
Apple Is Developing Its Own Screens for the First Time - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-19/apple-is-said-to-develop-displays-to-replace-samsung-screens
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xt00
Seems like the initial deployment of the microLED's into a smartwatch makes
some sense.. But unclear how this would make any sense for a large size phone
display. The sheer quantity of LED's that must be placed properly on a glass
substrate would be quite high.

However, the promise of microLED is pretty impressive if the manufacturing can
be pulled off.

Basic idea is small high performance LED's of Red, Green, Blue, that are of
the inorganic variety -- so much higher performance than OLED. They can be
larger fill factor since they are diced from a wafer and can be basically any
size -- vs. OLED where each color is limited in size due to the manufacturing
process -- basically due to the size of pin-holes put in a mask that hovers
above the substrate surface (called a fine metal mask).

The power, brightness, lifetime, and stability all likely would be quite high
with the inorganic microLED's.. However, the cost is the challenge for sure.
Its essentially equivalent to buying a bare wafer with millions of red, blue,
and green LED's -- per each display. So say you want a 4kx2k display, well,
that is 8 million LED's. If each one costs say $0.001 (a tenth of a cent),
well, you have 3 * 8000 USD, so $24,000... so... clearly they need the LED's
to be really, really, really, cheap -- say 10,000 per dollar.. which in the
world of LED's would be super crazy crazy crazy cheap.

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mozumder
lol these things aren't going to be priced per LED. Just like you don't pay
per transistor when you buy a chip, you're not going to pay per diode when you
buy a microLED display.

The costs scale with device area, not device count. This is because these
devices are made with lithography on a wafer. A single silicon wafer would
produce 5000 diodes, or it may produce 5,000,000, depending on how small you
make each one.

~~~
nrp
It depends on whether the display is assembled with a monolithic microLED
wafer or a microLED transfer process. I believe Luxvue which Apple acquired
was focused on the latter. Transfer cost and rework cost do scale per LED.
Additionally, defect rate most likely does scale per LED to some extent in
addition to per area.

~~~
mozumder
There are probably manufacturing processes where LED transfer costs don't
scale per LED. For example, they could use some type of expanding substrate
material as part of their transfer process.

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bwilliams18
The unattributed quotes in the story say a lot. Apple employees with that
level of information don't have casual, off the cuff, and not-for-attribution
conversations with Journalists by mistake or by accident. I suspect this was a
purposeful and controlled leak.

~~~
boombip
To what end? A shot across the bows of screen manufacturers? I suppose that's
possible, to try and force screen manufacturers (i.e. Samsung) to cooperate on
production costs for existing screens. But that doesn't seem like a useful
negotiating tactic to me and it would probably be more useful to keep this
secret until scale manufacturing deals have been signed and work has started.

~~~
ghfbjdhhv
It seems that having this kind of information out there would be of benefit to
Apple in negotiations with screen manufacturers eg. it could make suppliers
more willing to sign a long-term deal at lower rates than they might
otherwise, due to the fear of being dumped in the future.

Another potential purpose for such a leak would be to boost the stock price.

~~~
joezydeco
It would also create a bidding war to be the approved company to scale this up
to production levels.

Apple may be prototyping a dozen screens at a time, but they'll let someone
else build the factory to produce millions a year.

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grecy
When they talked about the upcoming "modular" MacPro [1], Apple confirmed they
will again sell a desktop display. I feel certain it will be _at least_ 5k,
and more likely 8k, and I've been wondering if they will make their own from
the ground up like this article suggests for the smaller screens.

[1]
[https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives](https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives)

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tunesmith
Is it ever going to be possible for a screen to _be_ a camera, so you feel
like you are making eye contact while video-chatting?

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gnicholas
Apple filed patents many years ago for an array of photo sensors interspersed
in between pixels on a display, which would enable this.

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halflings
Was just going to mention this. Here's an article describing this patent:

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/10/apple-patent-
pave...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/10/apple-patent-paves-way-
for-iphone-with-full-face-display-ar-heads-up-windows)

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est
So what happens to Qualcomm's IMOD Mirasol display?

Which was bought by Apple

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken-
ov...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/15/apple-has-taken-over-
qualcomms-imod-mirasol-display-lab-in-taiwan)

The Mirasol panel plant location is also Longtan, Taiwan.

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xbmcuser
Apple has the money to build everything thmeselves. And something like screens
that can give competitive advantage they are likely to produce themselves

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saagarjha
> It’s big enough to get through the engineering builds [and] lets us keep
> everything in-house during the development stages.

A tertiary benefit might be that controlling manufacturing of screens might
reduce leaks as well.

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pipio21
Remember Apple bought Qualcom Mirasol displays.

From my point of view, they did it to port the Mirasol technology to watches.
It just makes sense that they want to have watches with battery that last at
least a week or so without charging.

Mirasol is just so great with color and outside light. But it requires an
entire wafer per screen. It is an expensive process, but Apple has so much
money it is nothing to them to jumpstart production.

If they do it, they will have a product that has no competitors at all, at
least until those patents last.

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pedalpete
I don't think this is very surprising for apple. The current screens are made
by competitors (LG & Samsung), the screen is the main interface for most of
Apple products, and Apple likes to have end-to-end control over their
hardware.

They're going to want to do custom design without the catching the attention
of their competitors, or working directly with them.

~~~
fouc
They've often been leading in terms of build quality so it will be great to
see if there's more progress to be made beyond retina displays.

~~~
dingo_bat
Retina displays are already not the best in class and haven't been for some
time. So yes, there's a lot more progress to be made and has been made by
others :)

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RustySpottedCat
"promise to make future gadgets slimmer", isn't current oled technology, like,
really slim? As in, paper thin?

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gordon_freeman
it is not only about making thinner devices just for the sake. It is also
about making energy efficient devices. Current battery tech has not progressed
leaps and bounds so I think Apple is trying other ways to make Apple products
more energy efficient.

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m3kw9
Tim did say they want to control all essential tech for their products. As you
can see how they have integrated iPad Pros screen with new controllers and
pens to make the Pen work, they probably want absolute control on every
parameter without any issues and secret leaks

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laser
Seems like the right tech for a 2020 Apple AR headset?

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exikyut
Perhaps not _quite_ exactly on topic, but the multicolored red-yellow-white-
blue diamond to the right of the front entrance caught my eye. It can be seen
in here:

[https://i.imgur.com/naOuD3M.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/naOuD3M.jpg)

This picture is not clear enough to make out what it is. I'm very curious what
it could be.

(Image source:
[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ifII5w8OiDb...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ifII5w8OiDbk/v2/-1x-1.jpg))

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xt00
That's a standard safety diamond, NFPA 704
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFPA_704](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFPA_704)

tells you what kind of hazardous materials are inside basically.

~~~
exikyut
Ah, thanks!

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keyle
I didn't know the iPhone X is the first Apple device with OLED tech. I thought
it was using OLED for a while. Does that explain the fantastic battery usage
on iPhone X or is that due to the double battery pack?

~~~
saagarjha
Actually, the first Apple device with OLED was Apple Watch.

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modeless
I'm glad to hear that big companies other than Samsung are in the running to
develop MicroLED displays. MicroLED promises a huge improvement over all other
emmissive display technologies in terms of quality and capabilities, if
manufacturing can be figured out.

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mozumder
Micro LED displays will be an incredible advancement if it comes to fruition.
They potentially have the capability to display the full Rec 2020 color gamut.

Things will look indistinguishable from real life.

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aembleton
Except they'll be emitting light which rarely happens in nature. I'd rather
see transreflective screens which only use a backlight if it is needed. Most
of the time, ambient light is sufficient for the display.

