Thu. Apr 25th, 2024
I’m iCave Dave, and on Today’s Apple Daily:
Apple could shrink their chargers with Gallium Nitride bricks

Lidar to come to ALL 2021 iPhone models

Ming Chi Kuo predicts AirTags, an AR Device and More in 2021

She’s good at this eh? Nails it every time, what a pro.
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Also, just so you guys know, here in the UK we went into our third national lockdown yesterday, so if you have any Apple questions, #iCaveAnswers in the comments and I’ll answer in the show, because what else am I going to do now? Anyway, lets do some news

Apple could shrink their chargers with Gallium Nitride bricks

According to supply chain sources via DigiTimes, Apple is looking to order Gallium Nitride based power supplies for their devices iPads and mobile Macs.

Now I’m sure you’re all fully familiar with the chemical properties, specific gravity, combustion products and impulse velocity of Gallium nitride, (leave your answers in the comments) but its essentially a semiconductor used in LEDs. A semiconductor that can conduct much higher voltages over time than Silicon and also has a more simplified design in terms of chargers, meaning they can be made smaller and with less heat generated. They are a little more expensive than Silicon based chargers, but according to some sources, the efficiency is up to 1000X better. Four orders of magnitude is a lot.

So it seems like Apple could replace their current chargers with these, reducing the mass of the chargers, but I’d love to see them come with multiple USB-C ports so you could charge multiple devices, perhaps a MacBook as well as an iPhone. While I doubt there will be a huge fanfare for these, could they be called Apple Charger mini? Who knows.

Lidar to come to ALL 2021 iPhone models

I honestly think that THE killer feature on the iPhone 12 Pro Max that I’m currently shooting this video on is its LIDAr sensor. That’s right, the sensor everyone said they didn’t need because they don’t use AR – though we’ll be talking about AR in the next segment.

The reason Lidar has been a game changer for me is the autofocus. My biggest problem with the Lumix G7 I used to film the show with was constant hunting for focus – if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, it would just choose something in the background and decide that was probably what I wanted to focus on, not the talking person in the foreground.

With iPhone 12 Pro Max, the focus has been razor sharp all the time, and incredibly fast and stable when refocusing if something is brought up close to the lens. So Lidar is solidly for me, a camera function, not an AR feature. Plus, we had a little clue from Mr Jon Prosser around the time that we had leaked test versions of iPhone 12 that were testing 120Hz pro motion, that in the works, potentially for when the iPhone 13 generation arrives is Portrait Video – using the Lidar to map a scene and add artificial bokeh, just as Apple introduced with the iPhone 7 Plus and their first dual camera system.

For me, that would be an absolutely killer feature in 2021 iPhones, and I hope it would come to iPhone 12 Pros too.

Ming Chi Kuo predicts AirTags, an AR Device and More in 2021

According to a Ming-Chi Kuo note that was obtained by MacRumors, (and Also via Jon Prosser), Apple’s AirTags are produced, packaged and ready so ship, and have been for some time. This shipping delay seems to be almost certainly due to less people being out and travelling, so less people are losing their stuff. Apple is in this case most likely waiting until people actually have a chance to see what they do in a world where outside is a thing. Jon Prosser has video, apparently leaked to him by an Apple Engineer which looks like what would play when pairing with an iPhone, just like the AirPods animation, so go check that out on his channel, link up there and DON’T Skip to that part!

Ming-Chi Kuo also mentions an Augmented reality “headsets, glasses or both” so we are, by his information, looking at having Apple Glass actually arrive in 2021 – which seems earlier than I’d have expected, but if its true, that would be excellent. These have been reported to likely start around $399, which again if true, is pretty impressive, Cheaper than AirPods Max anyhow!

Also mentioned in the note are new 12.9” iPads Pro & MacBooks with miniLED Displays, plus a 2022 MacBook Air redesign with the screen tech. And redesigned 24” iMac and smaller Mac Pro, though not much new information on these.

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