Month: May 2022

The Chinese city of Zhengzhou – known locally as iPhone City as it’s home to the world’s largest iPhone factory – has been placed into immediate lockdown following the discovery of COVID-19 infections.

This will have an immediate effect on iPhone 13 production, and also impacts Apple’s preparations for later iPhone 14 assembly …

Zhengzhou had so far escaped lockdowns, and as recently as yesterday the company asked Foxconn to ramp up recruitment of iPhone workers, to balance out loss of manufacturing capacity elsewhere in the country.

Background

While most countries around the world have ended lockdowns, adopting an approach of living with COVID-19, China maintains its efforts to completely eradicate the infection.

A lockdown in Shenzhen last month forced Foxconn to halt iPhone assembly at two plants, though a combination of exemptions for closed-loop production, and the company’s ability to switch to backup facilities meant that iPhone production wasn’t badly hit.

However, lockdowns in Shanghai and Kunshan have seen Apple production halted at three other suppliers, and these are expected to have a much more significant impact.

Zhengzhou has previously escaped lockdowns. Indeed, as recently as yesterday, we learned that Apple had asked Foxconn to bring on board iPhone 14 workers earlier than usual, likely in the hopes of establishing closed-loop production at at early stage, to guard against lockdowns once assembly of this year’s iPhone line-up begins.

iPhone City in lockdown

South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that Zhengzhou has been placed into immediate lockdown following a small-scale COVID outbreak.

Zhengzhou, which recorded on Wednesday four new Covid-19 cases and 10 new asymptomatic carriers, is under lockdown from Wednesday till next Tuesday. During this period, employees of government organisations and companies in the city’s main districts will work from home, school lessons will move online, and people will only be allowed to leave and enter Zhengzhou under “necessary” circumstances.

Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer and Apple’s prime supplier, on Wednesday froze its hiring process of assembly line personnel until further notice, according to updates posted on Chinese social media by a number of worker recruitment agencies in Zhengzhou, capital of central Henan province.

A week-long city-wide lockdown might seem like a massive over-reaction to just 14 cases, but China continues to insist that it can completely eradicate the disease from the country by taking radical measures like this.

9to5Mac’s Take

Although the number of cases is tiny, and the present lockdown is for just one week, this is a hugely worrying development for Apple.

iPhone production was already hit by lockdowns in other cities, but Apple could take comfort from the fact that he largest iPhone factory in the world had been unaffected. Foxconn even has backup production lines there specifically intended to pick up assembly slack when other parts of China are in lockdown.

Even a short-term lockdown will have a significant impact, but the far more worrying prospect is that once the infection takes hold in the city, there will be further or continued outbreaks.

Sustained disruption in iPhone City would be such a big deal for China that it could even challenge the government’s zero-infection policy, where just one confirmed case leads to lockdowns. Much of the population is already frustrated at the policy, and this could significantly add to pressure to abandon it.

Photo: Hao Zhang/Unsplash

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Stories discussed in this episode:

• Apple Car poaches Ford exec as it aims for 2025 launch
• Apple opening submissions for in-person WWDC 2022 application next week
• AT&T price increases: What you need to know

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Intel last week provided an update on its 14th-generation Meteor Lake processors due to launch next year, but it seems that there may have been a crucial change to the company’s plans.

Intel has said as recently as last week that it would fabricate the chips itself, using a 7nm process, but a supply-chain report today claims that the company will instead outsource the work to TSMC, so it can benefit from the same 5nm process used for Apple’s M1 chips …

Background

Apple was said to have grown increasingly frustrated at the timing of Mac launches being effectively dictated by Intel’s timeline for new CPUs. Additionally, multiple quality problems with intel’s Skylake chip in 2015 is reported to have been the final straw in Apple deciding to switch to its own processors.

Although Intel had known for years that the day was coming, it seemed to have its head in the sand when it came to its expectations of Apple Silicon. The company didn’t expect the first generation of Apple’s Mac chips to so dramatically out-perform its own offerings, and had no idea how to respond.

