Are you planning to upgrade to the iPhone 15

[Foxbat]

I’m managing to get pretty reasonable battery life out of the Series 4 Apple Watch I inherited from Mrs. Foxbat after she got a Series 8 on Prime Day. She had it die constantly while at work, and I believe it was due to all the Apps that were running. I get home with 5-20% battery, but I try to quit apps I won’t be using. The Battery Health shows the following:

Apple will give $60 in trade for a new Apple Watch, but after September’s announcement, I am sure that will drop to zip.

Same thing for Mrs. Foxbat’s iPhone X, we got a $120 trade-in when we upgraded her to an unlocked iPhone 13. After the iPhone 15 comes out and iOS 17, the iPhone X is cut-off.

 

[navychop]

I decided that was where I said “I’ll pay Apple the $89” for an iPhone battery replacement.

HEAR HEAR!

 

[harshness]

HEAR HEAR!

Are you campaigning for a hearing aid-compatible Apple Watch?

 

[Foxbat]

Are you campaigning for a hearing aid-compatible Apple Watch?

I believe there are Bluetooth hearing aids, and they should be able to be paired with an Apple Watch…

 

[TheForce]

I will likely keep my AW 6 as it is working OK even with the lower battery capacity. But will take the trade-in on the 11 Max Pro if the hit in September isn't too bad. My AW6 will be a good backup or gift to my middle grandson. Now only worth $115. Looking forward to the Ultra 2 and iphone 15ProMax.

The next decision is whether to get 512GB or stay with the 256GB in the iphone. I have 512GB on my 11 but never used more than 225GB when I was shooting lots of video. Normally I sit around 200. The iCloud auto upload seems to be saving me on phone storage. I also am getting along fine with 200GB on icloud.

Which AW model did you get? Cellular? SS or Aluminum? My wife's first AW was Aluminum and it looked a mess after a year. Since she has gone with SS and like mine looks new after several years.

 

[klang]

Yet another version of the new USB-C rumors:

Not so fast: The iPhone 15’s USB-C cable is reportedly as slow as Lightning

I suspect most users, like me, don't really care about wired data transfer speeds.

Another couple weeks to wait for the real info.

 

[Foxbat]

(Don, I moved my Apple Watch post over to the Apple Watch thread.)

I think all the new reports of the USB 2.0 speeds are based on the one report from the same leaker, and they’re referencing each other in a wide enough circle that they eventually come around to the original “leak”.

Now, if I were Apple, I would be content to let the Apple-media continue frothing at the mouth so when the iPhone 15 is released with full 5.0 Gbps USB 3 speed, the Public will think that’s great, but then the hook gets set when the iPhone 15 Ultra shows up with Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.2 speeds of 40 Gbps.

Like klang says, come the September iPhone Event, we will know for sure.

 

[TheForce]

(Don, I moved my Apple Watch post over to the Apple Watch thread.)

I think all the new reports of the USB 2.0 speeds are based on the one report from the same leaker, and they’re referencing each other in a wide enough circle that they eventually come around to the original “leak”.

Now, if I were Apple, I would be content to let the Apple-media continue frothing at the mouth so when the iPhone 15 is released with full 5.0 Gbps USB 3 speed, the Public will think that’s great, but then the hook gets set when the iPhone 15 Ultra shows up with Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.2 speeds of 40 Gbps.

Like klang says, come the September iPhone Event, we will know for sure.

As I discovered by experiment, the speed topic is not so simple. Like How to measure the speed of data transfer? Simply put it limited to 3 parts- The source storage, the transfer connection and the destination write speed. What do we have that both ends are faster than the connection so we know how much that connection is the limiting factor?

 

[harshness]

Like How to measure the speed of data transfer?

How about a stopwatch?

 

[TheForce]

How about a stopwatch?

That's how I measured the speed of the system, not the Thunderbolt connection or the USB connection.

 

[harshness]

That's how I measured the speed of the system, not the Thunderbolt connection or the USB connection.

The same principles apply (assuming the interval is measurable).

 

[TheForce]

The same principles apply (assuming the interval is measurable).

Maybe I'm dense but how would you determine maximum speed of a connection when the source and destination is limited to a much slower speed than what you believe the connection is capable of? The old saying- "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link."

 

[harshness]

Maybe I'm dense but how would you determine maximum speed of a connection when the source and destination is limited to a much slower speed than what you believe the connection is capable of? The old saying- "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link."

Transfer rates are measured in some multiple of bits or bytes per second. If you take a file of known bits or bytes (size) and use a stopwatch (seconds), you can determine the transfer rate by dividing the size by the seconds. 480Kbps (max) is going to take a whole lot longer to transmit a 4K DolbyVision video than a cable running at 20Mbps. 20Mpbs is much faster than you can get with even Ethernet or Wi-fi 6.

There is now a second independent source supporting the idea that the non-Pro devices will be limited in both charging and transfer rates.

iPhone 15 USB-C Cables Again Said to Be Limited to USB 2.0 Transfer Speeds

All iPhone 15 models this year are expected to adopt USB-C ports for the first time, and while USB-C has several advantages over Lightning, another...

www.macrumors.com

No, it isn't fair to suggest that it doesn't matter because you would be buying a Pro model anyway.

 

[TheForce]

Transfer rates are measured in some multiple of bits or bytes per second. If you take a file of known bits or bytes (size) and use a stopwatch (seconds), you can determine the transfer rate by dividing the size by the seconds. 480Kbps (max) is going to take a whole lot longer to transmit a 4K DolbyVision video than a cable running at 20Mbps. 20Mpbs is much faster than you can get with even Ethernet or Wi-fi 6.

