Apple Executive Hints at Apple Silicon Mac Pro and Ongoing Focus on Apple Watch Battery Life

[leman]

How does that statement hint that an Apple silicon Mac Pro is still in the pipeline when he said "from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio?"

If an Apple silicon Mac Pro was still in the pipeline, he would have said "from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Pro"

I mean, Apple can make their entire product line run on Apple silicon by discontinuing the Mac Pro.

Right? That’s one very generous interpretation…

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

With Apple's magic formula, the Mac Pro with the M2 will be the fastest desktop ever made and the most expensive.

At times I think it's the silliest Mac Apple has ever made. 😭😭

 

[NMBob]

Who? Oh, a marketing guy.

 

[Attirex]

Lol MR is interpreting wrong. Capping at Mac Studio means exec is purposefully excluding the Mac Pro. Or am I missing something?

 

[hagar]

It has been frustrating the lack of battery improvement on the Apple Watch. Sure the Ultra is better, but it is also gigantic. Long story short, I want to get my elderly mother an Apple Watch to help monitor her health, give her a way to quickly respond to our texts etc. However the battery life in even the best case would be her having to charge every other day. I've thought about maybe getting two watches that should could at least quickly swap out instead of going times waiting to charge and/or just forgetting to put it back on. But of course that is at a cost. She is a small women, so something as big/gaudy as the Ultra isn't viable either.

You’re absolutely right. A more basic Apple Watch for the elderly with one week battery life, all the health features, a more easy to read interface and none of the fancy stuff would be a great addition to Apple’s lineup.

 

[NMBob]

At times I think it's the silliest Mac Apple has ever made. 😭😭

With macOS Compton you might be able to get it to heel. Good boy.

 

[Someyoungguy]

I don't know how Garmin gets a week with CONTINUOUS heart rate monitoring (not every few minutes like AW), NFC payment, GPS, AMOLED, and new to Venu 2, EKG. Sure, the UI is a bit rougher around the edges, but it's a huge difference in battery life. Wikipedia says the process node for AW CPU is 7nm. Maybe a 3nm chip would buy another day or two with the same battery?

 

[majus]

... "all the way up to the Mac Studio"... is merely a CYA statement, in the event they can't produce a chip that works well
with a slotted Mac Pro. Kind of implies the reality they are facing and leaking it so we will get used to the idea.

 

[Tagbert]

Why not just make the battery larger? I'd be fine with a bigger watch if it meant I could charge once a week.

Would you want a watch that is 4-5 times larger?

I’m hoping that they can switch to a SOC on the 3nm process to get some better battery life. The current SOC is on a several years-old process and not even 5nm.

 

[tomtad]

"From the MacBook Air all the way up to the Mac Studio"

Kind of implies to me the Mac Studio is at the top of the tree rather than the Mac Pro

 

[orbital~debris]

To be clear, he didn't mention Mac Pro, just the Mac Studio... they can cancel the Mac Pro line anytime, whenever they want.

Agreed. MR are reading a bit into what he said - and he specifically said "all the way up to the Mac Studio".

How does that statement hint that an Apple silicon Mac Pro is still in the pipeline when he said "from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio?"

If an Apple silicon Mac Pro was still in the pipeline, he would have said "from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Pro"

I mean, Apple can make their entire product line run on Apple silicon by discontinuing the Mac Pro.

I disagree. The quote (repeated below) is clearly in the future tense – "our goal is", not "our goal was" (the latter would be what you'd say when the lineup has completed the transition).

He also talks about taking the product line to Apple Silicon as something they intend to do – again, future tense, not yet done.

Given that the Mac Pro is the only current Mac Apple sell that's not yet shipping in a version running on Apple Silicon, this is how it is being alluded to when that's coupled with the quote.

"We believe strongly that Apple silicon can power and transform experiences from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio. We've been very clear from the beginning that our goal is to take our entire product line to Apple Silicon. And that's something we intend to do."

 

[foobarbaz]

Personally, I hope all battery advances go into making a thinner watch. Sure, also make a big watch with many days of battery life for the hikers and globetrotters, but I charge nightly anyway. Not charging every other day provides no extra benefit to me. A slimmer watch would.

 

[GMShadow]

That really isn't that long; automatic watches last indefinitely and any quartz watch last 1-2 years. Calling it 'ultra battery life' is a joke, really.

I wonder why something with no radios or other features has a battery that lasts a while.

 

[Tagbert]

Lol MR is interpreting wrong. Capping at Mac Studio means exec is purposefully excluding the Mac Pro. Or am I missing something?

”take our entire product line to Apple Silicon. And that's something we intend to do.”

