Apple

Mac shipments grow by 10.3% while other manufacturers shrunk.

In the subscribers-only section of his weekly newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman (who has reported accurately on new Apple hardware in the past) claims that Apple will introduce an external Mac monitor that can act as a smart home display when a Mac goes to sleep or is shut down.

The feature would be available on at least one monitor in an upcoming lineup that will likely include successors to Apple's Pro Display XDR and Studio Display. The newsletter didn't go into much detail about the upcoming displays beyond the smart home feature.

Like the Studio Display, a new monitor with smart home capabilities would run on a chip first seen in the iPhone. The Studio Display contains Apple's A13 chip---the same seen in the iPhone 11 line of smartphones. The upcoming smart display could potentially run on the A16 seen in the iPhone 14 Pro, since that device introduced a similar always-on display feature to Apple's smartphone lineup.

The iPhone 14 Pro's always-on display currently shows what you'd see if you tapped your iPhone to see the lock screen: the time, wallpaper, and app widgets---albeit at a very dim brightness. Later this year, Apple will launch iOS 17 alongside the upcoming iPhone 15. iOS 17 will introduce a new smart display mode for the iPhone that makes that always-on display mimic the features and information you'd see on a Google or Amazon smart display, a product category that was all the rage at CES a couple of years ago but that has not exactly become ubiquitous.

It's fair to expect the Mac monitor's smart display to work a bit like that iOS 17 feature. But while iOS 17 is slated to launch this fall, Gurman predicts that the new Mac display won't hit the market until next year at the earliest.

Gurman's newsletter also covers upcoming changes to AirPods at length. Most notably, it claims that Apple will switch the AirPods charging case from the company's proprietary Lightning port to USB-C alongside a similar switch for the iPhone 15 this fall. Apple also plans to introduce new health features for AirPods, like software that helps you test whether you have hearing loss in new ways. The health features "are likely several months or even years away."

The article is paywalled so here is the raw test for it.

Apple has been forced to make drastic cuts to production forecasts for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, unveiled last month after seven years in development and hailed as its most significant product launch since the iPhone.

The complexity of the headset design and difficulties in production are behind the scaling back of targets, while plans for a more affordable version of the device have had to be pushed back, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the manufacturing process.

Apple has already flagged that the $3,500 “spatial computing” headset device will not go on sale until “early next year”, a lengthy gap from its June 5 launch. Analysts have interpreted this as being more to do with supply chain problems than allowing developers time to create apps for the Vision Pro.

Two people close to Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese contract manufacturer that will initially assemble the device, said it was preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Multiple industry sources said Luxshare was currently Apple’s only assembler of the device. Separately, two China-based sole suppliers of certain components for the Vision Pro said Apple was only asking them for enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year.

Both projections imply a significant cut to production from an earlier, internal sales target of 1mn units in the first 12 months. The forecasts for low volumes reflect Apple’s lack of confidence in being able to scale production, according to analysts and industry experts, following years of missed deadlines in launching the device.

Wall Street analysts’ forecasts for sales of the Vision Pro vary widely, from the low hundreds of thousands to several million in its first year. At the time of the headset’s unveiling a month ago, Wedbush predicted Apple would ship around 150,000 units in the first year, while Morgan Stanley’s estimate was around 850,000 and Goldman Sachs believed it could reach as many as 5mn shipments in 2024. In comparison, Apple sold 1.4mn iPhones in its first year on the market.

Apple, whose market valuation closed above $3tn on Friday, three weeks after the announcement of the headset, declined to comment on the Vision Pro.

Luxshare did not respond to a request for comment.

This is the most complex consumer device anyone has ever made

Jay Goldberg of tech consultancy D/D Advisors Among the major hurdles being faced is the manufacturing of the sleek screens for the device. They consist of two micro-OLED displays — one per eye — and an outward-facing, curved “lenticular” lens. The inward displays offer a resolution exceeding anything currently on the market, while the outward lens projects the headset wearer’s eyes to the outside world.

The micro-OLED displays for the prototypes in the June demonstration were supplied by Sony and the chipmaker TSMC, according to two people familiar with the situation. Sony and TSMC declined to comment on any role in the Vision Pro.

