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

[deconstruct60]

1. The point is, they weren't dropped until a there was a system that could replace them. (The iMac Pro was dropped right after the transition began - it was a redundant system anyway after the new Intel iMacs were released in August just before the first M1 Mac was released.) Don't you think it's odd that only a little over a year into the transition they released an entire new line? A new line of systems makes no sense during a transition, unless they were created to replace something.

the iMac Pro got dropped closer to a year into the transition rather than "right after the transition began" ( March 2021)

Apple Confirms iMac Pro Will Be Discontinued When Supplies Run Out, Recommends 27-Inch iMac

Apple on late Friday evening added a "while supplies last" notice to its iMac Pro product page worldwide, and removed all upgrade options for...

www.macrumors.com

There was still a year to go before the Mac Studio would arrive. And Studio Display ( Apple had to keep the 27 5K production line going to get a viable transition over to the slightly tweaked new 5K displays for the Studio Display. )



The 2020 iMac made not sense? You are grossly reaching. The 2019, and previous, iMac 27" didn't have a T2 chip in them. It was odd that that Apple had not converted all of the Mac line up to T2 ( T --- probably 'transition' ) before making the Apple Silicon announcement. That system was late (for whatever reasons... Apple juggling other issues they thought were more important, pandemic , etc. ). [ Actually, it was a little odd in 2019 when the iMac 27" didn't get it. But then again they were still trying to wrangle the butterfly keyboard SNAFU so maybe it was 'too much' for them to do. ]

Pretty good chance that the plan back in 2018-2019 was to have that system launched by Spring 2020 and it just fell through the pandemic supply chain chaos cracks. In 2018, there was a decent Intel CPU ( Ice Lake) update for iMac Pro in late 2020 but it never arrived. It too probably would meant to be either differentiated from the mainstream iMac 5K or dropped by end of 2020 , but coasted into Spring 2021 just because they could get existing parts for an old system with suppliers just cranking out the same old stuff had been making for over 3 years. All Intel had was a cheaper W-2200 at approximately the same performance. Apple didn't really need a 'more affordable' iMac Pro as the mainstream 5K iMac was at 10 cores and a more modern GPU. It was already the more affordable option.


Pretty good chance that neither the iMac Pro nor the Mac Pro saw their best 'last gasp' Intel updates primarily because Intel completely blew up the time line with a grossly late and ill-fitting (for Macs) W-2000/3000 updates. That reinforced why Apple was making the transition.

Never did Apple say they were going to transition every single model in those two years, they specifically said range. From MacBook Air to MacBook Pro, from Mac mini to to iMac to Mac Pro. The iMac did transition, but only the 24" has made it (so far). Maybe they didn't think the M1 Pro/Max were worth redesigning the larger iMac for?

M1 Pro/Max didn't strictly need a redesigned chassis. The iMac Pro one would have worked just fine. The Mini,MBA,MBP 13" got no redesign chassis; so that was not necessary.

That connotation is really somewhat backwards. If the iMacs were gong to be turned into "iPad on a stick" then the M1 Pro/Max (even Ultra) were problems. The M1 Pro would have backslided on several metrics ( RAM capacity , GPU performance range ) and the Ultra would have been a tight fit thermally at lower noise levels.

Maybe they wanted to sell more $1799 Studio Displays? Who knows, but the lack of a 27" iMac model in no way indicates that the Mac Pro will not be updated.

It is indicative though that Apple isn't going to be dogma committed to keeping the exact same internal form factors. The notion that Apple is going to get 'modular everything' or the '100% exact same modularity' is displaced by what they did on the iMac. The iMac made a bit of a modularity 'swap' RAM DIMMs for screen. There is pretty good chance the next Mac Pro will also be making some 'swaps' on modularity.

3. And stop with the cannibalization crap especially across systems with different form factors. No one is going to buy an iMac if they need a laptop. And no one is going to a MacBook if they have no need for a laptop and want a larger screen. Furthermore, Apple couldn't care less if one Mac line ate into sales of another. I'm pretty sure the Mac mini and the MBA didn't decimate the 24" iMac market.

