iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

Posted by meetpateltech 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by quinncom 3 days ago

I love that it has a feature to prove images came from the real world:

> Users can now prove the authenticity of a photo taken on iPhone 18 Pro models with Apple Reference Image, powered by the new sensor in the Main camera that can sign every pixel it sees. When a photo is taken in the new Reference mode, the camera captures signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute develops into an unalterable reference image.5 Reference images can be viewed in the Photos app alongside the main image, like a digital negative, to visually compare the two assets and determine if any edits were made. APIs are available in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 for third-party apps to enable viewing of these reference images.

Comment by andrewmutz 3 days ago

Can't I just point my camera at an AI generated image? And it will get the stamp of authenticity?

Comment by dabinat 3 days ago

It would be great if they could use the LiDAR scanner to sign a depth map of the scene in front of the camera. It would show if you photographed a flat image.

Comment by bayindirh 3 days ago

The sensor already uses phase detection autofocus. You can create a depth map out of it. iPhone X used its dual cameras and that phase data for depth maps.

Comment by sm-silversight 2 days ago

How? Is this for every image taken, or does one need to take a second photo? Or is it "in theory phase detection hardware would let you make a depth map"

Comment by bayindirh 2 days ago

The sensor has special pixels which can detect phase differences in incoming light. Camera uses these pixels (aka embedded detectors on the image sensor) to be able to focus where you want. This is same from phones to professional cameras.

(DSLR cameras have independent phase detection arrays. This is why the mirror has a small mirror behind. To illuminate that section).

Lenses are tuned. They know how distant the thing they are focusing on, also photos' EXIF generally carries the focus point information. Side note: Apple Aperture used to be able to show where you focused with that info. Still no app does this. I'm still mad that we don't have Aperture anymore. Anyway...

So, if you collect this phasing information alongside the photo which you're taking, you are capturing the depth map of the photo. Its resolution will be lower, but not lower enough to be useless.

For example, Sony (and most probably all other big camera manufacturers) cameras use this phasing data throughout sensor in real-time for following moving subjects to keep the focus on them by predicting where they are going.

So, there's no "in theory". The phasing data is the depth map. Otherwise your camera can't focus on anything. It's there to focus, and it's done by reading the phasing data and knowing where to go by how much.

All fast AF systems are PDAF. When light is too low, then it's CDAF, which does way slower, without using any phase/depth data.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofocus#Phase_detection

Edit: Meaning clarified, bugs squashed, mirrors polished.

Comment by dwattttt 3 days ago

The 'ol "analog hole". Never been able to patch that gap.

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

Yes, if your adversary can generate a high-fidelity 3D moving replica of a scene, they can deceive you that it’s real. But can they really?

Comment by dwattttt 2 days ago

Images that are meant to be 2d (E.g. a photo of something on paper) isn't going to look 3d. I guess this approach will just have to let anything flat through?

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

"I took a real photo of this image printed on paper" seems possible to falsify, yeah, but that doesn't seem too surprising to me, given that anyone with a printer can print literally any possible image.

Comment by koolala 3 days ago

They could use the camera aperture to take a second photo and calculate blur.

Comment by mikeaskew4 3 days ago

Pretty sure it does that already.

Comment by w4der 3 days ago

And what if you take a picture across a IR-filtered window?

Comment by apetresc 3 days ago

Then you won’t be able to prove it was a genuine photograph? That sounds like the right failure mode.

Comment by ks2048 3 days ago

If that became popular, the AIs would learn how to generate a realistic depth map along with any generated image.

Comment by lokar 3 days ago

How would that work? I thought the premise here is that you can fool the apple camera by taking a (very carefully aligned) picture of a still image (printed out).

A depth map from the apple camera (again, signed) would show that the entire image had the same distance from the camera.

Comment by ks2048 2 days ago

You're right. I think my comment above doesn't make sense - it wouldn't help in this case.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

The photos are cryptographically signed in the apple image pipeline so it's not as simple as just AI generating something. That said, I can't see how this is any different to all the other times we have embedded crypto keys in consumer hardware where eventually someone finds a way to extract the key and the whole thing is busted open.

Comment by jaggederest 3 days ago

Given the whole private cloud bit, I am assuming they keep the private keys server side and never let them out.

Comment by monocasa 3 days ago

I think there's a chain of trust. The sensor signs raws, and the private cloud takes signed raws, does minimal processing so they're at least coherent, and re signs that output (maybe even including the original signed raw as well in the image file).

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

How would the server know that the request is coming from a real iPhone?

This is a pretty standard application of trusted computing and can be done entirely on the iPhone. A server would only possibly be needed for anonymization (while retaining key revocation capabilities if a key does end up leaking), but there are serverless ways to do even that (TPMs have supported these for a while now).

Comment by jaggederest 2 days ago

It wouldn't, but you could validate that a particular picture was created at a particular time, and had not changed, for example, especially with metadata that you may not want to share but that establishes certain parameters like gps coordinates. A lock, rather than an end-to-end pixel signature, which shows what was contemporaneous rather than exact provenance. If an event happened on day 0000-00-00 00:00:00am, but your photo was taken at some other time, it casts doubt.

I think a big part of validation for things like these are just "could it have been modified since Z event happened", because Z was not something people paid attention to before.

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

That's just a timestamping service then, not a content provenance/authentication scheme. Timestamping has been a solved problem for years; certificate authorities offer this, or you could just throw a hash onto any sufficiently trusted blockchain.

Nothing prevents anyone from opportunistically pre-generating and timestamping millions of permutations of fake kompromat and then selectively revealing the one that turns out to be useful after the fact.

You could charge per attestation, but the economics of that don't look great; you could demand publication of the image itself before attestation, but that would obviously not fly for most use cases out of privacy concerns.

Comment by jaggederest 1 day ago

> Nothing prevents anyone from opportunistically pre-generating and timestamping millions of permutations of fake kompromat and then selectively revealing the one that turns out to be useful after the fact.

If you're doing server-side timestamping and someone is sending millions of items, I think you just ban them. Apple accounts are free but not inexpensive.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

That's a good point, You might still be able to trick the cloud to sign your photos, but that's something they could patch in updates without losing control of the key. They could have the server only sign photos taken on the latest ios version.

Comment by jaggederest 3 days ago

And honestly you could have a similar antitampering oracle that was at least obscured, in terms of "we've detected tampering but won't tell you how or why", which is frustrating but I have to imagine that 99.9%+ of images are clean.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by khalic 2 days ago

Nobody has breached the Secure Enclave, not sure it’s doable without investing millions in direct circuit manipulation. Seems good enough

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by bayindirh 2 days ago

> generate a realistic depth map along with any generated image.

There are already pretty good depth map generation algorithms (for a decade or so) which works on 2D images.

Generate the image, feed it to a depth map generator, viola.

However, you can't get it signed by the sensor itself. That'd be hard.

Comment by embedding-shape 3 days ago

Even simpler, a 3D printed relief with an image "stamped" on it, now you effectively have a 3D image.

Comment by bayindirh 3 days ago

…and the PDAF data will show how shallow it is.

Comment by embedding-shape 3 days ago

... don't make it so shallow then. Perfectly possible in a consumer-friendly 3D printer for a face or even human body if you have lots of time for the prints.

Comment by ceejayoz 2 days ago

You’re well on the way to 1:1 replicas at this point. Next you’ll need to match the thermal signature and the exact weather in the sky for the time at that location.

Comment by DrammBA 2 days ago

This is almost reaching Kubrick’s joke about wanting to film the fake moon landing on location.

Comment by dylan604 3 days ago

but what are we really trying to solve here. you're suggesting a helluvalota work for what purpose?

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

Then take and sign a one-second video and you’re adding a few orders of magnitude of complexity again.

Comment by golem14 2 days ago

Sounds like Rincewind's spell from the Octavo.

Comment by FreJunofficial1 2 days ago

That's a cool idea.

Comment by selcuka 3 days ago

One can 3d-print the AI generated image and photograph that. /s

Comment by bl4ckm0r3 2 days ago

that's an authentic photo, not the subject/image, the photo is authentic.

Comment by Lord_Zero 2 days ago

An important distinction but I have taken pics of pics, and sometimes its hard to tell I didn't take it directly. So now, its hard to tell I didn't directly take the photo AND its got the stamp of approval.

Comment by llukas 3 days ago

Stamp only proves you did the photo and probably some metadata like when where etc.

It helps but doesn't solve credibility issue.

Comment by intrasight 3 days ago

The credibility comes from who took the photo. The next logical and easy step is for this metadata to flow to the user agent. I'll know that it was taken by a legit journalist photographer. And id not, I can have my user agent make it fuzzy or replaced with a kitten photo.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

I think this is where we are headed. This feature seems useless on it's own since someone will eventually find a way to extract the key from the iphone and sign any image. But if they could make it so every iphone uses it's own key and the photos show "Taken by xyz" and it's linked to their icloud or identity somehow. That way images shared around will still be able to be linked to a source that you can choose to trust and the viewer can know it wasn't modified from what that person shot.

Then we might move to an age where photos which were not signed by someone will be treated as fake.

Comment by mikestorrent 3 days ago

You may have forgotten that the world is driven by screenshots, and so a screenshot of a picture with the `(X) Verified by Apple to be Joe Schmoe` tacked on will be just as good as real verification for a lot of people.

What we need is almost something like the classic "press C+A+D to log in" or the idea of "above the browser pane"... something an image cannot show you unless it's legit. Perhaps a personal thumbprint icon that is different for each viewer, so you know its your device telling you that something is real and not just some mock fake thing?

Comment by intrasight 3 days ago

I don't think we'll treat them as fake but they would probably undergo more scrutiny - perhaps in a crowd-sourced manner that provides an overall score of probable legitimacy.

Comment by teaearlgraycold 3 days ago

Phones all have hardware security modules with keys stored inside. That will absolutely be in use for this new feature.

Comment by cavoirom 2 days ago

You actually think the Secure Enclave is useless.

Comment by nonethewiser 3 days ago

Right. All of your pictures will include identifying information. Same will happen for LLM generated text.

Comment by lokar 3 days ago

what is it missing then?

Comment by dymk 3 days ago

It will look like you took a picture of a screen or print out

Comment by michaelt 3 days ago

People have constructed video walls so high resolution they can film TV series in front of them and to an audience it's indistinguishable from a real set. It's extremely cost-effective for things like space fantasy that needs lots of exotic-looking backdrops, apparently.

It may not be in reach for you and I - but within reach of anyone with the budget to run a 'bot farm'

Comment by cedilla 3 days ago

The high resolution video wall is quite simple. The hard part and why this has not been done earlier is that for filming, they had to synchronize the rendered background with the movement of the camera.

Comment by spartanatreyu 3 days ago

Movement is solved by tracking the camera's position and projecting the background from there.

Proof of captured image with hardware-based-attestation can be increased by adding extra information besides the RGB channels, like depth mapping (which a projected screen wouldn't be able to fake), and eventually light field recording (plenoptic imaging, e.g. Lytro).

Comment by dgently7 2 days ago

also no, even in the high rez video walls its still possible to tell. maybe to an "audience" no but there are lots of fundamental flaws with video walls that make them not the same as filming it for real. all of those flaws show up in the final image and could be detected.

things like color rendering, sharpness, screen door/morie, motion blur, and yup even good ole depth queues in the lens system all show up as artifacts.

case in point, outside of a few specific niche cases like the mandalorian, that virtual production video wall thing is not actually being used all that much because of the amount of post shoot cleanup required to fix all those issues, it wasnt actually that much cheaper and its not really better either. especially when you factor in how hard it is to shoot that way.

Comment by michaelt 2 days ago

> things like color rendering, sharpness, screen door/morie, motion blur, and yup even good ole depth queues in the lens system all show up as artifacts.

Pre-AI fake videos sidestep this sort of issue by lowering the video quality.

Add some motion blur, some camera shake, some poor lighting, the camera being slightly out of focus, and make the video 720p instead of 4k.

Comment by dymk 3 days ago

If they’re spending millions on faking an image, okay fine. That’s clearly not the security model intended for this feature though.

Comment by InvertedRhodium 3 days ago

How large and pixel dense does a display need to be for it to convincingly fill an image sensor?

I suspect it’s significantly less than millions.

Comment by thallium205 2 days ago

I bet there exists data from the 3 cameras to represent some depth to the image.