You just explained second grade arithmetic which I first stated how I measured the entire transfer process. Sorry but you cannot measure the speed of a connection that way. The speed will be limited by the weakest part of the transfer process.

No Doubt, if you source from a 3.5GB/s M.2 and have the destination set at another M.2 with 3.5GB/sec destination write speed and use a connection as USB 2.0 then the transfer will indeed be limited to 480KB/sec or less. But if the same system is set up with a Thunderbolt connection and the speed of transfer is 3.5GB/sec then that proves the speed limit is set by the M.2 source and/or the destination devices, not necessarily the connection.
The claim of the Thunderbolt is 40GB/sec but until we have source and destination device that is equal to or same as the Thunderbolt speed, we just don't know if USB C 3.2 or Thunderbolt is intentionally being limited by Apple

At this point I am beyond offering a theory as my actual testing proves the Thunderbolt can run transfer at near 3.5GB/s which is considerably faster than USB 2.0.

In reality, as long as I can achieve transfer speeds equal or close to the weakest device in my system, then I am happy.


Show me what source storage and destination storage device can achieve 20GB/second read / write speed.

Here is how I added the M.2 500GB 3.5GB/sec to my wife's iMAC connected to the Thunderbolt port. The USB ports are all USB 2.0. The iMAC specs claim 40GB/sec on the Thunderbolt ports but I have no way to measure the true speed faster than 3.5GB/sec. In fact it is slower because the source is a SATA hard drive.

An interesting experiment might be if I connected another M.2 with a large video file as the source connected to the second Thunderbolt port on the iMAC and time it. But I have done a similar experiment on the Dell PC that has both source and destination as USB 3.2 connection and it was nowhere near the 20GBs rating. It was close to the read write speed of the M.2.

 

[harshness]

Sorry but you cannot measure the speed of a connection that way.

It is the best and most reliable way to find Vmax. Regardless of what the bottleneck may be it will yield a transfer rate number number.

I can state with relatively certainty that the 480Kbps link will always be the "weakest" in any modern chain of devices and interfaces employed in a data transfer. We're no longer burdening ourselves with floppy disks, dialup modems or 4x CD-ROMs.

I caution you to respect the units of measure. Transfer rates on data cables are typically rated in bits per second and hard drive speeds are measured in bytes per second. The theoretical top speed of Thunderbolt 4 is 40Gbps, not 40GBps!

 

[Foxbat]

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but that might be Thunderbolt II which uses the Mini-DisplayPort connectors. Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB-C connector and the cables need to be certified for Thunderbolt 3. TB2 is 20 Gbps, TB3 is 40 Gbps.

Apple sold TB2 dongles for Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, FireWire, and TB3.

 

[TheForce]

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but that might be Thunderbolt II which uses the Mini-DisplayPort connectors. Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB-C connector and the cables need to be certified for Thunderbolt 3. TB2 is 20 Gbps, TB3 is 40 Gbps.

It's Thunderbolt 3! I KNOW how to go into the Apple "About" settings and READ the specs. It not only describes all the hardware, but also the speed of those 2 ports.

Also, the USB C 3.2 rated cable in the picture should work at 20Gbps. But the speed is limited by the older SATA Hard drive in the iMAC vs the M.2 NVME stick in the Dell. The speed for backup of the hard drive in my older iMAC will never be as fast as the newer Dell. The iMACs sold the year after I bought mine use an SSD for the storage. There was a transition year for iMAC and I do recall SSD was an expensive option. Considering my wife's needs, we figured the standard drive was good enough.

 

[Foxbat]

My iMac is obviously older than yours, it was quite the beast at the time with the 4.0 GHz Core i7 and 27” 5K Retina display. Unfortunately I didn’t upgrade and it’s now stuck at Big Sur., plus no trade-in value. It has a pair of Thunderbolt II ports, plus the XD memory card slot. Your iMac must be closer in age to our Mac Mini with USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports. Agreed that the internal HDD 6 Gbps SATA interface is the limiting factor to transfer speeds.

I don’t know for sure, but I expect the iPhones to stay with the A-series of Apple Silicon and not support Thunderbolt, while the M-series of Apple Silicon does. If the iPhone 15 Pro Max does gigabit serial over its connector, it won’t be Thunderbolt unless there’s an M1 or M2 inside.

 

[TheForce]

My iMac is obviously older than yours, it was quite the beast at the time with the 4.0 GHz Core i7 and 27” 5K Retina display. Unfortunately I didn’t upgrade and it’s now stuck at Big Sur., plus no trade-in value. It has a pair of Thunderbolt II ports, plus the XD memory card slot. Your iMac must be closer in age to our Mac Mini with USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports. Agreed that the internal HDD 6 Gbps SATA interface is the limiting factor to transfer speeds.

I don’t know for sure, but I expect the iPhones to stay with the A-series of Apple Silicon and not support Thunderbolt, while the M-series of Apple Silicon does. If the iPhone 15 Pro Max does gigabit serial over its connector, it won’t be Thunderbolt unless there’s an M1 or M2 inside.

The iMAC in discussion is our second one. I don't recall when we bought it but I'm thinking about 2015. I still have it sitting in storage. The current one in use is a late 2019 model I bought at the store. The two look physically alike but not sure about the thunderbolt ports in the back. Back then we just did backup to the NAS via USB 2.0 and then disconnected and put the NAS back on ethernet for updated backups. I actually tried to give it to my daughter who messed it up but I got it working again with my backups then just put it on the shelf.

Personally, I don't like macs. Too limited. But for someone who just needs a trouble free computer for mostly communication and Microsoft Office, it seems to be trouble free.

 

[klang]

And another rumor roundup:

USB-C and the iPhone 15: All of your questions answered