Apple has been unhappy with suppliers’ productivity, said those people, especially with the yield of micro-OLEDs that are free of defects. The displays are the most expensive component in the Vision Pro.

“A lot of this is normal growing pains,” said Jay Goldberg, founder of tech consultancy D/D Advisors. “This is the most complex consumer device anyone has ever made.”

Goldberg said the higher than expected $3,500 price point already implied that Apple had baked in the cost of production inefficiencies, knowing that manufacturing yields were especially low compared with the mature products in Apple’s portfolio.

“Someone has to pay for that,” he added. “I think Apple went into this with a lot of ‘bad yield’ built into the model. There is a lot of technology in the Vision Pro and they knew it would take a while to scale up. Apple knows they won’t make money on this in the first year.”

Sony was cautious about how much the mixed-reality headset market would expand and was reluctant to step up production significantly, said Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony’s semiconductor unit, in a recent media roundtable.

“We will be watching to see how much demand [for micro-OLED displays] will increase,” he said. “But I don’t think we will be aggressive [in producing] in the same scale as image sensors,” for which Sony is building a new plant to boost production for the chips used in smartphone cameras.

Meanwhile, Apple is already working on later generations of the headset, including a more affordable version that is expected to appeal more to mass-market consumers, said two people with direct knowledge.

Apple is working with Korean display makers Samsung and LG on this second-generation headset. In order to drive the price lower, the iPhone maker has explored using other display technologies, including mini-LED, but two people said Apple was insisting on using micro-OLED even for the non-Pro headset, even though all suppliers had so far failed to match its expectations.

The cut to 2024 forecasts has disappointed Luxshare, which has been gearing up its capacity to be able to build nearly 18mn units annually in the coming years, according to one person close to the assembler.

Analysts said the whole headset supply chain in Asia was not getting much of a boost from the Vision Pro. “Apple has not made a better product than the industry imagined . . . the manufacturers’ confidence is not high,” said Eddie Han, an analyst at Taiwan-based Isaiah Research.

Despite the setbacks, market intelligence group Canalys believed Apple would surpass a user base of 20mn within five years of launch.

“Given the limited production numbers, it will be flying off the shelves, pre-ordered by Apple’s loyal fans and high net worth users in the US,” said Canalys analyst Jason Low. His projection was currently for Apple to produce 350,000 units next year, increasing to 12.6mn units five years later.

The Apple Watch is a very useful device that tracks your steps, controls your Apple iPhone, keeps accurate time, and can do much more. Although Apple's smartwatch is a fantastic accessory for everyday use, it can also play games to help you pass the time.

We rounded up the best mobile games for the Apple Watch to help you start playing. Believe it or not, but you can play all of these games on your wrist, while they're also compatible with the iPhone or iPad

or both. Luckily, most of the games featured in this article are free to download and play (with in-app purchases available). However, some of the games are premium purchases for just a few bucks, so they won't break the bank.

TL;DR -- These are the best Apple Watch games

• Star Duster ($2)
• Lifeline: Beside You in Time ($4)
• Dare the Monkey: Go Bananas! (Free)
• Chess (Free)
• Octopuz (Free)
• Arcadia! ($1)
• Infinity Loop: Blueprints (Free)
• Jupiter Attack ($2)
• Jellyfish Tap (Free)
• Ping Pong (Free)
• Tiny Armies ($1)
• Rules! ($3)

Apple and Nokia have signed a long-term patent license agreement that will give Apple access to patented Nokia inventions in 5G and other technologies, Nokia announced today.

The two companies had a prior licensing deal that was set to expire at the end of 2023, and the new deal will replace the one that is ending. Nokia and Apple have not announced the terms of the deal, but Nokia will be receiving payments from Apple.

Nokia owns more than 20,000 patents, including 5,500 patents that are related to 5G technology. Nokia offers its patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms because many of them are considered essential. This means that companies can license Nokia technologies for a reasonable price, but there are sometimes disputes over the definition of reasonable.

Back in 2017, Apple and Nokia established a new patent licensing agreement following a heated legal dispute, and that 2017 agreement was set to expire in 2023. Revenues related to Nokia and Apple's latest deal will be reflected in Nokia's Q1 2024 earnings.