Comment by nonethewiser 3 days ago

Yes.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by Lockal 2 days ago

> I love that it has a feature to prove images came from the real world

Congrats to Apple achieving nation-wide tracking, embedding some kind of yellow dots[1], but this time this time this is based on strong cryptography and non-removable, targeting people who don't use AI under the slogan "we are fighting AI fakes", but people still "love the feature".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

Comment by kenferry 2 days ago

I think the big difference here is that it's opt-in, off by default, and also not included with shared images by default.

This is a feature because you use it when you WANT to be able to demonstrate an image wasn't altered / was yours, like for a journalist.

This is an actual question, not a dig: what do you mean by non-removable?

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by knollimar 2 days ago

Are the yellow dots not opt in?

Comment by scq 2 days ago

If you have a colour laser printer, not only are the tracking dots not opt in, but there is no way to opt out.

Comment by knollimar 2 days ago

I meant the metaphorical iphone ones

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by sheepybloke 3 days ago

On the opposite side, this read to me like there was so much image processing going on in the background and off device that they felt like they needed to prove that there was a real image backing the creation, and that it was not all AI. It really begs the question of what the extent is of image processing.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

The iphone image pipeline is mostly just playing with exposure and color, things that we widely regard as fair game in editing. Where the line was crossed was magic eraser and reframe where the iphone is straight up making objects in the image.

Comment by whimsicalism 3 days ago

there is definitely some generative pixel stuff in the iOS pipeline as i've noticed garbled deepdream-esque letters when zooming before

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

That could be a result of a failed exposure stack. Phone sensors and lenses suck for light gathering so they have to take multiple photos and merge them together to create one that's less noisy. Occasionally you get artifacts where the merge failed.

It's still distinct from actual AI generation imo.

Comment by Schiendelman 2 days ago

This is correct (from someone who has worked on software to do this). Processing images for the 3D walkthroughs in real estate sometimes does this too.

Comment by cavoirom 3 days ago

Yes, this is really a "Pro" feature, while C2PA exists, not many consumer products have it, iPhone will be the game changer for reporters.

Comment by kllrnohj 3 days ago

Reporters who only capture pictures on an iPhone and not a "real" camera, and who also never need to edit the photo to crop off or obscure identifying information, innocent bystanders/victims, gory violence or nudity, etc...

The problem is real, but this solution seems to not really solve it in any practical sense.

Comment by reaperducer 3 days ago

So, 90% of photojournalism outside of the major cities, then.

Comment by cavoirom 2 days ago

You want to do all that, then still can prove the picture is authentic. The editing history show what had been changed compare to the previous version, from the color adjustment to blur areas... it's not about preventing editing, it's about proving the authenticity when needed.

Comment by kllrnohj 2 days ago

> The editing history show what had been changed compare to the previous version, from the color adjustment to blur areas...

That's not a thing. Straight from Apple:

"When a photo is taken in the new Reference mode, the camera captures signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute develops into an unalterable reference image. Reference images can be viewed in the Photos app alongside the main image"

So this only helps prove anything if you can share the original, unedited image. You can share it alongside an edited one, but you must also be comfortable sharing the unedited original if you want to prove you own an iPhone 18 Pro. Er, I mean prove it's "authentic"

Now I think C2PA had allowances for what you're talking about, but that also ended up resulting in it being easier to break.

Comment by Schiendelman 2 days ago

You don't need to share the original image with everyone, just like how journalists don't share their audio recordings from interviews with everyone. You share with an editor. Or a court.

Comment by kllrnohj 1 day ago

Yes, which is why this doesn't really do much. Readers still have to primarily rely on trust for whether or not they believe the news and who is reporting it.

Comment by Schiendelman 23 hours ago

There's no situation with any technology where you would not have to do that.

Comment by drdrey 3 days ago

you could do edits like crops in a way that preserves the signature using ZK proofs

Comment by FireBeyond 3 days ago

Canon's original high end digital models had this as a feature, that your images could be digitally signed in-camera based on raw sensor data. Primarily for law enforcement. Obviously a far broarder use case, now.

Comment by QuantumNomad_ 2 days ago

> Users can now prove the authenticity of a photo taken on iPhone 18 Pro models with Apple Reference Image, powered by the new sensor in the Main camera that can sign every pixel it sees.

Will this also work with third-party camera apps like ProCam?

https://www.procamapp.com/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/procam-5/id6787737491?mt=8

Comment by FinnKuhn 2 days ago

Not available in EU. The reason Siri AI and other iOS features are not available in the EU is the issue of Apple not opening up the same API for other apps. Therefore I think it might be the same case here, which would mean that third-party camera apps wouldn't be compatible.

Comment by spacebanana7 3 days ago

The weakness of this is that a person can take a picture of a high resolution screen or print.

We really need Apple to open up true depth APIs to make forgery non trivial.

Comment by apetresc 3 days ago

I don’t know too much about image processing, but my intuition tells me that distinguishing a photo of a 3d scene from a photo of a photo of a 3d scene is a much easier engineering problem than distinguishing it from an AI-generated diffusion. So even just reducing the problem to the former is still a worthy accomplishment.

Comment by awkwardleon 3 days ago

Agree with the weakness, but the benefit of provenance is still there. You can't tell if the picture that person took is of an AI image, but there's some value in saying "I took this" and being able to prove it.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

I hope future social media presents this metadata so if someone claims a photo is from the BBC, it actually gets checked against the keys the BBC sign their photos with.

Comment by snypher 3 days ago

How does this actually work though?

1) I see a photo online and doubt it's provenance

2) I contact the photographer and ask to see their cloud image (???!)

2a) I borrow someone's mac to download the image (.jpg?) and it can be verified on that?

Comment by spacebanana7 2 days ago

Ideally it’d be linked to public key on a DNS txt record or similar, and trustworthy clients (including social media apps) show the domain linked to the photo.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by whatever1 3 days ago

I wish next year for videos too.

We really need it for journalism. Otherwise we will not know what is real and what fabricated with ai.

Comment by lern_too_spel 3 days ago

Finally. Android phones have been shipping with C2PA since last year, so it's great that the final holdout has capitulated, though with its own set of nonstandard tools.

https://c2paviewer.com/articles/samsung-galaxy-s25-c2pa

https://security.googleblog.com/2025/09/pixel-android-truste...

https://c2paviewer.com/supported-devices

Comment by nxc18 3 days ago

The Android version is useless though, TBD if Apple can do better.

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/android-c2pa.html

Comment by lern_too_spel 2 days ago

Indeed, on top of Google's implementation being a bad joke, it sounds like the C2PA specifications in general are a massive fail so far. https://arxiv.org/html/2604.24890v1

On the other hand, ignoring standards altogether is the wrong way to go because the ecosystem after capture won't be there.

Comment by galkk 2 days ago

lol, called it month ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138302#49142011

Comment by tclancy 3 days ago

That smells like "show don't tell", but who knows.

Comment by Melatonic 2 days ago

So does that mean only the main sensor can do this ?

Comment by Schiendelman 2 days ago

Yes.

Comment by xattt 3 days ago

*Not available in EU or China.

I wonder what the common thread is.

Comment by rock_artist 3 days ago

> I wonder what the common thread is.

Regulation.

For China I would assume like other services, if there's some cloud involved, it should be on Chinese soil and accessible to China.

For EU harder to guess, but again the lock-in with "Private Cloud Computing" feels related.

Comment by speedgoose 2 days ago

It could be because a digital signature could be use to track without consent.

Comment by dannyw 2 days ago

Nah, it’s an optional feature, so by using it you provide express consent. GDPR gives users more data ownership; GDPR does not stop you from choosing to do what you want with your data.

It’s likely DMA — Apple would be required to provide APIs for signing for 3rd party apps too.

Comment by bluber84 2 days ago

This feature is not enabled in the eu

Comment by Schiendelman 2 days ago

Yeah, because GDPR and AI laws in the EU conflict with each other and they haven't resolved it yet.

Comment by bilekas 2 days ago

That's more of a software feature..

Comment by siva7 3 days ago

A mobile phone.. an internet communicator.. a music player.. don't you get it? well, steve, actually 18 years later it's a .. camera

Comment by no_time 2 days ago

Feels like the only ones who'd benefit from this are AI companies that are afraid of tainting their post 2023 datasets with their own slop.

On the other hand if this becomes mandated by law I can see it become treacherous for endusers.

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

It also sounds pretty useful for anyone involved in a lawsuit to be able to present photographic evidence again. I’m sure GenAI is already a big headache for forensics, and enforcing AI watermarks will clearly not be bulletproof.

Comment by Good4boothee 2 days ago

Will it ever work until a TPM like module is directly integrated into camera sensor? Older attempts of Nikon and Canon got broken, same had happened with C2PA implementation for Android - if it gets anywhere close to CPU it is insecure.

Comment by lxgr 2 days ago

Yes, presumably there will be a cat and mouse game until the entire system including all peripherals has been brought into the trusted computing base, either physically or logically (usually with secured/authenticated communication). This has been the case for all applications of trusted computing.

Security is never a binary property, however, and can usually be better expressed in terms of how expensive it would be to subvert a given mechanism. "This image is either authentic or would have cost at least $x to fake" is already much more useful than nothing at all even without $x trending to infinity.

Comment by ikr678 2 days ago

Cynical take: A single photo to now consume up 50mb of cloud storage, adding to the demand for more data centers that supported the creation of this authenticity issue in the first place.

Comment by vrighter 1 day ago

wtf is a private cloud compute?

Comment by Frost1x 3 days ago

How will this work against rehosted images on all the platforms people actually share photos from? It’s a good feature but many popular services apply metadata stripping and basic image adjustment before resharing. That seems like the place where people would actually want to verify authenticity.

Comment by cavoirom 2 days ago

It works for the author of the image who want to prove the authenticity, and the party that publishing the image who want to maintain the trust.

Comment by nateb2022 3 days ago

I would love to see some "pro" features hit the Pro or Pro Max. Something I've wanted for a while is the ability to have more than 2 active eSIMs; I think a dual modem would be really cool, maybe with some features targeting users in poor cell coverage/ spotty service areas.

Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD, and power a multi monitor setup with your iPhone Pro. macOS would be sick. Or (waterproof) exposed PCIE lanes so 3rd parties can integrate an ecosystem of backpacks like how Pi Hats work.

Comment by Aurornis 3 days ago

> Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD,

The old iPhone 17 Pro has USB 3.2 Gen 2, which is good for 10Gb/s.

You can already record 4K60 ProRes to an external SSD. This feature already existed for a year, so I assume you didn't actually need it?

> and power a multi monitor setup with your iPhone Pro. macOS would be sick.

I think you're looking for a MacBook Pro the size of an iPhone.

Comment by nomel 3 days ago

The MacBook Neo runs an A18 Pro phone chip. It's appears to be all there and somewhat ready to give us something like DeX [1].

[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/app/samsung-dex

Comment by runjake 2 days ago

Something like DeX is already lying dormant on iOS and it's already enabled on iPadOS.

But, if you modify the MobileGestalt plist on the iPhone, you can enable the "Stage Manager" desktop mode and connect a mouse, keyboard, and monitor and you get a desktop from your iPhone.

Caveat: due to artificial reasons, it's not really usable for daily driving due to the way the hacks work, but Apple could certainly make some trivial changes and get it going.

https://github.com/frs0n/GestaltEdit

Comment by black3r 2 days ago

yes, and the fact that it runs a phone chip is the reason why it only has one 10Gbps USB-C port and the other only supports USB 2.0 speeds...

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

10Gbps is 12 times slower than the maximum bw of TB5.

You could argue most people wont need that speed, but most people don't need pro phone too.

Comment by hnuser123456 2 days ago

Yes, and TB5 also uses around 10x as much power, around 4W rather than 0.4W for USB3, which would consume the majority of the sustained power budget of the entire phone.

Comment by 999900000999 2 days ago

Something else will drop the ball guaranteed.

Can you show me the workflow which uses this and has an iPhone as the bottleneck

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

Moving my videos from ip to my TB ssd ?

Comment by eigen 2 days ago

are these videos larger than the iphone SSD or TB SSD DRAM buffer and will need to drop to NAND erase/write speed?

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

No, but i dont understand your point ?

Comment by vel0city 2 days ago

The point is, with your example the link speed of the iPhone isn't the limiting thing of your example. You'll likely be limited by the speed of your storage before you saturate that link.

Comment by wang_li 3 days ago

>Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD,

My iphone 16 pro max can do 4K ProRes HDR or Log at 120 FPS when plugged into a SSD. If I had more builtin storage I could do it without the SSD. If you don't mind more dongling you can also have an external display along with the external SSD.

Comment by Scoundreller 3 days ago

> I think a dual modem would be really cool, maybe with some features targeting users in poor cell coverage/ spotty service areas.

