a German company named Infineon Technologies, which spun out of Siemens AG. And, all it had to do at launch was carry GSM and EDGE data for AT&T in the U.S.

GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications, is what most of the world was using. Most of the world, but not Verizon or Sprint in the U.S. Also Bell and Telus in Canada but they would eventually switch to GSM while Verizon and Sprint… would decidedly not.

Verizon and Sprint used and stuck to CDMA, or Code-Division Multiple Access. It was a technology that allowed for far fewer towers to cover far more distance and serve far more people, so even though it had a host of other problems, it’s what they went with to build their networks out bigger and cheaper.

What that meant was, once Apple had sold iPhones to everyone willing and able to use AT&T, in order to keep growing, they had to add support for Verizon.

That meant adding CDMA… and that meant dealing with Qualcomm.

Qualcomm

In order for your technology to become part of a standard, you have to agree to license it in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory way — what’s called FRAND.

Which means, in theory, anyone capable of spinning a chip should be able to license and implement it to spin exactly that chip. That’s how we get and preserve competition.

In practice, though, Qualcomm had CDMA wrapped up so tightly, there was just no way not to deal with them.

That’s why the iPhone 4 variant designed for Verizon, CDMA, and EVDO data, used a Qualcomm modem.

As Apple continued to expand iPhone carriers and eventually went to 4G LTE with the iPhone 5s, those Qualcomm modems were a huge benefit not just in terms of performance but also compatibility.

We got the first iPhone that was truly a world phone in that, if you bought it or could get it unlocked, you could use it almost anywhere in the world.

But it also came at a huge cost — specifically Qualcomm’s huge fees.

See, Qualcomm considered their modems so important to the success of any phone that they demanded not just a regular fee for the modem, but a fee based on the whole phone.

Now, you can just imagine if every important component in a phone wanted to do this, like — gotta have a screen, that’s a percentage! Wi-Fi, yeah, also a percentage. You want to plug a cable into it, right? Percentage! Processor? Oh, wait, have you seen how much Qualcomm is charging for those now as well? Galaxy S20 prices say hiiiiii.

I joke, but if every component vendor acted that way, every manufacturer would run out of percentages before they made a single phone.

But Qualcomm acts exactly that way because they’re not mostly or even mainly a modem or chipset company. They’re mostly and mainly a patent licensing company.

That meant Apple was paying those hefty, hefty modem fees — which meant we were paying those hefty, hefty modem fees — on every iPhone. Yes, even on iPhones that weren’t and would never be used on CDMA in the U.S.

And Apple, like Sauron does not share power. I mean profits. Profits.

So, Apple started trying to disentangle themselves from Qualcomm.

Infineon II

At around the same time Apple was switching to Qualcomm, Infineon was bought out by Intel — yeah, that Intel — and became Intel Mobile Communications. IMC.

The initial plan was to replace Qualcomm on all the non-CDMA phones. In other words, even in an increasingly LTE world, all the phones that didn’t need to still run on Verizon or Sprint’s legacy networks in the U.S.

Now, Qualcomm, of course, had a ton of LTE patents, and they treated FRAND there pretty much how they treated FRAND everywhere — in an unfair, unreasonable, and quite discriminatory way.

So Intel and Apple had to work around Qualcomm’s patents as best they could.

And that resulted in an iPhone 7 rollout where the GSM phones all had Intel modems that.. just didn’t quite work as well as the CDMA models that still had Qualcomm modems. Especially in areas with more obstacles or weaker signals.

But, for Apple, that didn’t really matter. They said, in order to get on Apple’s Olympic modem team, all you had to do was sprint 100 meters in under 10 seconds. Didn’t matter if Intel could do it in 9.7 and Qualcomm in 7.9, both were just had to be under 10 seconds.

And, it turned out, it also didn’t matter that Qualcomm could do it on pavement, grass, or mud, and Intel… not so much.

If it meant not having to pay the exorbitant licensing fee Qualcomm demanded, that’s what Apple was going to do.

Up to and including the iPhone 11, which was all-in on Intel modems, with not a dollop of Qualcomm inside or in sight.

Much better Intel modems as well… if still not quite as good as Qualcomm.

Qualcomm II

Now, while Apple and Intel were busy making modems for the iPhone, Apple and Qualcomm were busy trying to sue the pants off each other over Qualcomm’s licensing terms and Apple helping Intel make those modems.

Also, 5G was on its way, and Qualcomm had gotten every bit the stranglehold over that technology that they’d gotten over the ones before. More even.

And just as importantly, Qualcomm had a huge lead in terms of actually making modems that worked on the various implementations of 5G.

