Apple Hiring Engineers To Develop 6G Wireless (bloomberg.com) 58
Apple launched its first iPhones with 5G wireless speeds a few months ago. Now it's looking to start work on sixth-generation cellular connectivity, or 6G, indicating it wants to be a leader in the technology rather than relying on other companies. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based company this week posted job ads seeking wireless system research engineers for current and next-generation networks. The listings are for positions at Apple's offices in Silicon Valley and San Diego, where the company works on wireless technology development and chip design. "You will have the unique and rewarding opportunity to craft next generation wireless technology that will have deep impact on future Apple products," according to the job announcement. "In this role you will be at the center of a cutting-edge research group responsible for creating next generation disruptive radio access technologies over the next decade." People hired for the positions will "research and design next generation (6G) wireless communication systems for radio access networks" and "participate in industry/academic forums passionate about 6G technology." Industry watchers don't expect 6G to roll out until about 2030, but the job listings indicate Apple wants to be involved at the earliest stages in the development of the new technology.
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Do any of you have a use for whatever 6g is likely to turn into?
I'm dying for a laptop with built-in cellular data.
Re:Never need more than 640k (Score:4, Informative)
Do any of you have a use for whatever 6g is likely to turn into?
I'm dying for a laptop with built-in cellular data.
You don't need to die for it. Just buy one.
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Maybe he's one of those persons "deadly allergic to wireless communications".
Re: Never need more than 640k (Score:3)
This would all be well and good, if 5G wasn't actually slower in all real-life situations (like more than 6 ft from the base station, or moving at all).
And even more so, if there weren't hard physical limits on the bandwith, where, at some point, you will never be further awayfrom a station than the length of a manageable ... cable. Where the cable would always be faster and more energy efficient and safer.
I expect people in 50 years to run around mostly with a long cable in their homes, just like those 198
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Well I mean the plan is that we'll have 5g towers all over the place but given out the 4g rollout I'm not holding my breath and I'm certainly in no hurry to get a 5g phone. I also expect them to have datacaps on any reasonably priced plans that make high speeds mostly useless.
Pre-covid I used to have tasker switch my phone to 3g when I arrived at the office as most of the 4g towers in the area were saturated during normal working hours, I actually got better speeds. This is in a tech hub.
Re: Never need more than 640k (Score:3)
Do you know how all over the place it would have to be, to work as expected? Literally more dense than home wifi. Basically one station every 300-500ft, with every home router also serving it for everyone because its wall penetration will be so bad.
We might aswell just call wifi 6G, and be done with it. ^^
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Lol yes I'm totally aware. I see the potential for people to drop towers near dense populations. I'm honestly excited about it's potential for residential broadband in situations where your building has a deal with only one internet provider but the building across the street has a tower set up. I have a feeling all the people clamoring to get it on their phones are going to be pretty disappointed.
Re: Never need more than 640k (Score:1)
Datacaps? Must be something in USA, haven't heard of that in past 15 years in Northern Europe.
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Nope even our unlimited plans have data caps where you go over and you're throttled so badly you could download nonstop and only reap an additional few GB before the next billing cycle. So little bandwidth you can't even get an uber in a zone where you've already precached all the map data.
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I'm sure somebody somewhere is trying to sort out how to directly download our entire memories so that they can properly target us with ads. . . piped directly to the brain so that it's completely inescapable. Do you realize how much bandwidth you'd need to download a human brain in any reasonable amount of time?
Re:Never need more than 640k (Score:5, Funny)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with jars of brains.
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I'm picturing the '74 Ford LTD Country Squire with the faux wood paneling that I had in college with the back filled with jars of brains. I miss that car, let me tell you. I also miss the brains I had back then.
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Hey I had the pimpy version of that, 74 Mercury Marquis station wagon with pneumatic headlight covers, yellow with "wood paneling"
Re: Never need more than 640k (Score:2)
Depends on how precise you want the records to be.
(Disclaimer: I did ponder that, but not for ads but for teleportation.)
If you only want the "software", it's not *that* extreme. Think 100 billion neurons, each with 10,000 connections to other neurons, stored as parametrized polylines, and then you record the sensitivity of each neuron and synaptic gap for each possible input. E.g. how numb are the synapses for serotonine. How quickly does a neuron fire, and in what pattern.
So about one PB per byte of neura
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Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
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Do you realize how much bandwidth you'd need to download a human brain in any reasonable amount of time?
It doesn't matter because we can just quantum teleport it to a stack of floppies instantly!
Seriously, this is all just silly science fiction nonsense. You really shouldn't pay attention to anything Ray Kurzweil says.
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And benchmarks right now aren't reflective of the potential of 5G. Very few people have 5G, meaning very little air-time is for 5G. Much of the time towers allocate is for 3/4G. This limitation greatly hamstrings 5G.
