Rumors, while they are often at least somewhat inaccurate, very spoiler-y, and occasionally just not true at all (still no Apple Watch 2 ...), are born of a boundless optimism for the future and the thrill of mystery -- qualities that you just can't hate. This week, Rumor Roundup tries not to rain on the parade of the latest claims, reports, and speculation regarding a leaked part for next fall's iPhone 7, the possibility of refreshes in the MacBook family lineup, and at least one analyst who -- after finally giving up his dream of an Apple HDTV -- has now reshaped that dream to look like a car.
Let's start with the one we have some photographic evidence of ... well, perhaps. What we have is a picture of a battery from a Chinese web site (digi.tech.qq.com) that is claimed to be for the iPhone 7, the iPhone that is expected to replace the iPhone 6s as the flagship model next fall. This could be a battery from nearly any upcoming smartphone, of course, but the one bit of useful information on it is that it is a 7.04 watt-hour battery. For comparison, this is larger than the battery for the current 4.7-inch iPhone 6s (6.61 watt-hours) and just slightly more than the previous iPhone 6 battery (7.01 watt-hours).
Assuming for the moment that this is, in fact, a battery for the future iPhone 7, what does that tell us? Well, it could suggest that Apple has taken to heart the numerous complaints that the extraordinary capabilities of the iPhone 6 and 6s have made it so the battery life is just not enough for us anymore. If anything is going to make the iPhone SE a hit in North America, it will likely be the fact that it is, really, a smaller, slightly inferior iPhone 6s with two full hours more battery life, and a retail price a bit more than half the cost of the 4.7-inch 6s. So if Apple is thinking of giving the next iPhone more battery life -- even if it were a bit thicker than the current model -- that would probably go down well with at least a segment of the market.
Alternatively, it could be the battery for the iPhone 7 Plus -- and Apple has achieved a breakthrough that meets that device's power requirements while using less power. That's also possible, and more in line with what Apple has done thus far over the years. A lot of users think the battery in the iPhone 6 or 6s isn't as good as it was in earlier models, but statistics show that isn't true -- so what's really happening is that as each iteration of the iPhone brings us more capability or reasons to keep using it more and more, this naturally outpaces the growth in efficiency in the batteries.
The former notion that the next iPhone 7 could be slightly thicker than the current models also flies in the face of the current "conventional wisdom," which suggest that the iPhone 7 will, for the (now) second time since the iPhone 3Gs, stick with the basic design of the current model with only a handful of notable design changes. At present -- early days -- it's believed that the "iPhone 7" will actually be very slightly thinner (one millimeter less than the current 7mm thickness of the iPhone 6s), will move the antenna bands to a less-obvious design (hugging the top and bottom edges of the back), no headphone jack, stereo speakers, and on at least one model -- a dual-camera system that takes better pictures.
There's some other things that we'd suggest are "duh" type guesses, such as the "fact" that the iPhone 7 will introduce the world to Apple's A10 chip, or that it will support even faster LTE speeds. Less certain are claims such as that the new phone will have a Smart Connector as found on the iPad Pro line, or that -- now that there's an iPad with 256GB of storage space -- this option will migrate to the iPhone 7. Those two are within the realm of possibility, of course, but we'll see how much of a market there is for a 256GB iPhone option when it pushes the price up to nearly $1,000.
Speaking of things that could happen, a refresh of the MacBook family (MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro) line seems pretty likely, and there are two likely periods where that could happen: the late-spring "Dads & Grads" season just before or during the Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, or during the "Back to School" promotion in August. The highly-speculative Taiwan publication
DigiTimes believes that Apple will release "13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks" with the same thin design seen in the current 12-inch MacBooks at the end of the spring quarter.
It's unclear if the site means "MacBook Airs" or just "MacBooks," but the former seems more likely, since MacBooks (without the "Air" designation) only come in one 12-inch size, and MacBook Airs come in 11-inch and 13-inch configurations, so we'll assume they mean Air models, presumably abandoning the 11-inch size altogether. Apparently they will be about as thin as the MacBook line. While Apple is certainly keen to make the MacBook Airs thinner and lighter, the site seems to have forgotten that the reason the MacBook line can achieve that remarkable thinness is that it has at its heart a very,
very low-speed processor (and uses tricks like double-speed PCI flash storage to make this less noticeable.
In short, while the MacBook Air could take advantage of some of these "tricks," it's going to be a hard sell to differentiate the Air from the MacBooks if this is really the plan. We could see a different scenario where Apple drops the "Air" moniker entirely, and changes the 11-inch Air into a super-thin 11-inch MacBook to be a $999 budget model, while the 13-inch MacBook Air would become the entry-level MacBook Pro. Something like this has actually happened before: for a short time, Apple sold an aluminum unibody MacBook -- then decided it should be beefed up slightly and be the 13-inch MacBook Pro the following year.