As Apple and Qualcomm battled it out in the courts, Apple and Intel battled it out in the labs but, in the end, it just became 100% crystal clear that there was no freaking way Apple and Intel would be able to deliver a 5G modem anywhere nearly as good as Qualcomm’s or anywhere nearly on time… if at all, like ever.

That meant, Apple needed Qualcomm and Qualcomm still wanted Apple’s money, and neither really wanted to risk a decision going the other way.

So, both decided to bury their very large legal hatchets and sign a new deal that would ensure 5G support for the iPhone.

Just in time for the iPhone 12.

Apple

Now, the story doesn’t end here. When Intel lost Apple’s modem business, they kinda also lost… their modem business. Which is why it came as absolutely no surprise to absolutely anyone when Apple bought that business from Intel shortly after settling with Qualcomm.

So, now it’s Apple’s modem business. Of course, the modem is only part of the solution. There’s also the RF front end, the antennas, and more.

Apple already makes their own antennas. Perhaps you remember them from the iPhone 4 and… free bumpers? But we’ll have to see what happens with the RF front end.

But Apple didn’t just make a deal with Qualcomm for their modems, they made a deal to license the underlying technologies.

So, in a couple or few years, Apple could have their own, custom modems ready for the iPhone 14 or iPhone 15, alongside or as part of their custom silicon, the A14 or A15.

iPhone 12

But that’s then, this is now, and Apple and Qualcomm are both full steam ahead just trying to get 5G modems into the iPhone 12 in time for it’s launch later this year.

That could mean Qualcomm’s X55 modem, which is what we’ve seen in recent 5G Android phones. But, there have also been some rumors saying, if time and yield allows, it could also be the next-generation X60, which will apparently be fabricated on TSMC’s new 5 nanometer process, just like Apple’s next generation A13 system-on-a-chip.

That would certainly play into Apple’s more conservative modem strategy, where they prefer to wait and let other manufacturers and phones suffer with the quirkier, less power-efficient, more battery devastating early-generation chipsets. And carriers’ load strategies, where they prefer to keep the huge volumes of iPhone users off next-generation networks until they’re deployed enough to handle all the added traffic. Because no one likes a network when it’s continuously being taken down.

Now, I still haven’t even touched on the mess that is 5G itself. Sub-6 vs. Sub 9 or FR1 vs. mmWave and F2, and whether that’s even ever going to be a real commercial things, so let me know in the comments if you want a video on that as well.

The first Apple Silicon Mac system will be coming this year. And… while it may or may not be a new 12-inch MacBook Air… I kinda all shades of want it to be a new 12-inch MacBook Air.

Yeah, I said what I said. You can find out why in my weekly column for iMore:

https://www.imore.com/imaging-apple-silicon-12-inch-macbook-air

With the next-generation iPad Air rumored to be getting the same design and even display as the iPad Pro…

Just where exactly does that leave the next-generation iPad Pro?

Design

The iPad Pro got its modern make-over back in October of 2018. Apple not only Thanos-snapped off half the bezels, they gave it a squared-off, retro-future look right out of the iPhone 5 playbook.

The 2020 iPad Pro, released just a few months ago, kept the exact same look. Pretty much the exact same everything, when it comes to design.

And that honestly to be expected. The original 2015 iPad Pro looked like a big version of the iPad Air, which came out in 2013. The 2016 iPad Pro looking like an exact-same-sized version of the iPad Air 2. The 2017 iPads Pro, a little bigger and the same again. All until that 2018 change.

So, five years for that design, maybe five years for this one as well. At least enough time for the iPhone to catch up.

I mean, for people who use it semi-permanently on a keyboard, magic or otherwise, they may be itching for Thanos to snap again and make the bezels even smaller. Like some near 100% screen-ratio smart phones.

But very few people, at least on hour earth, have hands big enough to palm an iPad Pro, and for everyone who actually picks it up and holds it, to multitouch or to draw or write with an Apple Pencil, bezels just aren’t the enemy. Not all of them must die.

About the only thing I really, really want to see changed is for the TrueDepth camera system to move to landscape orientation.

To be clear, this has so far been rumored by no one, there have been absolutely zero in my dreams to love about it.

But it’s just so awkward in its current position, especially on the keyboards magic and otherwise, that I hope to Morpheus Apple does it anyway.

If you do as well, drop a comment and let me know.

Display

The original iPad Pro, the one Tim Cook walked out on stage with in 2015, had a 12.9-inch LCD display. And, compared to the iPad Air, it just looked so enormous, so immersive back then.

The 2016 iPad Pro, though, that had the same 9.7-inch display that Steve Jobs first introduced back in 2010. But, with DCI-P3 wide color gamut, meaning richer reds and deeper greens.

