1. Rise of Quantum Computing

Potential Impact: Revolutionizing Processing Power

Quantum computing, with its ability to perform complex calculations at speeds unimaginable by traditional computers, poses a significant threat to Apple’s existing hardware capabilities. As quantum computers become more accessible, they could outperform Apple’s devices in tasks requiring massive computational power, potentially affecting Apple’s dominance in areas like artificial intelligence and data-intensive applications.

2. Blockchain and Decentralized Technologies

Potential Impact: Disrupting App Stores and Transactions

The rise of blockchain and decentralized technologies challenges the centralized app distribution model that Apple currently employs. As decentralized applications gain popularity, the control Apple has over its app ecosystem may diminish. Additionally, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies could disrupt traditional payment systems, impacting Apple Pay and other financial services.

3. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Potential Impact: Shifting User Experiences

While Apple has made strides in AR with technologies like ARKit, the continuous evolution of AR and VR could redefine user experiences beyond what Apple currently offers. Competing platforms providing immersive augmented and virtual reality experiences might challenge Apple’s stronghold on the consumer market, particularly in areas like gaming and interactive content.

4. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advancements

Potential Impact: Enhanced Personalization and Functionality

Advancements in AI could pose a threat to Apple’s Siri and other AI-driven features. Smarter, more adaptive AI systems may provide users with highly personalized and efficient experiences, potentially surpassing Apple’s current offerings. Companies investing heavily in AI research and development might gain an edge in creating more intelligent and intuitive devices.

5. Cybersecurity Challenges in the IoT Era

Potential Impact: Protecting User Privacy

As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands, the threat landscape for cybersecurity becomes more complex. Apple’s commitment to user privacy could be challenged by increasingly sophisticated cyber threats targeting interconnected devices. Ensuring the security of a vast network of devices will be crucial, and any lapses could erode consumer trust in Apple’s ecosystem.

6. 5G Evolution and Beyond

Potential Impact: Changing Connectivity Dynamics

While Apple has embraced 5G technology, the future evolution of connectivity, such as 6G, could bring about new challenges. Competitors leveraging faster and more efficient communication technologies might offer enhanced connectivity experiences, potentially impacting Apple’s market share in the mobile device space.

Conclusion

In the ever-evolving tech landscape, even industry giants like Apple must remain vigilant to emerging trends that could pose threats to their dominance. Quantum computing, blockchain, augmented reality, AI advancements, cybersecurity challenges, and evolving connectivity technologies all present potential challenges for Apple over the next decade. Adapting to these changes and innovating in response will be crucial for Apple to maintain its position as a leader in the technology industry.

Apple’s latest Mac Pro targets professionals with highly demanding computing workloads. But we talked to those professionals, and they don’t want it — because Apple’s other computers are just too good.

Apple’s latest Mac Pro was finally revealed at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference as a machine for the most power user of power users. The video discussed audio engineering, color grading, and video transcoding. Apple’s product page mentions code compiling, animation, compositing 8K scenes, 3D rendering, and “analyzing enormous datasets.” This isn’t just for pros, Apple seems to claim; it’s for capital-P Pros.

Exactly who these pros are and why the Mac Pro is the perfect device for them remains somewhat unclear to me, even after testing the new machine for a few days and speaking to various professionals that Apple is ostensibly targeting. That’s in part because Apple, on the same day it announced the Mac Pro, also announced a smaller, M2 Ultra Mac Studio with the exact same RAM, storage, and processor options. The former, nevertheless, costs at least $3,000 more and carries a towering starting price of $6,999.

I wanted to know whether Apple’s purported target demographic — people who spend their days animating, making visual effects, and doing various other tasks generally associated with big, powerful computers — were actually interested in purchasing this machine. So I asked a bunch of them, and the answer, basically across the board, was no. Not because the Mac Pro is bad but because Apple’s other computers, namely its laptops, have just gotten too good.

