Apple Rumors

As spotted by MacRumors, Apple’s TestFlight app has been updated to support visionOS. That’s a sign Apple could start shipping out dev kits soon, allowing developers to test out their apps for the $3,499 mixed-reality system.

In a pair of tweets, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple would “aggressively” upgrade hardware specs with an eye to the ecosystem around its $3,499 headset.

That includes bumping the iPhone 15’s ultra-wideband (UWB) chip to a new 7nm process and a likely update to Wi-Fi 7 on the iPhone 16. Wi-Fi 7 devices should support faster mesh networking features and lower in-home latency. Qualcomm has said it will enable “peak speeds up to 5.8 Gbps” to a single device.

In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman is again highlighting Apple Vision Pro successors. That includes a 2nd-gen Vision Pro with a faster processor, as well as a cheaper one that could arrive by late 2025, with a two-product split mirroring Apple’s phones, laptops, and tablets.

Gurman offered a theory on why Tim Cook never donned the headset WWDC — Apple execs don’t want to be turned into memes by unflattering pictures.

We may not know until after WWDC, but Apple's mixed reality headset probably won't address every AR issue right out of the gate. As pointed out by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter today:

I expect that future versions will fix problems in the first model — such as nausea complaints, performance hiccups, overheating concerns and a lack of cellular connectivity — and bring down the price.

That’s not surprising, and doesn’t paint the “Reality Pro” as doomed, just a first attempt likely aimed at developers and very early adopters. As Casey Newton writes for The Verge, whether Apple’s new platform succeeds depends more on its evolution than on tomorrow’s device.

Late last year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple would change Siri’s invocation phrase to just “Siri” but was unsure about how long that shift might take. Now he says the change will be announced along with everything else we’ll hear about at WWDC next week.

Apple has a little AR teaser for WWDC (spotted by MacRumors). To see it, visit the Apple Events website using Safari on your iPhone or iPad and tap “AR Experience,” point your camera at a wall, and you’ll get a colorful animated logo with June 6th, 2023 — the WWDC keynote date — printed inside.

Apple’s mixed reality headset is expected to be the biggest announcement at this year’s WWDC.

At the exact same time as Microsoft’s Build developer conference kicked off, the folks at Apple released schedule details for their own developer event, WWDC.

The updated page also has a small embedded video that, if you look at it with a designer’s eye, either shows a clear lens moving over the 3D logo, causing it to animate, or a pass-through transition. Our list of anticipated announcements has been adjusted accordingly.

Next year’s iPhone 16 Pro display will jump from 6.1 inches (iPhone 15 Pro) to 6.3 inches, while the Pro Max will jump from 6.7 (iPhone 15 Pro Max) to 6.9 inches, say analysts Kuo and Young.

Kuo says the extra space will make room for periscope lenses with better zoom performance, also expected on this year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Apple’s so-called “Reality Pro” AR/VR headset that could cost as much as $3,000 is said to be running on an operating system called xrOS — a stylized wordmark for its “extended reality OS” that Apple wants to own. Seems like a solid bet at this point, but we’ll know for sure when WWDC kicks off on June 5th.

MacRumors got ahold of a research note from supply chain analyst Jeff Pu at Haitong International Securities suggesting a new 48MP sensor stack for the camera in these non-Pro phones will lead to production issues.

MacRumors notes Pu was the first to claim that “design issues” would keep iPhone 15 Pro models from switching to solid-state buttons, which leaks and other analysts have backed up since then.

Palmer Luckey who, as the primary inventor of the Oculus Rift, should know a thing or two about VR headsets, tweeted out his one-line approval ahead of its expected unveiling on June 5th.

Then again, Luckey’s also a documented shitposter and troll with a sometimes bad goatee who failed to make VR an Apple-sized success while at Facebook, so.

The Verge’s 2015 Apple Watch review:

Glances also feel like they have enormous untapped potential.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today: 

The new widgets system on the Apple Watch will be a combination of the old watchOS Glances system and the style of widgets that were introduced in iOS 14 on the iPhone. The plan is to let users scroll through a series of different widgets — for activity tracking, weather, stock tickers, calendar appointments and more — rather than having them launch apps.

We’ll see when WWDC kicks off on June 5th.

Just when you thought that rumors of a higher-end 27-inch Apple Studio Display had been killed off, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo resurrects them. The noted supply-chain sleuth says it’ll arrive with Mini LED technology and “thinner panel thickness, a narrower bezel, and extended product lifespan” in “2024 or early 2025.”

