Apple Vision Pro executive departure and foldable iPhone

W two ninety five Mac Daily for Tuesday, june thirtieth, twenty twenty six I'm your host, Chance Miller. We are sponsored this week by Back Blaze Leading off today, if you're interested in a base model iPhone eighteen, which isn't shipping until early next year, A new report might give you pause Mingqi uo reports that the iPhone eighteen will reportedly feature nine gigabytes of RAM up from the eight gigabytes of RAM used in the iPhone seventeen. For context, previous rumors said the base iPhone eighteen would have twelve gigabytes of RAM. perhaps now due to the current industry memory crisis eight gigabytes is now planned instead The iPhone seventeen Pro, for example, already has twelve gigabytes of RAM And the iPhone eighteen Pro is expected to match that as well But this raises an important question about support for IOS twenty seven's top features The iPhone seventeen is missing out on IOS twenty seven's most powerful on device AI model powers features like the ability to customize the Siri AI voice That's because that more powerful on device model requires twelve gigabytes of RAM The running theory was that the iPhone seventeen would miss out on the features, but Apple would update the RAM in the iPhone eighteen to allow support in its most affordable models. But now it's looking like that might not be the case. again due to the ongoing memory shortage Next up today, acccording to Bloomberg, OpAI has hired Paul Meade, who had been in charge of Apple Vision Pro and Apple's Smart Glasses initiative Bloomberg describes him as Apple's top executive in charge of the Vision Pro headset and smmart glasses He is set to depart Apple this week and will then immediately start at OpenAI's hardware division He will work on OpenAI's upcoming family of AI powered devices Meade led the Apple Vision Pro hardardware engineering team for seven years and has also been leading Apple's efforts to develop smart glasses that are expected to be released next year. With Mead's departure, many of his responsibilities will now fall to Fletcher Rothkof, his longtime deputy who is in charge of design for Vision Pro and smart Glasses During his time at Apple, Meade was also an iPad manager in twenty ten before then becoming head of iPhone program management in twenty twelve He then joined the Vision Products Group in twenty seventeen. Finally, the report notes that Mead's decision to leave was the result of reshuffling that came from John Turnis's appointment as Apple's next CEO Apple chip boss Johnny Sarurugi became Chief hardardware officer, replacing Turnis and initiated what's turned out to be a controversial shakeup of Apple's hardware engineering unit. That led to a number of vice presidents under Turnis being given new roles, and some executives feeling like they had been demoted. With Saruji taking over all hardware, Meade and several other hardware leaders now report to Tom Merab the new vice president of hardware Engineering rather than reporting directly to Saruji like they did before Marib now reports to Saruji, effectively pushing many of these other executives down a level in the organization That led to Mead leaving for open AI, and the jury is still out on whether it will lead to other departures as well We are sponsored this week by Back Blaze. Summer travel and vacation season is in full swing. And if you travel with your MacBook, you're carrying your digital life with you iCloud helps keep your files in sync across devices, while Time Machine protects you locally But if your laptop was lost or damaged while traveling, would you have an off site backup D Blaze runs automatically and creates separate backups of your entire Mac in the cloud, including external drives You set it up once and then you are set iCloud for Sync, time machine for local backup, and backpllaze for off site protection. Try it for free at backblaze. com slash nine to five Mac and get twenty percent off with code nine to five daily. Running out today, Apple's highly anticipated fooldable iPhone is launching this fall But a new report claims you might have to wait a little longer and save up a ton of money to actually buy it Mac World says the iPhone Ultra, or iPhone Fold, will be announced alongside the iPhone eighteen P models in September, but will ship later in the year. The report cites anonymous sources familiar with Apple's supply chain. explaining that iPhone eighteen Pro models are further along in mass production than the iPhone Ultra Report likens the situation to the iPhone eight and iPhone ten launch in twenty seventeen e announced the iPhone eight and iPhone ten at the same time and the iPhone eight was released a week later, like usual. The iPhone ten, however, didn't ultimately ship to customers until November But the report notes that the difference in launch times between the iPhone eighteen Pro and iPhone Ultra might not be as dramatic as the gap between iPhone ten and iPhone eight The report says the iPhone eighteen Pro will hit stores immediately after Apple's September event like usual, with the ultra following just a few weeks later In April, Bloomberg had reported that Apple was operating with a plan to release the foldable iPhone at the same time or very soon after the iPhone eighteen Pro The report noted, however, that timing wasn't final and could change Finally, the Mac World report also corroborates expectations that the iPhone Ultra will be expensive report says, quote, whileile details about the final price are still somewhat unclear Our sources believe prices for the iPhone Ultra could reach as high as two thousand five hundred dollars depending on configuration, end quote primarily due to the foldable display and the hinge. bothoth of which are key components that we've previously talked about as complicating the iPhone ultra mass production That wraps up another episode of N to five Mac Daily As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on nine to fiveMac. com Follow along with me on threads at Chance H Miller And we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode of Nine to fiveive Mac Daily.