Apple Reportedly Ramps Up Vapor Chamber Orders for Foldable iPhone

- So, if every chip comes with better power efficiency, why would they need more cooling and vapor chambers?

Because power efficiency and total heat output are not the same thing.
A more efficient chip uses less energy to perform a given amount of work, but manufacturers usually exploit that efficiency to run the chip faster rather than merely reducing power consumption.

For example:

* Old chip: 100 units of performance at 10 W
* New chip: 150 units of performance at 10 W

The new chip is 50% more performance-efficient, but it still produces roughly the same 10 W of heat. If the manufacturer allows it to consume 12 W for short periods, it may deliver 180 units of performance. That now requires even better cooling despite being fundamentally more efficient.

still not seeing these take off, 10 million units seems beyond optimistic

Folding phones are 2% of the Global market and 67% of those sold are clamshell style not "book" style.

Customer satisfaction sits at around 70%, and 64% of survey respondants say they aren't interested

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/64-of-people-still-dont-want-a-foldable-smartphone-cnet-survey-finds/

Same could have been said about the iPhone when it first launched. Apple doesn’t win by making it first. They win by making a category appealing to people who ignored it before.

If this was Jobs's Apple, you might have a point. However, when was the last time that happened for them? iPod, iPhone, iPad... then what? The watch… that's tied exclusively to the phone (and thus only a subset of phone users)? Certainly not the Vision Pro.

This is going to be the first "new" product since the Vision Pro. We're just going to have to see how it goes. I should say, as someone who bought iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches early on (and have since dropped the watch and the iPad)… neither the Vision Pro nor this foldable phone call to me. Maybe it's because I'm older and my perception of my needs has changed. Maybe it's because I see both products as signs of a company that's lost its rudder. Maybe it's a mix of both. We'll see.

I disagree with the premise. Steve Jobs was a once in a generation leader but Apple hasn’t been standing still since he passed. AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Silicon have all been massive successes. Whether the foldable succeeds is a separate question but I don’t think it’s accurate to dismiss Apple’s ability to execute simply because Jobs isn’t there anymore.

You're comparing a revolutionary world-changing product...to an iteration of that product that doubles the price and removes half of the best features.

Try to comprehend this.

Revolutionary is hindsight. Before the iPhone launched critics called it an overpriced touchscreen with no keyboard, no 3G no MMS no copy/paste and said it couldn’t compete with BlackBerry or Nokia. It only became obviously revolutionary after it proved itself.

That’s exactly why I’m skeptical of declarations that the foldable is obviously going to fail.

Try to comprehend this.

Whoever at apple thinks they're gonna sell 10 million of these folding phones the first year at over $2K a pop in this economy should be ordering crack pipes instead of vapor chambers.

The thing with a K shaped economy is there are still a lot of folks with a lot of cash

Also a lot of folks pay in monthly installments, over 2 years the extra monthly cost of the difference between a pro max, which tends to sell well, and this likely ultra doesnt add enough to trigger a lot of folks cost red line

Because power efficiency and total heat output are not the same thing.
A more efficient chip uses less energy to perform a given amount of work, but manufacturers usually exploit that efficiency to run the chip faster rather than merely reducing power consumption.

For example:

* Old chip: 100 units of performance at 10 W
* New chip: 150 units of performance at 10 W

The new chip is 50% more performance-efficient, but it still produces roughly the same 10 W of heat. If the manufacturer allows it to consume 12 W for short periods, it may deliver 180 units of performance. That now requires even better cooling despite being fundamentally more efficient.

Thank you. It's refreshing seeing a well-reasoned post here rather than the typical and hackneyed Apple is evil.