Zach Passero, who does editing, animation, and visual effects for films, has been a diehard Mac Pro user for over a decade. “I’m still a big champion of the old trash can,” he says, referring to the oft-maligned 2013 design. He was skeptical when the M1 Max chip was announced — he’d never envisioned that a laptop could handle his heavy workload. But he gave the 16-inch MacBook Pro a shot and was surprised — and a little bit sad — to find that it felt just as fast as his older desktop. “Video editing, even doing effects, compositing, animating — it has been a smooth and fluid process,” he says. “I’m like, ‘This might actually suffice for a while.’”

Passero still loves the Mac Pro, but he can’t justify buying the latest one when his laptop is so good. “There’s something about my experience using the M1 chip where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I need the full Mac Pro,’” he says, with some disappointment in his voice.

Vikram Bodicherla, a staff privacy engineer at WhatsApp, previously owned two Intel-based Mac Pro models — one for home and one for work. The minute the M1 Max came out, he jettisoned both of them. Like Passero, Bodicherla now spends his day — he works on mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as “server-side stuff” — on a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max. He can build much faster. He hasn’t even considered buying Apple’s new desktop. “I don’t really need any other computer,” he says.

Kevin Ford, who shoots and edits documentaries, has been using the Mac Pro for years. He’s owned both the tower models and the trash can. But he switched to the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Max a few weeks ago, and he’s not looking back — it can do everything he needs. He can cut 4K and 6K footage. He can color correct. He can even create graphics and titles. As a bonus, he can now do it all on the road; the last project he cut, which is now on Netflix, was done entirely in hotel rooms and airplanes.

“I’m very practical when I’m looking at a piece of equipment — what will allow me to do what I need to do for the best cost?” Ford says. “If the cheese grater was priced at a certain point, would that have been more attractive to me? Possibly.” But, he adds, his new MacBook is “working very well.”

But it’s not just that the MacBook has gotten better with the release of Apple’s M-series chips. The Mac Pro, with the release of the Mac Studio, has also gotten significantly more confusing.

The Pro I received to test vastly outperforms Intel models from 2019 — even those with Apple’s fancy Afterburner card that cost thousands of dollars more. But it’s a step backward from those other models in another way: modularity.

The 2019 Mac Pro was endlessly configurable, and ports could be swapped out and upgraded as users needed. Much has changed. Spec choice is now more limited (there are only two processor options, for example, and memory is now capped at 192GB where previously up to 1.5TB was available). The 2023 Mac Pro’s memory is not upgradeable after purchase for the first time in the model’s history.

And now, of course, the Mac Studio is here. And while the Pro delivers impressive performance, you can now get that same performance in a less expensive and much more compact chassis.

I had similarly specced models of the Pro and the Studio on hand to test. Both included Apple’s 24-core M2 Ultra processor with 76 GPU cores, as well as 128GB of unified memory. While the two look quite different, and the Mac Pro has a couple extra ports, I can confirm that their performance is close to the same.

The primary advantage that the Mac Pro can claim over the Studio is the fact that the former has PCIe expansion slots — six full-length PCIe Gen 4 slots, specifically, as well as a half-length Gen 3. These, in theory, allow for some degree of modularity, where a user could slot in additional storage, IO, or other peripherals.

Except: that doesn’t include external GPUs, which mitigates the utility of these slots for graphic use cases significantly. The Mac hasn’t supported Nvidia cards for quite some time, and Apple’s own silicon doesn’t support AMD’s GPUs, either. Further muddling this matter is the fact that most PCI-E cards can now be used with Thunderbolt via an external enclosure — you specifically need to require the PCI-E 4 x16 speeds in order to gain a tangible benefit from those extra thousands of dollars.

The slots, with those caveats, didn’t blow anyone I spoke to out of the water. “Would it be nice to have? Yeah, totally… if it wasn’t a machine that started at $7,000,” said Evan Stone, a senior iOS engineer at the software development agency MartianCraft. (Stone also works on the MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and he’s a fan; he has one for work and another at home.)

Passero used to be a huge fan of the Mac Pro’s expandability, but his new MacBook performs so well that he doesn’t feel the need to add anything extra. “The new silicon chips and these built-in GPUs that they have, and the neural networks, I’m finding that most of my needs are met,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Do I just settle in and see how this goes?’”