Can already do iMessage over satellite. Most “data” is download and I predict some satellite service that sends basic broadcasts (traffic, news, Text-to-speech podcasts) squeezed into a few mbps by pointing your phone at the sky (or a small cabled antenna for around the clock use). Would love to go carrier-less.

Comment by mcculley 2 days ago

Long ago there was a Usenet over satellite feed: http://www.art.net/lile/pagesat/netnews.html

Comment by dzhiurgis 3 days ago

Images that sync to mac photos app instantly via wifi rather than half day via icloud.

Comment by LoganDark 2 days ago

You can almost achieve this by setting a reminder to turn on "sync immediately" manually every single day (because Apple decided there should be no permanent or indefinite option, and went through the extra effort of making it timed simply for the sake of inconvenience).

I actually do this because it's the behavior I've wanted for years, and I care about it enough to go through the relentless annoyance.

Comment by dzhiurgis 2 days ago

I just don't understand why they wouldn't enable something p2p. We have handoff, screen mirroring, etc, but simple photo sync is impossible scientifically.

Comment by LoganDark 2 days ago

Fair. I usually just manually share with AirDrop when I need to have something on one of my other devices quickly, but I don't see the reason why the regular photo sync can't take advantage of the LAN

Comment by dzhiurgis 1 day ago

AirDrop is so finicky and you need to not to forget select option that doesn’t compress photos.

Comment by LoganDark 1 day ago

Isn't that a feature of the share menu itself? It likes to try to be "compatible" with whatever you're sharing it with. So if you try to share a video to Discord, it'll try to compress the video to fit within Discord's file size limit, etc. But AirDrop for me has always shared the full original file in Apple's native format without requiring processing steps.

Comment by tohnjitor 2 days ago

I would like to see dual Thunderbolt ports on the iPad Pro. I wonder if Thunderbolt chips would even fit in a phone.

Comment by cavoirom 3 days ago

Apple Reference Image is the new "pro" feature.

Comment by KermitTheFrog 3 days ago

*not so "pro" in EU and China

Comment by LoganDark 3 days ago

Well it apparently is so "pro" that it got regulated out of existence.

Comment by jloawjelrjl 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by ksec 3 days ago

I am actually quite excited on this iPhone 18 Pro. Seems to pack a a lot of exciting stuff. 2nm A20 Pro, C2. I wish they have N2 but I guess not. 2nd Generation Vapour Chamber. I thought I would have to wait another generation because Apple like to use new product features for two generation before moving on. And it seems this Vapour Chamber along with other heat desperation features are much better built. Much better Camera. And larger battery. With 60W charging that finally matches or closes to a lot of Android phone has been doing.

Never thought they would do it all within one update. In terms of hardware that is pretty much everything I wanted other than Silicon Battery.

The only thing that need radical change is iOS.

Comment by ivm 3 days ago

> The only thing that need radical change is iOS.

Please, not again.

– Sincerely yours mobile developer

Comment by RetpolineDrama 3 days ago

Introducing SwiftUI2: Every UI is a simple prompt, and all the underlying code is generated.

Comment by brokencode 3 days ago

I mean, isn’t that how like 90% of new SwiftUI apps are created these days? Just telling an AI what you want? Apple already can’t keep up with the review.

Comment by JAlexoid 2 days ago

If they can't keep up, that means that they're not using AI to do reviews

Comment by brokencode 2 days ago

Knowing how stingy Apple is, they’re probably still trying to get the expense approved.

That’s partially why they’re in the mess they’re in with AI. The CFO wouldn’t let them buy enough GPUs to train their models.

They needed all that money for more important expenses, like share buybacks, instead.

Comment by CountSessine 2 days ago

People will buy Macs and iPhones even if they don’t have AI. In fact at this point, based on revealed market preferences, it’s almost a value add. And if the AI capitalization bubble bursts, most people would be ok with OpenAI or Anthropic going bust. Both of them going bust would be really disappointing, but even that wouldn’t be the end of the world. And Meta going bust would almost be a side benefit of a market crash.

But Apple going bust would be a genuine loss for the world. So I’m glad they’re being conservative.

(Not that I would be happy with either anthropic or OpenAI going bust - I hope they can weather whatever is ahead).

Comment by brokencode 2 days ago

Yeah, it ultimately hasn’t hurt Apple much so far. Though eventually expectations may shift as AI gets better integrated into other phones.

Of course, there are a lot of AI features that we take for granted that aren’t LLMs, like speech to text, image foreground extraction, etc. Apple does tend to do this type of AI well.

Comment by theplumber 3 days ago

Besides a better camera what all this along with the past generations have so exciting ? I just fail to see a reason to upgrade. Maybe I am getting old?

Comment by ubermonkey 2 days ago

Because of a very, very last minute AppleCare replacement (like, 35 months after purchase), I have a year-old iPhone 14 Pro.

I figured there was nothing Apple could introduce yesterday that would turn my head, but the 40+ hour battery life AND the adjustable aperture on the camera are, by themselves, making me consider it. It'll all come down to what discounts or carrier subsidies are available to me, and what the trade-in value is for my phone. But as a shutterbug who travels, those two things are VERY interesting.

Comment by LeBit 3 days ago

Heat desperation?

I don’t think Siri is sentient yet.

Comment by jq-r 3 days ago

I don’t understand why the Max version doesn’t have C2. Maybe supply constraints but I doubt it.

Comment by ralph84 2 days ago

It could be as simple as Apple committed to a certain volume with Qualcomm before they were certain they could get mmWave working so they have to keep using Qualcomm modems somewhere while they burn down the commitment.

Comment by testaburger 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago

> The only thing that need radical change is iOS.

Personally iSO 26 is so unbelievably glitchy, it's only not embarrasing because you know others spent $$$ on the same thing so everyone pretends it's fine.

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

They seem to have ironed most of the problems now. You can disable liquid glass if you hate it, and as a result iOS 26 is nearly as good as the previous version. I’m running it on my iphone12. I hated it when it first came out. But it seems fine now.

Comment by ShinyLeftPad 2 days ago

I don't know how you're using it. The most broken (so it needs to be restarted sometimes) is Podcasts, but Music, Safari, Settings etc have glaring visual glitches too.

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

Well, it might help that on day 1, I turned off the liquid glass effects in accessibility settings. At first there were several small layout / UI bugs that came from turning liquid glass off. But it seems fine now.

I don't use the apple podcasts or music apps. (Overcast and Spotify for me). I haven't run into any serious problems.

Comment by ShinyLeftPad 2 days ago

I'm not sure if you're an iphone user or did you root your iphone?

It's NOT possible to turn LG off in iOS 26. It is possible to reduce transparency and motion (i tried with and without enabling those and it's broken anyway).

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

Oh my mistake. I just reduced transparency and motion. I’m not surprised that some things are still broken. Liquid Glass seems like a promotion ticket someone cashed at the expense of all iPhone users.

Comment by rightnutwingjob 2 days ago

iPhone 15 Plus:

I have Reduced Transparency, Reduce Motion, and Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions, all enabled. You have to have Liquid Glass set to Clear for Reduce Transparency.

I do use the Apple Podcasts app, but YouTube Music and DI.FM Radio apps for music.

I never see any rendering issues / glitches, and the UI is smooth & snappy.

Comment by ShinyLeftPad 2 days ago

iphone 17 pro:

0. none of the options you describe really disable LG and the glitches it introduced.

1. you don't need to switch LG to clear to reduce transparency. you can use reduce transparency with any LG theme. you just need to reenable "reduce transparency" after changing the theme. why? ask Tim.

2. in Podcasts you can tap between Home and Library to see the selection jank around the middle New tab. happens every time.

and if you tap to change episode sorting oldest to newest, then change it back, it 100% of the time won't ever change back again, unless you exit and enter the show again.

and semi daily when switching to it from lock screen the now playing layout will be garbled, either just the bottom card or the entire now playing screen is empty (at which point i usually restart the app).

and of course janky layout shifts and adjustments when switching between screens like search, show, episode, transcript, etc (which additionally also all involve sliding motion despite reduce motion + prefer fade on, but i will let that slide)

the list goes on

Comment by netheril96 2 days ago

Really? iOS Guided Access is bugged on the whole 26, and I have been encountering system freeze many times on 26, never before on any other versions.

Comment by solarkraft 3 days ago

27 is really a lot better, even on an iPhone 13.

Yet that’s still just repairing what they previously broke. I still can’t listen to music AND listen to a voice memo or a video clip.

Comment by millipede 3 days ago

The things we need to know most, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, are unfortunately missing from the release. Their absence doesn't bode well.

Comment by dgellow 3 days ago

What do you do with your phone that requires you to know the memory details? Genuine question, I have absolutely no idea how much memory my iPad or phone have and don’t see why I would need to know

Comment by WarmWash 3 days ago

Running not-particularly-useful local models.

Comment by millipede 2 days ago

The models are pretty useful, especially when it comes to asking things you may not want to go over a network.

Comment by hombre_fatal 3 days ago

To know what you're getting. No further reasons needed.

Comment by paimapi 2 days ago

I think an honest answer would be to account for software bloat over time. I'm one of those luddites who likes to keep a phone for a minimum of five years. in order to accomplish this, I select phones that have higher-than-average in-class RAM so that things I care the most about (snappy feeling, app loadtimes) stay good for longer

especially for Apple, I imagine if I were buying a phone knowing they historically throttle processors on older models, I'd try to at least control the one aspect that wouldn't make sense to throttle

Comment by dgellow 2 days ago

Hmm, yeah, that’s a good reason

Comment by millipede 2 days ago

It's because of the local model use case. Running AI locally on the phone is a feature (they brag about the processor), but it's constrained by memory and bandwidth.

Comment by o_m 3 days ago

I only care about it because I'm waiting for a MacBook Neo with more than 8gb of memory.

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane. We should get software working well on those devices, just like it did a decade or two ago.

Small, memory efficient programs run better everywhere. It feels like theft to make consumers pay for our inefficient software. Electron / react on the desktop is such a rort.

Comment by nonethewiser 3 days ago

>With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane.

Sure. Right along with Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows Vista.

Comment by dgellow 2 days ago

Modern CPUs and memory, just less ram

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

Modern operating systems too. Windows xp only used a few hundred megs of ram. Windows 11 is more complex, but none of its features justifies windows 11 needing 100x as much memory to run.

Slim the fat!

Comment by StilesCrisis 3 days ago

I wonder how much we could reclaim just by going back to 32-bit pointers. If we're going back to 4GB it should be fine, right?

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

Yes and no. If I recall, 32 bit windows has a fixed allocation of 3gb for userland and 1gb for the kernel’s memory space. I think 32bit only really works well for memory sizes smaller than 4gb. It might not be worth it, given a lot of OSes are in the process of deprecating 32bit support.

Comment by StilesCrisis 1 day ago

First, we don't need to be restrained to "how Windows did it twenty years ago." But either way, if we are targeting a 4GB PC, it's inappropriate for any single app to actually use more than 3GB regardless.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

Let's stop filling static websites with javascript. That should instantly reduce the overhead

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

Yep. And let’s stop putting react apps in the windows start menu.

Comment by wang_li 3 days ago

I'm waiting for a software release for my iPhone 16 Pro Max that will let me plug in a dock that has an attached SSD, keyboard, mouse, and display, and an option to pop up on my phone to reboot into MacOS.

Also, if they make a neo 2 from the A19 with 12 GB that'd be cool.

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

You’ll be waiting awhile. iPads have had desktop M-series CPUs for ages now, and you still can’t run macOS on an iPad.

It’s just a software restriction. I’m sure they have macOS running on iPhones and iPads internally, probably both through a VM and natively. But it’s very Apple to block this use case.

Comment by selectodude 3 days ago

I’m pretty sure the efficiency cores in the A20 Pro have more juice than the performance cores in my M1 Pro laptop.

Comment by fatata123 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by stingraycharles 2 days ago

I want to know how it compared to what I currently have.

Comment by swader999 3 days ago

Ok Bill.

Comment by renecito 3 days ago

sell another phone with "more than iPhone" and claim is better because "more X" right ?

Comment by bmandale 3 days ago

People who actually care about their money often like to compare competing products and decide which one provides them the best value.

Comment by hk__2 2 days ago

The amount of RAM doesn’t tell you anything about "the best value". Bad software with a large amount of RAM provides less value than highly-optimized one with a lower amount of RAM, for example. This was the whole advantage of the iPhone at the beginning: not a lot of RAM (meaning less energy needed) but a highly-optimized OS that works well even with that constrained environment.

