Linked List: September 19, 2019

Thursday, 19 September 2019

Om Malik: ‘An Exclusive Look Inside Apple’s A13 Bionic Chip’ ★

Om Malik, writing for Wired:

The answer to that question clearly illustrates the inherent advantage of Apple owning the whole stack. To learn about how that vertical integration manifests itself in a chip like the A13 Bionic, I sat down with Schiller and Anand Shimpi, who in a past life was an influential semiconductor- and systems-focused journalist who founded the website AnandTech. Shimpi is now part of Apple’s Platform Architecture team.

The new A13 outpaces last year’s A12 handsomely, with a 20 percent performance gain across all of its main components: the six CPU cores, its graphics processor, and the neural engine. For an already high-performing chip to see such a significant boost is sort of like watching Usain Bolt beat himself in a sprint.

Power efficiency and CPU / GPU performance are important, no question. But they’re not everything. I would never argue that Apple’s A-series chips are the main reason to use iPhones and iPads. If the tables were turned and it were Apple’s chips that were significantly slower and consumed more power, I’d still use and recommend iOS because of its user interface, apps, and overall experience. It’s the same reason I never considered switching away from the Mac during the latter years of the PowerPC era, when Intel-based PCs clearly had performance and performance-per-watt advantages.

But the tables aren’t turned. Apple’s A-series chips are faster and more power efficient than anything available for Android. Can you imagine what Android enthusiasts would say if it were the other way around? They’d have a field day. Instead, they just pretend it isn’t an issue.

How fast is the A13 CPU? So fast that it beats every Mac available in Geekbench 5’s single-core benchmark. Now think about how fast the A13X will be in the next iPad Pros.

Joanna Stern’s Review of the iPhones 11 ★

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

In the scheme of iPhone upgrade history, the new iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max sure seem boring. Same designs…but new colors! Cameras…but three of them! Glass…but stronger?! After a week of testing, I can tell you that’s mostly just smoke-and-mirrors marketing, except for one thing many of us have wanted all along: phones that are a bit heavier and thicker — but work when we damn well need them to. Yes, longer battery life.

I love that her take is sort of the inverse of mine. She sees the much-longer battery life as the primary appeal, with the improved camera as a bonus. I see the camera as the primary appeal, with the longer battery life as a bonus.

She also wrote a second review — “An iPhone 11 Review for Owners of Aging iPhones” — which is basically the same starting premise as Brian Chen’s bizarre review for The Times, except done right. Stern’s advice for owners of aging iPhones is accurate and useful.

Inside Apple’s Redesigned Fifth Avenue Flagship Store ★

Lance Ulanoff, writing for Lifewire:

Apple’s business may be transforming from one driven almost entirely by a passionate devotion to beautiful hardware to one idolizing code and, especially, services, but the reimagined Apple Fifth Ave. flagship Store in Manhattan is a reminder that the physical still matters very much to the California-based company.

The 13-year-old store, which sits at the base of Central Park and is instantly recognizable thanks to its iconic 32-foot glass cube with a suspended Apple logo inside of it, has undergone a massive, 2-year-long reinvention project that somehow maintains the core essence of what drew hundreds of people to the store to line up for their first iPhones more than a decade ago.

Looks pretty cool — the skylights that double as benches on the plaza are clever.

(As an aside, I think it’s wrong to frame Apple’s push into services as a transition. Apple has sort of sold that line to Wall Street, and I’ve seen several analysts buy it, but it’s just not true. Apple is as devoted to its hardware business as ever — the push into services is an expansion, not a transition.)

iOS 13.0 Is Buggy; Wait for 13.1 ★

Lauren Goode, writing for Wired:

iOS 13 holds a lot of promise. It introduces a Dark Mode, drastically overhauls the Photos app, includes a Street-View-like feature in Apple Maps, and officially introduces Apple Arcade, the new $5-per-month gaming portal.

Something atypical for Apple is iOS 13’s notably buggy rollout.

13.0 is really buggy — I’ve been using it on my iPhone 11 review units. I’d say don’t upgrade your iPhone to 13.0 — wait for 13.1. Which, according to Goode, may not be a long wait:

But if you can stand to wait five days, it might be worth it to wait for iOS 13.1, the next update to the iPhone’s OS that’s expected to drop on September 24, and should be more reliable. That’s when iPadOS, the retooled operating system for iPads, is coming out as well.

This is news to me — Apple has previously said 13.1 would ship on September 30. I don’t know why they moved this up, but if they’re really shipping it on Tuesday, just five days from now, I don’t understand why they’re releasing 13.0 at all. The iPhones 11 already have it installed, of course. But for upgrades I don’t see why Apple is releasing it.

Update: The second footnote on Apple’s iOS 13 features page confirms that 13.1 is coming September 24.

Update 2: Best theory I’ve seen so far as to why Apple is going ahead with a wide 13.0 release instead of just waiting until next week for 13.1 — Apple Watch Series 5 requires iOS 13 on the iPhone it’s paired with. So people getting new watches tomorrow need to update their iPhone to iOS 13 tomorrow. This raises the question of why Apple didn’t delay the release of the Series 5 watches until iOS 13.1 was out.