It’s a secondary reference. They “intend” to take their entire product line to Apple Silicon meaning there is still something left to move to AS.

 

[Manzanito]

"From the MacBook Air all the way up to the Mac Studio"

Kind of implies to me the Mac Studio is at the top of the tree rather than the Mac Pro

I’ll quote you, but several fellow posters have made the same point.

Keep reading, he also states they plan to transition the whole line of computers, as promised. That includes the mac pro.

Also, when the mac studio was introduced they explicitly mentioned the mac pro as the remaining model to be updated.

Now, if it’s a worthy succesor or falls a little short, remains to be seen, but we have zero indications they’re planning to drop the pro.

 

[aibloop]

I do not understand why there is no battery armband for apple watch... Even a third party charging armband! Anything...

It is THE achilles heel of apple watch, mine is basically a decorative armband 90% of the time.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Decades ago other watch companies solved the problem by using self winding. I wonder if Apple is looking at that technology? It would also be good for the phones.

Citizen famously has a while line of watches that are solar-powered too.

I think the issue is semiconductors and screens still use mountains of power compared to a basic watch. A regular watch can run for years from a single 35mAh battery. An Apple Watch has a battery 10x bigger that lasts a day.

So certainly there is potential to turn kinetic or solar energy into battery power. But Apple will need to find a way to make it's SoCs and screens at least 100x more efficient for it to work.

 

[theluggage]

Yeah, I was a bit bemused by MR's take on this interview. Borchers never says the words "Mac Pro" and never even alludes to it.

Agree - that's the closest a marketing guy would get to "actually, we're planning to drop the Mac Pro".

Reality is that while it would be perfectly possible to make an ARM based equivalent/direct successor to the 2019 Mac Pro, the Apple Silicon range we've seen so far (the genius of which is that the same processor die design can scale from the Mx Pro in the 14" MBP to the Mx Ultra in the top-end Studio) just isn't the right tool for delivering the 2019 MPs main selling points: bucketloads of RAM and the PCIe bandwidth to drive multiple discrete GPUs. Apple would need to develop their own Xeon-W/Threadripper-killer just for the Mac Pro, which would be eye-wateringly expensive without Intel and AMD's economies of scale... then sell it in to the one market segment where the advantages of ARM (power/thermal efficiency) really don't count for much - high-end, standalone, personal workstations with big, bulky, power-guzzling discrete GPUs. Move into high-density computing, cloud servers etc. and ARM gets interesting again, because those big data centres pay a fortune for power and A/C, but Google (Graviton) and Ampere are already in there and MacOS really doesn't have a horse in that race anyway.

 

[blazerunner]

I wonder why something with no radios or other features has a battery that lasts a while.

I wonder why 'ultra battery life' would be considered a couple days.....

 

[GaryMumford]

To be clear, he didn't mention Mac Pro, just the Mac Studio... they can cancel the Mac Pro line anytime, whenever they want.

That's the way I saw it too. "All the way up to the Mac Studio" suggests the Mac Studio is the top... Kill off the Mac Pro and that will complete the line up

 

[Unami]

"We believe strongly that Apple silicon can power and transform experiences from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio. We've been very clear from the beginning that our goal is to take our entire product line to Apple Silicon. And that's something we intend to do."

I think, it's a bit noncommitting apple-speak.

Apple Silicon can transform experiences, and we said that we intend to transition the entire product line.

So this includes the MacPro (at least the intention to transition it), as long as the MacPro is still part of their product line.

This can mean anything, imho. Sounds like they are still working on an updated MacPro, but want to have a way out if it doesn't work out.

 

[therunningman]

Apple apparently continues to explore how it can balance features, such as real-time health and fitness tracking, and battery life on the device.

The problem here is that the Apple Watch really doesn't do "real-time" health tracking, as its heart rate monitoring is only once every 5-10 minutes (other metrics, such as heart rate variability and respiration rate are tied to the heart rate data). I do not understand how other vendors can do 24/7 heart rate monitoring and still get 5+ days of battery life out of their devices while Apple's abbreviated monitoring nets a device that needs daily charging. That's the thing I really miss since moving to an Apple Watch: real time stats and real battery life.

 

[k1121j]

Nope fast charging isn’t the answer. But I do look forward to longer battery life.

 

[erikkfi]

The new Phil Schiller is wrong. Fast charging is not the solution to the Watch's problem of only having "great all-day battery life." Longer battery life is.

 

[therunningman]

Really glad they are looking into improving battery life on the Watch.

I personally also wouldn't mind losing some "silly" features like hand-washing reminders or noise levels for that.

Agreed...but I believe that those features can be disabled. I don't have them turned on for my watch.