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David Heinemeier Hansson:

This should all be eerily familiar to anyone who saw Microsoft
fall from grace in the 90s. From being America’s favorite software
company to being the bully pursued by the DOJ for illegalities.
Just like Apple now, Microsoft’s reputation and good standing
suddenly evaporated seemingly overnight once enough critical
stories had accumulated about its behavior.

It’s not easy to predict these tipping points. Tim Cook
enthusiastically introduced this awful ad with a big smile, and
I’m sure he’s sitting with at least some sense of “wtf just
happened?” and “why don’t they love us any more?”. Because
companies like Apple almost have to ignore the haters as the cost
of doing business, but then they also can’t easily tell when the
sentiment has changed from “the usual number” to “one too many”.
And then, boom, the game is forever changed.

Ever since this controversy regarding the “Crush” ad erupted yesterday, I’ve been wondering the same thing. As I wrote yesterday, when I first saw the ad during the keynote, I didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t strike me as particularly clever, but I didn’t suspect for even a second that it might prove even slighty controversial. It just didn’t strike a nerve for me. But clearly it stuck a nerve for many, evoking negative emotional responses — which for a brand like Apple’s, makes it ipso facto a failed ad.

But Apple could have used this exact same concept for any previous “thinnest ever” iPad. They could have used this exact same commercial for the original iPad in 2010 — a device that doesn’t seem thin or light by today’s standards but was rightly considered remarkably thin and light at the time it launched. You can paint, you can draw, you can edit photos and video, you can make music, you can play games — all in this single incredibly thin device. That’s not a new message for iPads.

Would this exact same commercial have evoked the same collective response in 2010? I’m going to say no, it would not have. What about in 2018? I’m going to say … probably not? Something has changed. Part of it is that our culture has changed. But part too is that Apple’s position in our culture has changed. They’re no longer, and never again will be, the upstart. They’re The Man now. They’re part of the firmament of our entire society, not just the tech world.

 ★ 

David Heinemeier Hansson:

This should all be eerily familiar to anyone who saw Microsoft
fall from grace in the 90s. From being America’s favorite software
company to being the bully pursued by the DOJ for illegalities.
Just like Apple now, Microsoft’s reputation and good standing
suddenly evaporated seemingly overnight once enough critical
stories had accumulated about its behavior.

It’s not easy to predict these tipping points. Tim Cook
enthusiastically introduced this awful ad with a big smile, and
I’m sure he’s sitting with at least some sense of “wtf just
happened?” and “why don’t they love us any more?”. Because
companies like Apple almost have to ignore the haters as the cost
of doing business, but then they also can’t easily tell when the
sentiment has changed from “the usual number” to “one too many”.
And then, boom, the game is forever changed.

Ever since this controversy regarding the “Crush” ad erupted yesterday, I’ve been wondering the same thing. As I wrote yesterday, when I first saw the ad during the keynote, I didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t strike me as particularly clever, but I didn’t suspect for even a second that it might prove even slighty controversial. It just didn’t strike a nerve for me. But clearly it stuck a nerve for many, evoking negative emotional responses — which for a brand like Apple’s, makes it ipso facto a failed ad.

But Apple could have used this exact same concept for any previous “thinnest ever” iPad. They could have used this exact same commercial for the original iPad in 2010 — a device that doesn’t seem thin or light by today’s standards but was rightly considered remarkably thin and light at the time it launched. You can paint, you can draw, you can edit photos and video, you can make music, you can play games — all in this single incredibly thin device. That’s not a new message for iPads.

Would this exact same commercial have evoked the same collective response in 2010? I’m going to say no, it would not have. What about in 2018? I’m going to say … probably not? Something has changed. Part of it is that our culture has changed. But part too is that Apple’s position in our culture has changed. They’re no longer, and never again will be, the upstart. They’re The Man now. They’re part of the firmament of our entire society, not just the tech world.

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Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, in a statement to Ad Age:

Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important
to us to design products that empower creatives all over the
world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users
express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We
missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.

Not just an apology, but attributed to a person. That’s how you do it.

The standard shouldn’t be never to make a mistake. It’s to make as few mistakes as possible, but quickly recognize, acknowledge, and address the ones you do make.

(Via 9to5Mac, which helpfully quotes Myhren’s entire statement. Ad Age’s paywall offers zero free page views.)

 ★ 

Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, in a statement to Ad Age:

Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important
to us to design products that empower creatives all over the
world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users
express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We
missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.