The lack of support for external GPUs makes the feature particularly confounding for graphic professionals. “GPU support, that’s what we mostly use PCIe for,” said Tom Lindén, who runs a 3D animation agency. Other than a capture card, he says, “there are not that many expansion cards that would be useful.”

The only aspect of the Pro that Lindén finds particularly compelling for his studio is its double ethernet port. “We’re simulating huge simulations, so fast networking is really important,” Lindén says. “I don’t know how much we’d be able to utilize two slots — like if that would help the speed.” He thinks for a moment. “I guess it could, probably.”

Emilio Guarino, a music producer and engineer, thinks that feature is mostly useful for “edge case kind of scenarios” in his field. “If you’re doing game development, I’ve seen session files where the track count is like two or three thousand. You might need the added expansion for that,” he says. “But if I’m just doing commissions or just building virtual instruments and samples… I would probably just get the Mac Studio and be done.”

What about additional storage? People mostly shrugged. “I’ve never really hit that limit, and I have a very large chunk of the company’s code base on my computer,” WhatsApp’s Bodicherla says — companies as large as his, he explains, generally have processes in place that mean their engineers don’t need to hold unreasonable amounts of data on their personal machines. “If you’re doing a huge ML model, it might make sense to download everything. But even then, I feel like for running that one odd job, you could always go to, like, a server cluster,” he muses.

“I can’t justify paying double for a machine that has a couple of slots,” said Danny Nathan, founder and CEO of the product design and venture studio Apollo 21.

In general, the attitude among the professionals I spoke to was not skepticism so much as confusion.

“I don’t know why they made two different products,” said Vyacheslav Drofa, a UX director at Alty, which engineers mobile applications for banks, as he looked bemusedly at the Studio’s and Pro’s identical spec sheets.

“The offering across the board from Apple has gotten so powerful that, frankly, the Mac Pro feels a little unnecessary,” echoes Nathan, who has owned a number of Mac Pros throughout his career but is now very happy with his 14-inch MacBook. “I think we all appreciate it for what it is and what it demonstrates, but at no point has anyone said to me, ‘So when are we getting an office load of these?’”

Many people across industries, who were confident that the Mac Pro wasn’t a good investment for them, spitballed about who it might be ideal for but weren’t exactly sure. Maybe architects need it, Stone suggested. “Really, really tough machine learning tasks,” posited Serhii Popov, a software engineer at Setapp. 3D rendering, Guarino proposed, but only if you’re doing a lot of it. DevOps, others said. But there was one use case that pretty much everyone suspected might tangibly benefit from the Mac Pro and its plethora of slots: VFX.

David Lebensfeld, founder and VFX supervisor at Ingenuity Studios, was dubious. “That doesn’t seem like something a VFX studio would use,” he said after I described the product. Nobody on Lebensfeld’s team has expressed interest in the Mac Pro — there has been “zero chatter” about the product, he says.

Lebensfeld’s company is all in on Windows and Linux, and that’s common for studios of Ingenuity’s size. Switching over to the Mac Pro, given its price point, would just be impractical. Lebensfeld gets better value out of Windows PCs, which support the latest GPUs from Nvidia and can be equipped with the exact parts and specs that each team needs. When a part breaks, they can grab another one off the shelf.

In fact, some of the VFX and animation professionals I contacted for this story declined to be interviewed because they simply don’t know much about Macs — they just aren’t widely used in that industry at this point. The reality is that these types of studios need to keep their hardware functional and up to date. Replacing a full Mac Pro system — let alone a fleet of them — regularly would be an absurd cost.

Lebensfeld speculated that the Mac Pro might be better for small businesses and independent artists who work with heavy graphics. But Lindén’s smaller studio is also fully a Windows shop, decked out with high-end Nvidia cards (which decisively outperform the M2 Ultra in programs like Blender), largely for the same reason. “We like to keep updating our machines with new hardware when we need to,” he says.

Deborah Wright, a digital sculptor, has the same hang-ups; she also uses a Windows PC. “I really, really love Mac… but it’s become prohibitively expensive,” she says. “Part of the attractiveness of a PC is my ability to customize the heck out of it,” she adds. “You buy a Mac, and you hold onto it for a few years. Buying a PC, you’re switching out your hardware pretty regularly.”