Comment by bmandale 2 days ago

It tells you a lot about the best value. It certainly doesn't tell you everything, and you might well pick a more expensive phone with less ram for other reasons, but all else being equal a phone with more ram will be better.

Comment by curiousgal 2 days ago

> best value

> iPhone

Pick one.

Comment by eagerpace 3 days ago

Because I am buying a phone to use for the next 3 years and want to buy it based on the most important property of compute devices right now. I couldn't care less about the camera and the 13 random metrics that all look the same as every other camera announcement. I will happily take 96GB of RAM in my phone (and I know what that means) and would gladly allow you to make it 1.2mm thicker in the process.

Comment by dgellow 3 days ago

You want a 96GB RAM phone and only plan to keep it 3 years? I cannot fathom the way some of you live. I have an iPhone SE from 2022 that I don’t expect to get rid of before at least 2-3 more years, meaning it would have been in use for 6-7y at minimum. And it’s perfectly comfortable to use, I’m not forcing myself in any way to keep it longer. And you’re talking about wanting a ridiculously expensive phone and only have it for 3 years? That sounds so wasteful and unnecessary

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

I couldn’t agree more. I’m typing this on an iPhone 12, bought new 6 years ago. My phone still feels snappy. And it gets me through a whole day with 60%+ battery remaining. The only real complaint I have is that I only have the 64gb model. I need to delete things every time a software update comes out because of how bloated modern software has become. But the hardware is fantastic.

I have no idea how much ram my phone has. So long as apps run well, why would I care?

Comment by unlikelytomato 3 days ago

It's about multitasking. RAM is the upgrade trigger for me. I'm so exhausted by developer introduced bloat in software such that almost every app fully reloads when switching. Devs ruin multitasking every few years until another RAM upgrade.

Comment by selcuka 3 days ago

You're missing the important bit in the GP comment:

> the most important property of compute devices right now

Memory didn't matter when iPhone 12 was released, but these days it determines which local LLMs you can run on device. That's the point of that comment.

Comment by halJordan 3 days ago

People sued apple for selling a device with no mention of ram and then apple released the next gen saying "this has more ram, you need to upgrade to it to use the features we advertised for last gen."

How about avoiding that scenario again? Is that a good enough reason? Being a diligent, informed consumer?

Comment by eagerpace 3 days ago

I’m being hyperbolic. Sharing the amount of RAM seems table stakes with the current demand and failing to disclose it seems like the answer wouldn’t be positive.

Comment by rightnutwingjob 2 days ago

If you keep a phone in good condition, the resale / trade-in value isn’t insignificant after 2 years.

The net price for a new phone then can be considered a relatively inexpensive hobby when looked at from a per week basis.

Comment by apetresc 3 days ago

What on earth would you do with an iOS device that has 96GB of RAM? You realize the last generation (i.e, the most powerful consumer phone in the world today) had 12 GB of RAM? You feel the need for eight times that amount?

Comment by lokar 3 days ago

Number go up, I guess? A lot of people derive great satisfaction from ever larger (or sometimes smaller) number. But, uh, 8X is probably too much, need to spread that out over a few generations.

Comment by cortesoft 3 days ago

They obviously want to run AI models on their phone.

Comment by apetresc 3 days ago

Very obviously you get a Mac Studio for that, not a phone. (Oh, the 96GB Studio is almost $6000, you counter? Imagine how much it would cost in a phone form factor).

You can't possibly expect Apple to take that market segment seriously.

Comment by HDBaseT 3 days ago

In theory it sounds alright, although in reality, the heat and power consumption make this less than ideal.

I am not sure single digit tk/s on weak model like ChatGPT OSS 20b @ Q3_K_M is going to be worthwhile.

Not to mention this has to be <0.01% of users who "want" to do this. The iPhone tooling would make it hard to even configure and spin up a local LLM.

Comment by LoganDark 3 days ago

> the most powerful consumer phone in the world today

According to what? (I don't disagree, just curious)

Comment by runjake 3 days ago

Based on supply chain leaks, it's pretty safe to assume 12 GB memory with up to 100GB/sec memory bandwidth at best.

The A19 Pro had 12 GB and was around 77GB/sec memory bandwidth for reference. If I was a betting man, I'd say the memory bandwidth on the A20 Pro is the same.

Comment by SirMaster 3 days ago

But they said the memory bandwidth was double the previous generation.

Comment by halJordan 3 days ago

And here we are back to the crux. Sure would be nice if the released material was verifiable instead of "trust me shitstick"

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

Why? What do you do on your phone that makes you care about memory bandwidth?

Comment by bel8 3 days ago

in 2026? LLM performance, for one.

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

everything. Faster memory, fast processing, making everything smoother, and you can idle faster.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

This is apple. They're the kings of "memory bandwidth is 2x... (within a very specific set of test cases)"

Comment by quentindanjou 3 days ago

If I didn't dream it, I think their presentation said something like 50% increase so you should be quite right probably around ~110GB/sec

Comment by carstn 3 days ago

Rumors suggested a wider memory bus on A20 Pro.

Comment by reaperducer 3 days ago

The things we need to know most, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, are unfortunately missing from the release. Their absence doesn't bode well.

Since 1984, Apple has targeted regular people, not spec nerds. You're not the market.

Comment by robocat 3 days ago

Regular people optimise for silly numbers too.

Threadcount, Watts, cubic inches: different products use different misleading measures.

Comment by ErneX 3 days ago

12GB of ram and double the memory the bandwidth over the previous model.

Comment by afavour 3 days ago

That’s certainly an iPhone, alright.

Apple basically need to release a new model every year to fit the phone upgrade cycle so I suppose it’s not that surprising to see one with so few compelling features. Maybe next year.

Comment by MattDamonSpace 3 days ago

Incremental changes year/year to a mature product line means if you skip a couple years you get a BIG upgrade

Comment by nobleach 3 days ago

> the most advanced camera in an iPhone

I mean, I can't remember the last time they DIDN'T say that. Variable aperture is kinda cool I guess. 256Gigs of storage basically means everyone's going to have to upgrade their iCloud storage monthly spend just to back this thing up. I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.

Comment by otherjason 3 days ago

Apple events are full of these meaningless statements, which always drive me crazy. Of course it's the "best iPhone Apple has ever made." If it wasn't, then wouldn't I be better off buying an older model?

Comment by paxys 3 days ago

Just once I want the CEO to go up on stage and say “this year’s model isn’t all that great tbh”.

Comment by Den_VR 3 days ago

That’s the open for an actually amazing year.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by nobleach 3 days ago

I haven't been this excited since Dodge released their new Caravan... or Ubuntu released their new orange and purple UI...

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

I'd be quite happy with "It's not as powerful as last years model, but it has double the battery capacity"

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by insaneirish 3 days ago

> I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.

This is an interesting choice. Photos from my phone would literally be the last thing I ever turned off backup for.

To each their own...

Comment by brewdad 3 days ago

Agreed. The photo backup is so seamless. I’ve been documenting my electronics and other possessions for insurance purposes and in anticipation of a move. It’s been so easy to go around the house taking photos of serial numbers and such with the better camera on my phone. Then I grab my iPad and update the spreadsheet. Nothing needed to happen on my end, the photos are just there for my iPad to access and as later proof if I ever need it.

Comment by nobleach 3 days ago

Oh I back them up to Immich self-hosted. I just stopped paying Apple.

Comment by insaneirish 2 days ago

> Oh I back them up to Immich self-hosted. I just stopped paying Apple.

Which means this original comment is somewhat disingenuous: "256Gigs of storage basically means everyone's going to have to upgrade their iCloud storage monthly spend just to back this thing up."

Clearly there is another option (as evidenced by your own behavior). But let's not pretend that option is free, either.

Comment by nobleach 2 days ago

*Everyone that wants an easy "blessed" path.

Naturally you don't run into folks who self-host Immich very often.

Comment by nicbou 2 days ago

USB-C and the 5x lens made me switch to iOS.

Likewise the 6th gen iPad Mini is what I was waiting for to get a tablet to sketch.

Sometimes a device hits just right.

Comment by drop_star 3 days ago

>I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.

how do you backup your photos when the phone gets full. I dont have a mac and the process is excruciating. Also the formats get messed up so some photos become unusable. I stopped taking 'live' photos because of this.

Comment by ValentineC 2 days ago

Not the parent, but Google Photos has been decent as a secondary backup. They even backup Live Photos now.

The two formats I've found that they don't back up accurately are rotated photos (if one's a stickler for "originals") and cropped screenshots (JPEG instead of PNG). Possibly the sidecar files for edits too.

Comment by sampullman 2 days ago

Rotation data isn't included in the file, or it just doesn't display with the correct orientation?

Sometimes Google photos shows the wrong orientation for my pixel photos/videos but it's just a display issue.

Comment by ValentineC 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by nobleach 2 days ago

I self-host Immich on a ZFS pool of older drives I had lying around.

Comment by Lucasoato 3 days ago

There’s this MacOS native application called Image Capture, use it to backup 100GB of photos. I then partitioned the photo by year and 7zipped them with encryption.

Comment by dylan604 3 days ago

You missed the salient details: "I dont have a mac"

Everything you stated to is useless to the person you replied.

Comment by edgarvaldes 3 days ago

Maybe he interpreted the "how do you backup" as a particular question directed to him, not a general one.

Comment by intrasight 3 days ago

Is handled by Synology DS File app. Is what I've done for 6 years. I don't send photos to iCloud.

Comment by FireBeyond 3 days ago

And it's not even that they said that, I get marketing spiel but one the actual phrases was, emphasis his, not mine:

"MASSIVE improvements in Camera". Where? Evolution, refinement, sure. Massive? Hm.

Comment by WarmWash 3 days ago

Camera quality actually topped out a decade ago or so, and now it's become all post-processing trends that define "best".

Not unlike the "Best jacket of the season" being the one that is most fashionable as opposed to the most functional.

Comment by Gigachad 3 days ago

This is not even close to true. I took a bunch of photos side by side with the iphone 13 pro and the 17 pro. The 17 pro was unmistakably much better, particularly on the telephoto, it wasn't even close. There was a very clear improvement in detail and sharpness, and not in a crunchy post processing way, the sensor is simply larger and higher resolution.

Now I think all the iphone cameras still suck compared to an actual camera, but the improvement over the last 10 years has been dramatic.

Comment by kingkongjaffa 3 days ago

You say that, but I've bought the non-pro iphones the last few generations (13, 15 currently) and consistently wanted a better camera, so this upgrade cycle I'll probably shell out for the 18 pro.

Comment by luqtas 3 days ago

soon we'll have a like amount predictor connected with your personal assistant talking with your social media

Comment by sleight42 2 days ago

You can always buy the $2000 edition. Or give Apple the finger. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Comment by sevenseacat 2 days ago

That's the iPhone 18, over here

Comment by fiatpandas 2 days ago

Still on a 12 Pro Max, which I bought near the original launch. It is in need of its first replacement battery. I’m very curious to see how much snappier it feels with this next iOS release which is focused a bunch on performance; in addition to a new battery, since I believe my iOS is throttling performance given the health.

Comment by sevenseacat 2 days ago

I still have my 11. The battery is garbage on it, but everything is still totally fine. Haven't upgraded to iOS 26 though...

Comment by ozgung 2 days ago

11 Pro Max. First battery needs replacement but it's ok on iOS 27. I don't need or want a new phone.

Comment by mmahemoff 2 days ago

I still use a 13 Pro Max for travel. Incredible longevity. The only downside is it requires a battery pack to last a full day but those are slim and compact now. I intend to replace the battery soon since it still has 2-3 years left as a backup.

It will probably keep most of its value too, if hardware price inflation continues.

Comment by hutattedonmyarm 2 days ago

Still using my 12 Pro Max as well. Battery is still okay-ish on mine. Not good, but I don't have to actively worry about it. Will be looking forward to all the fancy new features when I replace it in 3-4 years

Comment by napolux 2 days ago

Changed my 14 PRO battery last week. See you @ iPhone 22

Comment by sleight42 2 days ago

13 Pro here. Just upgraded my battery. May go another year or two at this rate.

Always said that I didn't see a reason to upgrade once I had 5G UW

Comment by fiatpandas 2 days ago

Yeah I tend to squeeze the life out of my Apple purchases. iPhone 4s -> 7 -> 12 Pro Max. And still on a 2017 MBP at home, running Sequoia via Open Core Patcher.