Not just an apology, but attributed to a person. That’s how you do it.

The standard shouldn’t be never to make a mistake. It’s to make as few mistakes as possible, but quickly recognize, acknowledge, and address the ones you do make.

(Via 9to5Mac, which helpfully quotes Myhren’s entire statement. Ad Age’s paywall offers zero free page views.)

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Andy Allen found a 2008 LG phone commercial that’s pretty much the same concept as Apple’s new “Crush” ad. And here’s a 1998 Nintendo commercial in which a bus full of Pokemon get smushed into a GameBoy.

 ★ 

Andy Allen found a 2008 LG phone commercial that’s pretty much the same concept as Apple’s new “Crush” ad. And here’s a 1998 Nintendo commercial in which a bus full of Pokemon get smushed into a GameBoy.

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Lots of nerdy details on both the tandem OLED “Pro XDR Ultra Max Plus Extreme” display technology (I think that’s the marketing name?) and TSMC’s next-gen 3nm process used to fabricate the M4 chips.

 ★ 

Lots of nerdy details on both the tandem OLED “Pro XDR Ultra Max Plus Extreme” display technology (I think that’s the marketing name?) and TSMC’s next-gen 3nm process used to fabricate the M4 chips.

Read More 

New iPad Pros and iPad Airs.

Keynote / Mini Events

Apple hosted about 50 members of the media in New York City, in their ludicrously spacious Tribeca townhouse, to watch the keynote stream live. They had a hands-on area post-keynote, and a bunch of demos and briefings throughout the morning and early afternoon. It was nice. More low-key than the pre-COVID on-stage events (like the Brooklyn one in 2018, when they introduced the first retina MacBook Air and the 2018 iPad Pros), but low-key is good. Doing things in-person is good. (They held a similar event yesterday in London, too — which perhaps explains why they streamed the keynote at 7am PT.)

The New iPad Airs

No surprises here, but the big news is the addition of a 13-inch iPad Air to the lineup. Until last summer Apple’s only “big” MacBook was the 16-inch MacBook Pro (which starts at $2,500), and their only “big” iPad was the 13-inch iPad Pro (which, until yesterday, started at $1,100). If you wanted a big-screen MacBook or iPad you had to pay premium Pro prices, even if you didn’t need Pro features or performance. Last summer they introduced the 15-inch MacBook Air (starting price: $1,300) and now there’s the 13-inch iPad Air (starting price: $800).

There’s really not much else to say about the new iPad Airs. During the keynote, John Ternus described the iPad Air as getting features and components that were previously exclusive to the iPad Pro models, and that’s apt. But that means there’s not much new to talk about.

The New M4 iPad Pros

They are thin — really thin. It seems impossible that the new iPad Pros are thinner than an iPod Nano, but read the tech specs and weep:

7th-gen iPod Nano: 5.4mm
M4 iPad Pro 11″: 5.4mm
M4 iPad Pro 13″: 5.1mm

For completeness:

M2 iPad Air 11″: 6.1mm
M2 iPad Air 13″: 6.1mm
iPad Mini 6th-gen: 6.3mm
iPad 10th-gen: 7.0mm

The thinness is noticeable in hand, but the reduction in weight is even more noticeable. Per Apple’s specs, the new 13-inch iPad Pro weighs 579g, down from 682g in the 2022 models. That’s a sounds-too-good-to-be-true 15 percent reduction. The weight reduction for the 11-inch iPad Pros is less dramatic: 444g, down from 466g in the previous generation. (Those are Wi-Fi-only weights, but cellular networking adds only a meager 3–4g.)

Apple is advertising the new tandem OLED “Ultra Retina XDR” displays as “the world’s best displays”, full stop. From what I saw in the hands-on area yesterday, they indeed look terrific: bright, inky-black blacks (as you’d expect from any OLED displays), seemingly no problems with blooming or a halo effect. Generally though, Apple’s “best display” goes into the iPhone Pro, so purely as a guess, I’ll bet that the iPhone 16 Pro models get this display technology come September.