Some folks bought two Macs. One for the road and one for the home; in part because the 'on for the road' had performance and/or screen compromises. A MBP 14"/16" with a Studio Display (or XDR) doesn't really have either over vast majority of the Intel iMac line up. More performance and just as nice a screen. Apple doesn't make pure display displays. They make docking station Displays ( they all provide laptop host charging on one cable. Folks come home and plug their laptop into the display. Bingo! just as big as the Intel 27" iMac. Actually bigger if not using clamshell/mirror mode. )

 

[el-John-o]

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.

Giving up space taken up by the battery to install something that'll only produce tiny bits of power is probably not a worthy tradeoff.

Mechanical watches are really cool; I own a couple. But they can be unreliable and most importantly; they often still require "help". That's why mechanical watch winders exist. Lots of people find that they don't actually move enough to keep the watch going 24/7/365. And given how little energy it takes to move a watch mechanism (a single coin cell battery can last several years in a traditional watch), it certainly would imply those mechanisms don't actually catch much power at all.

Because of EV's, a LOT of money is being spent on improving both batteries and charging systems. I don't know if we'll ever have a watch that doesn't ever need to be charged (although I have a popular mechanics from the 1950's that promises me a nuclear powered watch). But what MIGHT happen is a watch with a battery that lasts for several days and can be charged in seconds just by holding your wrist up to the charger the same way we do Apple Pay now.

 

[theluggage]

1. The point is, they weren't dropped until a there was a system that could replace them.

No, the point is they were dropped. There is no direct equivalent of them in the current line-up. Quite a lot of people are mourning them.

The iMac Pro was dropped right after the transition began

No, it was dropped in Summer 2020, at around the same time new Intel 5k iMacs were launched (which were the final nail in the coffin for the iMac Pro).

2. How in the hell did you "might" out that statement?

Life lesson: when someone says "that's for another day" they are kicking the can down the road and you really shouldn't count on that other day coming - especially when almost a year has passed and that other day still hasn't come.

And stop with the cannibalization crap especially across systems with different form factors. No one is going to buy an iMac if they need a laptop.

Nobody is going to buy an Apple Silicon iMac if they need a laptop, now that they can get a laptop with exactly the same processor, RAM and GPU and near indistinguishable performance from an iMac. Pre-AS, the iMacs had significantly more powerful, desktop-class processors and GPUs than the MacBook Pro so, yes, some people did need a laptop to use on the road and a more powerful iMac on the desk.

4. Except... Uhh... the 24" iMac. Why bother redesigning it? Just because they said? Or maybe Apple thinks/knows the iMac is still a really popular system.

....because it's a significantly cheaper device than the 5k iMac that sells to a different market.

Bottom line, it is huge stretch to equate EOL'ing a model of the iMac to dropping the Mac Pro line.

Based on your arbitrary decision that the Mac Pro is a "line" and the 5k iMac (...with models ranging from $1800 to $3000 and multiple CPU and GPU options) is a "model".

 

[3rdpath]

The hint about the Mac Pro was so small that it's actually nonexistent. If anything, this was a hint that the Mac Pro is NOT part of the future product line-up. And honestly, Apple should just let the Mac Pro die.

 

[257Loner]

Unlike the complete transition from vacuum tube switches to the microchip, it's possible that during this sea change in silicon that integrated SoCs will co-exist alongside dedicated microchips.

If Apple's latest SoC is suitable to replace their Xeon-powered Mac Pro, it would be a world first. I'm not counting on it. Rather, dedicated workstation CPUs and GPUs have every advantage over SoCs in workstations. It's like asking professional DSLR camera users to switch to smartphones. It doesn't matter what tricks the smartphones benefit from, professional DSLRs will still be better.

Apple should stick with Intel Xeons and AMD GPUs or drop the Mac Pro altogether. It's not enough for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro to be good. It has to compete against other workstations. Can SoCs do that? They haven't yet.

 

[MacHeritage]

Regarding the Mac Pro, I expected that Apple will transition it over and I believe it will also be more than just some Ultra chip and nothing more.

 

[rhysmorgan]

He didn't mention the Mac Pro because it is a future product. Official Apple policy is not to talk about future products.

But they did mention the Mac Pro last year when announcing the Mac Studio.
And then we've not heard anything more since then. It's just very unusual.