It wasn’t until 2017 that the 9.7-inch became 10.5, even as the 12.9-inch stayed the same. But, both got ProMotion, Apple’s adaptive display technology that let them ramp up to 120Hz for clarified buttery-smooth scrolling and Pencil drawing, down to 48Hz for properly cinematic movies and videos, and even 24Hz to save power for largely static images.

And even when the big redesign came in ought 18, and the 10.5 grew to fill out the bezels, to take the iPad Pro to 11, the 12.9-inch simply shed it’s own bezels instead, keeping the display precisely the same size.

And the 2020 update did nothing to change that.

The big rumor for the next-generation, though… is decidedly small: That Apple will be switching from LCD panels to mini LED panels.

There have been some OLED rumors as well but last I heard Apple still wasn’t happy with OLED at iPad scale. Brightness levels not being consistent and all that.

But mini LED offers a lot of the same benefits as OLED without having as many drawbacks.

It uses, literally, tiny LEDs, like 10,000 of them, below 200 microns in size, grouped into local dimming areas, so you can more precisely control the back light to get deeper blacks and higher contrast ratios.

So, you can get HDR, high dynamic range, without having to get OLED.

It’s not micro LED, which are self-emmiting, which generate their own light, like OLED. But without needing things like PenTile sub pixel layouts. They can use RGP stripe like all good-hearted panels.

That technology is further out, though, and will probably hit the Apple Watch first, then scale up to the iPhone. Just like OLED.

So, mini LED. Which will be terrific in terms of watching HDR content.

Especially with ProMotion, which should let it save power, show that HDR content at 48Hz like nature and Hollywood intended, and then ramp up to 120Hz for scrolling and Pencil.

Literally can’t wait.

USB 4.0

Part of the iPad Pro’s big redesign was the transformation from Lightning to USB-C. Yes, blessed USB-C.

It allowed the iPad Pro to work with a wider ranger of peripherals — Mac and PC peripherals.

But it’s not Thunderbolt, because Thunderbolt requires PCIe, and Apple has never surfaced any PCIe lanes for ports on any iOS device, not even the iPad Pro.

Now, there haven’t been any rumors about Thunderbolt coming to the iPad Pro, at least as far as I’ve seen, but… but…

Just last month Tim Cook announced the Mac was switching from Intel to Apple Silicon, similar if not the same as the systems-on-a-chip they’ve been using for the iPad for a decade.

In fact, the developer test kit is using an A12Z chipset — the same chipset that’s in the current iPad Pro.

Then, just after that, Intel announced Thunderbolt 4, and just after that, Apple sent me a statement saying they would continue to support Thunderbolt on Apple Silicon.

So, Apple is already building custom chipsets with PCIe lanes for Thunderbolt.

At the same time, USB4 is on the way. Now, USB is a standard, which means it just simply has to be super confusing, right?

To paint an ugly picture, USB letters define the plug. USB-A on older devices, USB-B on printers, mini and micro-USB on older mobile devices and headphones and, embarrassingly, still some new ones…

The number defines the speed. So USB 3 was faster than USB 2, and USB 4 is faster again than USB 3.

Again, that’s already grossly over-simplified, but to make it even simpler again — USB 4 is going to give Thunderbolt-like speeds in a cable uses the same USB-C plug. And it’s going to do that by folding in the Thunderbolt 3 spec.

And, if the USB Implementers Forum and Intel don’t screw anything up, Thunderbolt 4 as well.

I’d love to see that on both the USB-C port and the Smart Connector, so a next-generation Magic Keyboard could actually handle higher-bandwidth data well.

Again, there have been no rumors that I know of even hinting at USB-4 on the iPad Pro. Speculation like mine, sure. Tons. This is the internet, after all.

But as someone who’s dying to connect a super fast Samsung X5 SSD to an iPad Pro for 4k video transfer, and actually have it transfer super fast, I want it badly.

Hit that like button if you do as well.

5G

Yes, a bunch of super salty pundits wrote a bunch of super silly hot takes last year saying the iPhone 11 not having 5G was just super dumb.

And now, almost a year later, most of the world still doesn’t have functional 5G.

But, since then, Apple and Qualcomm have settled their long-running lawsuits and are actively working together on 5G modems for the iPhone 12.

Rumor has it, sub-6, maybe even sub-9 for the standard iPhone 12, and sub-6 or sub 9, and mmWave for the iPhone 12 Pro.

And that’s for sure the priority. But once that’s done, adding 5G to the iPad Pro just makes all the sense that does.

A14X

The 2018 iPad Pro had an A12X chipset. Basically the iPhone XS chipset with 7 GPU cores. But, turns out, it was 7 GPU cores because TSMC’s process wasn’t reliably turning out all 8 cores.

Flash forward to 2020, and that’s no longer the case. So, Apple starting shipping the fully operational version as the A12Z for the current iPad Pro.

