The titanium alloy used in the phone was revealed by Isabel Yang about 57 minutes into the presentation. She called it Grade 5 titanium, which is an ASTM designation. It’s also known as Ti-6Al-4V, because its major alloying elements are aluminum at 6% and vanadium at 4%. Allison Sheridan talked about its properties earlier this month, and I’ve been assuming that it would be the alloy Apple would choose ever since I heard they were switching to titanium for the band.
I guessed it would be Ti-6Al-4V because it’s the garden-variety alloy for titanium. A great material, but not exotic in any way. Apart from many aerospace applications, it’s also used in medical implants, so you know that skin contact won’t be a problem.
He goes on to describe the “thermo-mechanical process” used to build these new phones. This is a great read, as you’d expect.
Apple’s event wrapped up several hours ago, and I really enjoyed my first iPhone event. The vibe was really different from the WWDCs I’ve attended, with a much broader selection of media folks there.
The Steve Jobs Theater is exactly as nice as you’d think it would be. Everything is beautiful and perfect. The audio and visual systems are incredible. From my seat, I could see into the sound booth, and I wanted to chat with those folks about all the cool gear they had.
As things opened, the real-life Tim Cook greeted us with several of his trademark “Good Morning!” cries and then a giant Tim Cook started in on the announcements.
Apple & the Environment
Back in 2020, Apple committed to being 100 percent carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by the year 2030, and today’s event provided the company a chance to update everyone — including Mother Nature in that video — on how things are going.
As detailed throughout the keynote, Apple is using recycled material in more and more of its products. For example, the original Apple Watch Ultra used all new material in its Titanium case, and now the Ultra 2 is using recycled titanium. Moreover, these products are now carbon neutral:
Any aluminum Apple Watch Series 9 or SE when paired with the new Sport Loop
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 when paired with the new Trail Loop or the new Alpine Loop
I look forward to seeing what other products Apple can move to this new era. The sooner they get there, the better.
New Apple Watches
There’s no real way around this, but both the Series 9 and Ultra 2 are a bit boring, visually speaking. We didn’t get the rumored darker Ultra 2! But inside, there are some interesting things worth talking about.
The first is the S9 that powers these new watches. The silicon in the Apple Watch has been stagnant for a few updates in a row, but this year, performance should be notably better, as Apple shared:
Apple Watch Series 9 is powered by custom Apple silicon in the all-new S9 SiP. Apple’s most powerful watch chip yet delivers systemwide improvements and brand-new features, including a new double tap gesture and on-device Siri with the ability to access and log health data privately and securely. Apple Watch Series 9 also has a new 4-core Neural Engine that can process machine learning tasks up to twice as fast, when compared with Apple Watch Series 8. The power efficiency of the S9 SiP allows Apple Watch Series 9 to maintain all-day 18-hour battery life.
The new double tap gesture is really neat, and it builds upon AssistiveTouch, which showed up a few years ago. In my demos, it worked perfectly every time.
Tapping your index finger and thumb together will trigger whatever is the default button on the screen at any given time, assuming you are looking at a first-party watchOS app. I was told directly that there is not an API for third-party developers to integrate this into their app beyond use with notifications. Once you’re in a third-party app, there’s no double tap support, at least for now.
The iPhone 15 & 15 Plus
This year is another round of Apple taking Pro phone features and moving them down into the mainstream devices later, such as the A16 Bionic, which makes its appearance here after being in the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max last year. Likewise, the Dynamic Island comes to the 15 and 15 Plus, letting the Notch start its journey into the history books. The screen is also brighter this year, reaching 2,000 nits when used in sunlight.
One thing I didn’t expect to see was Apple’s 48 megapixel sensor pop up in the mainstream phones so soon. But it is here, and in addition to being able to produce “2x” photos by cropping that big sensor, photos can now be saved as 24 MP images, as outlined in Apple’s press release:
A 48MP Main camera shoots sharp photos and videos while capturing fine details, with a quad-pixel sensor and 100 percent Focus Pixels for fast autofocus. Using the power of computational photography, the Main camera gives users a new 24MP super-high-resolution default, offering incredible image quality at a practical file size ideal for storing and sharing. By intelligently integrating hardware and software, an additional 2x Telephoto option gives users three optical-quality zoom levels — 0.5x, 1x, 2x — for the first time on an iPhone dual-camera system.
