After Apple's spring conference in the early morning of March 9, Beijing time, Apple's official website also updated the home page. At the top are the new console and display, followed by the thin and light tablet with the M1 chip for the first time, and the new iPhone SE, which is positioned just above the two new colors of the 13 series. The arrangement of Apple's official website may indicate that they themselves admit that the upgrade of the iPhone SE this time is too small.
Aside from chips and 5G, the new SE looks like the iPhone 8 released five years ago — yes, its 4.7-inch screen, even less than 5.5 inches, and it's a single camera, not the latter's dual camera. With a sense of humor, Apple calls it a "design classic."
Apple can also be radical. The latest console is powered by Apple's most powerful computer chip to date, with a total of 114 billion transistors integrated inside, and Apple directly announced that it is "the world's most powerful personal computer chip.".
In the past two years, with the blessing of the M1 chip, the Mac product line has made many breakthroughs in form and performance, and the mobile phones that have entered the 5G era have also performed well. However, after going from "mountains and rivers" to "willow dark flowers", Apple did not resist harvesting the market through SE's "tinkering and tinkering for another three years" product. The shrewd Cook is still the familiar "business ghost".
New iPhone SE. Image source: Apple's official website
SE minimum storage capacity of 64GB, starting from 3499 yuan
Not surprisingly, the new SE uses Apple's latest A15 bionic chip to support 5G networks. However, in terms of appearance and design, Apple did not bring the full screen expected by the outside world, but still used the 4.7-inch screen and the home screen button design.
The appearance design of SE's square screen + round home screen button allows consumers to "dream back to 2017" at a glance. The screen size is still 4.7 inches.
SE will provide 64GB, 128GB, 256GB three storage capacity options, and there are midnight color, starlight color, red three colors to choose from, the domestic starting price of 3499 yuan, about 200 yuan higher than the previous generation, this may be the first time to carry 5G caused.
To be able to cram a 5G phone into a small body, it is also unfair to say that the new SE has no innovation. Apple also said that the A15 bionic chip and iOS 15 system, combined with a new generation of battery chemistry technology, can bring longer battery life. Even with a compact design and new 5G support, battery life is still higher than the previous generation and previous 4.7-inch models. The problem of poor battery life in the previous model may be improved.
There is no larger screen, no full screen design, the camera is still a single camera, in addition to the chip and 5G, the improvement is not big.
Cook at an Apple conference. Screenshots of live streams
The strongest chip is the interconnection of two dies
The biggest highlight of this conference is the new Mac Studio desktop computer and Studio Display display. The former is a new category host launched by Apple. It is worth noting that the M1 Ultra chip on the former is the latest product of Apple's M1 chip family, which Apple directly calls "the world's most powerful personal computer chip".
According to Apple, the chip is connected internally through two M1 Max grains, with a total of 114 billion transistors integrated inside, the highest number in the history of Apple's computer chips. The most common way to improve performance is to connect two chips through the motherboard, but this is often accompanied by many drawbacks, including increased latency, reduced bandwidth, and increased power consumption. Through the customized UltraFusion architecture, Apple uses a silicon intermediary layer to connect multiple chips, achieving 2.5TB/s low-latency processor interconnection bandwidth. Apple said that this architecture allows M1 Ultra to still show the integrity of a chip when working, and it will also be recognized by all software as a complete chip, and developers can directly use its powerful performance without rewriting the code.
The new chip allows users to accomplish tasks that were previously difficult to accomplish, such as rendering large-scale 3D scenes or playing 18 ProRes video streams simultaneously. The body is pressed in aluminum, the bottom edge is 7.7 inches long, and the height is 3.7 inches, and the overall appearance is quite compact, which can be easily placed under most monitors. The computer also features a new thermal design with dual centrifugal fans and precisely placed air ducts, as well as more than 4,000 cooling holes on the back and bottom of the housing to guide airflow through internal components to help cool down the high-performance chip.
Studio Display is a 5K display. In addition to the display effects, its main selling points include a 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera that supports character centering, and a high-fidelity six-speaker sound system that supports spatial audio. It features a 27-inch 5K Retina display with up to 600 nits of brightness, support for P3 wide color gamut, and display over 1 billion different colors.
Apple's new console with new display. Image source: Apple's official website
As the names of these two products indicate, their target market is a variety of creative studios. Apple also calls it the "ultimate studio configuration solution," arguing that it can meet the productivity needs of musicians and producers, 3D artists, app developers, photographers, videographers and more.
In terms of price, the starting price of the new computer is RMB14,999 and the price of the education offer is RMB13,499. The new display is priced at RMB11,499 and the education discount is priced at RMB10,799. In other words, the starting price of a set is 26,498 yuan, and the price of education discounts is 24,298 yuan.
Regular upgrade cost field conference mainstream
At this conference, Apple also launched two new colors for the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13, namely Cangling Green and Green. Just like the introduction of purple for the iPhone 12 last year, the launch of a new color match at the spring conference will also help the latest models continue to sell.
The new iPad Air launched at this conference is also a regular upgrade. The 10.9-inch Retina display can display 3.8 million pixels, the brightness is 500 nits, and it supports P3 wide color gamut and true color display. In addition to providing space gray, starlight, pink, and purple, there is a new blue version. Supports the 12MP ultra-wide front camera centered on the character, and the data transfer speed of the USB-C port is increased to up to 10Gbps, which is twice that of the previous generation.
The larger upgrade comes from the M1 chip and 5G. This is also the first time that the iPad Air model has adopted an M1 chip. Compared to the previous generation of iPad Air, the 8-core CPU can improve performance by up to 60%, unlocking the ability to edit multiple 4K videos, play image-intensive games, and design 3D interiors.
The new iPad Air is available in 64GB and 256GB capacities, starting at RMB4,399 for the Wireless LAN model and RMB5,499 for the Wireless LAN + Cellular model.
Apple's latest financial report shows that from October to December 2021, the company's revenue was $123.95 billion, an increase of 11% year-on-year; net profit was $34.63 billion, an increase of 20.43% year-on-year. Net revenue from Apple's mobile phones was $71.628 billion, up 9% year-over-year. In addition to the iPad product line, the revenue of all other product lines has increased.
Regionally, Apple's net revenue in Greater China was $25.783 billion this quarter, up 21% year-on-year, and net revenue from Japan, the rest of Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe also increased. Third-party statistics show that in the quarter, Apple even won the first place in global mobile phone shipments from Samsung, and also peaked in sales in the Chinese market.
When the pressure of external competition is slowing, Apple also has less scruples.
Beijing News shell financial reporter Xu Promised Editor Xu Chao Proofread chen diyan