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I loved his framing by Marques Brownlee, MKBHD: Solve + Justify.

That’s what Apple did back in 2016 when they deleted the 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7.

Sure, HTC had a bunch of phones without headphone jacks a decade before Apple did it, including the very first Android phone, but when Apple does it, because they drive so much product, it also drags the whole market.

Apple’s pitch was that the 3.5mm jack was an old, outdated, uni-tasker, and that we were heading into a better, brighter, more truly wireless world… with AirPods.

Same with the Home button. Apple first made it virtual, then made it disappear. Gave us a Taptic Engine and then gave us an edge-to-edge display and gesture navigation. Something else that’s become… just wide spread in the market.

Apple even deleted the AC adapter in the latest iPhone box and gave us MagSafe instead… now sold separately. And expensively. And after mocking them for a hot second, Samsung and Xiaomi, and probably others, are utterly, shamelessly, just following that along as well.

Lightning is going to be… well… no different. No different at all.

CLIP: What could be Apple’s rational?

You know, I think it’s a few things.

First is… the same as it was for the headphone jack and home button and that’s just to reduce the potential for hardware failure. Which sounds silly if you’ve never had the problem, but people still get their phones wet and still plug them in, and still cause corrosion and shorts, and it’s something they can solve for. So it’ll reduce support incidents and, oh yeah, get standardization bodies and regulators just all the way off their back about not using USB-C. Because they won’t be using anything.

Second is, Lightning is starting to age out. We had a decade of the 30-pin Dock connector before Apple switched to Lightning in 2012 and now we’re almost at a decade of Lightning so it’s time to switch again. I mean, Lighting was great for its time, it beat USB-C to market by several years, and literally let Apple make the iPhone 5 as thin as it was. But now, it doesn’t have any real advantages any more. Apple hasn’t even bothered to up the base data transfer speeds from ye old USB 2.0 of yore, except on older iPads Pro and only for the camera kit, which… weird.

Third, it continues Apple’s push into the true wireless future, which they ostensibly began with the 12-inch MacBook in 2015 and continued with the AirPods in 2016 and inductive charging in 2017. It absolutely trades speed and efficiency for convenience, but Apple absolutely seems to think that’s a fair trade and, based on AirPods and inductive charger sales, many of us seem to agree.

Same with data transfer, which Apple has been pushing towards wireless even longer, since iCloud made the iPhone PC-free in 2011, and everything from AirDrop to AirPlay have made us just positively giddy over accepting the same speed and efficiency for convenience trade off as inductive charging.

But, going portless still raises just a ton of questions. Which I know because of all of the questions all of you all have been asking in the comments and on Twitter every time I bring it up. So, let’s just handle those:

How will Apple handle existing accessories, including CarPlay?

When Apple switched from the 30-pin Dock to the Lightning connector in 2012 they… didn’t have adapters or extras ready to go at launch. And that was a huge problem because if you lost or damaged the one and only cable that came in the box, that was it for you. Done. Useless iPhone until those adapters and extras finally filtered in a week or so later. But, at least you could get those adapters and extras afterwards. And not just for the Dock, but for all sorts of connectors like HDMI and accessories like mics and SD card readers.

Going through another transition like that has been one of the major arguments against going USB-C, after all — hundreds of millions of mainstream iPhone owners, that, if you change their ports again, they’ll cut you.

So, just imagine what they’ll do if you don’t just change them, but delete them. Especially CarPlay. People may tolerate having to buy a new charger. But having to buy a new car?

Because, even with the wireless version of CarPlay slowly becoming more available, the OG wired version isn’t going anywhere for a decade.

Apple could offer a Lightning to Bluetooth adapter, like some companies do already for the AirPods. Or, maybe even a MagSafe to Lightning adapter that can handle more data than just… what color your case is for the charge animation.

No matter what, though, Apple needs to have a good answer for this before they delete a single atom more, and if you agree, drop a like below.

Will deleting the Lightning Port improve iPhone security?

I think… Yes and no.

We’ve seen physical access be translated into digital access numerous times over the years. Compromised accessories, evil house-workers, and people trying to trick users into plugging into malicious charging terminals is why Apple added “Do you Trust” popups to iOS a few years ago.

Likewise, the companies that collect and sell iOS exploits also lease or sell boxes that try to break in over a hard wire.

