About those new Macs

Apple's presentation today talks about three new products: the new iPhone SE, the new iPad Air, and the new Mac Studio desktop (with a new display, so maybe that is four new products).

The iPhone SE is pretty much what you would expect in a low-end Apple phone. It still uses the A-series chips.

The iPad Air uses an M-series chip, and that is interesting. Using the M-series chip brings the iPad Air closer to the Mac line of computers. I expect that, in the somewhat-distant future, Apple will replace the iMac with the iPad line. Apple already lets one run iPhone and iPad apps on Macbooks; some day Apple may let an M-series Mac run apps for an M-series iPad.

The new M1 Ultra chip and the new Apple Studio desktop and display received the most time in the presentation.

The M1 Ultra chip is a pairing of two M1 Max chips. Instead of simply placing two M1 Max chips on a board, Apple has connected them at the chip level. The connection allows for rapid transfer of data, and results in a powerful processor.

Interestingly, the M1 Ultra design does not follow the pattern of the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, which are expansions of the base model. Apple may have run into difficulties in building a single-chip successor to the M1 Max. The pairing of two M1 Max chips feels like a compromise, getting a faster processor on an aggressive schedule.

The Mac Studio is a computer that I was expecting: an expanded version of the Mac Mini. The Mac Studio  has a beefier processor, more memory, and more ports than the Mac Mini, but the same basic design. The Mac Studio is simply a big brother to the Mac Mini, and nothing like the Mac Pro.

Apple hinted at a replacement for the Mac Pro, and my prediction for its successor stands. That is, I expect the replacement for the Mac Pro to be a more powerful Mac Mini (or a more powerful Mac Studio). It will not be like the current Mac Pro with slots for GPU cards. (There is no point, as the built-in GPU of the M1 processor provides more computational power than an external card.) It will most certainly have a processor more powerful than the M1 Ultra. That processor may be a double M1 Ultra (or four M1 Pro processor ganged together); what Apple calls it is anyone's guess. ("M1 Double Ultra"? "M1 Ultra Max"? "M1 Ultravox"?)

The new Mac Studio is a processor for specific purposes. Apple's presentation focussed on video applications, which are of interest to a limited market. For typical PC users who work in the pedestrian world of documents and spreadsheets, the new Mac Studio offers little -- the low-end Mac systems are capable, and additional processing power is simply wasted as the computer waits for the user.

Apple's presentation, and its concentration on video applications, shows a blind spot in their thinking. Apple made no announcements about changes to operating systems or application software. Another company, when announcing more powerful hardware, would also introduce more powerful software that takes advantage of that hardware. Apple could have introduced improved versions of applications such as Pages and Numbers, or features to share processing among Apple devices, or AI-like capabilities for improved security and privacy... but they did not. Perhaps they have those changes lined up for a future presentation, but I suspect that they simply don't have them. Their thinking seems to be to wow their customers with hardware alone. That, I think, may be a mistake.