The part of this rumor we like is the continued existence of a 15-inch model. There had been some talk that Apple might discontinue the 15-inch size, since the 13-inch sells far, far better among the Pro line. Among the big changes, it is thought that the entire line -- or at least as much as gets changed in the next six months -- will feature Intel "Skylake" processors, USB-C connectors, and in the Pro line, those connectors may also double as Thunderbolt 3 when an appropriately speedy device or video is used. Apple last refreshed the MacBook Pro line about a year ago, but the model hasn't seen a serious redesign in many years.
There's also the possibility the entire line will go to Retina displays (currently, the MacBook Air and one 13-inch variation on the MacBook Pro are the only portables that don't have Retina displays. It has been reported in some quarters that current third-party reseller stock of the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros is running a bit thin, which is sometimes a sign of an impending refresh. A previous rumor from the same country's
Economic Daily News suggested earlier this year that Apple may be planning to consolidate it's MacBook family range to include fewer models. Dropping the 11-inch MacBook Air and the "Air" name entirely would leave a 12-inch "MacBook," and a 13- and 15-inch "Pro" model that is as thin as the MacBook Air is now.
Last but not least, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has decide to latch on to yet another idea that -- while it could come to pass -- will likely be foreshadowed with years of "maybe
next quarter!" type predictions. Interviewed by an Apple Car enthusiast site, Munster said unequivocally that he is "still in the camp that this is real ... our take is that there is still a sizable team" working on the concept, though some executive names formerly associated with the project have since left Apple. While admitting his initial report predicting the Apple Car is "a little dated," he insists the "substance" of the prediction is "unchanged."
Munster says Apple won't actually build the car itself -- "high probability of about 80% they outsource it," he said -- but that it probably won't appear for ordering until the 2019-2020 model year, and may not actually "ship" until the following year, 2021. This does tie in with a remark allegedly said by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the annual shareholder's meeting that there is something really special in the pipeline, but that he will have to keep quiet about it for quite some time, comparing it to waiting for Christmas morning. Munster believes the rationale behind the car is some anticipation that the iPhone will eventually peak and decline in sales, so another area that holds the promise of significant growth will be needed in a few years.
As to when we can see signs that any of this could actually come to pass, Munster says that the first thing buyers will see is large amounts of hiring. Apple has already done some hiring of automotive-industry people, but Munster is referring to much larger numbers of people. "Second phase [will be] tooling and early [part] orders. Third thing will be the plan," he said. "I think there is going to be a long steady flow of information ... [it's] hard to keep that under wraps. Apple thinks about how they are going to be in business the next 200 years," he added. "We think they will call it the Apple Car."
As for how much such a vehicle might cost, Munster points to Apple's traditional territory of the higher end of the market. "If you look at the overall automotive industry Apple historically plays toward the high-end," he said, saying the price would likely be "around $75,000." Despite guessing out a future that is still many years away, Munster said he has a "higher than 50 percent" optimism that the Apple Car will actually come to pass, which he characterizes as "very optimistic."
While he may not agree with Munster on the probability, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes that
if Apple were to build a car, it would be an "insanely great" one. In a recent "Reddit AMA" chat, he was asked about the possibility of an Apple vehicle in the future. While noting that he had no inside info, he said that Apple would be uninterested in making "just another" electric car or self-driving car, and would be more likely to pursue a product that will really help "all of humanity," saying he would be "really for that in Apple."
Woz mentioned that electric cars and self-driving cars are clearly coming into the mainstream in the years ahead, along with cars that use computer power to help prevent accidents and injury. "A couple months ago, my wife got rear-ended. Totaled actually, totaled in one of our cars, and the girl was crying from breaking up with her girlfriend and didn't see the red light. But if she'd been driving some kind of self-aware car, it would have stopped because of the red light. So I think that we're really going to improve life a lot with some of those things, and that's where Apple likes to be. Basically making products that make a better world for the users. So the car market makes total sense to me for Apple."
"I think that Apple will build a car, but won't put out any great thing until it's insanely great," Wozniak said. "It can't be just another new car." Munster said that the car project, if real, is "a big step forward (and sideways)" for the company. Asked why he held only a "better than 50 percent" certainty that the car project will come to pass, Munster brought up one reason rooted in Apple tradition -- the fact that Apple often spends time and effort on products that don't make it to market -- and another reason based on his own experience over the last decade.
"We still hold to a greater than 50 percent likelihood the project is alive and funded, and a greater than 50 percent chance it is unchanged," he said. "The reason why our number isn't higher is that we were wrong on the [Apple] television, and I learned some lessons about things we hear internally, and how that resulted in a lack of a project."
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