9to5Mac says it’s gotten more details on the iPhone 15 Pro via a “detailed CAD” file and other sources, and it’s showing us what the upcoming phone could look like. We’ve heard a lot of the rumors before — titanium frame, USB-C, thinner bezels, a great new color — but the renders really bring this story to life.

Well-connected supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says mass production for Apple’s rumored headset has been pushed back and forecasts shipping numbers this year of 200k to 300k units instead of 500,000 or so.

Kuo suggests the change is tied to a lack of optimism about the launch and “uncertainty” about a WWDC reveal — echoing a recent New York Times report — and while I don’t know if that’s the case, I’m sure there will be more rumors before the show starts on June 5th.

Poor Magic Leap — it really does have a decent augmented reality headset these days, but it was way, way too early to the consumer AR party, and now Apple is the guest of honor. No wonder it’s venting a little schadenfreude at Apple’s apparent internal woes.

While Apple may not be making any monumental jumps into AI just yet, the company acquired a startup last month that leverages machine learning technology to compress and decompress videos, as first spotted by TechCrunch.

The startup, called WaveOne, announced the sale to Apple on LinkedIn, with its former vice president of sales stating that Apple saw the company’s potential and “took the opportunity to add it to their technology portfolio.”

In yet another sign that Apple’s upcoming headset is nearing launch, the company covertly showed off the device during a “glitzy” presentation at the Steve Jobs Theater, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The company reportedly invited around 100 of its “highest-ranking executives” to see the device. And while this isn’t the first time these executives got a look at the headset, Gurman says this latest showing suggests “a public unveiling is getting close.”

The fancier iPhones will apparently switch from a mute switch to a mute button this year, and new renders in a video spotted by leaker ShrimpApplePro reveal that it, well, looks like a button. If this is the real deal, I’m curious if it will be an improvement over the switch, which has been an iPhone staple since the very first one.

In the video, you can also see the iPhone 15 Pro’s rumored unified volume button and that the iPhone 15 will apparently keep the mute switch and separate volume buttons.

Within an article examining the shortfalls of AI voice helpers over the last few years, like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, the New York Times has a note about Apple’s internal tech demos:

At Apple’s headquarters last month, the company held its annual A.I. summit, an internal event for employees to learn about its large language model and other A.I. tools, two people who were briefed on the program said. Many engineers, including members of the Siri team, have been testing language-generating concepts every week, the people said.

Of course, not everyone’s sure they want these freestyling AI bots taking control of their smart home devices.

While Apple has been exploring the idea of adding health-focused features to its AirPods for years, now Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes this is finally on the horizon.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Gurman speculates that Apple could “upgrade the AirPods to become a health tool in the next year or two” and that they may even “come with the ability to get hearing data of some sort.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks so, but the company’s design team? Not so much, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Cook is reportedly pushing ahead with its launch against the wishes of Apple’s top designers, who hoped to debut a more lightweight pair of AR glasses instead of the much bulkier headset that Apple’s expected to reveal in June.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara shares, based on a Weibo post (via MacRumors), a whisper that Apple will launch a new yellow iPhone 14 variant this spring.

Last year’s Peek Performance event added a new green option to the iPhone 13, so who knows, at the end of this game of telephone, there might actually be a phone. In yellow.

That’s according to leaker Ice Universe, who shared renders of what’s supposed to be the iPhone 15 Ultra, which 9to5Mac later corroborated.

In addition to a USB-C port, smaller bezels, and a buttonless design, the image shows a much less obnoxious camera bump when compared to the one we saw on the render of the iPhone 15 Pro.

The company’s highly-anticipated mixed-reality headset hasn’t even been announced yet, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says it’s readying a second device equipped with a “more powerful” processor.

Apple’s set to debut its headset at WWDC June, which is rumored to come with next-gen hand-tracking and an external battery. But if you don’t want to spend upwards of $3,000 on the device, Gurman says Apple’s working on a cheaper “Reality One” headset as well.

All that talk about computational photography but at the rate we’re going the iPhone 39 Pro Ultra will have like seven full-frame sensors.

An Apple patent (PDF) awarded on Valentine’s Day hints at future iPhones with touch-sensitive volume sliders and folding screens.

There’s also a “virtual shutter button” that sounds a lot like the solid-state buttons predicted by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last year.

Whether Apple actually makes a foldable iPhone (we’ve seen patent applications before) or is playing the wait-and-see game is still up in the air, but Kuo had also predicted a foldable iPad for 2024.

After saying that Apple’s buy now, pay later service is “nearing public release” last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now believes it could launch as soon as March or April.

Apple’s currently testing the service among retail employees, which has been heavily delayed due to “technical and engineering issues” since the company announced it last June.