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

[jz0309]

address battery life concerns with fast charging? that is utter nonsense ...
I've always been satisfied with AW battery life since my S0, always lasted a full day at a minimum, and Ultra goes 2 days. I'm not saying it can't/shouldn't be improved but fast charging is not the way to do that ...

 

[Paddle1]

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.

Although that still leaves the door open to "complete the transition" by discontinuing the Mac Pro when a new Studio is released.

 

[rhysmorgan]

The wording used was deliberate, and didn't mention the Mac Pro – only "the entire product line".
I know they mentioned it before, and there are "Compute Unit" hints that an Apple Silicon Mac Pro is coming. But the wording here - mentioning MacBook Air up to Mac Studio, and not explicitly stating that "yes, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro" is coming means I read the complete opposite to what the headline suggests.

 

[AppleFan85!]

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.

Why are these ““silly”” features? Just because you don’t use them?

 

[theluggage]

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

If they drop the Mac Pro, their entire product line will be on Apple Silicon.

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

Again, with carefully chosen words that didn't promise anything.
...and that was nearly a year ago.

but we have zero indications they’re planning to drop the pro.

...apart from a year of silence and a lot of people explaining why an Apple Silicon Mac Pro would be problematic, and lots of sketchy reports that the Mx Extreme chip has been dropped.

If the silence goes on much longer then most of the market for a Mac Pro will have evaporated anyhow - it's a "serious callers only" machine and "serious callers" have to plan and budget projects and write tenders in advance, which is difficult if you have no clue whether anything resembling the current Mac Pro is going to be available by the time work starts. Clue: you'll still be able to buy commodity Xeon/AMD tower workstations in six months.

Anyway, it's not so much about whether they'll drop the Mac Pro name - the question is what it will be. If the 2019 Mac Pro hadn't happened, the Mac Studio would have been a perfectly cromulent successor to the Trashcan. Given the laundry list of reasons why it would be difficult to replicate the 2019 Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, one possibility is that they'll just launch what is effectively a M2 Ultra Mac Studio as the "new Mac Pro" - effectively dropping the Mac Pro in all but name.

It's also interesting that the name "compute module" has surfaced - and while that could be something unrelated to do with the AR headset, it could also describe either a rackmount Mac Studio-like system designed to be paired with rackmount storage and PCIe cages, or a MPX-like plug-in card that could slot into a Mac Pro-style case. They'd both be better uses of Apple Silicon tech, but probably not the solution many current Mac Pro users are looking for.

 

[dpeters0911]

I love my Mac Mini but will not buy an Apple Watch until they address battery life.

You can get a Xiaomi, Huawei, or Ticwatch with 7-14 day batteries with the same cardiograph, heart rate, activity tracking, sleep tracking and more in a variety of form factors — and for a fraction of the cost.

The latest Mi Band runs at least 10 days for me with heart rate checks every five minutes and sleep tracking turned on.

It’s amazing how efficient Apple Silicon is and how inefficient and almost worst in class battery life Apple Watches are.

 

[raindogg]

"transform experiences from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio" Doesn't sound like the Mac Pro to me. Sounds like the Mac Studio is the new Mac Pro.

 

[aibloop]

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

The Worlds fastest Personal Computer! ...but only IF you include wheels and roll it down the street!

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

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

Oh gee I’m sure none of their thousands of engineers working on future Apple Watches never thought of that.
Just make the battery bigger! Brilliant!
/S

 

[ric22]

"all the way up to the Mac Studio"

Sounds like the death knell for the Mac Pro.

 

[ric22]

I don't quite get the fuss about Watch battery life. Could it be better? Of course. Is it a showstopper? Not in the slightest. I did 50k hikes with it. With always on at the time. I don't understand why it's an "issue" to charge a watch daily, while it's okay to charge a phone daily. Especially with newer models that can charge to full in like an hour or so, so you won't even miss your standing goals or anything.

For elderly and frail people you want the thing on their wrists as much of the time as possible. My mum is both of those things, and it would be much safer if she only had to take the watch off to charge it once a week.

 

[YoItsTonyMorgan]

I'm holding out for the Apple Watch Ultra Ultra Ultra with a month battery life.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

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

But also, to be clear, there’s literally only one computer they could be talking about when it comes to transitioning the rest of the lineup.
Every other one of their computers has either been discontinued (RIP 27 inch iMac 2009-2022) or totally transitioned.
It would be absolutely pointless to even bring it up if they weren’ttalking about the Mac Pro.
Also, if they really wanted to discontinue the Mac Pro, they would’ve done it last year so they could say they officially reached their two-year goal, but they didn’t.
They still sell the Intel Mac Pro, and there’s never been any press release, announcing the finish of the transition like there was before during PPC to Intel days.

 

[Rob__Mac]

I would be amazed but not surprised if they killed off the Mac Pro with the current crop of Apple Silicon. The AMD 6900 XT I've loaded into my Mac Pro is still fastest at 3D rendering than any Apple Silicon chip currently is.

If they can get at least these much power into a Mac Studio, sure…

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

My Apple Watch battery life is fine for what I need it for. But it drains the living hell out of my iPhone battery

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

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.

You can already turn off both, so that would be a relevant.

 

[Manzanito]

If they drop the Mac Pro, their entire product line will be on Apple Silicon.



Again, with carefully chosen words that didn't promise anything.
...and that was nearly a year ago.