Why not an A13 like the iPhone 11 or, more properly, an A13X? My guess is the 2020 iPad Pro was mainly a delivery vehicle for LiDAR testing and Apple’s silicon team was already beyond busy working on the A14 for the iPhone 12 and the new Mac Silicon that’s now on their plate as well.

But… rumor has it the next-generation iPad Pro will be getting that same A14… well, the GPU-embiggened A14X version.

It’ll be faster, because of course it will, and hopefully it’ll have more memory as well. The 2020 iPad Pro has 6 GB of RAM. 8 GB would put it on par with an entry-level Mac, though, which will really, really come in handy if and when Apple ships Final Cut, Logic, and Xcode for the iPad Pro,

The feud is over. The codec war… has ended. It’s 2020 and me, you, we — all of us! — can finally watch 4K YouTube on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Finally.

Almost. Maybe.

The Problem

Now, if you just want the answer to the problem and why it still may take a while for you to get, just use the chapter markers to jump ahead.

If you want to know who screwed up and made it such a big problem to begin with, well, just you buckle up. Because this is some high-order tech drama.

So, up until now, you just couldn’t watch 4K YouTube on any Apple device.

iTunes and Apple TV+, fine. Netflix and Disney+, no problem. Vimeo, go for it. Literally any other service, but not YouTube.

And you could watch 4K YouTube on literally any other ‘droid or Fire or streaming or casting device in the verse, just not Apple’s.

Well, almost. Chrome on the Mac was the one exception that really made the rule super beyond frustrating.

And the reason for this… is Google. But maybe not the fault. At least entirely.

It’s complicated.

See, for 720p and 1080p, what’s commonly called HD, pretty much everyone in the industry agreed to support the same standard codec — H.264.

When it came time for 2160p, or the resolutions grouped together as 4K or UHD, pretty much everyone in the industry address to support the same standard codec again — this time H.265. Also known by one of the world’s worst acronyms, HEVC or high efficiency video codec.

Except for — you guessed it — Google.

For YouTube, Google decided to go with it’s own, competing codec — VP9.

Now, because YouTube is such a big deal, a lot of other software and hardware platforms decided to just take it in the apps – I said apps! — and add in VP9 support just for YouTube.

Apple, being Apple, did not.

And so all their shared customers, all of us who just wanted to watch YouTube on Apple devices, ended up being screwed, yeah, right in those apps.

So, if you want to tell me who you blame, just do it in the comments below.

Google’s Problem

Google’s problem with H.265 — and H.264 before it — is that its a standard but not a free or open one. It’s owned by MPEG-LA, and they’ve historically been kinda super greedy about the royalties and licenses they charge for it. Although they have been pressured down over time. A lot.

With H.264 almost everyone, including Google, just grit their teeth and took it. That’s why you could play 720p and 1080p YouTube in H.264 in pretty much any player on pretty much any device.

Except… except some free and open source software. They either couldn’t financially or simply wouldn’t philosophically support a licensed, royalty-based codec.

So, Google made an alternative, which back in the HD days, was VP8.

Apple’s Problem

Now, free and open source alternatives to licensed and royalty based codecs are great. They’re terrific. At least in theory.

In practice, just because someone says their new codec is free and open source, doesn’t magically make it so. Even a company as big and bad as Google.

Patents are legal minefields, expect where the mines teleport around randomly and all you have to do is get a jury in the rocket docket to say one exploded, and you’re looking at 10s or 100s of millions of dollars in damages and penalties, if not more.

Remember Steve Jobs saying FaceTime was going to be an open standard back in 2020? Yeah, Apple’s been fighting patent suits over that pretty much ever since.

So, Apple, which has more money than some countries, would rather just pay the license and royalties in this case than risk being sued over the supposed free and open alternative.

The codec wars

When we started moving from HD to UHD, and from SDR to HDR — Stand to High Dynamic Range —and the file sizes threatened to become four times the size, we needed a better, smaller, more efficient way to compress them.

So, after a complex and borderline nightmarish set of patent pooling agreements H.265 — HEVC — was announced as the next generation replacement for ubiquitously used H.264.

Google, meanwhile, developed VP9 as the replacement for their own, then seldom used, VP8

And because, by then, they weren’t just YouTube anymore, but YouTube dammit, they decided to tell H.265 to just jog on and use their own VP9 instead.

So, yeah — begun these codec wars had.

Now, some people will tell you HEVC is also technically better than VP9, and others will of course argue that no, VP9 is actually technically better than HEVC, and they’ll all shake their tiny Vader fists at each other on every subreddit they can.

Since Google has it’s own ecosystem, it was trivial to build VP9 support into Android and Chrome, which is why 4K YouTube worked in Chrome on the Mac.

