Apple Might Start Making Its Own Batteries For iPhones, Macs (bloomberg.com) 90
Apple has hired an executive from the battery-making division of Samsung to help lead its own battery work. The new hire suggests that the company might start making its own batteries for iPhones and Macs. Bloomberg reports: Soonho Ahn joined Apple in December as global head of battery developments, after working as a senior vice president at Samsung SDI since 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile. At Samsung SDI, Ahn led development of lithium battery packs and worked on "next-generation" battery technology, the profile says. Apple has used batteries from Samsung SDI to power its own products in the past. The iPhone maker has been trying to reduce reliance on third-party components, and the notable battery technology hire suggests it may be doing the same for batteries. Apple has been working on its own MicroLED display technology for future devices, which would help wean itself off Samsung in other areas. It's also increasingly building its own processors and is investigating the development of its own cellular modems.
Proprietary battery ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Proprietary battery ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple has always relied on differentiating its products with unique hardware. Increasingly their competitors are getting ahead now, with things like foldable screens looking like they will be huge and Apple mostly reduced to just removing stuff like the headphone jack.
By developing their own screens, batteries, modems and other hardware they can differentiate themselves like they do with CPUs now. They have top notch single core performance that lets them look good in benchmarks, and no-one else can simply buy the same CPU.
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Methinks you don't understand what the GP wrote, and responded anyway.
Nobody was talking about the A12x. Nobody was talking about any of the A-series processors. Nobody was even talking about any ARM-based CPUs.
He was referring to the IBM PowerPC 970, a.k.a "PowerPC G5". You know, the processor series that Apple abandoned 13 years ago due to IBM's complete inability (and disinterest) in making available in a thermal package capable of shipping in a notebook computer that has a battery life longer than 12
Apple vs vertical integration (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has always relied on differentiating its products with unique hardware.
You mean unique software. Apple is at its core a software company. This seems counter-intuitive until you think about it for a minute. The hardware in most Apple devices is at best superficially different from the competition and Apple doesn't even manufacture it. Oh they make a big stink about their design as a marketing ploy but it isn't what really makes their products distinct. You can (and I have) put Windows on a Macintosh and the experience is not meaningfully different than on a Dell or HP. Apple differentiates their products primarily through their software. If a Macintosh was sold with Windows they would be unable to command the profit margins they currently do because their hardware is nice but it's not that different or better than their best competition. This is not my opinion [youtube.com] either. Steve Jobs understood this thoroughly. I think the current management seems a bit confused about this point.
Increasingly their competitors are getting ahead now, with things like foldable screens looking like they will be huge and Apple mostly reduced to just removing stuff like the headphone jack.
Folding screens as they currently stand are a fad that is not ready for prime time. It's a solution looking for a problem. Have you actually seen any of these products? If they are big hits I'll be truly astonished. The idea of a folding device is a good one but the form factors they are throwing out there currently are crap. And if you think Apple isn't taking a hard look at this stuff you are crazy.
By developing their own screens, batteries, modems and other hardware they can differentiate themselves like they do with CPUs now.
Certainly they could do this but they'll have to take it a LOT further. And unless they can actually create an improved component (cost and/or features) then there is no reason for them to do it in house. I think carefully curated vertical integration is actually probably a very good idea for Apple like you suggest. Tesla and SpaceX have done this too good effect. Plus one of the problems Apple has is that they do such huge volumes that supply becomes a problem. It's easy to do a folding screen when you only sell a few tens of thousands of devices. Apple sells tens of millions of iPhones which means that simply getting enough of any given component is a huge problem. Vertical integration can be a very good way to handle this issue and I think Apple has outsourced perhaps a bit too much of their hardware manufacturing.
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Apple has always relied on differentiating its products with unique hardware.
You mean unique software. Apple is at its core a software company.
The fact that you two are confused about the kind of company Apple is means they're quite successful at it.
Apple are a marketing company, they license or buy other companies hardware and leach of the open source community for software. Then convince you that it's "unique" and "special" with advertisements.
Re:Apple vs vertical integration (Score:4, Informative)
Their products ARE different... that's why we buy them. Give them a try and see if it's for you... return them if you don't like them. Not everything is for everybody but lots of people have tried their products and are happy with them. Who knows you may be pleasantly surprised.
Marketing is not a superpower (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that you two are confused about the kind of company Apple is means they're quite successful at it. Apple are a marketing company
I'm sure that bit of nonsense sounded better in your head. You have classic conspiracy theory thinking. For whatever reason you don't like the company. You want to believe that Apple is some master manipulator because you can't quite wrap your head around the idea that they are simply providing good products that people actually want to buy. You don't have to like Apple or their products but spare us your notions that they are some sort of devious marketing company because you sound stupid saying it.
they license or buy other companies hardware and leach of the open source community for software.
"Leach the open source community"? The VAST majority of Apple's software is not open source and never will be and they've never pretended otherwise. The do utilize some open source software when it is reasonable to do so and under the terms requested by those who wrote that open source software. They even contribute back to some projects and have some of their own. If they are following the license terms of the software then it's not clear to me what your problem is. If the writers of the software had a problem with it they could have offered a different license.