And, yes, the new iPad Pros have the M4, not the M3 chips that debuted just six months ago. This seems largely driven by moving to TSMC’s next-generation 3nm process, which brings efficiency gains compared to the first-generation 3nm process used to fabricate the A17 Pro and M3 family. In briefings yesterday, Apple reps emphasized, repeatedly, that these new iPad Pros could not have been built without the M4. The efficiency gains allowed Apple to make them remarkably thin and light, and more essentially, only the M4 has a display engine that can drive the new tandem OLED displays. This truly is one of those examples where Apple controlling the entire stack — their own silicon driving their own display design — puts their products in a league of their own. They couldn’t drive the new displays without the M4’s display controller and they wouldn’t have engineered that display controller if they hadn’t had these tandem OLED displays in mind.

Mark Gurman’s week-before scoop that these iPads might have the M4 is simply remarkable, even with the hedging around “might”. A hall of fame rumor scoop. Nobody else even spitballed such a notion. If not for Gurman it would have been a rather shocking surprise in the keynote. And my understanding is that Apple went to extraordinary lengths during development of these iPad Pros to keep the debut of the M4 under wraps. Apple folks are never ever happy about leaks, but this one in particular seemingly surprised them. But it also makes me wonder about reports — most prominently by Gurman himself — that these iPads were originally slated to launch in March, presumably just a few weeks after the launch of the M3 MacBook Airs, and just two months after the launch of the Vision Pro, which sports an M2. How soon after the launch of the M3 could the M4 have appeared? One thing I’m taking away from this is that it’s wrong to think about M-series generations as year-over-year annual iterations, like the A-series chips in iPhones. Rather, it seems like Apple is evolving the M-series chips in parallel, designing them with very specific but widely variant products in mind.

The iPad Family Lineup

Back in October, after Apple launched the Apple Pencil With USB-C, I wrote the following regarding the complexity and confusion in the iPad lineup:

Off the top of my head, what I’d like from Apple on the iPad front
next year:

Drop the old 9th-gen iPad from the lineup. That iPad is so old
it still has a home button.
Lower the price of the 10th-gen iPad by $100. (And maybe give it
a speed bump from the A14 to A15 chip? But it’s probably wishful
thinking to hope for a price cut and a newer chip.)
Update the iPad Air (and Mini?) models to be more like today’s
iPad Pros, with Face ID instead of Touch ID.
Major revision of the iPad Pros, which haven’t seen a major form
factor change since 2018. Put more pro in the iPad Pros, just
like Apple has done with the iPhone 15 Pro models.
Update the Magic Keyboard, ideally in a way that continues to
support both iPad Airs and 11-inch iPad Pros. The Magic Keyboard
is a great idea, and I think a popular one. But it ought to be
better — thinner, lighter, and more durable. (The white ones
especially age quickly. Keep your eyes out for them in the wild,
in cafes and airports — they often look quite grungy. Compare
and contrast with MacBooks, which often look great even after
years of daily use.) Mark Gurman has reported that just
such a revision to the Magic Keyboard is in the works.

That would clarify the iPad’s three tiers: good (regular iPad,
10th-gen), better (iPad Air — the best choice for most people),
and best (iPad Pros, with advanced new features and capabilities).
The point should be to make the question “Which iPad should I
buy?” as easy to answer as possible. I think Apple has made
that question pretty easy to answer for iPhones, MacBooks, and
Watches — and for peripherals like AirPods. Now do it for iPads.

Apple came pretty close to hitting every single item on my list yesterday. The only miss is that the new iPad Airs still use Touch ID, not Face ID. A few sources told me, after the writing the above post in October, that Face ID components remain surprisingly expensive lo these many years after Face ID first appeared with the iPhone X in 2017, so I’m not surprised in the least that the iPad Airs still use Touch ID on the top button.

The only sore thumb in the entire iPad lineup is the iPad Mini, which, since it first appeared, has always been the least-frequently updated iPad. Compared to the 10th-gen regular-sized iPad, the iPad Mini seems expensive at $500. But the iPad Mini is more like a small iPad Air, with features like P3 wide color and an antireflective coating. And the current iPad Mini, despite being 2.5 years old, still has a faster chip than the 10th-gen iPad (A15 vs. A14).

Pricing

StorageM4 iPad Pro 11″M2 iPad Air 11″iPad 10th-geniPad Mini 6th-gen

64 GB——$350$500

128 GB—$600——

256 GB$1000$700$500$650

512 GB$1200$900——

1 TB$1600$1100——

2 TB$2000———

11″ → 13″+300+200——

Cellular+200+150+150+150

Nano-texture*+100———

* Available only with 1 and 2 TB storage.

A 13-inch M4 iPad Pro with 2 TB of storage, cellular networking, and the nano-texture display costs a cool $2,600.

