iPhones 15 Pro.

What might be different in the non-pro A17 next year? I suspect the GPU might not be as
beefy (perhaps, with binning, it will offer 5 cores instead of 6), and I suspect it might have
6 GB of RAM (like the A16 Bionic chips) instead of the 8 GB of RAM in the A17 Pro.

But my god, what a GPU the A17 Pro seems to have. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is
a huge deal, and a major differentiating factor between Apple’s M-series chips (which
don’t have it) and high-end PC GPUs from Nvidia and AMD (which do). Clearly, this new
GPU is not just the biggest aspect of the A17 Pro, it’s going to be the biggest aspect of
the M3-series chips for Macs and iPads (and, eventually, Vision headsets) too. The A-
series chips have always had world-class GPUs for phones, but Apple is attempting to
narrow the high-end GPU gap on the PC side as well.

But when? The A17 Pro is the de facto launch of TSMC’s next-generation 3nm
fabrication. Informed speculation suggests that Apple has secured 90-95 percent of
TSMC’s 3nm output for the next year, and it sounds like TSMC’s production might not be
able to keep up with iPhone 15 Pro demand — the 15 Pro models might wind up
backordered for months to come. That’s an aspect of Apple’s two-pronged annual
iPhone strategy I didn’t mention last week. I don’t think it would have even been possible
for the non-pro iPhone 15 models to use the A17 chip because they’re going to have
trouble enough producing them for the Pro models alone.

So based solely on TSMC’s 3nm production capability, I don’t expect to see M3 Macs or
iPads this year, and perhaps not until midway through next year. Keep in mind too that
the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air just launched three months ago. That to me was a sign that
the M2 would remain “current” until at least next year. People hoping for new M3
MacBook Airs this year are setting themselves up for disappointment, I think.

It speaks to the iPhone’s preeminence in Apple’s product lineup — a preeminence based,

reasonably, on profound popularity and profitability — that it gets the most cutting-edge
silicon long before any other product.

A P P L E W AT C H S E R I E S 9 A N D U LT R A 2

The Series 9 watches continue to have their series number etched on the caseback. But
the new Ultra doesn’t say “2” on it anywhere. It’s just the new Ultra. I think it’s
indistinguishable from last year’s original Apple Watch Ultra on the outside — you’ll need
to power the watch on and check in Settings → General → About to tell whether an Ultra
is from the first or second generation. Apple almost never labels its products with
generation numbers or model years on the outside. But this seems like an inconsistent
way to treat the two different lines of Apple Watches. It’s almost enough to make you
think that when the Series Apple Watches launched, there was an influential executive
who thought numbering them was a good idea, and that executive is no longer at Apple.

The best new feature in Apple Watch this year has to be the new double tap gesture,
enabling no-touch manipulation of the watch. We got to try this in the hands-on area, and
it Just Worked™. Fast, accurate, and natural. In the keynote and their marketing
materials, Apple says you need to tap your thumb and index finger, but I tried with my
thumb and middle finger and it worked just fine. No more touching your nose to your
watch when your hands are dirty from food preparation or carrying something you can’t