Comment by nitin7 2 days ago

I use a 14 Pro Max and the battery capacity is down to 75%

Comment by trflynn89 2 days ago

I bought a 12 Pro Max around the time the 13s came out, still at 92% max battery capacity, and still feels very snappy. Every year I wonder if the new models are going to entice me to upgrade, and every year I find myself saying meh.

Comment by techthumb 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by meyum33 2 days ago

The non-max 18 Pro getting 17 Pro Max battery is quite a great leap, no? This is actually the most surprising announcement today, given how Duo was anticipated.

Comment by fsuts 2 days ago

Yes longer battery life if the main benefit nearly every user experiences and appreciates

Comment by Merad 3 days ago

> eSIM-only models deliver up to 36 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro Max.

That might convince me to upgrade. Not because I care about watching video for two days straight, but hopefully it means the battery is large enough that it'll last 5+ years before battery degradation becomes annoying.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

I doubt any phone battery is lasting 5+ years. But I can say modern iPhones are pretty easy to swap the battery on. They designed it so the back plate gets removed to open the phone rather than the screen. No more risk of cracking the display.

Comment by tonyedgecombe 3 days ago

>I doubt any phone battery is lasting 5+ years.

Just coming up to five years on mine and it is still at 87% capacity.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

That is genuinely shocking to hear. You have to be like 3+ sd above the mean. Do you know how many charge cycles you have? I recall that most batteries need replacing after 300-500 cycles.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

There's no way that's true. Otherwise everyone's phone battery would need to be completely replaced every 2 years

Edit: I just googled it. Apple claims that the iphone 17 should handle 1000 full charge cycles before reaching 80% capacity

Comment by JK-Swizzle 2 days ago

Looks like I am going off old info. Up until the iPhone 14 it was 500 cycles to 80%, 15 and up is 1000.

I also believe apple’s claim is assuming optimal conditions. Real life is going to do a fair bit worse. So likely 700-1000 cycles for 80% if the pattern holds up.

Comment by tonyedgecombe 2 days ago

I don't know but I am very careful not to run it flat and I don't use a fast charger with it. It does get used daily though (more than I would like).

Comment by ValentineC 3 days ago

My iPhone 14 Pro is almost 4 years old and at 65% capacity. I don't know how everyone else is (not) using their phones.

Comment by Lucasoato 3 days ago

I’ve got a 14 Pro Max, used it extensively for four years and got mine at 81%.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

I think you are the average case.

I follow the estimate that lipos lose 2-4% capacity per year without any use beyond recharging for safety. If the battery sees daily use that number gets a lot worse.

My guess is everyone else is the perfect mix of hardly any use and winning the battery lottery.

Comment by usefulcat 3 days ago

iPhone 11 coming up on 7 years old in December, still at ~85% capacity.

Really it mostly depends on how heavily you use it, and maybe to a lesser extent charging habits (charging slowly, not charging to 100%, etc).

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

I hear you, but the convenience of 30W charging is very hard to give up. The only downside is it damages the battery, which makes it harder to give up, which damages the battery more.

Comment by blitzar 2 days ago

the convenience of the old usb charging brick that has been plugged in under my bed for 15 years is very hard to give up.

Comment by lotsofpulp 3 days ago

I have an iphone 13mini at 5 years and 81% capacity.

Comment by chrisweekly 3 days ago

My 13pro is at 84% capacity, but in the last month or two it seems to lose charge much more rapidly than it used to. Probably the only reason I'll consider an upgrade.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

Very jealous over here. I had a 12 mini whose battery dropped off a cliff just in time for the mini line to get discontinued.

Big phones are overrated.

Comment by Exoristos 3 days ago

You didn't replace the battery[0]?

0. https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-13-mini-battery

Comment by monxer 3 days ago

The maximum capacity of my iPhone 17 pro is still at 100% after 192 charges, that's after 1 year of usage. The extra battery life does reduce the amount of charges I have to do so that helps with the battery life.

I'm not sure where the capacity will end up after 5 years, but I think my iPhone 14 pro was at less than 95% at this point. Apple refused to replace just the battery on that one because of a small crack in the screen.

Comment by obruchez 2 days ago

My iPhone 13 Pro will be 5 years old next month. Battery capacity at 82%. Does that count as lasting 5+ years?

Comment by moduspol 3 days ago

Oh that's nice. I'd always see guides talking about glue with the screen and kinda spooked me out of it.

Comment by stevenwoo 3 days ago

I took an iPhone SE generation three to Apple Store to replace battery and they broke the NFC functionality in a way that passed their simple diagnostic tool but failed to work in the real world. I had to go back and reset the phone and upgrade my IOS so they could troubleshoot it (the phone menu for setting appointments does not allow you to pick repair broke NFC funny enough) and they were nice enough to give me a new iPhone SE to replace we proved it was broken. But that was kind of worrisome and put me off any kind of Apple self repair for something they still make.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

I think anything after the 16 regular or 17 pro becomes easy to repair. I feel you though, my first battery swap turned into a screen swap too.

The SE versions have a history of board level issues so I have been afraid to touch any of them.

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

With reason. That glue is a nightmare to deal with. I would not advise anyone start with iPhone repair.

I damaged my first iPhone repair even after multiple years of active hardware modification on other consumer devices. The older models really only go smooth if you have the Apple tools. A nice $149 of tool rental to swap the $50 part at home, rather than paying the $199 to get Apple to swap it for you. Odd how that math works out.

Comment by Insanity 3 days ago

I'm on the iPhone 13 pro max since launch and my phone comfortable gets through an entire day of usage. (Given my usage is pretty light). If the battery fubars in one of the next years I wouldn't be upset, 5+ years of battery life is enough.

But I also don't see it failing me any time soon on battery. I think local AI models in a future iPhone could be an actual reason to upgrade.

Comment by eastbound 3 days ago

Don't. Large iPhones are the deadweight of a ball and chain, and fits in no pockets. Next one will be the SE, and even if I buy an external battery, it's still lighter than the ingot Pro Max. Also you can buy one every 1.5 years.

Comment by tencentshill 2 days ago

You'll just get used to charging it once every few days, and charging it once a day will seem annoying once it degrades.

Comment by jmuguy 3 days ago

I have a 12 Pro Max purchased at release, battery is now at 83% capacity. Still lasts all day and then some, rarely think how much I've got left on a charge.

Comment by Scoundreller 3 days ago

I set up a shortcut to put me into low-battery mode once I hit 95%. Works a treat.

Comment by arealaccount 2 days ago

I have the same phone, also lasts about a day and a half.

How do you see the capacity?

Comment by Merad 3 days ago

My three year old 15 Pro is already down to 85% capacity.

Comment by LUmBULtERA 3 days ago

My 15 pro bought on release is at 91% and 607 cycles, for more reference.

Comment by rafaelmn 3 days ago

Meh I just replaced a battery in my 14 pro (and the charging port) for ~200 EUR. I didn't want to upgrade yet and I would not even be considering upgrading if the device had USB-C

Comment by kimseungyong 3 days ago

I was waiting for the standard iPhone, so it’s a shame it’s coming out next year.

Unless you’re using photos or videos like an expert, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to go for a heavy Pro anymore.

Since last year’s promotional display came equipped with the standard model, I just can’t find it appealing.

Ah, of course, since it has AI features, we’ll have to see how much the RAM difference matters, but

Could it be that Apple is going to put so little RAM in the standard model that they can’t really use AI well?

I hope you won’t go that far.

Comment by fizwidget 2 days ago

I don’t think you need to be taking “expert” photos to want some optical zoom.

I wish they’d put a zoom lens instead of a wide angle on the standard iPhone, but alas, you need a Pro for that.

Comment by ksncksndsh 2 days ago

The base iPhone’s digital som is pretty much perfect for its target audience, to be honest. These cameras are fantastic already, optical zoom is indeed a pro feature.

Comment by weezing 2 days ago

Unfortunately not gonna happen because if they introduced telephoto on base iPhone most people that buy Pros wouldn't buy Pros.

Comment by kimseungyong 1 day ago

Honestly, I don’t really know much about lenses, wide-angle lenses, apertures, and things like that Just open the camera app and take a picture In everyday life, I hardly ever zoom in to take pictures Because of this, I can’t see any reason to buy the Pro

Comment by bilekas 2 days ago

I'm finding it really hard to justify buying a new iPhone. They're so expensive these days for marginal improvements that seems if you're not an avid photo taker/media maker you don't get much back from.

Comment by otterley 2 days ago

It makes a lot more sense to purchase one if you consider their residual value when you sell it to upgrade later. A typical Android phone depreciates much more quickly than an iPhone. My three-year-old iPhone 15 Pro is still worth $500 or more on the open market--about half of what I spent. That's only $166/year.

The downside is that you need more money up front to purchase it.

Comment by Marsymars 2 days ago

TBH I don't think I've ever bought a new phone because there was something new and fancy that I could justify. Every phone I've bought has been because my previous phone stopped receiving software updates, or in the case of my Pixel 6a, had a hooped battery.

Comment by hobo123 2 days ago

Then don't. Isn't the whole point of long support cycles that you can keep using your phone for 5 years +, if it serves you well? (typing this from an S22)

Comment by orloffm 2 days ago

If you're an avid photo taker, you need to buy a Pixel Pro.

Comment by ksncksndsh 2 days ago

If youre an avid photo taker that actually cares about the photos you take, you need to buy an iPhone.

Comment by bienstar 2 days ago

or a camera I daresay

Comment by zarzavat 2 days ago

The marginal improvements add up over time. Most people upgrade every few years, amortized over a 3 year upgrade cycle it's not really that expensive.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

Don't then. Just wait until you actually need a new phone before buying a new one

Comment by vivzkestrel 2 days ago

- tired of fitting all the 7 inch phones

- can I get a 5 inch phone please?

Comment by ngruhn 2 days ago

refurbished 13 mini for me

Comment by adolph 3 days ago

Is anyone else intrigued by the $129 "panel of over 50 biomarkers, aimed at enhancing preventive health insights?" This was mentioned in the Apple Health segment. [0] I checked out Quest's website and there wasn't an obvious match. [1]

0. https://www.biopharmawatch.com/news/DGX/apple-health-app-que...

1. https://www.questhealth.com/shop-tests

Comment by tonic_note 2 days ago

Yes, that felt very bizarre and glossed over. The specific details the speaker gave made me feel like it was a weird product placement, but like, _why_? Why would this multi-trillion-dollar behemoth needs to strike a brand deal with Quest?

Comment by adolph 2 days ago

I don't think it is bizarre since a panel of lab tests are physiological indicators that may result from the various health and fitness metrics currently measured/collected by iPhone.

There are lots of tie-ins from Apple products to other services that they don't offer: like telecom, and banking. Quest seems a reasonable partner given their ubiquity. I wonder if Apple is getting a cut and/or getting a discount for consumers on this service?

Comment by cromka 2 days ago

They want they health models to learn based on consistent set of baseline markers. Pretty cool thing to do.

Comment by epistasis 3 days ago

I really don't care at all about phone models, I just want software to launch quickly.

Waiting 15 seconds for a simple app is just infuriating in this day and age. This is mostly on crappy app developers, but a lot of that falls on Apple for not having a rating system that encourages basic good app behavior.

Every bad app that I encounter, which sends advertising notifications, takes a long time to launch, etc. is dominated by 5 star reviews, somehow. The whole ecosystem feels broken.

(And I'm also really offended by how ugly, unpolished, and broken the Tahoe visual style is on iPhone. The whole thing feels like a buggy beta, something completely unworthy of Apple of the past. That it's still not fixed is an indication of the Apple of the future, unfortunately...)

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

I try and pick apps based on package size the rare time I look for some app. There are still apps out there made like they were 10 years ago (that probably haven't been updated in 10 years) where the package size is sub 10mb, sometimes sub 1mb. You get an app like that it is performant and will fly on any iphone really, and barely impact battery life in all likelihood.

Comment by fhub 2 days ago

Package size has very low correlation to launch time. The binary and assets are separate. Additionally some slow app launches are simply waiting for a network request or chain before the view controller renders.

Comment by asdff 2 days ago

Situational. But often these apps are doing something just using that standard ios ux library from the really old days, and they open almost instantly as a result as it was designed to work on an iphone 3gs.

Comment by Marsymars 2 days ago

In theory, sure, but in practice devs who care about package size correlate to those who care about launch times.

Comment by throw1234567891 3 days ago

Maybe you need a new phone. Or a faster internet connection?

Comment by epistasis 3 days ago

No I need better phone app developers. The fastest phone has the same issues. New phones are just as sluggish. And, it's a phone, there's not going to be fast networks everywhere, and a whole generation of poor developers was raised to believe that the network was always present and always fast.