Wright suspects her next purchase might be a MacBook Pro, which, while not modular, is at least more affordable. “Their displays are just exquisite,” she says. “Velvet on the eyes.”

But the larger issue among the professionals I spoke to, and one that will likely take many more product cycles for Apple to truly fix, is one of trust. Apple, the business behemoth that it is, still has a reputation to build in the enterprise space. In order to become a go-to purchase for studios, Apple doesn’t just need to make the Mac Pro more competitive on price — it needs to reestablish itself as a brand that industries can rely on for years to come. And it needs to make some amends.

“Apple doesn’t really have a great history of servicing this market,” Lebensfeld said. “Do you want to hang millions of dollars of equipment purchases on a company where you know this isn’t their main focus?” He added, “It really feels like an afterthought. It feels like they’re gonna put this chip in every laptop and iPad that they can, and then later, they’re gonna fuse 20 of them together, and that’s the Pro.”

And while Apple’s decision to overhaul Final Cut Pro was over a decade ago, studios still haven’t forgotten. Almost all of the video professionals I spoke to brought it up. “Every filmmaker in the world was using this,” Lebensfeld complained. “And they lost that whole market. They just don’t take it seriously.”

“They really did screw us over on that,” Ford, the documentarian, agreed. “I was really upset.”

I searched high and low and ended up connecting with over 20 professionals for this story in order to locate someone who enthusiastically wanted to buy the Mac Pro. I found exactly one: Drofa. He loves the cheese-grater design.

“The killer feature is when somebody comes and says, ‘Okay, you have a Mac Pro,’ and I say, ‘Yeah, I can make a cheesesteak,’” he explained. Asked about the Mac Studio, he replied, “I don’t trust that small thing.”

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/16/how-screen-refresh-rates-work-on-your-phone/ Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:53:57 +0000 https://www.theverge.com/23763320/refresh-phone-iphone-android-samsung-how-to

When you read a review of a smartphone, you will usually be hit with a long list of screen specs: the display type, its dimensions and aspect ratio, its resolution in pixels, its HDR support (or lack of it), and its brightness, for example. Too often, it’s assumed that everyone understands the significance of each of these specs.

So in this article, we’re going to focus on the basics of the refresh rate, which you’ll see in the specs of monitors and TVs as well. It tells you how many times the display is refreshed per second, typically measured in Hz (hertz). In other words, a 90Hz display refreshes itself 90 times a second. Here’s what you need to know about the spec and how to make sure the maximum refresh rate is enabled on your phone.

What is the significance of the refresh rate?

A faster refresh rate means a display that’s easier on the eye because movement looks smoother and pixels get updated more quickly. There is a downside, though, because all this additional refreshing means that battery life can take a hit, especially on big and bright displays.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

High refresh rates are most sought after on gaming monitors, where fractions of a second can make a difference when it comes to making a turn or spotting an enemy. However, the video source needs to keep up: if you have a gaming monitor that offers 144Hz (144 refreshes per second) but a graphics card that can only display 30 frames per second, then a large chunk of that 144Hz refresh rate isn’t being used. It’s the same on your phone: games and videos would often be capped at a certain number of frames per second in order to keep them stable — Netflix content, for example, is streamed at between 24 and 60 frames per second.

That is now starting to change as phones with higher refresh rates begin to appear. For many years, phone display refresh rates were stuck at 60Hz, but in recent years, that’s changed: the iPhone 14 Pro Max can go up to 120Hz, for example, while the Google Pixel 7A is able to hit 90Hz.

As a result, YouTube now displays some content at 60 frames per second, for example. A growing number of games are able to support higher refresh rates on modern phones—your best bet is to check the game listing or run a web search.

Whether a higher refresh rate is really noticeable can be a point of contention. A higher refresh rate ceiling is a nice feature to have, but unless you’re an avid gamer, you might not need to prioritize it — and you should be wary of paying a premium price for this feature alone. It’s also worth emphasizing that a screen is the sum of its specs. A 60Hz display could easily outperform a 120Hz display in areas such as brightness and color accuracy, depending on the manufacturer, so always check the reviews carefully.