5G is also quite green as a technology. 5
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Do any of you have a use for whatever 6g is likely to turn into?
Do you have any knowledge of what 6G is likely to turn into? You're focused on $BIGNUMBER which already means you've missed 99% of the reason for 5G's development which had little to nothing to do with your phone getting a bigger number.
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In contrast to the snarky replies you've gotten so far, I'll try to look at some possible goals and future uses.
A couple of people have mentioned more efficient bandwidth use, cramming more devices into a given block. This will continue to be a goal for anything in the future, since available bands will continue to be restricted both by regulation and by physics.
Speed will also be important, though this may be offset somewhat by more advanced compression algorithms. Given 5G's difficulties with ultra-high-s
Have fun with that ... (Score:2)
I hear AT&T has already "evolved" to 9G. :-)
My understanding is that they're going to switch to base26 for 10G so they can keep using a single character on the displays for, at least, the next few months -- I mean years -- so then it will be "AG" -- "ZG". Could be twice that if they decide to use UPPER *and* lower-case letters, but they're concerned that could be confusing... /satire
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Or... base36 for those that don't have fat fingers and can proofread. :-)
Re: Have fun with that ... (Score:2)
Nah, BaseUnicode! I'll wait for {POOP_EMOJI}G!
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I hear AT&T has already "evolved" to 9G. :-)
9G is soooo 15 minutes ago. I hear Tesla has already gone to plaid. It's so fast they're waiting for smartphone engineers to be born so they can design the thing.
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9G is soooo 15 minutes ago. I hear Tesla has already gone to plaid. It's so fast they're waiting for smartphone engineers to be born so they can design the thing.
That's just ludicrous...
Buzzword pissing contest (Score:1)
"I have the most G's, believe me! In fact I have infinity G's, everyone knows it! When millions talk to me, cheering by the way, always cheering, they start out, "Gee..." as in, "Gee, you are so smart, you invented all those terrific G's by yourself! Next I'll tackle H's, and it will be fantastic! Can't wait to get to T's. Love those T's!"
Fuck it, we're gong 7G! (Score:5, Funny)
Full 1 THz infrared, passes through NONE of the things, needs base stations in every room. Stations. Plural. Cause your body might be in the way. But somehow we will still manage to actually be slower.
Because "progress"!
(I am for progress. I'm saying if it isn't better, it by definition isn't progress. That is how I define progress.)
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If you think your comment is funny, imagine Cave Johnson is reading it.
It's not funny, it's freakin' hilarious.
singal attenuation issue is easy to solve.... (Score:2)
....just by increasing frequency to x-ray range. You get wider bandwidth as a nice side effect too. *ducks behind lead shield*
Re: singal attenuation issue is easy to solve.... (Score:2)
While we're at it: Just wondering:
Given that no blockage seems perfect, how bright of a normal, say, green light would you need, for it to actually be detectable, or even visible, on the other side of a 4 inch thick brick wall?
And would the wall melt first? ;)
Or is there some quantum effect that makes that 100% impossible for that thickness and that frequency?
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I already made a 7G mobile years ago. Its seven G's are hanging in my bedroom window.
Each G is in a different style and different colour.
Easy to upgrade to 8G or more.
Has a bell for ringing.
A small notepad for memory.
A picture of the speaker of the house at the top. (He's loud)
Not wireless though.
"Leader in the technology" (Score:2)
Apple launched its first iPhones with 5G wireless speeds a few months ago. Now it's looking to start work on sixth-generation cellular connectivity, or 6G, indicating it wants to be a leader in the technology rather than relying on other companies.
...and that might also afford them the ability to charge for the technology if they end up designing it, instead of being the one to pay to use it, thereby generating more of that sweet, sweet revenue for them.
Unless of course they open it up for everyone to use freely, which I highly doubt would happen.
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Re: "Leader in the technology" (Score:4, Insightful)
And it willl result in more decisions beig made in favor of their insane mindset. Like taking power away from the users and becoming even more people's condescending nanny. Like it being more important that it looks good, than that it actually is good (, so more people fall into the nanny trap).
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Each generation of cellular and wifi Builds on the work of previous generations. 5G is still using patents from 3G cellular.
Regardless of what Apple is thinking they will accomplish here they aren't going to be able to generate enough innovations to hold even a double digit percentage of the relevant patents because of this. Maybe if they keep with it for 20 years they will hold enough patents to be relevant but for the next decade everyone is still going to be paying all the people they are paying now.
I ho
Re: "Leader in the technology" (Score:2)
I think for Apple it is not just about money but also about control. They really hated that Qualcomm had them over a barrel, and no matter what they did, they had to pay the same percentage to Qualcomm. (Add better screens and processors and memory and charge more? Qualcomm gets more money for the modem chip.) And the courts bizarrely said that it was all FRAND.
