Track Hyper | iPhone 16: "Subverting" Perception

Author: Zhou Yuan / Wall Street News

Once hailed as the Spring Festival Gala of the tech industry, Apple's autumn new product launch in 2024 "subverted" previous perceptions.

In the early hours of September 10th, Apple's event was held as scheduled. However, on that day, there was very little attention paid to this event domestically, with some industry insiders even asking in the afternoon of September 10th, "Has the iPhone 16 been released? Why is no one talking about it?" More people expressed that the (Apple) event was unremarkable, "staying up all night for nothing."

At Apple's WWDC 2024 event on June 10th, the Apple AI (Apple Intelligence) that was "preheated" did not introduce any amazing applications. Compared to domestic manufacturers, it not only lacked significant advantages but also "surprisingly" followed the trend. Is this still the Apple that once led the industry with "disruptive innovation"?

Even with this "lag," Chinese users will have to wait until 2025 to experience the AI applications of the Apple iPhone 16 series, so there isn't much to discuss.

As for the biggest upgrade in hardware design - the "Spatial Computing Platform Shortcut" (one-click photo taking), it completely goes against Steve Jobs' minimalist design philosophy from the past. The playability and practicality are not high, so there is no need to spend time explaining in detail.

The capital market's reaction to this Apple event was also very tepid: on September 10th, Apple's stock price fell slightly by 0.36% to $220.11.

So, does the iPhone 16 series show no progress compared to the previous generation? Not exactly. The progress of this generation's high-end models mainly focuses on video shooting, with the sound technology featuring industry-leading mixing functions.

Specifically, the high-end versions of this generation's flagship Apple models, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Max equipped with the A18 Pro main chip, have made significant improvements in video functions: they can record slow-motion videos at 4K 120fps, adjust frame by frame for 4K 120fps Dolby Vision videos, achieving cinema-quality color grading.

At the same time, without the need for users to set the frame rate, they can directly adjust the playback speed through the gallery after shooting, without the need for editing software, to freely choose the desired effect.

In conjunction with the video, Apple has introduced a mixing function: in noisy environments, such as fast-food restaurants, this technology can identify and extract dialogue sources in layers, while providing three different options.

These options include the IN-FRAME mode that can extract voices separately, the STUDIO mode with a recording studio effect, and the CINEMATIC mode suitable for movie production, providing high work convenience for professional photographers and greatly simplifying the post-production process.

Technically, the ability of Apple's mixing technology to identify and extract different sound sources in the same noisy environment has long been achieved by the Chinese company "Future Intelligence" (a company incubated by iFlytek), with intelligent terminals that have been mass-produced and landed, such as the iFLYBUDS series of office headphones. The difference is that Future Intelligence applies this technology to audio terminals, while Apple uses it for video shooting on smartphones With such "innovative" capabilities, it really doesn't match Apple's status in the industry.

Recently, Intel, which is on the brink of danger, is known in the industry as the "toothpaste factory". However, this time Apple didn't even squeeze out toothpaste. For example, the storage space still starts at 128GB, with no changes compared to the previous generation. The visible upgrades are basically hard for the general public to feel any difference.

Another upgrade in the Apple iPhone 16 series is the replacement of the A16 main chip with the A18 (used for iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus) and A18 Pro (used in iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max).

Apple CEO Cook is proud of this. Cook said, "I am very excited about the new generation of iPhone, which is completely designed for Apple's intelligence and various breakthrough features. The processor of iPhone 16 has leaped forward two generations compared to iPhone 15."

It seems that Cook's standards are quite low if he is so excited about this. No wonder there were no highlights in this release event.

From the expression of Apple's AI capabilities and technical logic framework in the iPhone 16 series, it is obvious that domestic Android players are more advanced: for example, Honor Terminal proposed the "Honor AI Four-Layer Architecture" in March this year, and on June 10th, Apple proposed the Apple Intelligence technology concept, which is in line with the technical ideas of Honor's AI architecture.

Some users believe that the Core ML framework of A18 and A18 Pro is at least 2-3 years ahead in terms of AI technical capabilities compared to Android phone manufacturers using Qualcomm Snapdragon 8gen3 or MediaTek Dimensity 9300 chips.

So, is this Core ML really advanced?

Core ML was first introduced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2017. It is a machine learning framework that allows developers to integrate machine learning models into iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications.

Core ML aims to optimize performance on devices by utilizing Apple chips, minimizing memory usage and power consumption, and achieving efficient model execution. Through this framework, models can run on the device side without the need for a network connection, which helps protect the privacy of user data and improve application response speed.

Apple's ecosystem technology developers can use the APIs and tools provided by Core ML to integrate pre-trained machine learning models or self-trained models into applications to achieve various intelligent functions.

It looks really good, but the significance for users lies not in having a technically advanced framework, but in what kind of AI functionality with high-frequency application value Apple has introduced. Without this premise, no matter how advanced the technology is, it has no actual commercial value.

Therefore, merely having "advanced" technology that users cannot perceive, without the courage and ability to explore new innovative value, and being content with relying on outdated strategies and concepts, seeking stability without seeking newness, then Nokia is a cautionary tale