As for buying and licensing other companies hardware, please find me a large tech company that doesn't do that and a lot of it. And there is nothing wrong with licensing or buying other company's technology. Not sure why you think this is a problem.
Then convince you that it's "unique" and "special" with advertisements.
You seem to be suffering from the delusion that marketing give companies some kind of superpower of influence. In actual fact Apple spends less as a percent of revenue on marketing [vtldesign.com] than most of their peer tech companies including Microsoft, Intel, Google and even Oracle. If they were a "marketing company" as you claim then they would be spending far more on marketing than they actually are. In actual fact they make good products that people demonstrably want and they have one of the strongest brands out there as a result.
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The fact that you two are confused about the kind of company Apple is means they're quite successful at it. Apple are a marketing company
I'm sure that bit of nonsense sounded better in your head. You have classic conspiracy theory thinking. For whatever reason ...
Apple is a marketing company in the purest sense of the word. They figure out what people actually want to buy already, and then go design and build those products.
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It's not just marketing. There's a few things lacking, as with everything, but there's passion and great thought behind Apple's software ecosystem.
Although I resisted, I've started writing in Swift, talking to SceneKit and other APIs as needed, in Xcode.
It's the most fun and best effort-to-reward ratio I've had in 30+ years of developing.
Re:Apple vs vertical integration (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean unique software. Apple is at its core a software company. This seems counter-intuitive until you think about it for a minute. The hardware in most Apple devices is at best superficially different from the competition and Apple doesn't even manufacture it. Oh they make a big stink about their design as a marketing ploy but it isn't what really makes their products distinct. You can (and I have) put Windows on a Macintosh and the experience is not meaningfully different than on a Dell or HP. Apple differentiates their products primarily through their software. If a Macintosh was sold with Windows they would be unable to command the profit margins they currently do because their hardware is nice but it's not that different or better than their best competition.
This theory ignores the fact that the primary attraction for many Mac users, especially web developers and science/engineering types, is the POSIX underpinnings and the GNU toolchain. Apple did not create POSIX or GNU and do not substantially contribute to the development to them. Their support of CUPS and Clang is welcome and appreciated, and they recently open-sourced FoundationDB, which is nice if Cassandra isn't small-batch-craft-beer-check-shirt enough for your hipster ass..... but.... what else do they do in this space? Almost 100% of people working in these fields could use Linux instead, but they choose macOS because of the well-polished hardware integration, especially the screens, keyboards (maybe less so now) and touchpad.
Yes, there was a period where Apple was well-defined by great software: The early-mid 2000's. Programs like iPhoto, Garageband, and iMovie cemented their reputation as a company that could create really innovative software that was really easy to use. But that's a long, long time ago now. Here's the reality: There has been exactly one entirely new Mac application from Apple this entire decade. Yes, just one, and you'd never guess it: iBooks Author. That's it. Everything else they've done has been iterating on products from the Steve Jobs era (Mainstage, Motion, iTunes), or doing mediocre ports of mediocre iOS apps, like Homekit and Stocks. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Nobody's buying a Mac instead of a Surface because it can run desktop versions of mobile apps.
Apple isn't exactly the gold standard in pro software either. Most software devs don't love XCode.... Final Cut Pro X isn't capturing converts from Premiere.... Logic is very good but ProTools is still the industry standard.... tons of people choose Office over Pages, Sheets, Keynote and Mail.... Safari is generally considered inferior to Firefox and Chrome....
Add to that the fact that almost nobody can name a new feature of Mojave other than Dark Mode.... it sure feels like Apple is coasting on their Mac software efforts, not leading.
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So Apple isn't a fabless semiconductor designer who happens to have designed the most powerful mobile processor shipping in consumer devices right now, and has been for quite some time?
You seem to have forgotten about 90% of Apple's business (iOS), and you focused on the 10% or less that is the Mac in order to support your assertion.
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Unfortunately, you need to sink huge amounts of capital into spinning up a design and manufacturing organization that is quite far from your core competency, which is a long way of saying "a massive risk."
They pulled it off with their CPUs, mostly by making the very wise purchase of PA Semi. They whiffed spectacularly on that industrial sapphire plant in Arizona. We're still waiting to see if the "liquidmetal" purchase will ever amount to anything besides the SIM ejection tools they shipped with earlier i
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AFAIK, Tesla Model S uses NCR18650B cells from Panasonic. And they may actually be available at Walmart inside one of the many forms of battery pack they sell. And if they aren't, they are easily found online.
So you could conceivably change every individual cell from a Model S battery pack. I wouldn't recommend it for many reasons, one of them being that just buying the cells it will probably cost you more than buying a entirely new battery from Tesla.
Tesla Model 3 batteries are different. They use 2170 cel
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Apple already does this. Except they contract with other companies to make custom to meet Apple specs.