And on the iOS side, Tahoe inserts all sorts of overdone, ridiculous animations that slow down phone interaction, but delaying presentation of

Comment by crtified 3 days ago

We are up to the iphone 18 now. The iphone is said to be about 50% of Apple's revenue since 2012. Regardless of app developer quality, it is quite literally Apple's now-well-honed job to ensure that enough people want to buy next year's model, by various types of forced obsolescence. Indirectly, this means that the durably snappy and non-sluggish experience you're forever wanting can never actually happen. 'Forever wanting it' is an essential part of the business design here!

In this system. Of 'smartphones', where a small handful of corporate masters - who also happen to (now!) be a big share of the world's largest and most profitable corporations - now own over half of the computing world that we love, following their whirlwind 20-year takeover of it.

"No I need better phone app developers." - Hmmm. Commiserations. The trend of developer quality (and/or it's inverse - e.g. system complexity and overheads) has been fairly constant since the term 'developer' became mainstream parlance, and you won't need me to point out what effect AI coding agents have had upon the doorway-to-entry.

Comment by hobo123 2 days ago

Indeed, on modern laptops and phones every UI interaction should be instant (check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison). For background stuff, add some progress indicator.

Can't believe the crap OSes and frameworks add these days in terms of performance cost (and sadly, Apple doesn't exactly shine in that regard)

Comment by devilsdata 3 days ago

Not that you aren't correct, but Tahoe is a MacOS release, not iOS. I assume you mean iOS 18 (the version before iOS 26)?

Comment by MYEUHD 3 days ago

Tahoe is macOS 26. The corresponding iOS version is iOS 26

iOS 18 corresponds to macOS 15 (Sequoia)

Comment by ksncksndsh 2 days ago

iOS and macOS don’t “correspond” in any way, shape, or form. Completely different releases. Their release windows tend to be close (by design) but there ‘s no “correspondence” here.

Comment by throw1234567891 2 days ago

Yeah, they do: go and fucking educate yourself. You're one google search from the result: https://support.apple.com/en-us/123075. Fuck...

They both by design follow the same numbering scheme. By design. It's like you missed the whole point of Liquid Glass.

Comment by xu_ituairo 2 days ago

I agree that the releases to correspond, but the way you’ve said this is probably making someone’s day worse

Comment by asdff 3 days ago

The bigger question is what are these apps doing that they aren't doing 10 years ago that they now need all this extra compute for to serve the same basic functionality? It always amazes me how stuff like instagram just tanks my battery life. It is instagram its basically wgetting image urls same as its always done but it is taking over system resources for reasons...

Comment by redundantly 2 days ago

Because the app tracks every movement, every scroll and tap, how long you look at things, and reports back with data on all of your activity.

Comment by asdff 2 days ago

You'd think this would only amount to what a couple dozen lines of text log per session showing the clicks and look times on different frames.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

Nah. Software took 15-20 seconds when we were back on spinning discs.

Now that we have solid state supercomputers in our pockets, even the most simple app should launch in milliseconds

Comment by JK-Swizzle 3 days ago

I just tested a number of apps on my 15pm connected to WiFi and could not find anything that took longer than 5 seconds. That includes some small developers and bad developers.

Not quite sure where you are seeing this. Maybe games?

Comment by pawelkomarnicki 1 day ago

I am sitting on my 15 Pro Max and I don’t feel compelled to upgrade apart from the mild flex of having a mobile camera with aperture. But then, I can take my camera with me when I want to take more ambitious photos rather than point and click I usually do with my phone. It’s nice to see the progress though because one day I might upgrade and it will feel nice.

Comment by doubtfuluser 2 days ago

Sadly my 14 pro has a crack in the lower right screen, and the tele lense has some issue with fixing lens position / focus (? I hear some clickering and it doesn’t focus). Otherwise I would just stay another few years with it, now I’m going to upgrade - and yeah I’ll stay with Apple. I have some devices quite a few years old by them and still working flawlessly.

Comment by 40four 2 days ago

The only thing that’s interesting to me about this release are the “Reference Images”. Seems like it could be a genuinely useful feature, especially in a world of AI generated content. I wonder if a similar system exists in other cameras?

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by at1as 3 days ago

I have no idea which iPhone version I have anymore. It doesn't feel as though it's missing anything, though.But I'd upgrade immediately if the new models truly offered better AI experience.

Forgive my skepticism that Apple will get it right. Even the lauded latest version of Siri is far worse than the labs' offerings or Android at voice dictation (I now have to fix 1 word per sentence instead of 4, previously)

Comment by jjice 3 days ago

Agreed on iPhone versions not feeling significant. I personally consider it a good thing. I'll keep my phone for as long as possible and not feel the need to upgrade.

I personally don't care if Siri is the worst LLM of the big players, as long as it can answer my basic questions and search my texts, I'm happy. I don't need "frontier intelligence" for that kind of stuff.

As for dictation, they say the new dictation is much better, requiring an iPhone 17. Unfortunately, I won't get to find out if that's true for another five or so years, but I'm hopeful for a better dictation on device, because you're right.

Comment by kenjackson 3 days ago

I update my phone now when the battery requires two full charges to 100% to last throughout the day. But there's no feature I'm looking for. My current phone is a 13 -- so I guess it lasted five years, which seems crazy long for it to be perfectly fine from a functionality perspective.

Comment by at1as 3 days ago

I would probably still have my iPhone 12 mini if not for what happened to its battery. Loved that form factor, but the battery went from bad to worse in just a couple of years.

Hopefully these models have a longer lifespan before the battery life forces a replacement. If they truly offer 36 hours, there's more runway before they hit the < 18 hours point at which many people need a refresh

Comment by mrexroad 2 days ago

I’ve been holding on to my 12 mini for a bit too long probably. I loved the thing before iOS 26, but sadly since then, even basic tasks cause it to overheat and just hang for several minutes until it cools off. The battery is a joke of course, but I was fine with that until the overheating. I’ve swapped it 2x over the years for a new unit, but shit software, shift web, and shit cell data coverage have made it nearly unusable.

I’ll finally, albeit reluctantly, upgrade this year. I really liked the mini form factor.

Comment by petesergeant 3 days ago

I'm on a 12. Paid really not very much to get the battery replaced recently, and I wished I'd done it sooner. There's at least another year left in this phone now if I want it.

Comment by ocdtrekkie 3 days ago

Same, I went from a base model iPhone 11 to a base model iPhone 16. Assuming the trend line holds up, I'm in for an iPhone 21 next!

Comment by osiriskang 3 days ago

Almost the same as what I did, 11->16 Pro, and really only because I wanted a nicer camera. 128Gb has been more than enough for what I need. Don't have a reason to upgrade, battery still gets me through 2 days without a charge, and with Kino the times I want to have nicer-than-stock video I can get it.

Comment by newman314 3 days ago

I went from a 13 Pro to 17 Pro and the battery life has been great.

Comment by littlexsparkee 3 days ago

I used my iPhone 8 for exactly 5 years before the battery went to hell. Been on iPhone 14 for 3 years, 9 months and see no reason to upgrade.

Comment by dylan604 3 days ago

That's kind of like saying the 2026 Corolla isn't really much different than the 2025. People don't expect to upgrade annually. I'm using an iPhone 15, and upgraded to that from a 6S+. The 15 was a night and day difference. Most people are financing their device with their service plan which is 2-3 contract.

Comment by dayvid 3 days ago

I upgraded from a 13 to a 17 pro. Barely notice a different, my old phone was just dying

Comment by hakunin 3 days ago

I got a battery replacement instead, and still use 13 pro, works like new.

Comment by js2 3 days ago

The 13 is the last generation of the mini and I still have mine. Good to know I'm not missing anything. Battery capacity isn't even below 80% so I can't replace it under Applecare yet.

Comment by bayganyo 3 days ago

13 to 17 pro is a huge leap in performance, battery life, and camera features.

Comment by paul7986 3 days ago

Indeed been using the new Siri since June and it fails a ton in comparison to chatGPT voice!

Using chatGPT voice i can see Open AI's push for pushing us to a new Internet voice paradigm 1st with screens/visuals secondary & complimentary to possibly none at all. It would be much safer especially when driving to get super intelligent human like directions where voice says drive to the mcdonalds on dorset you go to all the time and across the street is the new 7 Brew coffee shop.

Comment by hdgvhicv 3 days ago

This is the problem for Apple. Expect shorter lifetime for security updates in the next few years. It’s why they’re pushing the “lease to own”, because people aren’t upgrading every year, or two, or even three any more.

Comment by eastbound 3 days ago

— "Start my chronometer"

— "There is no contact named 'Chronometer'"

Maybe if we mock the iPhone enough, they'll stop autocorrecting words with other words that are on the opposite side of the keyboard. Or mistype letters with the letters just next to them.

iPhone is laughing stock. A neverending comedy of "There is no track named 'Call Mom' in your Apple Music library."

Comment by VCFundedGenYer 2 days ago

Holding onto my 14 for as long as possible as it is safe from the absolute nonsense AI features.

Comment by gniv 2 days ago

The 17 is 969 euros. The 18 Pro is 1479 euros. How can I justify the difference? I'm on 13 now and I wanted to get an 18 but since there is no such thing I will probably end up with the 17.

Comment by ldsd 2 days ago

I'm still on a 12 pro. Was considering the 17 a couple months back, decided to wait for the 18 and now I'm in the same boat as you. The 18 just doesn't really seem worth the huge difference...

Comment by ldsd 2 days ago

I've decided; just ordered the 17

Comment by pangratz 2 days ago

It was 969€. It's 1099€ now.

Comment by gniv 2 days ago

FNAC/Darty/Boulanger still sell it for 969. Maybe I should pull the trigger soon.

Comment by jtrn 2 days ago

I’ve never been more baffled by an Apple event in my life.... We in Norway are part of the first batch of the rollout for the new AI/language feature?!??!?! Something’s fishy. Somethings up!

Comment by the_sleaze_ 3 days ago

The photos I get on my iPhone are worse with every generation. Can anyone tell me if the photos are any good on these new ones? The hardware is fine I'm sure it's the post processing that destroys the image.

Comment by alistairSH 3 days ago

Have you tried using a 3rd party photo app (like Halide)?

Comment by ricardobeat 3 days ago

The 16 was a significant downgrade in quality due to over-processing. The hardware is actually improving, you just unfortunately need to use a third-party app to get access to the raw photos.

Comment by theHocineSaad 2 days ago

My iPhone 14 Pro already does everything I need. Honestly, I can't see what a newer phone could possibly do for me that this one doesn’t.

Comment by 40four 2 days ago

Nothing. I’m going to run my 13 Pro Max into the ground. I do find the “Reference images” interesting, but not so much in going to run out and buy one. Other than than it’s the same old “everything is better” marketing shtick

Comment by ModernMech 3 days ago

Seems like at this point each year the biggest new feature is a new color.

Comment by brewdad 3 days ago

It works with normies.

My wife just preordered an 18 pro. She’s the family photographer and is still on a 128gb iPhone 12, so it’s time for an upgrade and she fell in love with the cherry color.

She bought the 12 instead of the more appropriate 12 pro years ago because she loved the purple that she couldn’t get with a 12 pro.

Edit:typo

Comment by rconti 3 days ago

Is it cherry? I see burgandy on the site. Also, preorders begin on the 12th.

Comment by brewdad 3 days ago

You’re right, Apple is calling it Burgundy. Previous leaks were calling it something or other cherry but it looks to be the same color.

Comment by ModernMech 3 days ago

Yeah I wish they made a Macbook that color, it's pretty nice.

Comment by ValentineC 3 days ago

> My wife just preordered an 18 pro.

I guess this is from a reseller, and not from Apple.

Comment by brewdad 3 days ago

Apple was taking orders today. Maybe not in your region.

Comment by ValentineC 2 days ago

Which country are you in?

Comment by sssilver 3 days ago

...and a brave new price

Comment by maxglute 3 days ago

That is a... very underwhelming strap design. Wish Apple would do something interesting with accessories like eink backscreen. It's just been so mid.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by rajay99 3 days ago

$1199 for a variable aperture camera + 12gb of ram. Why not add stylus support?

Wait, that is gated to the $1999 duo device, with untested reliability.

Comment by supratims 3 days ago

I think I am going to continue with my 17 pro max for another year. I usually upgrade every year, but not this time.

Comment by josephg 3 days ago

I haven’t upgraded since 2020 and I still don’t have a good reason to. My iPhone 12 still runs great. I use a real camera for photography. Other than the cameras, what has meaningfully improved over the last 6 years?

