iPhone 18 With 9GB RAM Still Won't Support Two New iOS 27 Features

[freedomlinux]

What difference does it make to the cost of the chip if it has 100,000,000 tiny transistors or 200,000,000. It's just a drawing etched into a wafer substance.

They key difference is density. As the number of transistors doubles, they don't want the surface area of the chip to double, as the silicon wafer is their main materials cost.

That means that more complex chips need to have smaller transistors. Even if their current machinery is capable of etching those smaller features, it requires higher precision and increases the chances that a defect might ruin the chip. (As a bonus, the smaller transistors also keeps the power requirements down)

With this increased risk, the production cost is certainly higher but yeah I doubt 2x. At some point, it's just profit optimization on the manufacturer's side - if they have enough wafers for X amount of chips, they'd rather turn them into products with a higher margin instead of older/smaller designs.

[As for calling it a cartel - no objection from me. The DRAM makers have been caught in price-fixing scandals etc in the past]

 

[Fraserpatty]

It requires more than that. I have 16 GB of RAM on my M2 iPad Pro and it still won’t get it. I don’t give a darn about Siri voice, it’s a robot after all, but I would really like to have better accuracy in the voice dictation speech to text. It seems to have gotten worse just in time to make you buy a new device to improve it. How strange.

 

[Deliro]

Imagine spending 800+ bucks on a current gen iPhone and it not supporting all the software features of an OS it will ship with?

 

[Reeneman]

Imagine spending 800+ bucks on a current gen iPhone and it not supporting all the software features of an OS it will ship with?

Yeah in some way it’s strange. But if you look back it was already the same with the 15 pro and the base 15 in some way - turned out a year later when they did show iOS 18 with the AI stuff.
I think the vast majority of users, especially from a “base” iPhone won’t care that much as forum enthusiasts will. It’s so far “only” the advanced text correction and the Siri voice customisation. All other features and AI stuff are there.
It’s something but as I said a lot of people won’t care about these details.

 

[zapmymac]

Every apple device should have a minimum of 12GB’s ram, since apple is all but ramming AI down out proverbial throats in the 2026 product lineup.

 

[JPack]

Imagine spending 800+ bucks on a current gen iPhone and it not supporting all the software features of an OS it will ship with?

It's been like that for years.

ProRes, ProRAW, Cinematic Mode are software features. If you don't buy the Pro models, you don't get the pro features.

Before, it was camera features. Now it includes AI features.

 

[Tagbert]

MacBook Pro Max really should have had the tandem OLED screen for a while now. And a display that's at least
3840 pixels wide. I guess we are lucky we even got mini LED. I'm sure Apple have good internal reasons for not doing it.

When the current generation of MacBook Pros came out, the tandem-OLED screens were not ready yet. They came out with MiniLED instead. The tandem-OLEDs were then put into the iPads, in part I suspect, as a test bed to see how they held up. Now that they have a couple of years of field experience with them, they can put them into a redesigned MacBook Pro. Apple only changes the screen technology when they are doing a redesign. They don't just cram in different tech into the same case. That redesign was not ready to go before this year (or next if that is when it launches).

 

[Tagbert]

How do you even end up with 9GB? 3x3GB module? This is groundbreaking advancement!

Same way some devices are 12GB. There are modules with 3GB capacity. Not everything is always double.