Rounding up to 13

Praise jeebus, Apple has decided to label the bigger iPads as “13-inch” rather than the more exact but far less graceful “12.9-inch”. Apple is more comfortable rounding down than up. Underpromise, overdeliver. Look at the tech specs for the 13-inch MacBook Air: the display is 13.6 inches, so it could credibly be rounded up to 14. But these product names are more like “size classes”, not specs. I’ve been referring to big iPad Pros as “13-inch” for a while now, on the same grounds as rounding up prices like $499 to $500. Glad to see Apple make it official though.

Pencil Proliferation

With yesterday’s introduction of the Apple Pencil Pro, Apple now has made, and continues to sell, four different Pencil models. I saw a lot of gripes yesterday that this is confusing — that there ought to be just one Pencil, or perhaps two at the most. But in practice I don’t think it’s all that confusing at all. You don’t start by buying a Pencil; you start by choosing an iPad, and then you buy the Pencil that goes with that iPad. Arguing that it’s confusing that different iPads support different Pencils is like saying it’s confusing that different iPhones require different cases. In real life you just buy a case that is designed for your specific phone model, and it’s not confusing at all that the Apple Store carries cases for several generations of iPhone models, each in two different sizes.

I mean in theory, it would be better if there were one Pencil that worked with all iPads. And it stinks that if you have a Pencil 2 already, you can’t use it with a new iPad Pro or Air. But the mistake that prevents Apple from being able to offer just one Pencil has nothing to do with any of the Pencil models, but instead was the company’s yearslong resistance to moving the front-facing camera on iPads from the short side (like an iPhone) to the long side (like a laptop).

From my brief hands-on time, the haptic feedback and new squeeze gesture on the new Pencil Pro are just great. And for illustrators and calligraphers, the support for rotating the barrel to rotate the on-screen pen nib is very cool. On the cusp of the keynote I offhandedly hoped for the ability to turn the new Pencil upside down to get the eraser tool, but this squeeze gesture and the new radial menu of Pencil tools that appears contextually under the current pen location is a better idea. Upside down eraser support would offer a shortcut for just one tool; the squeeze menu gives you a shortcut to all tools.

I suspect naming the new Pencil “Pencil Pro” is a downstream effect of the fact that Apple needs to keep selling the Pencil 2. (People who own years-old iPads still buy new Pencils.) But Apple never printed the “2” on the Pencil 2 barrel — it just says “ Pencil”. And physically, the new Pencil Pro is indistinguishable from the Pencil 2 — same size, same color, same texture. They even use the same replacement tips. So if they had named it “Pencil 3” but still printed only “ Pencil” on the barrel, anyone who owned both models wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. So “ Pencil Pro” it is, even though it works with the new non-pro iPad Airs.

Also: the new Pencil Pro supports Find My. Unsurprising, but nice.

Miscellaneous

Anyone playing a drinking game that required taking a shot for each mention of “AI” or “machine learning” during the keynote probably passed out before it ended.

There’s just one rear-facing camera on the new iPad Pros. The previous generation had two: wide (1×) and ultra-wide (0.5×). I’m not sure what to make of that other than conceding that iPads don’t really need multiple cameras. I can’t recall ever — not even once — wishing that my personal iPad Pro from 2018 had an ultra-wide lens in addition to the main 1× camera. Perhaps this omission helped Apple shrink the camera bump on the new iPad Pros?

Apple is, for the first time, offering a nano-texture display option for the new iPad Pros. It costs an additional $100 and is only offered with the 1 and 2 TB storage configurations. I liked the way it looked in my limited hands-on time yesterday, and it didn’t seem problematic fingerprint-wise. I did not get the chance to try the nano-texture display with a Pencil, alas, but I can’t help but suspect it offers an at least slightly more paper-like feel. One oddity: only the display has the texture — the black bezel surrounding the display is glossy. The delineation between the glossy bezel and textured display area is both easy to see and easy to feel. In a sunny room with glare from the windows, I thought that looked odd: obvious reflections and glare on the bezel, but no reflections or glare on the display content area. With the nano-texture versions of the Pro Display XDR and Studio Display, the nano-texture finish includes the bezel area — except for one tiny glossy spot on the Studio Display in front of the FaceTime camera lens. Perhaps with all the various sensors for Face ID and the front-facing camera, leaving the entire bezel glossy was deemed a better trade-off than making several glossy cutouts. (No notch on iPads.)