Physically, the 15 and 15 Plus are very similar to the 14 before them, but now the aluminum rails around the phone curve to meet the front and back glass. The sides are still flat, but this rounding at the edges makes it even more comfortable in the hand. The change also makes the new iPhones look a hair thinner, to my eye at least.
The camera bump mesa is still big, but Apple has infused the glass in a new way that I do not understand, but looks great.
On the other hand, the 15’s colors are all too muted for my taste.
I got a lot of questions from folks about these finishes, and here are some thoughts:
I get that the colors are kind of boring, but I love the “Natural” finish so much, I don’t care about the others.
Apple’s video made the brushed effect look more noticeable than it is in person. If you are familiar with the Titanium Apple Watches from Series 6 and Series 7 days, that will get you in the ballpark.
Keep in mind, most people use cases and probably never noticed how smudgy the old Pro phones were. Or even what color they were.
Ditching stainless steel for titanium would make these devices lighter on its own, but Apple did more than that when rebuilding the pro iPhones:
Using an industry-first thermo-mechanical process, the titanium bands encase a new substructure made from 100 percent recycled aluminum, bonding these two metals with incredible strength through solid-state diffusion. The aluminum frame helps with thermal dissipation and allows the back glass to be easily replaced.
Who doesn’t love a good thermo-mechanical process and better repairability?
The new design also uses THE SMALLEST BEZELS ever, meaning the 15 Pro and Pro Max are slightly smaller than the 14 line, which you can see on Apple’s website or in these amazing illustrations by Kate (the Official Relay FM Historian) on Mastodon:
As always, the new Pro phones pack nice camera updates. The updated 48 MP sensor on the Main camera gets the same high-resolution 24MP default file format trick that the 15 and 15 Plus get. There was also a lot of talk about improved low-light performance, updates coming to Portraits and a lot more. I lost track of some of the specs in the middle of the presentation, but I’m excited to see what these things can do.
USB-C All the Things
The biggest news today is the iPhone’s move to USB-C, which is overdue but welcome nonetheless. Lightning was a great connector, but it’s time had come:
The real question is how long it will take Apple to remove Lightning from all of its devices, but the clock is ticking.
As expected, Apple downplayed the change, promoting USB-C as a universal standard and in use across the rest of the Apple ecosystem. While the European Union may have pushed Apple into thisand while many people will complain that Apple “just” changed their ports around, USB-C is a win.
It’s a huge win if you spring for a 15 Pro or Pro Max, as the USB-C ports in those models are capable of USB 3 speeds up to 10 GBps.
Oh, but USB-C ports in the 15 and 15 Plus are clocked at the same measly 480 MBps.
Oh, and a 10 GBps USB-C cable is not included with the purchase of an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max.
Oh, and you can’t buy a USB-C case for your AirPods Pro; the only way to upgrade to the new charger is to replace your AirPods Pro entirely.
All of these things are bad.
The Feelings Part
Being at this event on 512 Pixels’ 15th birthday was amazing. Getting asked about our work with St. Jude was even more special. In all the excitement today, I got some time to reflect on what the last decade and a half has meant.
A new episode of Mac Power Users is hot off the presses:
Mere hours after Apple’s iPhone 15 event, Stephen and David break down the news surrounding the iPhone 15 line, the Apple Watch Series 9 and the updated Apple Watch Ultra.
Old-school readers will remember 512 Pixels’ original name, ForkBombr. I bought the domain from my friend Kevin for a couple of slices of pizza, as I thought the programming joke was pretty clever.
I don’t have many screenshots from those early days, but I managed to find this one in my archives. It’s from the development phase of the first version of the blog, so don’t worry, the logo ended up a good bit smaller by the time the site went live.
(2008 was a very different time.)