Comment by muppetman 3 days ago

Yea I just swapped my jogging/beach iPhone from an Xr to an iPhone 12 and wow, it's so much better than the Xr and pretty much as good as my "proper" phone, an 17Pro. It's got 4G RAM instead of 12G but it performs almost as well. Xr->12 is a huge leap in performance and I noticed it straight away. But the 12 against the 17 is much harder to see the difference. Less redraw of icons on the main screen is the primary thing I've noticed.

Comment by arrowsmith 2 days ago

I'm still on an iPhone 11 that I bought second-hand a few years ago when the iPhone 15 was the newest. The battery life isn't great which is the only thing tempting me to upgrade, but I'll still put that off as long as possible.

Other than the battery I have no complaints. It's a phone. I can make calls, send texts, browse the web, check maps, take photos. What more do I need? Why waste money?

I can't even tell the difference between newer iPhone models. Why do people upgrade every year? What's the point?

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

The only noticeable thing is faster screen, the 17 has 120hz screen.

Comment by blitzar 2 days ago

my eyes are an older model

Comment by ksncksndsh 2 days ago

The difference is noticeable even if you pretend to not notice it for cool internet points. ;)

Comment by josephg 2 days ago

I can definitely spot the difference. But I don’t think I really care. If my MacBook mysteriously swapped from 120hz to 60hz, it would probably take me several weeks to notice.

Comment by whackernews 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by gcanyon 3 days ago

We need Apple Reference Video and Audio.

Comment by sergiotapia 3 days ago

45 hours of video playback is insane?! Is this accurate, because if it is I will sell my phone and buy this. Normally my samsung discharges in about 12 hours or less when I'm out, not even watching 12 hours of video.

"On iPhone 18 Pro Max, five minutes of wired charging provides around seven hours of video playback"

Materially impactful feature holy moses! I can plug it in, brush my teeth and I'm set for the work day.

Comment by dofm 3 days ago

iOS video playback is pretty highly optimised and hardware-assisted, though, right?

Not sure you can really extrapolate non-video battery life from video battery life. I have an ageing iPad and I can get a couple of hours of video when the battery is at 30%, but it would be gone in 45 minutes if I was browsing.

Comment by phil21 3 days ago

Depends on which video codec. If it’s the most efficient one that has dedicated silicone embedded in the chip, it’s going to work great.

Web browsing is typically significantly harder on power. Plus these benchmarks usually mean in a perfectly dark room with the backlight at close to zero.

Comment by sergiotapia 3 days ago

I had no idea, I thought video was the most expensive thing to burn battery on since it's video, full screen motion, and loud sound. Interesting!

Comment by kccqzy 2 days ago

Apple quotes 30 hours of mixed use or 45 hours of video playback. So video playback is almost 50% more efficient than general use.

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

It is gaming if you want to burn through your phone battery.

Comment by ChrisRR 2 days ago

It's like electric car ranges. Their claim will be 45 hours under a very specific testbench. Real life results will be lower

Comment by BISH-BASH-BOSH 3 days ago

Is the C2 modem the satellite data chip?

Comment by rickdeckard 3 days ago

It's their in-house cellular modem for 2G/3G/4G/5G.

No details on satellite comms, but the predecessor C1X also handles satellite communication and competitor Qualcomm also does satellite comms on the same silicon, so I'd say yes.

Comment by mcculley 2 days ago

Will they figure out how to fit the new C2 cellular modem into a MacBook Pro?

Comment by gib444 3 days ago

£1200 / £1300 and 256GB storage lol

(Pixel 11 512GB / 16GB RAM is also £1200 - not an endorsement)

edit: and Apple Care got a huge price increase (31%) on the new Pro: the 2 year £179 option is gone - now it's £129 for 1 yr.

Comment by nixuserb58 3 days ago

$300 price increase in India.人

Comment by SV_BubbleTime 2 days ago

I find it really strange they don’t mention the zoom magnification.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by iw2rmb 2 days ago

I've never seen such a boring landing page from Apple.

Comment by HaZeust 2 days ago

Because they shared the Newsroom URL, instead of the Apple product page:

https://www.apple.com/iphone-18-pro/

Comment by iw2rmb 2 days ago

A-h-h! Thanks! But still, I see no usual transitioning; the images differ in style, weird `play` on carousel. Previous ones were eye catchers. Do you disagree?

Comment by HaZeust 1 day ago

I like the heavy visual emphasis on the variable aperture across the page! That's pretty cool

Comment by diogenescynic 3 days ago

I just want a MacBook with a cellular modem. Why is this not sold?

Comment by nomel 3 days ago

I would assume it's because most people just tether to their phone with a USB cable or wireless with two mouse clicks.

Comment by jshier 3 days ago

It's also because, until Apple's C-series models, they would've had to use Qualcomm modems which had a percentage-based royalty, and Apple would likely need a new contract for usage in Macs, so may had to pay even more. Even with their own modems they still have to pay Qualcomm's patent royalties, so it's likely just don't want to do that on devices which can cost over $10k today.

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

I don't want a seperate cable, and my iphone burn through battery like nothing when hotspoting.

Comment by aeroscissorz1 2 days ago

I personally prefer 17 pro for better value for money.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by publlus_enigma 3 days ago

I wonder how this works in tandem with the Computational Image Pipeline?

From Apple: "Apple Reference Image provides users with an unalterable reference photo, visually confirming what the sensor saw at the moment of capture."

The pixels that arrive in the final image have already been significantly altered from what the sensor saw: demosaicing, noise reduction, Deep Fusion, artificial bokeh, etc. Is the signature anchored to raw sensor readout (making the reference a de-mosaiced digital negative, with all CIP processing deliberately left outside the trust boundary), or to the CIP's emitted image (in which case what does 'unalterable' actually protect against)? If it is the latter, then Apple are essentially saying some forms of computational (and ML) manipulation are acceptable in a signed capture, so long as it is their manipulation.

Comment by phyzix5761 3 days ago

Reminds me of nba2k: same game every year

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by justinator 3 days ago

Looking forward to the photo samples with the variable aperture. If it's something you can manually set (with the Camera app or third party), that would be neat. The miniaturization of this mechanical piece is really quite wild.

Eh, that's maybe about it.

Comment by timster6442 3 days ago

While it is a cool technical advance to see, its use case is probably niche. One of the biggest things people say about photography is lighting. In general, if you can get more photons onto your imaging plane, you will have a better picture. This is why phone cameras, despite advertising 100s of MPs, still fall short. For the same field of view and capture conditions, fewer photons are collected because phone sensor sizes are much smaller. This is a physical limitation that cannot be overcome.

Now given that they already have a lower photon budget, you now want to add aperture control, which when stopped down physically reduces the amount of light from the scene that reaches the sensor. Thus you need to compensate for these lost photons somehow, so gain will probably have to increase quite a bit, but then you get noisier, grainier photos. This then leads to the suspicion that you will need some sort of AI denoising or computational processing to recover some of that lost image quality. Though of course you can comp in other way such as exposure time (they can make big wins here with their stabilization) and tons of lighting.

Also a phone already starts with very deep depth of field because again smaller sensor size thus smaller focal length etc. Most images at their lower f stop is already in focus. So the ability to reduce aperture or simulate shallow DOF is trying to give users more of the creative control that larger sensor cameras naturally have (need to manipulate because of their larger sensor size) and doesn't make much sense to me.

Comment by foldr 3 days ago

The iPhone 18 Pro main camera is f/1.48, which is half a stop wider than the f/1.78 main camera on the 17 Pro. An f/1.48 fixed aperture would probably not be ideal (less depth of field, more revealing of lens aberrations) so there is a real light gathering advantage to the variable aperture.

>Also a phone already starts with very deep depth of field

Fairly deep. You can easily see background blur on a modern iPhone camera if you focus on something close. The very fact that the cameras all have variable focus shows that depth of field isn't as deep as all that. The extra depth of field from a narrower aperture could certainly be useful in some cases, such as landscapes. Here's a question for your favorite LLM:

"If I am shooting an iPhone 17 Pro main camera, what aperture would I theoretically need to get perfect focus from 1.5 meters to infinity, assuming a CoC suitable for a 12MP shot?"

Answer: about f3.2 if you manage to focus at the optimum hyperfocal distance.

>which when stopped down physically reduces the amount of light from the scene that reaches the sensor

As you say, this is only the case if you can't increase the exposure time to compensate. In daylight you will often have plenty of latitude to do so, even without image stabilization. Typical daylight shutter speeds at f/1.78 can be around 1/1000 at base ISO, so there is plenty of room to increase exposure time by 2-3 stops in those conditions.

Comment by tehnub 3 days ago

>Also a phone already starts with very deep depth of field because again smaller sensor size thus smaller focal length etc. Most images at their lower f stop is already in focus. So the ability to reduce aperture or simulate shallow DOF is trying to give users more of the creative control that larger sensor cameras naturally have (need to manipulate because of their larger sensor size) and doesn't make much sense to me.

Totally agreed. I wonder if it will make 180-degree shutter angle video easier to achieve. The only way to achieve this on current iPhones during the day is using a pretty strong ND filter.

Comment by polskibus 2 days ago

What compact camera would you recommend to get to take pictures that look noticeably better than iPhone’s? I mean without running around with a bag of lenses.

Comment by mrheosuper 2 days ago

>The miniaturization of this mechanical piece is really quite wild.

It's nothing new, Samsung has done thing on the S9/S10, and recently Sony is also doing this, they even come with movable zoom lens

Comment by 1970-01-01 3 days ago

Apple innovation truly looks dead at this point. At $1200 I expect them to be made in the USA by union workers.

Comment by infecto 3 days ago

Hyperbole if I have ever read it. Lots of other products released I don’t think the highlight was the iPhone 18.

Comment by spacebanana7 3 days ago

And even then the price of the phone ex memory is staying stable.

Even Apple can’t eat hundreds of dollars in extra cost per phone in competition with AI memory consumption.

Comment by tempest_ 3 days ago

Why would they?

Every one else is raising prices at so they will too.

Comment by Marsymars 2 days ago

How would this even be tenable? Like there's no way for Apple to stand up production of hundreds of millions of iPhones per year in the US.

Like say Apple invests billions of dollars into American iPhone production to at least produce the tens of millions to sell in the US - then what? Apple just accepts the the US market is basically a wash where profits are a fraction of the rest of the world with Chinese/Vietnamese/Indian models? And you anticipate that other countries won't mandate the same thing?

Comment by nxc18 3 days ago

Try $12,000 for that.

Comment by ballsac 3 days ago

This is the kind of nonsense I come here for… can I follow you? :D

Comment by hulitu 1 day ago

I'm waiting for iPhone 18 Ultimate

Comment by b8 2 days ago

Samsung phones still have better cameras. Nothing that special over the Pixel 10.

Comment by jghn 3 days ago

Just say no to phablets

Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

I don't know why we even have this event anymore. There's a new iPhone every September. It's incrementally better than the last iPhone. Phones keep getting more expensive while doing basically the same thing for some reason. Just buy whatever is out when you need a new phone.

I bought an iPhone 11 in 2019 I think? It last until 2 years ago when I limped along until the iPhone 16 Plus. I like the big screen area. The premium for Pro isn't worth it to me. I hope to get another 3 years out of it.

What I would like is an iPhone with Touch ID as an option and no, I don't mean the small one (SE?). I want a big screen. Put the Touch ID on the back of the phone like the samsung Galaxy did.

I literally hate Face ID with a passion and it's a massive accessibility issue for people with visual impairments.

No amount of slightly better CPU and camera is going to get me to upgrade every year anymore.

Comment by chrisbrandow 3 days ago

How is Face ID un-accessible for those with visual impairment? I hadn't heard that before.

Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

If you have to hold your phone closer to your face because of poor eyesight, Face ID will constantly fail. So you have this dance of having to pull it away to get Face ID to pass when required. Touch ID just works.

Comment by havaloc 3 days ago

You can easily turn it off - it's a security feature:

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/change-face-id-and-at...

Comment by sgarland 3 days ago

You’re in luck, the Duo has Touch ID and a big screen.

Comment by nullbio 2 days ago

Boring.

Comment by theplumber 3 days ago

Ok so another “better” smartphone. To me it is very hard to get excited about the new smartphones. It really seems they have nothing new. I mean you have Apple Pay on any old iPhone and the software is more or less the same, the battery more or less the same…there is really nothing new. I am going to get a 12k or 16k camera to solve the “camera” issue and that would be it to avoid buying better iPhones every x years.

