Tencent Digital News Apple’s Mac series was once a significant leap in computer products. The large multi-touch trackpad, floating island keyboard, and unibody aluminum chassis were trends initiated by Apple, which led to imitation by other manufacturers. However, in today’s PC market, Apple’s innovation speed seems to have fallen behind competitors, making the Mac series feel outdated. If Apple wants to improve the Mac series, there are many options available. This article will outline some of them.
Biometric Recognition
Touch ID is the fingerprint recognition feature that Apple launched in 2013 on the iPhone 5s, and now, nearly every mobile device from Apple comes with this feature. Although it is not an absolutely secure authentication method, Touch ID has fulfilled its promise. For devices like the Mac that also require identity verification to protect data security, similar features should have been integrated long ago.
Whether Apple will directly incorporate Touch ID or choose other biometric methods remains to be seen. However, Windows 10 has pointed out a viable solution. When using devices equipped with depth-sensing cameras, users can take a photo of themselves. When waking the device again, the camera will automatically start recognizing the user’s face and unlock the device after completing identity verification. In practical use, this process is almost instantaneous and supports multi-user systems.
There are also reports that Mac users will be able to unlock their Macs using their iPhones. Companies like Google have already begun experimenting with this method: newer Android phones can automatically unlock when within the Bluetooth accessory’s signal range. Providing a similar feature should not be difficult for Apple.
Default Encryption
The Mac already offers full disk encryption through the FileVault feature, allowing users to easily enable and disable it. It can store keys through your iCloud account, and you can also specify the storage location of the keys. The OS X installation wizard prompts you to enable this feature, and what Apple should do next is to make it enabled by default.
Performance may be a concern for users. For Macs that have been around for about the past five years, performance is not a significant issue, but mechanical hard drives will surely not handle encryption as quickly as solid-state drives. Older models—like all models equipped with Intel Core 2 Duo processors—will be even more affected, as these processors do not have hardware encryption acceleration capabilities.
Windows PCs also encrypt disks by default, but only under specific conditions. Apple’s control over its hardware ecosystem makes it easier to implement default encryption. In recent years, Apple has been carefully cultivating an image that values user security and privacy, and having encryption always enabled on the Mac platform aligns perfectly with this positioning.
Standard Solid-State Drives
The MacBook Air series first introduced solid-state drives in 2010, which was a big deal at the time. Solid-state drives were still expensive and rare, often viewed as a more high-end option compared to mechanical hard drives. When introducing solid-state drives, Apple also significantly lowered the price of the Air series and added a cheaper 11.6-inch model. Most high-end laptops on the market today are designed based on the MacBook Air from back then. However, in the last year or two, the design of the MacBook Air has started to feel somewhat outdated.
Solid-state drives are now much cheaper, and many PCs—and almost all high-end PCs—now come standard with solid-state drives. However, whether it’s the $500 Mac mini or the $1799 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, they still come standard with mechanical hard drives. Having such an old hard drive in devices that are equipped with high-end processors/graphics cards makes them feel less new. To combine the speed of solid-state drives with the capacity of mechanical drives, Apple introduced the Fusion Drive feature, but it seems they haven’t utilized it effectively.
For Macs that cost over a thousand dollars, continuing to use mechanical hard drives is quite unreasonable.
Mac mini: Make It More Mini
Most of Apple’s hardware designs now seem quite outdated, and nearly every product could benefit from design improvements.
The Mac mini is a perfect example. The current design of this device comes from a completely different era. Its internal space was originally designed to accommodate an optical drive or two mechanical hard drives, which is no longer necessary. Compared to the current Intel NUC series or other mini PCs on the market, the Mac mini now appears quite large. Part of this is due to these devices using external power supplies, which Apple is unwilling to do. However, even so, the Mac mini should be smaller than it currently is.
Assuming the Mac mini is an entry-level dual-core system, redesigning it would be quite easy: reduce the number of hard drive slots to one, or use a solid-state drive directly; shrink the motherboard, fan, heatsink, and power supply; place USB Type-C or Thunderbolt 3 ports on the back, and use a smaller aluminum casing.
If Apple wants to further reduce the size, they could use Core M processors to eliminate the fan entirely and further shrink the power supply. With this approach, the Mac mini’s body would be only slightly larger than the new Apple TV. Although performance would not be strong, performance is not the positioning of the Mac mini.
MacBook Air: A Long Farewell
Since the launch of the MacBook, the situation for the MacBook Air has become somewhat precarious. The MacBook is Apple’s entry-level thin and light laptop, with a very clear positioning, but it overlaps with the Air. This explains why the Air series has not undergone a design update for many years: thinness has become the new normal and is no longer a defining selling point for hardware.
Meanwhile, the Air will continue to exist as Apple’s entry-level laptop, which means that even if it receives upgrades, the extent will not be significant. If it gets Thunderbolt 3 ports and a Retina display, it will essentially become a 13-inch MacBook Pro.