Because YouTube is YouTube, it also wasn’t hard to get companies who felt they really needed YouTube in 4K, like Roku and Amazon, even other browsers on the Mac, to add support for it as well.

But, again, Apple is Apple.

They’d already created custom HEVC encode and decode blocks to both their A-series chips for iPhone and iPad and T2 chip for the Mac.

That meant, not only would HEVC play back incredibly smoothly on Apple devices, it would do so without any software overhead, excessive heat, or battery drain.

Something they were really proud of and saw as adding significant value to their products… and something that just simply would not be the case with VP9.

And if you’re thinking, well, Apple could just add VP9 encode and decode blocks to the silicon as well…

One, that takes years, and two, it’s not entirely clear how workable that really is.

Here’s why — Google supports VP9 and only VP9 playback for their video service, YouTube, but they only support H.265 — yes, only HEVC — for 4K capture on their current generation phones, the Pixel 4.

Because… hardware encoders are hard.

So, that where we’ve been for the last few years. Apple not supporting VP9 and Google… er… YouTube not supporting H.265.

Until now.

tvOS 14

At WWDC 2020, Apple announced iOS 14 and tvOS 14. They spent a bunch of time showing off widgets on the Home screen and even Control Center on the big screen, but what they spent zero time on was 4K support for YouTube on all their screens.

No, that little gem was tucked away at the bottom of the Apple TV 4K page on Apple.com.

But it was there:

Watch the latest YouTube videos in their full 4K glory. Your favorite music, slo‑mo, outdoor, and vlog footage never looked better.

So, what happened? Did YouTube decide to re-encode their massive video library in H.265 for silky smooth playback on all of Apple’s devices?

No.

Did both Google and Apple decide to switch to the new Alliance for Open Media Video 1 codec — or AV1.

Also no. At least not yet. If that beautiful dream for a unified codec future is to come true, and not be bifurcated again by competing H.266, it will not be this day.

No.

Apple seems to have added software support for VP9 to tvOS 14. And maybe iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 as well.

Weirdly, because everything about this apparently has to be just so weird, it’s not showing up for everyone on the beta versions yet.

Some people now have the option on all their devices, some on a few but not all their devices, and others on none of their devices.

So, it’s possible Google is rolling it out to those devices in stages, or Apple is testing it on some installations, or some cooperative combination of the two.

It’s also possible 4K YouTube showing up on iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 is just a bug from the tvOS 14 rollout and it still won’t be there come the fall.

Because increased heat and battery drain won’t be an issue on an Apple TV 4K box plugged into AC power, but it will be for an iPhone or iPad on battery.

Likewise, Apple TV 4K really benefits from 4K video where the iPhone does not, and neither do almost an of the iPads.

I mean, yes, some of us have said we’d give anything for 4K YouTube on our iPhones and iPads. But that anything is always theoretical. When it becomes practical, and touches battery life, you know it, we’ll cut you.

Since I’d rather be surprised than disappointed, I’m only going to expect it on tvOS 14. But, hopefully that’s something the big brains at Google and Apple are busy figuring it out right now.

Some tech nerds in some comment sections just keep saying if Apple doesn’t bring a high refresh display to the iPhone 12, well, then they’re not bringing the iPhone 12 home.

DED. Done. RIP.

And the other 99 out of 100 people are saying… a high what now?

The What

If you’re not familiar with 120Hz displays, if you don’t know what they are or why anyone would be talking about them, let me give you a super quick TL;DR.

Now, I’m totally going to cheat a little — ok, a lot — by not talking about the refresh rate, or how many times a second the display refreshes the pixels on it, but about something I think will resonate with more people — frames per second.

With video or animation, nothing really moves. What we see as movement is really a series of still images changing rapidly in a short period of time.

Like a flip book, if you ever made one of those as kid. Draw one picture per page, change the picture ever-so-slightly on every page, and when you flip them fast, it looks like they’re moving.

That’s basically how film work, just with 24 pictures — or frames — a second. Because, back in the day, that was enough to fool our brains into buying the illusions but not so much that it used too much more, expensive film to shoot.

Now, because we’ve gotten used to seeing 24 frames per second in film — at the cinema — it just looks… cinematic. Which is why a lot of YouTube channels, including mine, stick to 24 frames per second, even though YouTube happily supports 30… 60 even.

30 is the traditional frame rate for television in North America, which is why TV looks smoother in both good and bad ways. When done well, like a primetime show. When done badly, like a soap opera.

The iPhone has been 60 frames per second, double television, since it launched. Basically, because if it dropped even a single frame, Steve Jobs would drop it on someone’s head. Figuratively, not literally. I hope.

And for other reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

So… 120 frames per second is double again — the pixels on the display updating 120 times a second instead of 60.

And that brings with it some huge benefits… and some potential challenges if not outright problems.

