The Apple Watch is easily one of the best wearables out there, but the battery life can be pretty underwhelming — but that may change in the future. An Apple exec hinted that extending its wearables' runtimes is a focus for the Cupertino-based tech giant.
Like any comments from the company, you’ve really got to interpret hidden meanings in what is actually said here, and Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers is one of the best when it comes to non-committal-but-also-kind-of-committal answers.
While our interpretation of Borchers' responses for Apple Watch is optimistic, I’m afraid it looks like the sunset is near for the dream of a new Mac Pro.
Giving the Apple Watch more stamina
Speaking to India Today, Borchers confirms that Apple is aware of these consistent complaints about the battery life, saying that the Apple Watch “is an excellent health tracker, but which will also greatly benefit from more battery life.”
He also confirmed that in something like a smaller wearable, the company has to strike a good balance of everything — from its real-time health and body tracking to internal processor power. All of this has an impact on battery life, but this does very well seem like the company has heard all the complaints, and is going to do something about it.
Don’t expect a Mac Pro anytime soon (or ever)
So far, the closest we’ve gotten to an Apple Silicon-based Mac Pro is a casual mention during the Mac Studio announcement, and a code reference in iOS 16.4. But beyond that, the company has been very quiet about it.
And I think the reason is simple: there is no new Mac Pro. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be wrong here, but Borchers’ comment about it when asked is very telling. While he reiterated the mission to have the “entire product line” running on its own processors, he then went on to say that Apple silicon can “power and transform experiences from the MacBook Air to all the way up to the Mac Studio.”
Did you get that? No mention of the Mac Pro in his answer. This could be by design, but with the graphical prowess of the likes of the current 14-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Studio for creative pros, you have to question the point of having a Mac Pro.
Because sure, a dedicated GPU would be nice, and swappable components would be pretty mint. However, I think the ship has sailed on this grand idea, given just what incredible feats the standalone silicon is capable of.
Outlook
So all-in-all, a rather mixed affair of good news and bad news, but the latter doesn’t necessarily mean it’s game over for creative pros at the top of their game.
It’s already clear that the M2 Pro and M2 Max are capable of big things. Add to that the ongoing work to constantly improve (given the fact we’re hearing a lot about the M3 chip being built on a 3nm process), and Apple’s journey seems a lot clearer to just focus on improving this current range of hardware rather than try to introduce a super-expensive pro-tier desktop system.
The closest I think we’d see is an iMac Pro, but don’t quote me on that! Besides that, though, as someone who is always struggling with battery life anxiety in the Apple Watch Series 8, to see the company take a vested interest in this area is encouraging.
