2024 Winners and losers: Apple | Infinium-tech
Last year was a strange one for Apple, as it primarily focused on maintaining its smartphone market dominance while dipping its toes into XR and AI. Regulators from around the world knocked on the door of Cupertino’s walled garden and we saw the first crack with the release of iOS 18. The iPhone 16 series brought more improvements that generated substantial interest from consumers but fell short of initial expectations.
The M4 series chips continued to deliver great performance for Macs and iPads, while the new AirPods 4 delivered great audio and active noise cancellation without the silicone ear tips. All was not well in the Cupertino world as the Apple Intelligence and Vision Pro can be safely classified as flops. Let’s take a deeper dive into the best and not-so-best of Apple in 2024.
Winner: iOS 18
Third-party app stores? Alternative default apps? RCS messaging? They’re all part of iOS now, at least in some regions. Features that once seemed like a distant mirage to iPhone users are here, whether Apple likes it or not. The European Commission has been a driving force for change, as have regulators in other parts of the world, and a major overhaul is coming to Apple’s most popular operating system in 2024.
The feature gap between iOS and Android has narrowed in 2024 compared to a few years ago. You can also rearrange icons without any grid limits, something that should have been a feature on iPhones from the beginning.
You’re free to set alternative default apps for your browser, camera, gallery, and messaging apps, which is a big win for those who oppose Apple’s walloping. We’re glad to see that iOS is now a freer and more customizable operating system, and we look forward to what’s next.
Loser: Apple Intelligence
You’ve probably seen those hilarious Apple Intelligence notification summaries, and they kind of indicate the entire feature: It’s half-baked. In a surprisingly un-Apple way, Apple Intelligence was marketed as a key feature for the iPhone 16 series without it being present on day one.
At the time of writing, more than three months after its official launch and with iOS 18.2 now out, Apple Intelligence is still missing several key features. Perhaps more pressing is that the AI features are exclusive to a handful of English-speaking countries. Users in Europe and China will have to wait until April 2025, which is a big disappointment. Barring the struggle for large-scale deployment, Apple’s AI features seem rudimentary and lagging behind competitors like OpenAI and Google.
Winner: iPhone 16
Baseline iPhones have been some of Apple’s best-selling iPhones for years, and this year is no different. The iPhone 16 is arguably the best non-pro iPhone yet, with a more capable A18 chipset, 8GB of RAM, an autofocusing ultrawide camera, and new camera control buttons.
Add a long-lasting battery, and you’re left with a wonderfully premium and (kind of) compact device that’s just missing one thing – a screen with a high refresh rate. But hey, Apple calls them ProMotion displays, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Loser: Apple Vision Pro
Despite all the hype surrounding its US launch in February, the Vision Pro seemed to fall off a cliff shortly after. Despite a later extended rollout in some Asian and European markets, Apple’s $3,500/€4,000 space computer is an expensive first-gen niche product with limited use cases, meaning most consumers aren’t interested in it. Besides being prohibitively expensive, Apple’s XR headset is bulky, clunky, and isolated, and it doesn’t have any real game-changing applications at the moment.
According to the latest rumors, a more affordable Vision Pro is at least two years away, so it’ll be time before Apple sees a more polished headset ready for prime-time.
Winner: M4 Chips/Mac Mini 2024
The M1 series chips laid the foundation for the ARM revolution in personal computers, and the M4 generation brought solid CPU and GPU gains over previous chips.
The M4 Max chip is configurable with 16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores, and 128 GB of integrated memory with 546 GB/s bandwidth. Those numbers are ridiculous, but provided you have the right workflow and are able to live with macOS, Apple is offering some crazy capabilities for creative work.
Along with the M4 chips, Apple also announced its smallest desktop ever with the new Mac mini with M4 and M4 Pro chips. At just 12.7 cm (5 inches) per side and 670 grams, the new Mac mini fully lives up to its name. And as we saw in our M4 Mac mini review, the device is a capable workhorse with silent operation and a good port selection, while its base configuration is priced at a reasonable $599.
Winner: AirPods 4
The biggest problem with in-ear headphones is their fit. Many people can’t stand having silicone tips crammed into their ears for more than a few hours, but not having a good seal around your ears is a recipe for poor noise cancellation.
Apple managed to solve that problem with its AirPods 4 with ANC, which were developed with special ear-mapping technology that ensures optimal fit for different types of ears and somehow enables noise cancellation. Manages to connect. The new drivers also ensure better sound quality, which combined with the longer battery life and USB-C charging case make these one of Apple’s best AirPods yet.
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