The Good

So, ok, there are some real advantages when it comes to 120hz displays.

Rock solid 60 frames per second was critical to Apple when they launched the original iPhone back in 2007. Twice as fast as television, it made the interface animations, the scrolling through lists, the pinch and zoom through photos and maps, all of it, not just look buttery smooth but feel it.

It created the illusion of direct manipulation, that it was locked onto your fingers when you touched it, just instantly responsive. Like when you moved your fingers, you were moving the pixels.

Then, in 2017, Apple announced ProMotion for the iPad Pro.

Now, ProMotion wasn’t high frame rate. Not exactly. It was adaptive frame rate. But, it could boost up to 120 frames per second to make scrolling, pinching, zooming, all even smoother and Apple Pencil feel even more like a real pencil.

In other words, even smoother than butter. Like Ghee.

It’s legit terrific for anything like interfaces, animations, and gaming. People were psyched when Fortnite shipped 60 fps on the iPhone XR and iPhone XS a couple years ago, so even the idea of double that on the iPhone 12 has people, well, double psyched.

Also, for people like me, who watch videos far more than we game, the best thing about adaptive 120hz refresh is the adaptive part — it quintuples perfectly down to 24 frames per second, so it shows everything from YouTube videos like this to Hollywood movies just as nature and cinema intended.

So, yeah, I’m a total display nerd and I want it badly. And if you want it badly as well, hit that like button.

But… I don’t know that any of us want it… badly.

The bad

So, there are some issues with 120hz displays that very few people, especially nerds, will tell you up front but you’ll hear all about, loudly and repeatedly if you just stick around and listen.

First, they’re way easier to do on LCD than OLED. Which is why the iPad Pro’s had it since 2017 and the iPhone hasn’t… since it switched to OLED in 2017.

OLED is just such a complicated technology with a ton of good characteristics and a ton of bad ones that require serious mitigations to overcome. I’ve explained those in a bunch of previous videos, so, seriously, hit that subscribe bell and button and check them all out.

Now, other companies have been doing both 90hz and 120hz on OLED and with varying degrees of success for a while already. Even Samsung, who’s OLED process and panels a lot of these companies use.

Some of them do it… some of the time. And it either switches automatically when, like a cloud goes across the sun outside and the ambient brightness in your living room changes and you can just see the refresh rate downshift in the middle of a game, and just nothing in the world makes sense any more.

Others do it manually, and you can choose between lower resolutions with higher refresh rates and higher resolutions with lower refresh rates and as you switch you can literally see the white point change and it makes you hate your own eyes for a hot minute.

And some of them have been getting software updates to try and fix at least some of that, because these are the kinds of downsides we’re still dealing with even in 2020.

120Hz OLED panels, at least so far, haven’t been great when it comes to color management, low brightness levels — not, like, inky blacks, but like you’re in a dark room and you want to lower the brightness of your phone, and battery life.

Because the display is one of the most power-hungry parts of the device and having it refresh twice as much uses… wait for it, significantly more power.

Now, Apple designs their own displays, sometimes with their own material requirements, and has Samsung fab them on their OLED process. Apple also makes their own display controllers and has functionality for that built in at the silicon level.

But Apple also has a complete DCI-P3 wide gamut pipeline, with device-level calibration at the factory, and complete color management all the way through. From taking a photo to showing that photo.

It’s why a RGB and DCI-P3 image displayed side by side on a webpage on an iPhone look fine, and why an LCD iPhone 11 so closely matches an OLED iPhone 11 Pro, even though they’re completely different display technologies.

But 120Hz will still screw with all of that.

So…

The reality

Apple may well ship 120Hz with the iPhone 12, quite possibly just the iPhone 12 Pro.

Like maybe they’re good. They’ve figured it out and have got all of this just handled.

Or, if the color is off, the low brightness is problematic, or the power drain is just too much, Apple may do what they’ve done with a bunch of other technologies and just decide to wait.

Remember, this is the same Apple that waited until 2017 and the iPhone X before they decided 60Hz OLED was good enough for them. On the iPhone. They’re still not happy enough with things like consistent brightness levels to use it on the iPad at scale.

Even today, they still ship LCD on the iPhone XR and iPhone 11, the two most popular single phones of the last two years.

Or, maybe Apple is just going to wait for production capacity on LTPO OLED panels big enough for the iPhone so, like the Apple Watch, they won’t just boost up to 120Hz for high frame rate, but down to 1 for super low frame rate, like for an always-on lock screen display.

Hey, a nerd can dream. And if you’re dreaming of the same thing, let me know in the comments.

The market

Now, if Apple ships 120Hz display on the iPhone 12 Pro, it’ll make a lot of display nerds like me super happy. Just like shipping HDR on the iPhone X made us and me super happy. But, it also made most of the world just go… what now?