This is more likely so Apple has a tighter control of its supply chain market, and reduce the risks you get from having different vendors. Especially today with nearly every nation is hiding in its own little hole, making crazy rules to prevent others from getting too much control of their stuff. The B2B market is getting increasingly tougher to navigate, with governments, and a world of immediate outrage
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I wonder if Apple will develop its own battery format
Define "format". Apple's batteries are unique to Apple made to specification from a 3rd party. If you're talking about a different chemistry then good luck to them.
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It's BAD ENOUGH you STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anon posts OR even IMPERSONATE me telling lies
Like you're the real apk?
What could they possibly do better? (Score:2)
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So now "iteratively improving a base technology" is "copying" then?
Here's a hint: the entire march of technological progress of humanity is "copying" according to your assertion. We don't have anything we have today without someone "copying" what came before.
We get it, you don't like Apple. But whomever you do like is doing the exact same shit, be it Samsung, Google, LG, Lenovo / Motorola, HTC, etc. And yet you don't accuse any of them of "copying" even though many of their products are actual shameless
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Fair enough.
How can he do that? (Score:3)
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What happened to non-compete agreements?
You can't sign your legal rights away in a western country, any such clause is invalid.
I was offered one once for a job interview. Something about avoiding the related field for 10 years or some crap. Needless to say, I didn't go. Even if you might technically be able to win, if you have to pay for a bunch of lawyers, well you lose.
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What happened to non-compete agreements?
The are illegal in most of the world. Good luck getting a Korean company to successfully enforce a Korean contract on an American company on the other side of the world.
You'll probably find most non-compete agreements (if you have them) are completely unenforceable too if you left the country.
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So how can he just jump ship from one company to another, and start doing the same thing there? What happened to non-compete agreements?
Apple HQ is in Cupertino, California, USA.
California law specifically disallows non-compete agreements.
If Apple chooses to locate him at Apple HQ, any non-compete agreements he may have signed are null and void.
learn from the experts (Score:2)
are they sure they want someone from samsung to help them on the matter of batteries?
people are still joking about that samsung note 7 battery fiasco from two years ago...
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For all we know, this battery guy was totally opposed to a bunch of engineering decisions in the Note 7 and told the product managers it would be a problem. And then he got overruled because someone else wanted them to reach a specific thickness/power target that resulted in the battery being compromised.
Bad Link? (Score:3)
All the slashes removed. Some weird leading 'c' character. Editors?
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They have a vast pile of cash and their cash cow, the iPhone, has declining sales. They need to diversify.
The component stuff is different to the other three items on your list though. Apple components only go in Apple products, they aren't going to be like Samsung who sell to anyone. So that's less about diversification and more about trying to make sure that their products have something unique about them.
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I think that they are taking a lesson from Commodore Computers.
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Future Apple markets (Score:2)
Apple cannot seem to figure out what business it's in.
Apple is pretty clear about what business they currently are in. A little too clear maybe. The problem they have is that they can't seem to figure out what business to go into next. Apple has the problem that any business they go into has to be enormous to really move the needle for them. The Apple Watch currently generates more revenue than the Ipod ever did (remember those?) and yet people think it is a failure for Apple because the market opportunity just isn't big enough. For Apple to grow just 10%
How do you know Samsung "does better" (Score:2)
I kind of agree with you on #1, Apple media content is a strange fit.
#2 makes sense as a moon shot, that they wisen dropped - but it gave them a lot of benefits in understanding modern machine learning, so like all moonshots it had good side products.
#4 you are just flat our wrong on, Apple in the last year has done a lot of stuff - hardwire and software - for the Mac world.
Now this one:
Making components that Samsung does better.
How do you know Samsung "does this better"? It seems like at this point Apple
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Apple cannot seem to figure out what business it's in.
No. Apple definitely knows what business it's in. Its in the business of defining new products in new markets. As they jump between IT, portable audio, phones and personal organisers, mapping, home entertainment, they are doing so under the knowledge that each of the markets they enter easily saturate and they either need to vertically integrate and / or find another market to continue their obsession with endless growth.
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Ahhh... (Score:3)
So Foxcon are going to start making batteries now. Good for them! Apple doesn't actually make anything- they design things and hire out other companies to make them for them.
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They frequently outsource the design too
The label on the back of Apple products is always careful to proclaim "Designed in California (made in China)"
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Patents (Score:1)
Soon they will be applying for patents on battery tech and fuck us all over, again.
I'm sure lithium batteries will be considered innovations by the US patents office.
Or they may go the Nikon route (Score:2)
Nikon does not fab their own sensors. They source them from Sony and some other companies. What they do have is a sensor design team or department that acts as though they have a fabrication facility. This lets them take the product offering from Sony and then spec it to their particular needs. Apple may not need to make batteries ultimately but they certainly go through a lot of them and developing in-house expertise on this component cannot hurt them.
Nikon in trouble (Score:2)
Nikon does not fab their own sensors. They source them from Sony and some other companies.
This is true and ultimately it may be their doom. Sony has gotten into the high end camera market to the point where they lead the market in new camera sales [theverge.com] passing both Nikon and Canon. Having to rely on one of your biggest competitors for such a critical component is a BAD place to be. Especially since the market for dedicated camera fell off a cliff courtesy of smartphones.
They hired a Samsung battery exec. (Score:2)