MacBook Pro: The Balance Point for High-Demand Users
For various reasons, the MacBook will not satisfy all existing MacBook Air and Pro users. Complaints about this device mainly focus on its single USB-C port, while the screen size, performance, and keyboard do not meet everyone’s taste. Apple needs to leverage some advantages of the MacBook—its slim body, USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, and color options—to encourage people to use the 13-inch MacBook Air and Pro as versatile office devices, while the 15-inch MacBook Pro serves as a mobile workstation.
Although we should not take a blurry photo claimed to be from the supply chain too seriously, if the recently leaked photos indeed show the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, they do appear to be a promising start. The photos depict a notebook with uniform thickness (without the sharp corners of the MacBook and MacBook Air). Although the four ports are not clearly visible as USB-C or Thunderbolt, they are certainly more practical than just one.
Additionally, there is an opening above the keyboard that is rumored to be an OLED touch panel, replacing the traditional function keys. If the rumors are true, it would be a pretty cool feature, especially if users can customize it to change functions and order.
If the weight of the 13-inch MacBook Pro could approach that of the 13-inch Air, it should satisfy those hoping for a Retina display option on the Air. Given the advancements in technology, Apple should find it easier to produce a thinner Retina panel than in 2012, while also ensuring that the resolution increase does not sacrifice battery life by using a battery that makes full use of every inch of internal space.
Moreover, we hope Apple can also introduce a keyboard that feels more traditional and is more comfortable than the MacBook. Apple’s desktop Magic Keyboard has a key travel that is shallower than the previous Wireless Keyboard, but it still feels more comfortable than the MacBook’s keyboard. If Apple could include this keyboard in the MacBook Pro, most users would likely be satisfied.
In addition to external changes, the MacBook Pro’s internals also need an upgrade of equal measure. Upgrading the entire series from Intel’s Broadwell processors (13-inch model) and Haswell processors (15-inch model) to Skylake processors may not bring a significant performance boost, but the Iris and Iris Pro integrated graphics in this generation have seen considerable improvements in graphics performance. The 15-inch model also has a potentially interesting option: the quad-core Xeon mobile processor. This series of processors has almost the same functionality as the standard Core i5 and i7, but can support ECC DDR4 RAM like the Mac Pro. While not a necessary feature, it would indeed make the MacBook Pro appear more “professional.”
If a discrete graphics card were offered for the 15-inch model, it would represent an ideal balance between meeting design goals (thinness, more integration, using one interface for everything) and professional user demands (speed, flexibility, expandability, and everything else that other MacBooks can avoid).
Mac Pro: It’s Time for Some New Tricks
Apple released a completely redesigned Mac Pro in 2013. Regardless of what you think of its trash can shape, it is undoubtedly a workstation that only Apple could create.
The upgrade cycle for the Mac Pro is much longer than for other Mac devices. Perhaps an upgrade every three years is sufficient for the professional market, or Apple only wants to upgrade when it can provide significant performance improvements. Regardless, if Apple continues to plan for a long upgrade cycle, the extent of its upgrades should be substantial.
The current Mac Pro is based on Ivy Bridge-E architecture Xeon processors, with core counts ranging from 4 to 12. The current series of Xeon processors has already been upgraded to a new generation and manufacturing process, resulting in a significant gap between it and the new processors with the same clock speed. Broadwell Xeon supports faster 2400MHz DDR4 RAM, which not only offers slight power savings but also provides a significant bandwidth boost over the current 1866MHz DDR3 RAM.
The number of processing cores is a more important factor. The lowest-end model of the Broadwell Xeon series still has 4 cores, while high-end models can have up to 22 cores, with options for 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20 cores available—all achievable through a single CPU socket. While a 22-core Mac Pro would certainly be very expensive, it would greatly surpass the number of processor cores and threads supported by the older dual-socket Mac Pro. More processing cores are often more important than higher clock speeds for many types of workloads.
The models of processors used in workstations are very complex, with many old architectures using new branding, and the graphics card situation isn’t much better. However, Nvidia’s Pascal architecture and AMD’s Polaris architecture have emerged, both promising maximum peak performance and performance per watt improvements. Once workstation-grade FirePro and Quadro graphics cards based on these architectures are released, they will be excellent upgrades for the Mac Pro’s currently outdated 28nm FirePro D300, D500, and D700.
If Apple (or other manufacturers) could produce upgrade graphics cards compatible with the 2013 Mac Pro, that would be even better.
Other internal upgrades that the Mac Pro could receive include Thunderbolt 3 ports and faster PCI Express solid-state drives, but a 2-3 year processor/graphics card upgrade is the best improvement Apple can currently offer for the Mac Pro. Providing users with more processing cores at the same price is certainly not a bad thing, especially considering that the four-core Mac Pro’s processing performance has long been inferior to high-end iMacs.
Source: ArsTechnica