Removing that access won’t suddenly make the iPhone intrusion-proof. We’ve recently seen significant hacks delivered wirelessly as well. But, depending on the existence and effectiveness of adapters, it may reduce, slow down, or even eliminate the wired ones.

And, if and when Apple gets an illegitimate search and seizure request demanding they help break into a device, they can answer in their most very favorite way — it’s not that they won’t do it, it’s that they can’t do it.

What about special new features?

There are some interesting things Apple could do with portless iPhone. For example, swim proofing, just like the Apple Watch.

Apple has been increasing water resistance over the last few years, but they’ve also gotten into hot water for how they’ve been marketing and not warrantying it. But if they delete the Lightning port, and add one of those fancy water ejecting systems to the speaker, maybe they could go full on swim-proof?

Then… then.. and I know this is bordering on fanfic, but stay with me — because this is an iPhone, they could add a computational photography mode that tries to give you the best underwater pictures and video possible, and, well, that just markets itself.

What about restore and DFU?

Okay, this is where things get tricky… maybe?

Currently, when a software update or something else goes wrong, you have to plug into iTunes or the Finder and factory reset and reload your iPhone.

What would you plug in without a plug to… in… to?

The Apple Watch and Apple TV both have hidden ports but they’re only meant for an AppleCare technician to use. And as frustrating as it is to have to take or send your Watch or TV in for servicing, it’ll be even more frustrating to have to do that with your phone.

But, Apple just introduced something pretty cool with the M1 Macs a couple of months ago.

Basically, a minimal, separate, macOS environment in a hidden container that lets you reinstall macOS, even macOS Recovery if and when you need to.

Could that work for an iPhone with iOS and a form of iOS Recovery utility and internet restore on board?

The next-generation iPad Pro might be coming our way as soon as March and, in this video, I’m going to break down… just everything that might be coming with it I’m talking miniLED display, M1-class chipset, Thunderbolt 3, and, of course, 5G.

Display

The current iPad Pro is already full screen, with Apple Thanos-snapping half the bezels away going on 18 months ago already. It’s also DCI-P3 wide color gamut, with rich reds and vibrant greens, TrueTone ambient temperature matching, so whites look paper white, and ProMotion adaptive refresh, so it can ramp up to 120Hz for silky smooth MKBHD-quality scrolling or ramp down to 48Hz to show 24fps movies the way nature and Hollywood intended.

But it’s still LCD. In 2021… When the iPhone switched to OLED back in 2017 already.

But, despite Samsung and LG pushing for OLED in the industry rags, Apple just doesn’t seem to think the bigger-than-phone-sized OLED panels are really ready for prime tine. Just in terms of LTPO cost, yield, and brightness consistency.

So, the big rumor is, the iPad Pro is going miniLED instead. And mini LED offers almost all the benefits of OLED but without the issues like smearing, pulse width modulation, off-axis color shifting, burn-in, and PenTile sub-pixel arrangements.

No, miniLED is bless-ed RGB stripe. What it does is use smaller backlights, like 200 microns small, like 10,000 of them, grouped into local dimming zones, which lets them get the deeper blacks and higher contrast ratios needed for HDR — High Dynamic Range.

I’ll be doing an in-depth explainer on how it all works soon. So make sure you’ve hit that subscribe button and bell so you don’t miss it.

Because it should be terrific for everything from TV+ to Disney+ to all the Dolby Vision content now being shot on the iPhones 12 right now.

A14X

The 2018 iPad Pro had an A12X chipset. Basically the A12 chipset from the iPhone XS but with 4 efficiency cores, 4 performance cores, 8 neural engine cores, and 7 graphics cores, fabbed on TSMC’s 7 nanometer process.

The 2020 iPad Pro has an A12Z chipset. Basically a tweaked A12X with its eighth graphics core fully operational.

But not an A13X, probably because Apple’s silicon team was too busy working on the A14 for the iPhone 12 and iPad Air 4, and the M1 for the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

This next one, though, the 2021 iPad Pro, is rumored to be getting an A14X or… an M1.

Which would pretty much be the same thing. Current generation versions of all the performance, efficiency, and graphics cores, 16 neural engine cores, and all the modern bells and whistles to go with them.