Setting refresh rates on your phone

As we’ve already mentioned, higher refresh rates can mean faster battery drain, which is why a lot of handsets use an adaptive approach — that means the refresh rate can be adjusted on the fly as needed.

Apple iPhone

On the iPhone, the adjustable refresh rate technology is called ProMotion. The feature is supported on the iPhone 13 Pro, the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the iPhone 14 Pro, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max and will no doubt come to more of Apple’s handsets in the future.

If you have one of these models, you can check if ProMotion is enabled. Using it will make sure the higher frame rates are only used for specific apps; however, if you’re really worried about battery life, you can turn it off to keep your frame rate at 60Hz.

• Open iOS Settings and tap Accessibility.
• Tap on Motion.
• Enable Limit Frame Rate to fix the refresh rate at 60Hz or disable it to leave ProMotion working as normal.

Samsung Galaxy

There’s a similar setting available on high-end Samsung Galaxy flagship phones made in the last few years, including the most recent Samsung Galaxy S23 series. As on the iPhone, you can opt to disable the higher refresh rates if you prefer.

• Open the Settings and tap Display.
• Tap on Motion smoothness.
• Choose Adaptive to enable variable refresh rates, Standard to keep the display fixed at 60Hz, or High to lock the display at its highest setting.
• Tap Apply to confirm.

Note that if your phone is in Power saving mode (which limits battery-sapping features such as background network usage and syncing), you will be limited to the Standard display option.

Google PIxel

Pixel phones that go above the traditional ceiling of 60Hz — for example, the Pixel 6 and 7 phones can go up to 90Hz, while the Pixel 6 Pro and 7 Pro phones can hit 120Hz — have a feature called Smooth Display, which will push the refresh rate to their higher rate for certain apps.

• Open Settings and tap Display.
• Toggle Smooth display on to have the phone automatically switch between 60Hz and 90Hz as needed or disable it to leave the refresh rate fixed at 60Hz.

If you have a later-model Android phone from another manufacturer, you can try either of these methods or see if you can find your manufacturer’s equivalent. It may take some trial and error before you figure out what’s best for your phone and its battery life and the sort of tasks you’re wanting to do on it. If you find that you can’t actually tell the difference as you switch between modes, you might decide to keep your phone locked at 60Hz — but to get objects on-screen looking as fluid as possible, you’ll want to keep the highest possible settings in place.

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/16/growth-stock-apple-could-be-a-huge-winner-in-the-next-decade-and-beyond/ Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:08:41 +0000 https://macdailynews.com/?p=263662 Apple has a history of outperforming the market thanks to its dominance in consumer tech. AAPL is a growth stock that could be a huge winner…

The post Growth stock Apple could be a huge winner in the next decade and beyond appeared first on MacDailyNews. Apple has a history of outperforming the market thanks to its dominance in consumer tech. AAPL is a growth stock that could be a huge winner in the next decade and beyond.

Dani Cook for The Motley Fool:

Apple has proven time and time again its stock is one of the most reliable stocks available, often outperforming the market… Apple was one of the few tech companies to outperform the Nasdaq Composite index amid last year’s sell-off.

The company has continued to follow this trend into 2023, with its stock up 40% year to date compared to the Nasdaq Composite’s rise of 28%.

Apple’s consistent growth is largely thanks to the popularity of its products and services. The company boasts leading market shares in smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, attracting consumers with its user-friendly design language and focus on quality. The iPhone maker has climbed to the top of each of these markets despite being the most expensive option in most of these product categories.

As a result, Apple’s recent debut of its virtual/augmented reality headset, the Vision Pro, has only strengthened its long-term outlook. The new device has alienated many consumers with its price of $3,500. However, the innovative leaps the device has taken could see Apple dominate the market once it can make the technology more affordable. A leading position could be a huge win in an industry projected to develop at a compound annual growth rate of 45% through 2029.

Alongside a history of reliable growth, Apple has massive potential over the next 10 years and beyond.

MacDailyNews Take: The massive growth engine that Steve Jobs fired up and Tim Cook continues to fuel isn’t stopping anytime soon!

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The post Growth stock Apple could be a huge winner in the next decade and beyond appeared first on MacDailyNews.