SEPTEMBER 2020 MACWORLD 13The new Mac Pro shows that Apple can think
outside—and inside—the box.consider the calendar of the next couple
years, there is a tremendous amount for
Mac users to get excited about.
MODELING GOOD BEHAVIOR
Sometime later this year Apple will roll out
its first Mac models running on Apple
silicon. That frisson of anticipation hanging
in the air is because nobody has a really
good idea what exactly those models
might look like. And not just in an aesthetic
sense, though that’s surely part of it. Will
Apple opt for consistency, comforting Mac
users by producing models that bridge the
gap and change little, as the company did
for the transition to Intel? Or is this a time
to be bold, to push forward and
demonstrate “This is what we can do when
we’re in complete control of every piece of
hardware and software”?
I’m certainly hoping for the latter. Mac
design in the last decade has, at times, felt
staid and conservative. Sure, the latest
MacBook Pro doesn’t look exactly like its
2006 predecessor, but neither is it a huge
departure. Likewise, the current
generation iMac isn’t hard to trace back to
the first aluminum iMac of 2007, but it’s
honestly not even that distinct from the
iMac G5 that preceded it.
Could those really be the ultimate
evolved forms of the Mac, the platonic
ideals of notebook and desktop
computing? The new Mac Pro certainly
illustrates that the company can think
outside the box—or is that inside the box?—
when it wants to. Plus, the engineering on
the iPhone and iPad proves that when
Apple does build its products from the
ground up, it’s second to none.SOFTWARE EVERYWHERE
Not only is Mac hardware about to get
more capable than ever, but that hardware
is about to be deluged with software. Not
only will Macs be able to run the same
apps they’ve been running for years, but
now they’ll add hundreds of thousands of
iPhone and iPad apps to the mix as well.
It’s going to be a bit rough at first, to be