Whether it’s actually an A14X or M1 is part branding, part economics. It just depends if it’s cheaper to make a chip without the Mac specific hardware blocks, like x86 optimizers, or just make the same chip and not use those blocks. And, then, whatever Apple wants to call it. But if you have strong feelings one way or tother though, let me know in the comments.

Battery life should stay at 10 hours, because of the physical battery size and because that just seems to be Apple’s target for pretty much every iPad always.

Since the previous iPad Pro had 6GB of RAM but the M1 MacBook starts at 8GB of RAM, just how much memory Apple wants in the next iPad Pro will be interesting to see either way.

Would a better chipset and more RAM mean the new iPad Pro would finally be able to run Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Xcode?

No, because more RAM and even M1 doesn’t magically port them from AppKit to UIKit, or adapt their interfaces from mouse pointer to multitouch.

It could certainly happen and I’d be ecstatic if it did, but it’s just never been a purely hardware problem to solve.

USB 4.0

Part of the iPad Pro’s big 2018 redesign was the transition from Lightning to USB-C. It allowed the iPad Pro to work with a wider ranger of peripherals — specifically, Mac and PC peripherals.

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

But… But… Apple did surface PCIe lanes for the M1. Two of them. With two on-board Thunderbolt controllers.

If the next iPad Pro uses the M1 chipset as-is, it’ll also have those two Thunderbolt controllers.

In a perfect world, that would give us two USB 4/Thunderbolt 3 ports on the next iPad Pro. For some people, including me, that would make it just twice as much Pro. And if you feel the same, drop a like below.

Because our world is just so often so far from perfect. So expect the actual number we’ll get is somewhere between none and one. So, fingers crossed for at least one. Just make the iPad Pro a first-class USB 4 experience.

5G

I’ll just say it. For most people, in most places, 5G still isn’t that meaningful. It’s something that really only carriers care about. Even then, only carrier finance and marketing people. Technicians are like up to hear with it already….

But, those are the modems being made right now, which means those are the modems Apple’s going to be using in the next iPad Pro.

Depending on how dates and yield work out, either the same Qualcomm X55 modem that’s in the iPhone 12, or the next-generation Qualcomm X60 modem that’ll almost certainly be going into the iPhone 13.

That one, the X60, is going to use Samsung’s latest fabrication process. I don’t think it’s as good as TSMCs, but Apple’s eating up most of TSMC these days, and either way, it should at least be more power efficient.

Camera

The current iPad Pro added a second, ultra wide-angle camera and LiDAR Scanner. Hopefully Apple will continue to improve both of those and the main, wide angle camera as well. I mean, if it were up to me, they’d always be as good as the latest iPhone cameras. But I don’t most times get what I want.

The A14X or M1 image signal processor — again, same thing — will do a lot to improve them either way, including HDR3, and possibly deep fusion, Night Mode, and Dolby Vision.

But the current iPad Pro was also missing things like Portrait Mode on the read camera… even with LiDAR.

Again, I assume the camera team was so busy working on the iPhone 12 they just didn’t have time to work on the iPad Pro as well. But why that wasn’t fixed with iPadOS 14 back in September… I have no idea.

Maybe third time will be the charm? And if so, even if the glass doesn’t match the iPhone 12’s, at least the functionality gap will be closed.

Size (Bonus)

There’s no indication that Apple will be changing the sizes on the next generation iPad Pro. In other words, the same 11-inch and 12.9-inch models as now. Only better..

Which is good, because it means they’ll work with existing accessories, including and especially the less-than-one-year-old Magic Keyboards that have made Apple’s tablet into a pretty damn remarkable hybrid laptop.

Still… Now that there’s a very similarly designed iPad Air that’s the same exact casing size, if not quite screen size, as the 11-inch Pro, I kind hope Apple takes the opportunity to up-size just a bit.

I fully realize everyone but artists might find this ridiculous, but if Apple even roughly followed the MacBook Pro sizes for the iPad Pro, and gave us the existing 12.9-inch and an all-new 15.4-inch, wow but would that be a bigger, even more beautiful canvas for everything from Apple Pencil to just… finger painting with productivity.

Feel totally free to @me.

Welcome to Season 2 of the Apple Event show. This year's episodes — spoiler alert! — could feature everything from M1X Macs to A15 iPhones, A14X iPads to maybe, just maybe... AirTags. At last.

