You have to be pretty innovative with chip design to make processors that double the performance over the previous model.

You have to be pretty innovative with hardware design to reduce the weight of a phone that's already compact by 20%.

I don't think they lost their touch at all.

Do you really believe Android manufacturers use fundamentally different chips? Most of Apple chips are designed and manufactured by other companies, including the CPU.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Apple's Ax processors are manufactured by other companies (mostly Samsung) but they're designed by Apple, in-house. They started doing so after the acquisition of PWRficient.

They are indeed different from the CPUs used by other smartphone manufacturers.

Of course, Apple "designs" the exact same Cortex-A9 and PowerVR cores as everyone else. (I'll give them some credit if they are first with A15.) Qualcomm is arguably more innovative given that Krait, Adreno, and the baseband are all in-house.

Remember that it's another ARM based SOC; as a percentage of gates it would surprise me if Apple's input was more than a percent.

I also suspect that most of the speed and power gains come from process improvements.

I'm sorry you are so brainwashed by Apple marketing. Apple's Ax line is using reference ARM designs, with negligible modifications.

Manufactured? Yes. Designed? No. Of course, their processors are ARM based, but that doesn't mean that they just stick a reference design in there and hope for the best. A lot of work goes into the design and Apple bought P.A. Semi and Intrinsity and acquired a 9.5% stake in Imagination Technologies, the folks behind PowerVR for that very purpose. Blithely declaring that Apple don't design their chips is somewhat wide of the mark.

I don't know how these acquisitions are relevant at all given that all dissections of A-series chips revealed reference ARM Cortex designs underneath. At best Apple design packaging of these chips, but that's 1% of work.

Your just outright wrong. All of the companies that design SoC's put a heck of a lot of work into the design of the chip. Saying that it's mere packaging is simple mindedness at it's best.

lol

I think we need to wait for some real benchmarks and not just Apple's sales department's numbers to find out the real performance of the new processor.

Yes, one of the hallmark traits of Apple and one of the reasons why I still sometimes can love them. A company that is willing to perfect their products, that doesn't go for new for the sake of new, that's really rare.

I hate many of their decisions, many of their views, but I think they always had and still have the right mix of iteration and innovation.

Yes, because every iPod they released was a revolution with tons of innovations compared to the previous year's, right?. Just like every Mac?

Iteration is how Apple plays it, and they play it well.

Although I agree with your broader point, the iPod actually seems like a terrible example to me. They did innovate a ton- the mini, the nano, thin nano, fat nano, square nano, chewing gum shuffle, square shuffle...

True, true. My thoughts were along the line of the Classic - from year to year they didn't innovate much along that one line, but you're 100% correct they innovated to fill more niches with new lines.

Iteration and innovation each have their places.

Innovation works best when the existing alternatives are awful. I'm not sure why one would "innovate" against their successful formula.

Individual features might be innovative, however. For example, the re-arrangement of photo processing tasks to produce better low-light photos.

http://live.arstechnica.com/apple-september-2012-event-its-a...

The innovation/iteration process of Apple is often misinterpreted. Apple has had a clear line in this for a long time:

- The main innovation is done to create new products: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Such products are a result of years of research and development. When Apple releases the product, they make sure the core usability philosophy is sound and does not need to be changed afterwards. - After a product and the surrounding concepts are released, Apple is very conscious not to depart to far from the original concepts and philosophies surrounding that product group. This creates trust and customer loyalty that more "innovative" brands would pay dearly for.

This, in my opinion, has been an oft-overlooked factor in Apple's success.