...apart from a year of silence and a lot of people explaining why an Apple Silicon Mac Pro would be problematic, and lots of sketchy reports that the Mx Extreme chip has been dropped.

If the silence goes on much longer then most of the market for a Mac Pro will have evaporated anyhow - it's a "serious callers only" machine and "serious callers" have to plan and budget projects and write tenders in advance, which is difficult if you have no clue whether anything resembling the current Mac Pro is going to be available by the time work starts. Clue: you'll still be able to buy commodity Xeon/AMD tower workstations in six months.

Anyway, it's not so much about whether they'll drop the Mac Pro name - the question is what it will be. If the 2019 Mac Pro hadn't happened, the Mac Studio would have been a perfectly cromulent successor to the Trashcan. Given the laundry list of reasons why it would be difficult to replicate the 2019 Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, one possibility is that they'll just launch what is effectively a M2 Ultra Mac Studio as the "new Mac Pro" - effectively dropping the Mac Pro in all but name.

It's also interesting that the name "compute module" has surfaced - and while that could be something unrelated to do with the AR headset, it could also describe either a rackmount Mac Studio-like system designed to be paired with rackmount storage and PCIe cages, or a MPX-like plug-in card that could slot into a Mac Pro-style case. They'd both be better uses of Apple Silicon tech, but probably not the solution many current Mac Pro users are looking for.

That’s why I added the part about falling short.

As for the planning ahead, nothing can be so much harming as the 6 year hiatus of the trash can mac pro.

We’ll have to wait and see.

 

[Attirex]

”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.

Macworld is less optimistic (like me):

LINK

 

[RedWeasel]

Mac Pro
2006-2023
R.I.P.

 

[deconstruct60]

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

He didn't mention the Mac Pro because it is a future product. Official Apple policy is not to talk about future products. This guy is a non executive Vice President ( i.e, one of a several vice presidents ... VP here is an inflated upper management title that gets tossed around ... not Vice President of a Country like VP where there is only one.). He can't speak for Apple as a whole. Nor is this a extremely scripted , carefully crafted Apple large event utterance.

Since he can't talk about the Mac Pro not saying anything doesn't indicate one outcome or another. Apple can cancel the whole Mac product line whenever they want. It may not be probable , but it is possible.


Pointing at the Studio utterance is essentially misdirection. The only named Apple Silicon Macs are going to be the ones they have already released. The Mac Studio was the last major Mac subgroup released. ( Apple pretended at the Mac Studio release that they were done with the Mini's transition so the Mini Pro isn't part of the 'range' of Macs to make the transition).

The part that the headline really is leaning in is

" ... that our goal is to take our entire product line to Apple Silicon. ..."

'entire product line' . If go to Apple's Mac marketing web page https://www.apple/mac what do you see? The Mac line up. You can stand on your head and invent something different but the more likely meaning of the "entire (Mac) product line " is just what you see there.

What is not being 'doubled down on' is any 'about 2 year' timeline to finishing. Obviously that is blown at this point. And they are not setting another 'approximate line in the sand' deadline.


" we intend to do"

is likely an allusion to some Apple Silicon that they have haven't finished (or are immediately ready to release yet). May not get the long rumored 'quad die' solution but stopping at just two chiplets doesn't really make much sense given the phrasing Why would Apple need to 'intend" if the Mac Studio was the end of the line on performance?
"intend" has a future connotation to it.


"... We believe strongly that Apple silicon can power and transform experiences ..."

That probably means they are tapping out on the Ultra level and quitting. That doesn't mean they are out to make a Epyc/ Xeon SP / Xeon 3400 / Threadripper / 4090 / 'killer' SoC. Just that they are out to pack as much transformational 'power' into Apple Silicon packages as skill and technology allows. It probably isn't going to be the most extreme power consumption possible. But the Mac Studio probably isn't the 'top' end on performance breadth either.

 

[Pezimak]

But he said all the way ‘up to the Studio’, no mention of the Pro at all? Seems this is a story made from nothing to me.

 

[johnmarki]

I'd like to see Apple utilize the gyroscope in the watch to produce energy that can be used to power certain functions. This would help supplement the battery. It may not increase it 10x, but just having the option would be a step in the right direction. Its also a nice marketing opportunity for Apple to incentivize movement even more than they already do.

 

[BenLeong]

Ask about Apple Pay. Fitness plus. Apple News. Better language support (just Indian English would do. At least offline Siri). Lack of HomeKit accessories in the country. High price of products. Poor reception to Apple Maps feedback.... the list goes on..

You think most people care anything about pipeline plans for Fitness Plus or Apple News?

 

[sharpimage]

I don’t know how MR draw the conclusions they do? This sounds more like an announcement that the Mac Pro line is being discontinued.

 

[profets]

Previous Apple Watches it was a bit tough for me to get through a full day (when it included workouts and cellular use / GPS / running). Wasn't a big deal, I would throw it on the charger for 15 minutes while showering or getting ready.

But the Ultra really seems crazy. First device where I legit do not think about the battery life at all. More than enough to get through a busy day. I noticed that a little while ago its been charging itself to 80% to preserve battery health, which is nice.

I've never been a fan of trying to squeeze more than a day out of battery use (whether it be the watch or another device). Need to get into a consistent routine. Like with my phone, just charge it nightly. Would be different if it was significant enough to charge it weekly, as long as it is a consistent pattern. My opinion anyway.