Read the full story on iMore!

https://www.imore.com/apple-2021-welcome-season-2-event-show

I was chatting with Jacklyn from NothingButTech for another project, a secret project, something I’m working hard on and I’ll tell you about as absolutely soon as I can, but we ended up on this tangent about iMessage for Android — whether Apple would do it but, more importantly, whether Apple should do it… and how. And, since she’s way beyond 9000 IQ, well, we just had to share it with you.

Jacklyn Dallas on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nbtjacklyn​

Jacklyn Dallas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nbtjacklyn​

Lloyd from Android Central: https://www.androidcentral.com​

In this video, we are starting off 2021 RIGHT! Digging into what’s next for Apple in the new year… in a way only you amazing, sizzling smart people could come up with. That includes M1X MacBooks and iMacs, and M2 Apple TV (?!), iPhone 13 pricing and 5G, Apple Watch 7, iPad/Mac hybrids, Mac apps on iPad, an Apple YouTube competitor, rOS and AR devices, and more!

Your questions, I’m reading them out and answering them live. And as always, members over at patreon.com/reneritchie have Q&A priority, but if you have anything else to ask, to follow up on, to just wonder out loud about, hit that subscribe button and bell so we can hang in the comments and chat whenever new videos go live.

Watch the extended video on Nebula:

https://watchnebula.com/videos/reneritchie-m1x-macbook-pro-m2-apple-tv-apple-in-2021-answers

In this video, it’s just you, and me, and iJustine, talking about what we liked, and didn’t like, from Apple in 2020, and what we want to see in 2021.

That includes iPhones — just all the iPhones, M1 Macs, Apple Watch, and more.

Watch the extended version on Nebula:

https://watchnebula.com/videos/reneritchie-apple-endgame-m1-mac-iphone-12-watch-more

You're either thinking of getting a new iPhone 12 and still can’t decide between the regular and Pro, just got a new iPhone 12, are watching that exchange period tick, tick, tick down, and want to make sure you got the right one, or you’ve had your new iPhone 12 for a while and still want to make absolutely sure you, like Indy… chose wisely.

Either way — any way — I’ve got Brian Tong on the line to re-review everything we’ve learned and experienced about both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, now, today, more than 2 months later.

Watch the full video on Nebula:

https://watchnebula.com/videos/reneritchie-iphone-12-v-12-pro-two-months-later-full

Are the AirPods Max for you? The answer turns out to be remarkably simple:

1. Are you all in on the Apple ecosystem?
2. Do you listen to a ton of digital music and videos, especially streaming?
3. Do you want wireless, noise-canceling headphones?
4. Do you prefer over-the-ear headphones?
5. And do you have $550 just lightsabering a hole in your gear fund?

If you answered yes to all of those questions, literally nothing else matters. Not codecs, not cables, not comparisons, not cost, not even cases. If you answered yes, to quote Flossy Carter, Apple's new AirPods Max are a major, major, major… major — quad-major — go.

If you answered "not sure" to any of them, though, then I'm going to go through everything that really matters, so you can quickly, easily figure it out.

For my full review, see iMore:

https://www.imore.com/airpods-max-explained

Ok. This one has everything. Drama. Tech. Rumors. Salt. So much salt.

First, it was a sketchy rumor about Project Titan, the Apple Car, going into production next year. Then it was a slightly less sketchy report about production actually starting in 2024 or 2025, and with newfangled battery tech to go with it. But no one seemed to fact-check the newfangled-ness of that report, because when someone tweeted it at Tesla CEO and martian colonist one, Elon Musk, well, Elon flamethrower tweeted back, right at Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook.

To help us make sense of it all, I’ve called up one of the most accurate financial analysts… at least on this plant. Above Avalon’s Neil Cybart.

Watch the extended version on Nebula:

https://watchnebula.com/videos/reneritchie-tesla-vs-apple-car-elon-roasts-tim

There’s a fresh story out of randomly accurate rumor site, DigiTimes, saying Apple is once again working on minimizing the Notch, this time for the iPhone 13.

Meanwhile, ZTE has just shipped the first phone with no nightmare of a notch, no punchole, no forehead, no mechanical choocher. But with the dream — an actual under-display camera system. That’s… still kind of a nightmare.