 

[whitby]

Unlike the complete transition from vacuum tube switches to the microchip, it's possible that during this sea change in silicon that integrated SoCs will co-exist alongside dedicated microchips.

If Apple's latest SoC is suitable to replace their Xeon-powered Mac Pro, it would be a world first. I'm not counting on it. Rather, dedicated workstation CPUs and GPUs have every advantage over SoCs in workstations. It's like asking professional DSLR camera users to switch to smartphones. It doesn't matter what tricks the smartphones benefit from, professional DSLRs will still be better.

Apple should stick with Intel Xeons and AMD GPUs or drop the Mac Pro altogether. It's not enough for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro to be good. It has to compete against other workstations. Can SoCs do that? They haven't yet.

This was exactly the point I was trying to make earlier and your analogy using the smartphone and dedicated cameras is spot on. The Apple SoC approach is great for easy to use consumer devices and consumable tools is fine but, for flexible work stations which are configurable and scaleable, it will not work. It is not flexible enough. Apple is a consumer orientated company and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If Apple could come up with a dedicated CPU using their ARM based risc architecture and allow the use of high speed ram and GPUs that are readily available, they might be able to build and supply a fully scaleable workstation, but this is a very narrow market and may not be compatible with their objectives. Their decisions going forward will be very telling. Are they a consumer device manufacturer with fully integrated consumable devices or are they a full range computer system manufacture? They have successfully bridged these markets in the past, but I am not sure that is where they want to be now. That is fine but we need to understand where they are going so we can make the appropriate decisions for our future systems for our high end workstations. I have already jumped ship for my high end workstations, but would be happy to jump back since I prefer UNIX based OS like MacOS rather than Windows (and no Linux is not an option for a number of reasons).

 

[GigabitEthernet]

Ultra battery is fantastic. ROFL.

My Garmin lasts me thirty days

 

[k1121j]

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.

I agree 100% who’s gonna carry the charger with them!

 

[obviouslogic]

Unlike the complete transition from vacuum tube switches to the microchip, it's possible that during this sea change in silicon that integrated SoCs will co-exist alongside dedicated microchips.

If Apple's latest SoC is suitable to replace their Xeon-powered Mac Pro, it would be a world first. I'm not counting on it. Rather, dedicated workstation CPUs and GPUs have every advantage over SoCs in workstations. It's like asking professional DSLR camera users to switch to smartphones. It doesn't matter what tricks the smartphones benefit from, professional DSLRs will still be better.

Apple should stick with Intel Xeons and AMD GPUs or drop the Mac Pro altogether. It's not enough for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro to be good. It has to compete against other workstations. Can SoCs do that? They haven't yet.

Yes, you could theoretically make an SoC with that kind of performance but you'd need one helluva cooling system to keep it from melting down. Based off the M1 Ultra (CPU~65W, GPU~120W), if there was an M1 "Extreme" SoC it could potentially consume up to 400+ watts. So it's really not unreasonable as that's about what high end GPUs consume. An M3 Extreme based off TSMC's N3 node, could remain at that same power consumption level while also pushing performance through the roof. Of course we don't know what kind of performance we'll see out of the M3 Ultra (or Extreme), but it should be nothing less than shocking compared to the M1 Ultra.

However, the Mac Pro is a high-end workstation that was designed from the ground up for massive through-put and expandability. So I tend to think they'll forgo the SoC centric design and stick with a more traditional system having disparate processing units...

X1 CPU 16/32/48 cores
G1 GPU 64/96/128 cores.
T3 SoC; NPU, ISP, Secure Enclave, etc.
64 gen. 5 PCIe lanes (same MPX/PCI slot layout).
12 ECC DDR5 slots.

Will support 3rd party GPUs, but I doubt Apple's going to continue to write the drivers for them.

 

[deconstruct60]

But they did mention the Mac Pro last year when announcing the Mac Studio.