In the past 15 years, I’ve published nearly 11,000 articles, had three children, changed jobs twice, started a podcast network and have helped raise $2.5 million for St. Jude. I’ve forged lifelong friendships and have been lucky enough to build things that people truly care about.
With that phrase, one of my mentors has repeatedly set me straight. And with that phrase, I’m launching ForkBombr.
In hindsight, that wasn’t the most helpful advice I’ve ever received, but it was simple enough that it still bounces around in my head. Not sucking means caring about the details no one will ever see. It means being thoughtful about the work and humble when it isn’t good enough. Sometimes, it requires turning down sponsors who aren’t a good fit or knowing when a project isn’t working out.
In that original post, I linked to a post from Merlin Mann, and now I get to call him a colleague and a friend. In fact, I get to work with a bunch of my Internet heroes thanks to Relay. Getting to do this full-time for eight years and running is a true honor.
My podcasting partner Myke Hurley has not only helped me improve my craft, but has made me a better person. My wife Merri has been nothing but patient and supportive as I’ve worked to take my hobby and turn it into a sustainable business.
The success of this blog, my podcasts and Relay FM itself all astound me. Yes, I work hard, and sometimes I care way too much, but it’s all of you who have made this possible.
So thank you. Thank you for letting my support my family by talking about computers on the Internet. Thank you for the fantastic ride that has landed me (quite literally) in Cupertino this week. My career has ended up in a place far more wonderful than I ever would have guessed back when I installed my first copy of WordPress at 22 years old.
The future of web-based macOS apps is about to change. Unite 5, the next generation of the popular Unite app is launching next week. Building on its lightweight, WebKit-powered browser backend, the new version offers groundbreaking features that make your Mac even more versatile.
Unite 5 takes customization to the next level, with an array of new modes that allow you to use web apps like never before. Whether it’s a personalized Gmail client or a high-performance workspace for resource-intensive apps, Unite 5 offers a solution that fits seamlessly into your workflow.
In its first significant update since launching Unite 4 in 2020, Unite 5 offers dozens of major new features and a new vision for how the web and macOS can coexist.
This week on Mac Power Users, David and I talk a bit more about window managers and backup utilities, while also answering listener questions and David’s modern typewriter, my new Plex server and a lot more.
For years, journalists, space nerds and government oversight groups alike have talked about the staggering costs associated with the SLS program, which is the agency’s new moon rocket. As Eric Berger reports, NASA has finally gotten the message:
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.
Published on Thursday, the new report ( see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program.
“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.
Eric quotes the juiciest parts in his article, but the report’s message is loud and clear: the SLS program cannot continue as it has for the last decade if NASA wants to use this launch vehicle to power future missions to the moon and beyond. Of course, with the agency’s direction and budget set by Congress, fixing this problem isn’t going to be easy.
I have an Analogue Pocket, which is an outstanding modern take on the Game Boy that can play original Game Boy cartridges. I also have the Analogue Pocket dock, which lets me play Game Boy games on a big screen by taking advantage of the Pocket’s excellent upscaling mode for Game Boy graphics. And, of course, Nintendo made everyone’s favorite camera from the late 90s, which you can get pretty cheap these days on eBay. If I could use the Game Boy Camera on a Pocket and send the video feed from the console to the iPad Pro, would I then be able to do a FaceTime call with someone while looking like a character straight out of a Game Boy game?
The answer, my dear readers, is a glorious, resounding Yes.
A little known secret is hidden inside every early intel iMac made by Apple prior to their 21.5″/27″ transition… they all have a Mini-PCIe slot! While many upgrades have been documented/discovered for these iMacs, and GPU upgrades have been attempted as well, few eGPU solutions have been presented as viable, or have been documented.
In this article today, the examples we’ll be using are my 2007 20" iMac, as well a 20" Early 2006 iMac. The ‘07 iMac had been upgraded to sport an AMD XFX RX 570, with full graphical hardware acceleration, under macOS Monterey! The theme here is promoting the longevity of devices deemed otherwise obsolete. Whether or not a device is obsolete is subjective, and this opinion lies with us.