Apple is doing some chip-binning with the iPad Pros. The 256 and 512 GB models have 9-core CPUs (3 performance, 6 efficiency) and 8 GB of RAM. The 1 and 2 TB models have 10-core CPUs (4 performance, 6 efficiency) and 16 GB of RAM. (The new iPad Airs all have the same M2 chip with 8 GB of RAM.)

I still have no idea how the event name “Let Loose” is applicable to any of yesterday’s announcements. But sometimes a name is just a name.

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Mark Gurman, writing at Bloomberg, posits that John Ternus might be the leading candidate to succeed Tim Cook as CEO:

“Tim likes him a lot, because he can give a good presentation,
he’s very mild-mannered, never puts anything into an email that is
controversial and is a very reticent decision-maker,” says one
person close to Apple’s executive team. “He has a lot of
managerial characteristics like Tim.” Christopher Stringer, a
former top Apple hardware designer, called Ternus a “trustworthy
hand” who’s “never failed with any role he’s been elevated to.”
Eddy Cue, the Apple executive known as Cook’s closest confidant,
has privately told colleagues that Ternus should be the next CEO,
according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

I wouldn’t have linked to this if not for the above line about Eddy Cue. If Cue is telling people that, that means a lot. No executive at Apple is more juiced-in company-wide than Cue. Cook’s first action as CEO was to promote Cue, and Cue was arguably just as tight with and trusted by Steve Jobs.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, writing at Bloomberg, posits that John Ternus might be the leading candidate to succeed Tim Cook as CEO:

“Tim likes him a lot, because he can give a good presentation,
he’s very mild-mannered, never puts anything into an email that is
controversial and is a very reticent decision-maker,” says one
person close to Apple’s executive team. “He has a lot of
managerial characteristics like Tim.” Christopher Stringer, a
former top Apple hardware designer, called Ternus a “trustworthy
hand” who’s “never failed with any role he’s been elevated to.”
Eddy Cue, the Apple executive known as Cook’s closest confidant,
has privately told colleagues that Ternus should be the next CEO,
according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

I wouldn’t have linked to this if not for the above line about Eddy Cue. If Cue is telling people that, that means a lot. No executive at Apple is more juiced-in company-wide than Cue. Cook’s first action as CEO was to promote Cue, and Cue was arguably just as tight with and trusted by Steve Jobs.

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Todd Spangler, writing for Variety:

An Apple commercial for the new iPad Pro tablet showing an
industrial press literally crushing a TV, musical instruments,
books and more ignited an angry backlash among many in Hollywood
and other creative industries.

The ad, titled “Crush!”, shows an array of various
objects — including a record player, a piano, a guitar, an old TV
set, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and a classic arcade
game machine — getting compressed into (voila!) the new iPad
Pro. The spot is soundtracked to Sonny and Cher’s “All I Ever Need
Is You.”

But the ad has been interpreted more as a visual depiction of the
tech industry’s devastation of cultural industries. “The
destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,”
actor Hugh Grant commented on X.

Personally, I didn’t think twice about this spot when it ran during the keynote yesterday. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I sort of like seeing things get smashed, run over, or, best of all, dropped from rooftops, and that’s really all I took from it at the moment. But a lot of people find the spot unpleasant, if not downright disturbing, not because they’re bothered by seeing stuff get smushed but because of the implied message. To wit, as Grant quipped, that technology not only replaces analog instruments and objects of artistic expression, but destroys them.

Thought about that way, it’s clearly a mistake — the vivisection of technology and liberal arts.

The best response is this “fixed it for you” version from filmmaker Reza Sixo Safai, simply running the commercial backwards (and choosing a better Sonny and Cher song). Same message, but emphasizing creation rather than destruction.

 ★ 

Todd Spangler, writing for Variety:

An Apple commercial for the new iPad Pro tablet showing an
industrial press literally crushing a TV, musical instruments,
books and more ignited an angry backlash among many in Hollywood
and other creative industries.

The ad, titled “Crush!”, shows an array of various
objects — including a record player, a piano, a guitar, an old TV
set, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and a classic arcade
game machine — getting compressed into (voila!) the new iPad
Pro. The spot is soundtracked to Sonny and Cher’s “All I Ever Need
Is You.”

But the ad has been interpreted more as a visual depiction of the
tech industry’s devastation of cultural industries. “The
destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,”
actor Hugh Grant commented on X.