Comment by refactor_master 2 days ago

If you think a cryptographically signed image can’t be JPEGed 5 times and shared on Facebook for misinformation then here’s a relevant XKCD for you:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png

Comment by ungreased0675 3 days ago

I’m still waiting on a mini

Comment by dijit 3 days ago

we’ll be waiting a while. The last Mini was iPhone 8 sized, when I considered anything larger than the 5 to be too much.

The Mini thus, undersold, because if you were fine with the 8 then iPhones of that size were still available (2nd Gen SE). Nobody bought: So Apple thinks theres no market.

Comment by Jtsummers 3 days ago

> The last Mini was iPhone 8 sized

It was smaller than the iPhone 8. It was slightly thicker (0.01"), shorter (by 0.27") and narrower (0.13"). And it had a bigger display despite being overall smaller. It was bigger than the 5, though.

Comment by dijit 3 days ago

maybe I'm misremembering the dimensions of the 8.

I did, however, take a series of photos comparing the Mini to the SE- and the packaging of the 6 (I think I gave the phone away but still had the box).

https://imgur.com/a/iphone-mini-vs-iphone-5-vs-iphone-6-case...

Comment by Jtsummers 3 days ago

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-13-mi...

The SE was the one that shared the 8's dimensions, the Mini was smaller than both. That Mini appears to be in a case, so the comparison photos aren't as useful as they'd be otherwise.

(Also, it looks like I couldn't do arithmetic earlier or typo'd the number, the Mini is 0.12" narrower, not 0.13").

Comment by dijit 3 days ago

I'm not sure I understand how you think the mini is in a case from those photos.

Maybe because it's the dark version of the phone you can barely make out the shiny apple logo, but it's there, you can see the metal edge of the phone.

It's not in a case.. obviously, that would be a stupid comparison.

Comment by Jtsummers 3 days ago

Fair, zooming in I guess I can see that. You may want to correct the label on the photo though, it shares dimensions with the 5 but you've clearly photographed an SE (original, it turns out, which was part of my confusion since you switched at some point from talking about the 2nd gen to the 1st gen) not an iPhone 5.

Comment by dijit 3 days ago

No, I was comparing the size difference of the 5 (and lineage) to the 6 (by way of case) and Mini.

"SE" is a nondescript product line and the only physical differences are the tone of the chassis and a stamp; it's a fair representation of the size of a 5.

Comment by ocd 3 days ago

Always seemed like a marketing issue on Apple's part. People have different opinions when they actually see and handle the Mini. Apple appended so many "Pro" and "Max" names to everything which ended up creating a "status symbol" that was contrary to the actual needs of the consumer to have a more reasonably sized phone. "Fablets" weren't particularly popular for that reason, and Apple still managed to lead people down this road.

Comment by permanent-overc 3 days ago

I think you forgot the history.

Apple was the last hold out with small phones, years after everybody else moved to huge phones.

But even Apple couldn't resist the pressure from the consumers, and eventually yielded.

Comment by layer8 3 days ago

The mini was released six months after the SE2 was released, which many SE1 owners holding out for a new smaller iPhone had already migrated to. Then Apple presented the mini in a joke-y manner in the keynote, didn’t do any publicity afterwards, and neither did the carriers (because the mini was lower-margin for them I presume). Lastly, the iPhone 12 gen had particularly bad battery life, which also hurt the mini. With today’s battery improvements, it would be much better (as demonstrated by the iPhone Air’s good battery life). Apple could at least have taken the option to make the “e” line mini-sized.

Comment by happymellon 3 days ago

Yet they sold more minis than Google sells Pixels.

And somehow we ended up with more Pixels and not minis.

Comment by ocd 3 days ago

Despite the Lightning port, I prefer my 13 Mini to upgrading.

Comment by rootusrootus 3 days ago

An updated 13 Mini with USB-C and modern chipset would be fantastic. That would get me to upgrade. My hope is that Apple decides the world needs an iPhone Mini once in a while, just not a new one every year.

Comment by eumenides1 3 days ago

My contention is every 5 years release a mini spec with hardware bumps. Everyone jumps in and everyone upgrade. It only has the larger size space spec.

Rinse and repeat.

If you have a "known" or "expected" cycle, people can rely on that.

Comment by jghn 3 days ago

This has been my hope. Relase one, say "oops no market", and then come back several years later

Comment by stoneman24 3 days ago

Me too, still surviving on 12 mini. Issue a new mini and you’ll have my money the minute that the shop opens.

Comment by mrheosuper 3 days ago

With SiC battery no less.

Comment by pixelesque 3 days ago

Same, got battery replaced 5 months ago.

Wish I'd got the biggest storage size when I bought it though :(

Comment by havaloc 3 days ago

Having used a Z Fold 8, it's sort of a Mini. I'd love to see a non-folding phone in the same passport form factor, I think they'd sell a ton.

Comment by azibi 3 days ago

I really liked my iPhone 12 mini. But Apple also makes a lot of money from app sales, so I wonder if there’s a connection between screen size and app purchases. Maybe users with larger screens spend more time in apps and are therefore more likely to buy apps or make in-app purchases. The more screen real estate people have, the more they might engage with apps, which could translate into higher spending.

Comment by haunter 3 days ago

The new iPhone Duo in single screen mode is the same size (5.4") as the iPhone 13 mini but with a different aspect ratio

https://photos.reportinglive.com/p/2026-09-09/f-bf86c6f5adb3...

Comment by layer8 3 days ago

Same diagonal doesn’t mean same size. The Duo is also much thicker (the camera plateau in particular) and heavier, and the front screen is so wide (a good bit wider than the Pro Max) that it’s hardly suited for one handed use.

Comment by idontwantthis 3 days ago

I wouldn’t mind buying half of one of those for 1/4 the price.

Comment by Firaxus 3 days ago

I think the screen might be the same diagonal length but it looks wider overall…

Comment by pixelesque 3 days ago

It's wider though, and surely going to weigh more...

Comment by kgwgk 3 days ago

A lot more. Almost twice as much (+80%).

  Height
  4.64 inches (117.8 mm) closed / 4.64 inches (117.8 mm) open
  5.18 inches (131.5 mm)

  Width
  3.31 inches (84.1 mm) closed / 6.48 inches (164.6 mm) open
  2.53 inches (64.2 mm)

  Depth
  0.44 inch (11.3 mm) closed / 0.21 inch (5.2 mm) open
  0.30 inch (7.65 mm)

  Weight
  8.96 ounces (254 grams)
  4.97 ounces (141 grams)

Comment by idontwantthis 3 days ago

Me too. Everyone who sees my phone loves it, and I always share a nod with my fellow mini owners. I really don’t want a huge phone and it is still more than fast enough (a 12 at that!) iPhones got Good Enough at least 6 years ago. Same with macbooks.

Comment by pixelesque 3 days ago

I wish they'd alternate each year or something between iPhone / iPhone mini if they're struggling for sales.

The body shapes and cases seem to change each year anyway now, so it's not like people get to re-use cases that much anyway...

Comment by 486sx33 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by permanent-overc 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by jdgoesmarching 3 days ago

I swear only Apple brings out comments where people will insinuate a whole nefarious conspiracy over phones being sold in different colors.

Comment by petesergeant 3 days ago

I'm an Apple fanboy, and I think OP is probably right? Having a distinctive colour that marks a phone as being the latest one is definitely a great marketing idea.

Comment by MattDamonSpace 3 days ago

Yeah it’s just not nefarious conspiracy some people are just anti-commerce

Comment by acheron 3 days ago

99% of people put their iPhone in a case that covers up the color. This is not something anybody actually thinks.

Sometimes I tell my teenage daughter “stop inventing things to be mad about”. Good advice for HN commenters, too.

Comment by OkGoDoIt 3 days ago

I don’t know, in both the USA and Vietnam I see a massively disproportionate amount of people with the orange iPhone 17 Pro. Personally I like the orange color, but based on how ubiquitous the color choice seems to be, is does look a lot like conspicuous consumption to me.

And even in a case now that they have those huge camera plateaus you can still definitely tell what color iPhone someone has.

Comment by spiderice 2 days ago

Oh my god, I think you might be on to something. If you follow the evidence, it does in fact seem like people like color. Of course Apple would exploit this by offering colored phones!

Comment by sdcfgy 3 days ago

Yeah I had a pink iPhone 13 for ages when my 15 pro got stolen.

Comment by NDizzle 3 days ago

Mine is in a blue case. My last case was black. Only when my cases wear out do I remember that my phone is actually white.

Comment by jchook 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by runjake 3 days ago

There's a lot of misdirected complaining here, so some reminders:

- Apple has this event because it generates buzz, which increases sales.

- You do not need to watch the event.

- You do not need to pay attention to anything about the event.

- You do not need to buy the new device.

Comment by michelb 3 days ago

Golden HN rule: the more complaints, the more successful the product will turn out because normal people like it. It’s like the inverse Cramer.

Comment by justinator 3 days ago

I guess exception:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593

Comment by michelb 2 days ago

Maybe, but I would argue the Vision Pro is a devkit.

Comment by Razengan 3 days ago

The Reddit Rule: The more votes someone gets for bitching about something, the more popular that thing is in the Real World.

Like on the post about the No Man's Sky update: "Oh these devs have been putting out free updates for 10 years? So what? I don't like it"

The worst thing about cynical-for-the-sake-of-being-cynical goons is that they drown out the actual legitimate complains and concerns about something.

Comment by justinator 3 days ago

Things were simpler in the Slashdot/iPod era.

Comment by mig39 3 days ago

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Comment by ActorNightly 3 days ago

- Top 4/6 links on HN are currently Apple news.

Yeah Apple TOTALLY doesn't astroturf HN.

Comment by geraneum 3 days ago

That doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to astroturf HN. We are not as important in Apple sales volume scale as you think we are.

Comment by ActorNightly 2 days ago

There are endless posts on HN about how Macs are good for LLMs. Somoene is running some model on their Mac for local inference.

What the posts dont mention is how unusable that experience is with dogshit slow tokens/second. To make a local model usefull you need to run the highest parameter models at 100+ tok/sec, otherwise you are just better off paying for cloud inference. So either all those people are dumb as hell, or Apple is doing clever advertising. And I personally have more faith in the tech sector.

Comment by AxonOSorg 3 days ago

Great

Comment by matesz 3 days ago

Did they just announce the ultimate solution to image authenticity online?

Instead of proving some image on some platform is not AI or severely edited, we can simply prove it was original by verifying unforgeable signature made by a camera / microphone baked into each image produced by it.

And of course in future it could be done for video and audio! This would be absolutely HUGE!

Comment by embedding-shape 3 days ago

> that image shared online is original and unedited?

The image data the sensor physically receives passes through a ton of processing steps before the image lands in your phone. If there is some watermarking/signature doing on, on the image, it'd be that the device at that moment capture that data, not that it's not AI, or not edited, or "truthful" or whatever. That's still an unsolved problem to figure out.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by nicce 3 days ago

It is a very old idea. But it matters a lot in iPhone’s scale. Many people will have it without buying a separate device.

Comment by rickdeckard 3 days ago

From what I understand, the feature renders a signed reference image from raw sensor-data "alongside the final image".

Still no solution if the image posted online is not that reference image or that reference image is actually a photo of an AI picture.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by Oras 3 days ago

Isn’t that done by EXIF like decades ago? Not on phones but DSLR. I would think it’s an easy software thing to add (and probably to remove)

Comment by doublepg23 3 days ago

The underlying tech is already compromised on the Android side.

https://lobste.rs/s/4netv1/c2pa_cameras_do_not_survive_conta...

Comment by SirFatty 3 days ago

Where's the foldable? :-D

Comment by rootusrootus 3 days ago

In some thread not yet voted to the front page. iPhone Duo

Edit: Nevermind, it has made the front page now

Comment by stuff4ben 3 days ago

Apple iPhone Duo is out

Comment by qsbuilder 3 days ago

From an Android perspective we have the new upcoming Snapdragon which is going to be more powerful and more efficient. Just for anyone thinking of switching though I share that :)

Comment by WarmWash 3 days ago

I have been out of the phone tech loop for a while...

When did Qualcomm start eclipsing apple?

Comment by Havoc 3 days ago

They’re not. They’re both playing the same ARM mobile chip game though and recent Qualcomm chips have been decent. Just a pity about their weak software support

Comment by josteink 3 days ago

This phone is so underwhelming it doesn’t even make the frontpage of HN. And yes, I realise it was obviously overshadowed by the Duo.

Still. This must be the first iPhone not to break page one.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Edit: Page one I guess?

Comment by MattDamonSpace 3 days ago

Hi from page 1