And that’s the thing. If you ask a bunch of nerds like me on tech Twitter or tech YouTube if we want 120Hz refresh on the next iPhone — nay, if we insist on it, we’ll say yeah. Hell yeah. Why wasn’t it there last year? Nokia had it back in 1812!

Just like if you ask us if we wanted cake, we’d say hell yeah to that as well.

But if you tell us that cake is going to cost $100… well, then we stop and think.

Same way when you add context to 120Hz, even tech nerds like me stop and think.

Would you still want 120hz if it messed with low brightness levels… Ah, maybe. If it screwed up color management? What, no… If it trashed battery life. I’ll cut you!

And that’s just us nerds. If you ask the other 99% of the market, they’d say… 120 what now?

Seriously, this is the same market where… some people… double facepalm thumbnailed so hard at the iPhone XR not-even-1080p in 2018…

And it clowned them not only becoming the best seller that year, but by being followed up by the same display on the iPhone 11 being the best seller repeat in 2019.

Now, you could argue that the iPhone 12 going OLED across the line means Apple will need some other form of differentiation or segmentation between the standard and Pro versions this year, and 120Hz is a good one.

And I’d agree. To a point. Again, outside of tech nerds, the vast majority of the market just doesn’t make purchasing decisions based on display techs or specs. Some just get the best or biggest version every year, because they’re on an annual update program, and others just buy it every time they upgrade, however long that is.

And for people picking and choosing, typically things like cameras and battery life are the key drivers.

Which is why if 120Hz hurts battery life, most people won’t be happy about having it. They’ll be mad.

Which, T-B-H, I still kinda wish was the case with mmWave 5G. But that’s a very different marketing spend.. and video.

Even design details, like the colors, finishes, stainless steel antenna, all of that will likely drive more mainstream purchasing decisions than 120 vs. 60hz, XDR vs. HDR, even, god help us all, notch size.

At least for the vast majority of buyers.

And, again, I’m someone who really, really wants to 120hz all the things.

David Imel, writing on Twitter

https://twitter.com/DurvidImel/status/1285275333327978498

Just got word that Marc Levoy, who previously led Computational Photography at Google has just joined @Adobe as a VP and fellow to work on CP initiatives, as well as a "Universal Adobe Camera App" 👀

This seems like a huge win for iOS users.

Google chose to never share the Pixel Camera app with other Android phones, let alone iPhone. (Yes, every company places limits on 'openness', usually right around where it starts making them money.)

iOS has a consistent, well-abstracted set of Camera API, as apps like FOCOS, Halide, Obscura, etc. have shown over the years.

So… Adobe Camera on iPhone could end up being far better supported than on any other phone.

I appreciate the press release, Samsung, but can we just not brand… all this… as the “Next Normal”?

Can we not brand it at all, and not try to "normalize" any of it?

https://news.samsung.com/us/tm-roh-steering-mobile-industry-through-the-next-normal-unpacked/

So, after my last two videos on what Apple Silicon really is and what it really means, I got a bunch of questions from you all asking where that left Intel Macs, especially since Apple was still going to be releasing more of them.

Timelines

At the exact same time Tim Cook announced that the first Apple Silicon Mac would be shipping this year, he also announced that they still had some new Intel Macs in the pipeline that they were really excited about.

Because, Apple Silicon is going to take some time to rollout. When Tim Cook said we’d get the first system by the end of the year, he said first system SINGULAR. As in one system.

Sure, it could be more, but we can’t expect any more.

He also said the full transition would take two years. As in, it could be two years before the specific Mac you want gets released with an Apple Silicon system-on-a-chip.

Sure, Steve Jobs said it would take two years for the PowerPC to Intel transition back in 2005 and it ended up taking less than one year, but past isn’t always predicate. Things could go just as well this time, or Tim Cook could be far more accurate about the time.

Either way, if you need a new Mac now, now, now, you may simply be in no position to wait for the Apple Silicon version later this year, next year, or seriously, in as much as two years.

And should know my standard advice by now anyway — wait as long as you can to buy, buy when you absolutely have to, buy the best you can afford at the time, and then have zero regrets because there will always be something next.

So, if you need a Mac now, and you can’t wait, don’t feel at all bad about getting an Intel Mac now. It’ll see to your immediate needs and when the time comes for your next next Mac, even better Apple Silicon models will be on the market.

And, especially if you are a high-order-bit Pro, where time is literally money, new systems are paid off by the studio, a single client, or a single gig, getting a new Intel 10th generation iMac or 16-inch MacBook Pro, with next-generation RDNA graphics from AMD, now could be well more than worth it to you even if you plan on getting an Apple Silicon Mac whenever they arrive as well.

If that’s your plan, jump down and tell me which one you’re waiting.

