The IT Nerd

The iPhone has been using the Lightning cable standard forever. The problem with that is that it’s not only one more cable to carry around (though I will admit that it’s a cable that can be shared with my AirPods Pro which makes it marginally more useful), it’s also slow as it’s based on USB 2.0. Which was fine when it was released in 2012, but is beyond lame in 2022. Especially with iPhones capable of shooting ProRes video which takes forever to pull off an iPhone due to the massive size of ProRes files. Thus I am very happy that the European Union agreed on this today:

That’s right, Apple will be forced to switch to USB-C by 2024. Now while they could in theory come out with a EU only phone to satisfy this requirement, they likely won’t as I can’t see Apple doing an “EU only” phone even though they have done Chinese specific phones in the past. Thus my thinking is that it will likely be USB-C on iPhone regardless of where it is sold.

Or will it play out that way?

In my mind, Apple won’t want to go down this road unless they have no other option. And it has nothing to do with their MFi program where they license accessories from third parties that use their tech. Frankly, the cash that they get from that is likely a rounding error for Apple. But the real reason in my mind is that it’s because Apple would lose control of how iPhones are charged and how data is transferred to and from iPhones. Because if there’s one thing that Apple loves, it’s control. Thus I can see a scenario where the iPhone goes port-less rather than Apple being forced to adopt USB-C. After all, there have been consistent rumours over the last couple of years of Apple working on something along those lines. Thus I can see Apple responding to this move by the EU by going down that road regardless of how consumer unfriendly that it would be. If you want an example of that, take a look at the Apple Watch. Downgrading to an earlier version of watchOS for example requires you to send the entire watch back to Apple. A similar process on the iPhone is trivial and only requires a cable and can be done by end users. I for one hope that Apple abandons this idea. Though I can totally see them doing it as early as next year simply so that they can maintain control and thumb their noses at the EU.

Here’s the counterpoint to that argument. Apple has USB-C on MacBooks, iPads, and even the HomePod mini. And Apple could just say that the gig is up and just make the move to USB-C. That would make consumers happy. And it would make the EU happy. And Apple is rumoured to be testing iPhones with USB-C at present. Thus it’s plausible that this switch to USB-C is already in progress at 1 Apple Park. Though I can completely see Apple putting an Apple style “twist” on their implementation of USB-C on the iPhone so that they maintained some level of control, or gain some sort of competitive advantage. Though that may risk the wrath of the anti-trust gods if they did do that. Regardless, if Apple were to do this, we could see it as early as next year’s iPhone.

I for one am happy that the EU took this stance as it may result in less cables in my laptop bag. And I bet that a lot of consumers feel this way as well. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to this. Though that response outside of a press release or a comment to the media may take a while to come.

Yesterday, Apple announced the M2 processor which is the successor to the M1 processor. It was dropped into a new MacBook Air and a 13″ MacBook Pro. And the second that this was announced, I got a bunch of emails from people asking if the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, or M1 Ultra based Mac has been made obsolete?

First of all, let’s hit the specs:

• This new processor is a 8 core CPU made up of 4 high efficiency cores and 4 performance cores. But all of those cores come with more cache and memory bandwidth. This according to Apple delivers 18% greater multithreaded performance versus the M1.
• Where things diverge a bit is that there’s an 8 core GPU version which you should totally ignore, and a 10 core GPU version that will give you a 25% improvement in graphics performance versus the M1 at the same power level or 35% better at max power. At least Apple says that. Nobody has benchmarked it just yet.
• The Neural Engine of the M2 can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. Which is over 40 percent more than M1 says Apple.
• The media engine includes a higher-bandwidth video decoder, supporting 8K H.264 and HEVC video. Which is better than the M1…. And that likely implies that the iPhone 14 is going to do 8K video as the processor in that iPhone whenever it ships will likely br based on similar silicon.
• Apple’s ProRes video engine enables playback of multiple streams of both 4K and 8K video. Again implying that the iPhone 14 is going to get 8K video.
• Apple’s latest Secure Enclave provides “best-in-class security”. Which is Apple’s way of saying that they fixed this mostly harmless flaw and likely a few other things we don’t know about.
• A new image signal processor (ISP) that delivers better image noise reduction for those Zoom and Teams calls.
• You can spec it with a max of 24 GB of RAM up from the 16 GB in the M1. And at first glance, the memory upgrade prices seem reasonable by Apple standards. That’s not to say that it’s cheap. They’re just not gouging you for nearly as much this time around.
• It only supports Thunderbolt 3 instead of Thunderbolt 4. So just like the M1 it will only support 1 external display that has a resolution of up to 6K at 60Hz. This is a bit of missed opportunity in my mind. But I assume that Apple is trying to create a reason for you to buy the M2 Pro, Max or Ultra when they come out.

So with all of that out of the way, does it make your M1 series processor obsolete? In short, no. After all, when Apple comes out with the iPhone 13, it doesn’t make your iPhone 12 or iPhone 11 obsolete. This is no different. Besides that, if you have a M1 Pro, Max, or Ultra, those processors will utterly destroy the M2 in every way as they have way more headroom than the M2. At least until the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra appear. And even at that point, what I said about your iPhone not being made obsolete when the new iPhone comes out still applies.

Now I will admit that there’s a performance boost in the M2. But unless you are playing video games on your Mac, which despite what Apple claims nobody does because of the lack of triple A titles on the Mac platform, or you’re really pushing the M2 using Logic or Final Cut for example, you won’t notice the difference. Thus if you’re worried that you might of wasted your money on Apple’s first generation Apple Silicon, you haven’t. Feel free to enjoy your M1 based Mac today and for years to come.