That was a odd ball corner case and a deliberate mention by Apple itself, not some non named VP on a press interview. Apple has said nothing before or after the Mac Studio launch. The 'Mac Pro' mention was completely driven by the Mac Studio release. Those large events are entirely scripted by Apple (not some individual VP... the whole thing is crafted in deep detail). Apple explicitly drove home the notion that there was only one Mac left in the transition. At that point the name of that Mac cannot even remotely be a secret anymore ( since have completely eliminated the other possibility. People are not that dumb. 'It is one of these on our web site , but this picture I'm about show you highlights all of the ones we have finished'. )

Apple could not brag about finishing the bulk of the Mac line up without also drawing attention to the main lone 'holdout'. Apple wanted to walk into WWDC 2022 with a '95+ % done" status so could just skip over talking about it in detail there "about 2 years later".

All Apple effective said in the Mac Studio session was that they were not going to talk about the Mac Pro for a substantively long amount of time ( the extremely obtuse timeline of 'later' ). And they have not. Message delivered and executed on. That session about about the Mac and Display Studio products. There was no details or 'leading people on' with the Mac Pro there. It just fell out of the announcement of the other stuff.


The other small secondary misdirection Apple was doing there by explicitly mentioning the 'obvious' Mac Pro was to divert attention away that they really had not finished the Mac Mini; a missing "Mini Pro". The upcoming 2 year anniversary of their 'about 2 years" statement was going to miss not just one Mac Pro They still were dragging an almost 2 years old one they had started, minimally, 1.75 earlier and still not finish. ( if not fully two years since the developer transition kit which kicked off the transition came in a Mini chassis also. ) . By explicitly mentioning the Mac Pro Apple causes most of all the chatter about 'missing' transition product to circle around the Mac Pro which withdrew attention from the breadth of their shortfall.


Apple is once again in a pretty obvious 'painted into corner' driven by other Mac product releases. That misdirection away from the Mini Pro isn't going to work so well when actually do replace the last Intel Mini. The second problem is that creeping up on one year 'later' that obtuse reference increasingly stops being effective. A year later it is 'later'.

That's why probably going to get a few "we intend to finish the transition" statements out of them. It is yet another obtuse timeline whose subject is relatively obvious to folks not standing on their head to invent something else to make the subject of the story. Apple doesn't want to talk about how they blew past their "about 2 year deadline' and about to blow past their 'later' one. However, they do want to acknowledge that they haven't finished.

And then we've not heard anything more since then. It's just very unusual.

It is not unusual at all. Apple's standing corporate policy is to not talk about future products. Hearing nothing official from Apple about future products is the status quo. So nothing from WWDC 2020 to Mac Studio launch and also nothing from then to now is basically Apple norms.

Hearing something at the Studio was really about the Studio. It was about the accumulation over the previous 1.75 years that had seen at least one M-series product in every other Mac product category. And most of the Intel stuff wiped out. That last remaining , untouched Mac product is as obvious as a turd in a punchbowl. They had to minimally say something that reveal almost exactly zero details. So they mentioned 'Mac Pro' with not attached adjectives and not even the subject of the sentence it was mentioned in.

It is puzzling why folk keep making a 'big deal' out of that mention. There is practically nothing there of any substance at all.

 

[seek3r]

Ultra battery is fantastic. ROFL.

My Garmin lasts me thirty days

I mean my Kindle lasts vastly longer than my iPad too, comparing completely different product capabilities is a little silly, the Garmin does a lot less than an AW does

 

[_Spinn_]

Should be interesting to see what the Apple Silicon Mac Pro looks like. Glad to hear they are looking at the Apple Watch battery life.

 

[Le0M]

Surely this tech must have downsides, otherwise Apple would already be using it in the Watch, given its low power usage. Since you proposed it, have you looked into what its downsides might be?

I don't know much about electronic paper myself (E Ink is just a specific brand), but I believe two of the issues are mediocre color saturation and low refresh rate. For the latter, E-ink's recently-released Gallery 3 Color Paper has refresh rates of 0.75 s – 1.0 s in standard color mode, and 1.5 s in best color mode. That's too slow for an interactive device, even if you're not watching videos or playing games.

I'm also wondering how efficient electronic paper would be if it actually had OLED-like refresh rates, since the reason electronic paper is so efficient is that it only draws power when it changes. So if it was refreshing much more quickly, that would increase its power draw.

