When Apple revealed the Apple Watch Series 7 during their event,
it basically blew everyone’s mind because we were all expecting a new flat and boxy design,
but Apple came out and did the COMPLETE opposite. They made it more rounded than ever before.
And this obviously caused a LOT of drama because Jon Prosser and Ian Zelbo were banking on this
new boxy design and they received a ton of hate comments because they got it wrong!
And their response was they were absolutely
confused about what the heck happened with the boxy design..
Apparently they saw multiple leaked images from various sources
of the flat sides so they were CERTAIN that it was gonna end up being the final design.
Even I was 100% sure that this would be the new design of the Series 7,
because the actual CAD files of the design were leaked,
and they perfectly matched up to the renders that Ian created.
On top of that, multiple sources in the supply chain agreed on the new boxy design,
and even Mark Gurman himself corroborated
the new flat sided design, and he is probably the most reliable Apple leaker out there.
And what’s incredibly weird is that Mark Gurman previously reported that
the display would be flatter, NOT more rounded like Apple just did with the Series 7 display.
He even said that it would feature a new lamination technique to bring the display
closer to the front cover, which makes sense for a boxy design, but NO, Apple actually made
it further away by increasing the thickness of the glass, which doesn’t seem to make sense.
Mark even mentioned that it would receive new internals
including a faster processor, but nope, we didn’t get that either!
He also mentioned that the Series 7 would have updated ultra wideband tech, but nope,
Apple didn’t mention anything about that.
A few days before the event, Ming-Chi Kuo mentioned that the key selling point of the
Series 7 is the dramatic change in design, which is the most significant change ever,
with the flat edge and narrow bezel design, and that’s obviously not what we got.
So what in the world happened? Well, there is a huge theory going around that Apple
completely fooled all of the leakers by putting out the boxy CAD files to weed out the leakers,
but that is actually false, and I’ll prove it to you in this video.
Because of all of the weirdness surrounding the Series 7’s design,
I decided to do some investigative journalism and I can now confirm that Apple HAD to cancel the
boxy design of the Series 7 at the last minute and scramble for a solution before the event!
And it all starts with the weirdness surrounding the event and release date.
For the first time ever, Apple revealed the Watch without giving us a release date!
They simply said Later this fall, which is incredibly weird.
And even worse, for the first time ever,
they didn’t give us any tech specs at all on their website!
So I was looking through twitter and I found something completely shocking.
The Apple developer Steve Throughton-smith was digging through the code
and discovered why Apple didn’t talk about the chip this year! Apparently,
that’s because it uses the same S6 chip as last year.
The Series 7 apparently doesn’t even get a new model number, it’s still listed as t8301,
which has never happened before, and this means that the internals are basically
identical. Apple simply tweaked the chassis and that’s it!
And another developer Guilherme Rambo believes that the leakers were actually RIGHT all along,
but something went wrong at the last minute and it was too late to be fixed,
so Apple had to improvise.
And this brings us to a wild chain of leaks that explain the entire situation
that occured with the Series 7..
On August 31st, we received a report from Nikkei Asia that the Apple Watch Series 7
production has been delayed due to quality issues.
Apparently, small-scale production began the week prior,
and they encountered critical challenges in reaching satisfactory production performance.
And this next detail that they shared is about to be the nail in the coffin for this video!
Three sources said the current disappointing production quality
could be attributed to the complexity of design, which is quote.. “Significantly different
than that of previous generations of the watch.. And the assemblers found
issues when putting together electronics modules, components and displays”.
Just take a look at the design of the new Series 7
and tell me that it looks significantly different. IT DOESN’T! It’s ALMOST EXACTLY the SAME DESIGN!
Now THESE renders of a boxy design look
significantly different, and that’s what I think made them run into the issues.
The report also mentioned that they had trouble putting the different components together, and the
only way that would make sense is if the entire layout was changed and redesigned completely!
In fact, the faster S7 chip was leaked for a while in the supply chain,
including by Mark Gurman, and it was even rumored to come with a new
double-sided design which was meant to provide space for a larger battery and other components.
But guess what, Macrumors just came out and confirmed that the Series 7
will come with a rebranded S7 chip package which is literally identical to the S6
in terms of the CPU layout, the performance,
the 32GB of storage, the bluetooth 5.0 spec, and the same U1 ultrawideband chip.
And this totally goes against everything Mark Gurman said about the S7, so what if
there actually is an S7 chip out there that is faster and features a dual stacked PCB design
which was destined for the new boxy watch design, because if you think about it,
that new design would require Apple to completely rearrange the internal parts.
And if that is true, the battery design would also need to be changed and potentially be made larger,
which is what a lot of the leaks pointed to. Even Max Weinbach said that the Series 7
would get the biggest battery life improvement since the original Apple Watch.
But nope, Apple said the Series 7 gets the same all-day 18 hours of battery life as it did before,
kind of pointing to Apple reusing the same battery from the Series 6,
which the identical model numbers basically confirm.
So I went on Apple’s website and I tried to find what was actually changed or improved,
and there were only five things, the new color options the larger 41 and 45mm display panels
that are now brighter, the slightly redesigned speaker port, the more rounded top cover glass
and the charging architecture that is now faster, that’s it! Nothing else has changed!
So I got to thinking and I realized that the charging system is completely irrelevant to
the design of the watch because Apple had to make sure that you can reuse the old charging puck that
is included on many third party accessories like this expensive 3-in-1 charging stand.
So I ended up reading the entire Apple Watch Series 7 product page on Apple’s website,
and everything else that Apple showed off on the website was related to
software features, including the new Apple Watch faces.