Rev A boards

I have this friend whose like a nerds nerd. He’s written software that’s literally been used by billions of people. On every platform. And there’s two things he doesn’t do — beta and buy rev A boards.

What he means by that is simple: He has to work, he has to produce, and he has absolutely zero time for anything that will slow him down or hinder him for doing that in any way. Which is what cutting edge, never mind bleeding edge, software and hardware will do.

So, he’s always a point version or two behind on his operating system and software updates and a generation or two behind on his computers and cards.

And that’s totally legit. Totally valid as computing choices go.

For some people, having the best and last of the old is just a much smarter, safer, more predictable, more practical position than having the first and least known of the new.

That’s why, while I’m here waiting and just totally obviously salivating over whatever Apple Silicon Macs we get first and soonest, and if you are as well, hit that like button and lets see how how it can go.

But him, he’s just sitting there, laughing, and more than happy for me to be the beta tester, the guinea pig, on all of that for the next year or several.

Just sitting there waiting to see how that family of Apple SoC’s really perform. How that Intel platter really, really gets served by the Apple Silicon’s sandwich.

How Apple scales up from ultra-lights to pro laptops, to desktops, to workstations. How those storm-based CPU cores really compare to Intel’s… endless Lakes. How the custom GPU face off againt Intel embedded and AMD dedicated, never mind Nvidia… How universal memory works compared to the PCI buses. What the RAM and storage stories end up being, the specialized silicon vs. general purpose computing plays.

Just laughing, waiting to spend his money on that 10th Gen, RDNA iMac or MacBook Pro…

And maybe some or many of you are as well. Let me know in the comments.

The software story

Now, as much as Apple loves to hold an event, show off a new product, and say orders start today or this week and they’ll be in the store or at your door immediately if not within a week or two…

When it comes to really new products, as in new category products, Apple typically announces them way earlier than when they ship, sometimes a month, sometimes several.

And no, not to give Tim Cook time to personally come to your house and baseball bat your old Mac so you’ll just have to buy the new one. It’s still not safe for him to travel.

But, no. Seriously no. To give developers time to get their apps ready.

For Apple Silicon specifically, there are a couple ways apps will be able to run.

First, existing Mac apps will run using Rosetta 2, which basically emulates Intel on Apple Silicon. It does a lot of smart things, including translating on download, install, and dynamical as needed, and it will probably run way, way better than anyone is assuming right now, but it’ll still be emulation.

Second is Universal Binaries 2, where developers have the existing Intel version, make a specific version for Apple Silicon, bundle them up, and you just get the right version for your system when you hit download.

Many, if not most developers, especially Indies who really care about the performance of their software are going to jump on that, like Mario on a super mushroom.

But many if not most is not all. Just like not all 32-bit plugins and apps got moved to 64-bit in time to survive the Red Upgrade that was Catalina, not all Intel apps will get moved over to Apple Silicon.

Sometimes it’s because they’re older apps and the people who developed them are just no longer around, and sometimes it’s because they see the Mac as just a niche market and t think they can justify the effort and costs, and sometimes it’s because their own internal resources and priorities and politics make it so it’s going to take them a bunch of months or a year or more to do it.

You know, like Google with iOS apps.

But, if that app happens to be a bleeding edge game or, far more critically, a high-performance audio or video tool, or 3D or scientific modeler that you depend on for your work, than Rosetta 2 just isn’t going to be much comfort… or much help…

And if that app or game doesn’t even exist on macOS to begin with, and you’ve been using Bootcamp to run Windows on your Intel Mac… well… Bootcamp isn’t even going to exist on Apple Silicon Macs either.

That’s all end of line.

So, if you need Windows, like good old-fashioned Windows on Intel, then you’re going to need an Intel Mac for a good long while still.

Which is why Apple is still closing them out, even with delays in the roadmap and shipping chips, and issues with lock-downs and shelter-in-place, and just… everything.

Getting the Mac lineup all good and all updated on the latest Intel and AMD chipsets, and promising to support them with new operating systems for years to come… that just creates the best and strongest foundation for everyone before everything that comes next.

Apple isn’t moving the Mac to ARM. Not exactly. And it isn’t about speed. It isn’t even about battery life. Not really. No. Most people are just getting all of this wrong, wrong, wrong.

And I’m going to explain to you exactly why… in my iMore column this week!

https://www.imore.com/mac-moving-apple-silicon-not-arm

Not only is Tyler Stalman an incredibly talented photographer and videographer, he's been beyond generous when it comes to sharing his knowledge and wisdom.

Oh, and his podcast is snappy as well!

Talking to Rene Ritchie about the Canon's huge new camera announcements, the transition to Apple Silicon, and our wishlists for Final Cut Pro X.

https://www.stalmanpodcast.com/90