I would expect Apple is looking into this tech, because its low power draw is very appealing, but it may have a ways to go before it can be used in a watch. Accoding to Ross Young, the next upgrade to the Apple Watch's OLED display will probably be micro-LED. While micro-LED may not equal electronic paper in power draw, it will give a significant boost in efficiency over OLED.

E Ink Gallery 3 color ePaper offers faster refresh rate, higher resolution - CNX Software

This is confusing. E Ink just announced the Kaleido 3 color e-paper at the beginning of the month, and now comes up with E Ink Gallery 3 color e-paper.

www.cnx-software.com

Apple Watch with display upgrade reportedly set for 2025

Apple is set to make an upgrade to the Apple Watch display technology as soon as 2025, according to a...

9to5mac.com

Yeah the electronic ink tech is to be improved a lot. It has few important downsides, like extremely low refresh rate, and perhaps not an impressive contrast.
But, today it's possible to have a colored e-ink screen, and battery life is just mind blowing.
When I first said Apple should release an e-ink Watch I didn't mean to just release one with today's downsides. BUT, I truly hope Apple has taken at least some interest in developing this technology further, and eventually use it for watches and other devices.

 

[GigabitEthernet]

I mean my Kindle lasts vastly longer than my iPad too, comparing completely different product capabilities is a little silly, the Garmin does a lot less than an AW does

They’re both sold as fitness gadgets, with a focus on running. The Garmin is superior for running in basically every possible way.

 

[257Loner]

If Apple could come up with a dedicated CPU using their ARM based risc architecture and allow the use of high speed ram and GPUs that are readily available, they might be able to build and supply a fully scaleable workstation, but this is a very narrow market and may not be compatible with their objectives. Their decisions going forward will be very telling. Are they a consumer device manufacturer with fully integrated consumable devices or are they a full range computer system manufacture? They have successfully bridged these markets in the past, but I am not sure that is where they want to be now. That is fine but we need to understand where they are going so we can make the appropriate decisions for our future systems for our high end workstations. I have already jumped ship for my high end workstations, but would be happy to jump back since I prefer UNIX based OS like MacOS rather than Windows (and no Linux is not an option for a number of reasons).

I'm sure Apple could. They're a $2 trillion dollar company. The questions I have are:

Will the new Mac Pro be competitive?​

If Apple goes with Apple Silicon SoCs, they will be easy to make because Apple will only need to scale up the SoCs they already make. But will those SoCs be competitive against dedicated workstation processors? That's hard to imagine.

Will the new Mac Pro be profitable?​

If Apple goes with dedicated RISC CPUs of their own design to accommodate many PCI Express lanes and expandable RAM (called by many here the "X1") + AMD GPUs, this will entail a herculean effort by Apple's Silicon department for only one model. This could very well check the box for being competitive in the workstation market, but all that effort for one product risks being unprofitable for Apple.

An extra benefit for Apple designing an Apple Silicon chip that will work with an AMD GPU for the Mac Pro is that they could import that design feature to their other Apple Silicon chips and thus allow them to take advantage of eGPUs.

 

[theorist9]

This was exactly the point I was trying to make earlier and your analogy using the smartphone and dedicated cameras is spot on. The Apple SoC approach is great for easy to use consumer devices and consumable tools is fine but, for flexible work stations which are configurable and scaleable, it will not work. It is not flexible enough. Apple is a consumer orientated company and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If Apple could come up with a dedicated CPU using their ARM based risc architecture and allow the use of high speed ram and GPUs that are readily available, they might be able to build and supply a fully scaleable workstation, but this is a very narrow market and may not be compatible with their objectives. Their decisions going forward will be very telling. Are they a consumer device manufacturer with fully integrated consumable devices or are they a full range computer system manufacture? They have successfully bridged these markets in the past, but I am not sure that is where they want to be now. That is fine but we need to understand where they are going so we can make the appropriate decisions for our future systems for our high end workstations. I have already jumped ship for my high end workstations, but would be happy to jump back since I prefer UNIX based OS like MacOS rather than Windows (and no Linux is not an option for a number of reasons).