So from an internals and specs standpoint, the Series 7 is literally identical to the Series 6,
so it kind of proves that Apple had to actually scrap
the REAL Series 7 at the last moment and improvise a new solution.
And guess what, just a couple of days before the event, it was confirmed that Apple overcame
the Series 7 manufacturing issues and they would apparently be starting mass production this month,
with the supply of the Series 7 improving significantly from mid to late October.
And this is where we get into the craziest leaks yet!
ShrimpApplePro, a lesser known leaker, posted a thread showing a new Apple Watch label
for the Series 7 with a new 41mm display.
However, he mentioned that the Series 7 would still have a round design
like the Series 6, but with thinner bezels.
At first, I didn’t believe him, especially since he was saying that his source was going against
Prosser who saw real life photos, but he ended up being completely right all along!
And this morning, he JUST confirmed that the Apple Watch Series 7 production will begin next week,
which is ironically when customers would already have new watch models in their hands.
So if you’re confused on how all of this could have happened, let me break it all down for you.
Late last month, Apple began mass production for the REAL series 7 but they ran into issues
with putting all of the components together like Nikkei Asia reported on August 31st.
So Apple scrambled to figure out what they could do to resolve the issues
and still ship an Apple Watch this year, which is what their investors are expecting.
But here’s where the massive problems began!
The S7 chip with the totally redesigned double-sided package
has already been produced in mass numbers, and it doesn't fit in the series 6 design,
so they had to scrap the new chip and go back to the S6 chip.
But even worse, Apple already mass produced the new 41 and 45mm display panels that were now
meant to be used alongside a new flat cover glass design
which would perfectly fit the new boxy Series 7 design we saw in the renders.
On top of that, Apple already created new Watch Faces to take advantage of the larger displays,
and they also created the new keyboard feature which works because of the larger displays,
so they would have to scrap all of that as well.
But here’s the worst part of all, something that they couldn’t scrap.
According to Majin Bu on twitter, Apple had
already started mass production of their new Series 7 watch bands on August 26th or sooner.
And the crazy part about it is that the band itself shows a 41mm text on the edge,
and another leak showed a leather band with a 45mm text on it, so at that point,
since many of the bands were already produced, including the hand-made Hermes bands,
Apple couldn’t just go back to the old 40 and 44mm display panels with the old looking design.
And if they did, there would be essentially NOTHING different
at all about the new Series 7 except for some new color options, which would be absolutely chaotic
since everyone on the internet is expecting a FULL square redesign.
So here’s what Apple did in the short couple of weeks between the discovery
of the production issues and the announcement from ming chi kuo that the issues have been
solved just a few days before the actual Apple event happened.
Apple scrambled to figure out a way to integrate the new 41 and 45mm display panels
into the OLD series 6 design with all of it’s internals and everything else..
But the MAJOR issue is that the new larger display panels
simply won’t fit inside of the current cover glass that the Series 6 is using
because it’s already at its physical limits.. So here is how Apple did it.
Since they obviously scrapped the real Series 7 boxy redesign,
instead of making the flatter display closer to the front cover glass like Mark Gurman leaked,
they ended up completely changing the front cover glass and giving it a completely flat
base to match the already manufactured flat display panels.
And to make the display panel actually fit, they had to pack it slightly deeper
into the watch itself, which required them to redesign the cover glass and make it 50%
thicker with a much more rounded shape so that you can actually see the full larger display.
And to match the new more rounded cover glass, they also had to slightly redesign the metal
chassis to make it more round to match up to the glass, which obviously required them
to tweak their existing manufacturing tooling for the new rounded design.
And that perfectly explains why Apple didn’t give us any release date at all,
simply saying some time this fall, because they didn’t know how long it would take for them
to replicate the new tooling on more production lines and get mass production going at full speed.
So it turns out that completely scrapping the Series 7 was Apple’s solution to the
production issues. They were able to keep the already produced larger display panels,
they kept the already produced Apple watch bands,
they kept the new larger Watch faces and keyboard feature, AND they gave us a new design.
The only downside is that they had to scrap all of the new internals including
the faster double-sided S7 chip, the larger battery that was leaked,
the updated ultra wideband chip that mark gurman leaked and obviously more.
So if you’re gonna tell me that Apple did all of this to crack down on leaks
and embarrass Jon Prosser and Ian Zelbo, I don’t believe you.
Apple holding back on a release date and official tech specs absolutely hurts Apple,
and these delays are actually REALLY bad for Apple’s bottom line because they’re
losing out on quarterly sales numbers the longer they wait to ship the Watch.
And just the fact that last year, Apple held a September event and released the
Apple Watch on time instead of waiting until the delayed iPhone event in September
goes to show how important it is for Apple to NOT delay the watch.
And BOOM, that was the last nail in the coffin! Everything I mentioned in this video basically
confirms that the leakers weren’t wrong at all. Apple actually had to SCRAP the boxy design at the
last minute and somehow improvise a new solution while making it seem like nothing happened.
So with that said, I honestly feel like Jon Prosser and Ian Zelbo deserve a pass on this one,
so stop giving them a hard time because of Apple’s production freak accident and let’s all
hope we get the REAL flat sided Series 7 with the faster chip next year with the Series 8.
And to finish off this crazy video,
LeaksApplePro explained it in the perfect way. Apple had to go back to the old design
because of problems with the new one. That’s why there’s nothing new, that’s why it has
the same CPU, the same model number and it’s taking longer to ship. The leakers were right!
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