Personally, I didn’t think twice about this spot when it ran during the keynote yesterday. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I sort of like seeing things get smashed, run over, or, best of all, dropped from rooftops, and that’s really all I took from it at the moment. But a lot of people find the spot unpleasant, if not downright disturbing, not because they’re bothered by seeing stuff get smushed but because of the implied message. To wit, as Grant quipped, that technology not only replaces analog instruments and objects of artistic expression, but destroys them.

Thought about that way, it’s clearly a mistake — the vivisection of technology and liberal arts.

The best response is this “fixed it for you” version from filmmaker Reza Sixo Safai, simply running the commercial backwards (and choosing a better Sonny and Cher song). Same message, but emphasizing creation rather than destruction.

Read More 

Simon Willison:

I’m a big proponent of LLMs as tools for personal
productivity, and as software platforms for building
interesting applications that can interact with human language.

But I’m increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed
content that has been artificially generated with other people is
rude.

Slop is the ideal name for this anti-pattern.

Not all promotional content is spam, and not all AI-generated
content is slop. But if it’s mindlessly generated and thrust upon
someone who didn’t ask for it, slop is the perfect term for it.

Endorsed.

 ★ 

Simon Willison:

I’m a big proponent of LLMs as tools for personal
productivity, and as software platforms for building
interesting applications that can interact with human language.

But I’m increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed
content that has been artificially generated with other people is
rude.

Slop is the ideal name for this anti-pattern.

Not all promotional content is spam, and not all AI-generated
content is slop. But if it’s mindlessly generated and thrust upon
someone who didn’t ask for it, slop is the perfect term for it.

Endorsed.

Read More 

Marvel:

Marvel Studios and ILM Immersive announce What If…? — An
Immersive Story, the first-ever interactive Disney+ Original
story coming exclusively to Apple Vision Pro. Fans will be invited
to step inside the Multiverse like never before and have the
chance to dive into an immersive, narrative-driven and innovative
story in mixed reality. Connected to the critically acclaimed
Disney+ Original animated series What If…?, Marvel.com was
given a first look at the hour-long experience, diving into what
fans can expect when it is released soon as a new app for Apple
Vision Pro.

 ★ 

Marvel:

Marvel Studios and ILM Immersive announce What If…? — An
Immersive Story, the first-ever interactive Disney+ Original
story coming exclusively to Apple Vision Pro. Fans will be invited
to step inside the Multiverse like never before and have the
chance to dive into an immersive, narrative-driven and innovative
story in mixed reality. Connected to the critically acclaimed
Disney+ Original animated series What If…?, Marvel.com was
given a first look at the hour-long experience, diving into what
fans can expect when it is released soon as a new app for Apple
Vision Pro.

Read More 

Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Apple has been working on its own chip designed to run
artificial-intelligence software in data-center servers, a move
that has the potential to give the company an advantage in the AI
arms race.

Over the past decade, Apple has emerged as a leading player
designing chips for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and Mac
computers. The server project, which is internally code-named
Project ACDC — for Apple Chips in Data Center — will bring this
talent to bear for the company’s servers, according to people
familiar with the matter.

Project ACDC has been in the works for several years and it is
uncertain when the new chip will be unveiled, if ever.

Another rebuttal to the whole “Apple is behind on AI” discourse. Apple is just doing things their own way, at their own pace, and they’re not going to talk about any of it in advance. Custom chip development is slow, expensive, and indicates an extreme commitment.

As for the “ACDC” codename, if I didn’t know any better, I’d half wonder if Jim Dalrymple took a job on Apple’s silicon team.

 ★ 

Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Apple has been working on its own chip designed to run
artificial-intelligence software in data-center servers, a move
that has the potential to give the company an advantage in the AI
arms race.

Over the past decade, Apple has emerged as a leading player
designing chips for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and Mac
computers. The server project, which is internally code-named
Project ACDC — for Apple Chips in Data Center — will bring this
talent to bear for the company’s servers, according to people
familiar with the matter.

Project ACDC has been in the works for several years and it is
uncertain when the new chip will be unveiled, if ever.

Another rebuttal to the whole “Apple is behind on AI” discourse. Apple is just doing things their own way, at their own pace, and they’re not going to talk about any of it in advance. Custom chip development is slow, expensive, and indicates an extreme commitment.

As for the “ACDC” codename, if I didn’t know any better, I’d half wonder if Jim Dalrymple took a job on Apple’s silicon team.

Read More