Either way, any way, I figured it was time for an updated look at Apple’s iPhone 13 options, and how close we are to really, truly, finally deleting the Notch.

I’ve got a ton of iPhone 13 coverage coming your way so make sure you hit that subscribe button and bell so you don’t miss any of it.

Let’s do this.

Sponsored by Skillshare

The Notch

When Apple wanted to take the modern iPhone X design full screen, they had to delete the bezels, the Home button, and Touch ID along with them.

Sure, they could have moved Touch ID to the Apple logo on the back of the phone, or the power button where they’ve since shipped it on the iPad Air 4.

But Apple didn’t want the same, they wanted better, more transparent, harder for other companies to copy, and also in line with the AR — augmented reality — plans they’ve been not-so-subtly having all of us beta test for years.

So, Apple used a depth-sensing camera array — TrueDepth — instead. But, that meant, instead of just a single RGB selfie camera like most other phones on the market, Apple Apple also needed an infra-red camera, flood illuminator, and dot projector as well. Throw in the earpiece and you have wide… like the Enterprise D wide… of notches.

The forehead

Now, Apple could have stuck with the forehead. They had Klingon sized foreheads on all the iPhones from the original to the 8, and even the current iPhone SE.

It would have prevented a full on corner-to-rounded-corner display, and removed a small amount of usable pixels, but it would also have removed the cosmetic abomination of the notch.

That’s what Google did with the Pixel 4, after all, which I think is the only other phone to ever field a Face ID-like facial geometry scanner.

But Apple wanted to market corner-to-corner, full-ish screen for the display, so they decided to embrace the notch. Make it something distinctive. Even iconic. Shove the status bar all up into those corners, to make it look even more expansive. So the spent a ton of engineering resources on sub-pixel masking to cut first OLED and then LCD around it.

They didn’t do it for the modern iPad Pro design with Face ID. That one only Thanos-snapped away half the bezels, so no notch needed. Just foreheads all the way around.

But, with the iPhone, it sure seems like the forehead is just never going to be an option again.

Hole punches

Samsung did full screen different. They never got into Face ID-style biometrics so they’ve only had to deal with that single RGB camera or, for a brief period of time, dual RGB cameras.

So, Samsung literally cut the screen just around those single or dual RGB cameras. Like hole punches. And they’ve gotten better and tighter at doing it.

That let the display go not just corner-to-corner but truly edge-to-edge. It just doesn’t give you a truly full screen or that much more in terms of usable pixels.

Apple could go with something similar but, unlike Samsung, they’d have to deal with more than just one or two RGB cameras. They’d have to have cutouts for the dot projector, flood illuminator, and infrared camera as well.

And, while, subjectively some people might prefer it in an enter-the-spiderverse kind of way, like the Mac Pro case, objectively it’s no better or worse than a notch.

Mechanical choochers

To avoid notches and hole punches and get that full-on full screen, other companies have resorted to mechanical choochers what pop the front-facing cameras up and down or spin them around.

No matter how fast a mechanical choocher chooches, it’s just never going to be as fast as a camera that requires zero… choochage. Choocherage?

Also, mechanical parts aren’t great for water resistance but are terrific at being potential points of failure. And Apple hasn’t gone to all the trouble of deleting the Home button headphone jack and soon, maybe, the lightning port just to stick popup in the top.

In-display

Meanwhile, ZTE has just shipped the first phone with an under-display camera. Basically, just what it sounds like — they paved the camera over with pixels, then shrunk and spread the pixels out to try and clear a path for light to get to the sensor.

And… it’s not great. Not yet. There’s enough interference that they have to use machine learning to try and extract a usable image and even then, it’s not that usable….

Or even that well hidden at times. Especially if Apple would be paving over all four Face ID models, not just one camera.

If it matures fast, though… in a few years… come iPhone 14 or iPhone 15… who knows?

Notch-less

So, yeah, that leaves us with the DigiTimes rumor, and rumor Jon Prosser has reported on as well — that Apple has been and continues to prototype a notch-less iPhone — as in less of a notch.

They’d do that by moving some of the components like the receiver up higher, maybe even to the top, or replacing them with physical acoustical components like the under-display phones use, so that the Face ID TrueDepth system proper can be condensed closer together.

Still a notch but not as much of a notch… if the rumors prove true.