Indeed, Intel’s responses appear to have been generated by a Magic-8 ball. It dismissed Apple’s status as a lifestyle brand, mocking it in multiple ad campaign. Then it declared it would manufacture ARM chips. After claiming it could take over Apple Silicon, it then said that it could. Finally it claimed it could win back Apple’s business.

The company claimed it could make ARM-based chips that beat Apple’s TSMC-fabbed ARM processors. However, the company also continued to entertain the possibility of outsourcing some production to Taiwanese competitors. Indeed, some reports went as far as saying this has already been happening for well over a year now.

Enter Intel Meteor Lake Chips

Intel first announced plans for its 14th-generation CPUs last year, branded Meteor Lake. The company stated at the time that these would be fabricated in-house using the company’s own 7nm process (which it rebranded as Intel 4, to make it sound more advanced than TSMC’s 5nm process).

The US chipmaker gave an update last week, stating that it had officially powered-up a prototype of this chip. Intel described this as ‘our first disaggregated product,’ which is another way of describing a similar system-on-a-chip design to that used in Apple’s M1 chips.

Meteor Lake chips may be made by TSMC

However, a Digitimes report today claims that Intel is now considering plans to outsource chip fabrication to TSMC, so that it can take advantage of the Taiwanese company’s 5nm process.

Intel is evaluating a revision to its blueprints for the 14th Gen Core “Meteor Lake” CPUs by turning to TSMC’s 5nm process family to manufacture all of the integrated chips, according to industry sources.

9to5Mac’s Take

If Intel does indeed take this approach, it would amount to an embarrassing admission that the company cannot match the chip-fabrication capabilities of its Taiwanese rival, and needs TSMC’s smaller process to have any hope of matching Apple’s M1 chips.

The efficiency of Intel’s design will determine just how close Meteor Lake processors are able to get to the performance and power efficiency of Apple’s M1 chips.

However, even if Intel does go this route – and it’s so far a single uncorroborated report – Apple is already working on M2 and M3 chips. The company’s close relationship with TSMC, accounting for about 25% of the chipmaker’s business, is likely to mean that Apple gets first access to each new generation of the Taiwanese company’s tech. This would make it challenging for Intel to catch up, regardless of its outsourcing plans.

Reincubate launched its Camo app back in 2020 to seamlessly upgrade your Mac’s webcam with the iPhone you already have. Over the last two years, the app has been continuously upgraded, and today brings a major milestone. Camo now has official support to use your iPhone as the webcam in FaceTime, Safari, and QuickTime Mac apps.

As I covered back in my original review, Camo is an impressive app that gives you fine-grain control to use your iPhone as a 1080p Mac webcam. You can choose which iPhone camera lens to use, resolution, flash level, zoom, along with customizing white balance, exposure, brightness, temperature, and more.

Camo has worked with popular video services like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Skype, and through browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. One problem has been the support for FaceTime or Safari.

After talking with Apple over the last couple of years, Reincubate has been able to build official support for Camo into first-party Mac apps. Available starting today with version 1. 6 (macOS 12. 3 required), Camo lets you use iPhone natively through FaceTime, QuickTime, and Safari.

“We’re super excited to bring the power and simplicity of Camo’s video superpowers to millions of Safari, FaceTime, and QuickTime users,” says Aidan Fitzpatrick, CEO of Reincubate. “This update comes as a consequence of two years of conversations with Apple on how we can make the most of the incredible cameras in their devices, and it’s freely available to all users running Camo 1. 6 and macOS 12. 3 or newer.”

I was able test the update before it became available and it worked seamlessly with Mac apps. Just search for Camo Camera in Safari’s settings for your video calling service.

For FaceTime, just click “Video” in the menu bar then choose “Camo Camera” to switch from your default Mac webcam to iPhone. And in QuickTime, when you go to record a new movie, click the dropdown arrow next to the record button to find Camo Camera as an option.

Camo is available for Mac and PC – Android in testing too – with a free and paid Pro version (both ad-free).

Whether you’re disappointed with the new Studio Display webcam or just haven’t tried out Camo yet and are ready for an upgrade, it offers a simple setup and a wonderful app experience with vastly improved webcam quality.