You can shoot real RAW with the iPhone hardware, just not with the system camera app. If you use something like Halide or Photon Camera, they have proper RAW options that give you a traditional noisy RAW.
“Noisy RAW”? What? It gives you a RAW file. Period. But this proves my point that Apple does not capture a RAW file, it is pretty highly processed. I want to do my editing, and I want to compress it my self if i want.
Apple does offer the ability to capture a lossless RAW file with raw sensor data, just not with their app. It’s exposed through their API for 3rd party apps to use. It’s harder to get a good result in low light or high contrast scenarios from a single exposure of such a small sensor, but many people prefer it to the processed ProRAW files.
The ProRAW format that the default app offers has a different use case: it combines the automatic advanced processing of multiple exposures into a file format that offers more flexibility for post processing than a standard photo does. With the new lossy compression option it gets more attractive for some users that are willing to trade in some quality for space. I don’t see the problem in offering that option next to the lossless compression.
Lossless compression is something I’m not going to argue about, as there is literally nothing lost by doing that and many professional cameras do the same thing, though with different algorithms. Well, unless your argument is that it’s not yet compatible with many photo editors, because that’s a fair point.