What kind of scalability are you looking for? E.g., consider the Windows workstations you've bought. In practice, how common has it been for you to do the following upgrades post-purchase?:

• More storage
• More RAM
• More powerful GPU
• More powerful CPU

The last time I used a Mac workstation, I found I needed to upgrade the storage and RAM during its lifetime, but not the GPU or CPU (by the time I needed the CPU to be faster, I'd moved on to a new machine; and my work was not GPU-intensive, so that wasn't an issue). I'm thus curious what your experience has been.

 

[George Dawes]

From reading that I get the nasty feeling that they’ll replace the Mac Pro with a souped up studio

 

[257Loner]

From reading that I get the nasty feeling that they’ll replace the Mac Pro with a souped up studio

That's quite possible. They could quadruple the M3 Max into an "Extreme", put it into a Mac Studio, paint it black, and call it the new "Mac Pro", à la poubelle noire:

 

[spaz8]

The GPU is what ages the quickest in any computer. I think I upgraded the GPU 4 times in my MP 1,1 over the 7 yrs or so I kept that thing going.

 

[whitby]

What kind of scalability are you looking for? E.g., consider the Windows workstations you've bought. In practice, how common has it been for you to do the following upgrades post-purchase?:

• More storage
• More RAM
• More powerful GPU
• More powerful CPU

The last time I used a Mac workstation, I found I needed to upgrade the storage and RAM during its lifetime, but not the GPU or CPU (by the time I needed the CPU to be faster, I'd moved on to a new machine; and my work was not GPU-intensive, so that wasn't an issue). I'm thus curious what your experience has been.

In general, more storage, more RAM and upgraded GPU over time. Rarely the CPU, as new motherboards are often needed for a CPU upgrade. However it has happened where I have replaced the motherboard and reused the memory, storage and GPU and then gradually upgraded the GPU etc. I have also upgraded the CPU from say an i5 to i7 or i9 where no chipset changes are needed, but the improvements gained by a pure CPU change are often not worth the effort (except for an i5 to i9 say). In other words it may be a gradual evolution so that a machine has evolved with my needs. Something that is not possible with a modern Mac.

I am not really looking for such radical changes in general but the ability to add RAM and add fast storage would be a must along with a GPU change to suite application type (I do not necessarily need a game ready GPU but one with more memory or better vector graphic processing for real time simulation programs). Apple are not providing solutions that will meet those needs today and seem to be heading towards closed box replaceable computing units that cannot be worked in parallel. As parallel processing architectures improve, the software needs to develop to harness this as we see the move to massively parallel CPU architectures, maybe they see us moving to massively parallel computing nodes. Possible but not seen yet.

The software is key and, as we have seen with AS, the performance improvements between Mx, Mx Pro, Mx Max and Mx Ultra is the increase in number of CPU units which assumes that software scales well. It is a fact that for normal use the single core benchmarks dominate, only parallel activities like video processing and games seem to take advantage of the parallel processing cores.

 

[257Loner]

It seems Apple Silicon engineers have been convinced by:

The Legend of the Ambalappuzha Paal Payasam​

Translation: The rice pudding (paal payasam) of the temple of Ambalappuzha. (A toponym using the words 'Ālayam', meaning 'home', and 'puzha', meaning 'watercourse' or 'river'.)

Excerpt:
The sage told the king that he had a very modest claim and being a man of few material needs, all he wished was a few grains of rice. The amount of rice itself shall be determined using the chess-board in the following manner. One grain of rice shall be placed in the first square, two grains in the second square, four in the third square, eight in the fourth square, sixteen in fifth square and so on. Every square will have double of its predecessor.


This seems to describe Apple's silicon strategy:
The Max is double the Pro chip's GPU cores.
The Ultra is 2 Max chips fused together.
Apple could install 2 Ultra chips into the new Mac Pro.

Everything is "double its predecessor".

 

[seek3r]

They’re both sold as fitness gadgets, with a focus on running. The Garmin is superior for running in basically every possible way.

Sure, but the AW is sold as a powerful multi app smartwatch that also happens to be a fitness gadget. My iPad is sold as a reading device too, but not primarily a reading device like my kindle. The iPhone is sold as a camera but a DSLR is likely to last longer on battery life. Etc.

 

[257Loner]

This upcoming Mac Pro sure does "live rent free in our heads" as the kids say these days. Apple will do fine with or without the Mac Pro, and so will creative professionals.