Apple is missing out yet again and it’s nothing at all like the other times Apple was supposedly missing out but that didn’t actually end up amounting to anything. Unless we’re talking about network speeds.
What?
Oh. The Macalope is being informed that, yes, we’re talking about network speeds.
Gordon Kelly proudly declares that originality has no place at the Forbes contributor network and Institute for the Advancement of Understanding Why There Are So Many Spider Eggs In Your Hair.
“Apple’s New iPhones Have An Expensive Nasty Surprise.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
SIGH. WHAT IS IT THIS TIME, GORDON?
Bloomberg reports Apple has fallen substantially behind its rivals and will not be able to equip iPhones with 5G until late 2020 at the earliest.
Once again Apple has fallen behind in meaningless checkbox feature sets that hardly anyone will be able to take advantage of any time soon. It’s a wonder Apple stays in business when it refuses to give people useless features.
And 5G is about to become a game-changer.
Is it? Because there’s some dispute about how soon that’s going to happen.
But why is missing out on 5G a big deal? In short: because 5G is the real deal.
In short and also in pabulum.
Kelly believes that 5G is almost here! And that Apple will miss out because throughout 2019 iPhone users will be looking aghast as Android users are running virtual circles around them on the information superhighway! Just think of how many more YouTube conspiracy theory videos they can watch.
But being envious of amazing speeds is probably exactly what will happen… as long as iPhone users are looking at people using Android phones being used in labs.
According to The Verge’s Vlad Savov, “Apple is right: 2019 will be too early to buy a 5G phone.” (Another tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
…both Samsung and Qualcomm are telling us about their lab results. No carrier or manufacturer is walking around cities with actual 5G devices yet and giving us truly real-world measurements.
Well, sure. But it’s only December. There’s no reason to believe that within the next three weeks there won’t be a national rollout of…
At Qualcomm’s big 5G get-together in Hawaii yesterday, my colleague Sean Hollister was only shown one Samsung 5G phone…
Ah, so there is at least one. Therefore…
…which he wasn’t allowed to touch…
Uh. Okay, look…
…a 5G Moto Mod, and a couple of chunky 5G mobile hot spots, and none of those devices exhibited speeds higher than 140Mbps.
Wait. Vlad. Stop.
To put it simply, the first 5G devices will spend a lot of their time running on 4G LTE networks because that’s the most compatible and available thing they’ll have to connect to.
OKAY, WE GET IT. Jeez.
So, how real is this deal? It doesn’t look like it’s very real. This deal seem positively unreal.
Kelly insists that despite people complaining that iPhones should have had 3G in 2007 and then should have had LTE in 2011, both before those networks were fully rolled out and Apple having been right to wait, this time it should have 5G before it’s rolled out because, uh, well, he ate several Qualcomm press releases? That’s all the Macalope can come up with.
We don’t know when Apple will deliver iPhones with 5G so it is possible they will come late to the party, but that party isn’t being thrown in 2019.