So Apple basically wants to create their own integrated CPU and modem, and not have Qualcomm be able to dictate any terms, financial or technologica
6Geeee (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 5G is probably where things end.
Each technology (eg AMPS, TDMA, GSM, WCDMA, (HSDPA), LTE) before it were large jumps enabled by reducing the power required to transmit the same amount of data, with LTE we finally went all IP for the voice and data.
With WCDMA and HSDPA we switched away from dedicated channels for data. With GSM and TDMA we introduced time-slice channels on the otherwise analog spectrum it previously used.
There already was nothing to gain from 5G other than using multiple spectrums simultaneously. What's been happening every time a new tech has rolled out, is that it came at the expense of the two-technolgies-ago spectrum. So 4G came at the expense of previous 2G spectrum in the US. 5G comes at the expense of 3G spectrum. If you go look at the actual coverage maps for most of the western half of the US or Canada, you'll find that there is no 5G or 4G coverage between cities, when there used to be coverage back when there was AMPS and 2G. Devices simply are not capable of putting out the power needed to communicate, and the carriers are unwilling to put up twice as many towers to solve it when it only serves car or train traffic.
If you use Amtrak, you've likely encountered large dead zones where no cellular internet works at all. These are areas that were likely only ever served by AMPS/2G, if at all.
So by saying 5G is where it stops, is that we will likely never see the full roll out of 5G, because carriers won't let it. eg 5G NR (operating in unlicensed spectrum) will likely never be permitted by AT&T because it cuts them out of the picture.
6G is unlikely to improve upon anything unless it supplants WiFi from the beginning, and I don't know how I feel about only being able to use wireless services provided by my ISP.
Re: 6Geeee (Score:3)
6G and wifi will be literall the same thing. Mark my words.
That means your wifi router will offer wifi. But the technology will be the same as 6G. Aka the 6G cell will be 6G, but technology will be the exacf same as the next wifi standard.
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That means your wifi router will offer wifi. But the technology will be the same as 6G.
And that's fine with me. As long as I can configure my phone/laptop to connect to my router. Which might be LAN only (I have a WiFi router that only talks to a local server). Or if it connects to the Internet, it does so through a broadband/VPN connection so my end point appears local to my bank in Monaco.
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Living in New Mexico where coverage is very spotty I would like it if we could get direct connections from a handset to LEO satellites or high-flying drones and call that 6G, but I guess that's a pipe dream.
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6G might not offer speed, bit it might offer pervasiveness.
As in, you take your device out of the box and it's connected instantly via 6G. No messing with WiFi settings or passwords or IP configuration. Out of the box, it just works.
That's where I see cellular technology going - after all, the user experience to get connected is fairly low friction - you insert the SIM card, and you have connectivity and telephony without having to enter long strings of anything. Insert and go.
No matter how you do it, WiFi
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And to say nothing beyond 5g.... I've been reading about real world usage of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access, where devices can communicate at the same time on the same frequency and sub-carrier by differentiating "power level".
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The idea that 5G won't be fully rolled out by carriers is a fantasy. 99% of the functionality rolled into the 5G standards was specifically to benefit carriers and includes access to new markets and more customers with a largely decreased cost of infrastructure.
I don't know where 6G will go, but I will bet you a kidney that 5G will get a full rollout. It's precisely the standards that carriers have been clamoring for. And if you think 5G is about faster speeds or phones like most people then you have a lot
Fuck it, we're going to 6G (Score:1)
That's a cancer creation, mind control waves, virus implantation delivery, slightly better internet speeds, AND an aloe strip. Hell, make it two aloe strips to be sure!
Hopefully (Score:3)
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like AX ? (Score:2)
New and Improved! (Score:2)
Shark with lasers jumping the other shark (Score:1)
I know where this is going (Score:1)
They have a secret pact with Elon Musk and once 3000 satellites are up, you'll be able to send texts for free from any point of the planet, with a $1700 iPhone, no ISP needed.
China and Russia will just love it.
Too bad, I only have +5 years experience with 6G (Score:2)
Those damn recruiters are always pushing it.
I wait for 7G... (Score:2)
Tin ear Tim (Score:2)
SO Cook just launched dumbnet 6g. He bought Telco BS 5G was deployable for iPhone12.
SteveJobs included WiFi call handoff with iPhone1 and iPhone3. Seamless cellular to WiFi calls were a thing in the beginning. He included WiFi, as a not too obvious, reminder that Telco carriers are not the only game. Metered calling rates were a real threat to iPhone. Apple wanted access based billing rather than metered bits.
Why Apple dropped WiFi call handoff is beyond my pay grade. Now Apple could be far more effective l