The release of 16-inch Macbook Pro has made it clear what Apple is after. It is catering to its long craving pro users with love. Fixing the hardware issues won’t cut it. They need to deliver a robust performance with software changes to give the Pro lineup of Macs a boost. It is the times of Intel Icelake’s AI and AMD’s SmartShift technology that is giving an overall boost to the system performance hence increasing productivity substantially.
Apple’s software especially the OS has been known to be in perfect sync with its devices. Since, they have their own products and devices that they designed to optimize, it should be able to achieve so with perfection. Apple’s Macbook Pros have been criticized a lot owing to thermal and performance issues owing to the consistent design and its issues that lingered on. With this newly designed 16-inch Macbook Pro, I had this slight feeling of Apple coming up with their own version of above said performance oriented technology for its pro users to give them a performance gain while using their favorite Apple apps for creating content or just gaming.
In a recent report by 9to5Mac, it is apparent that Apple is showing software level efforts to achieve a short-term performance boost in its Pro lineup of Macbooks. A system power management related profile “Pro mode” is available in the macOS 10.15.3 beta. Further, text in references have been discovered suggesting faster and louder fans. References to text stating faster apps and reduced battery life are also found. The report said, it might not be turned on by default and might even go off automatically after a while. It seems experimental like any other new technology.
There is very little data or specifics available as of yet regarding what all Pro machines other than the new 16-inch MBP would actually receive an optional Pro Mode if ever released by Apple to the general public. Until Apple officially confirms this optional Pro Mode in its macOS. We can only speculate that it is something designed for Pro machines that Apple sells including the Mac Pro. That being so, MacRumors has also received information from an anonymous source suggesting that ‘Pro Mode’ is also coming to new Mac Pro. So, it is not going to be limited to portable pro machines by Apple only. Honestly, this mode is something that I would expect on a 16-inch MBP instead of a Mac Pro.
Owing to lack of official data or figures to compare, we can imagine this Pro Mode as a power management related profile that temporarily lifts software limits on fan speed to improve thermal efficiency for greater sustainable CPU performance at higher clock speeds. It would be interesting to see how much of a reliable boost is achievable with this Pro Mode especially on MBPs. Also, we would love to see this ‘Pro Mode’ being used automatically depending on the demand or type of tasks we perform on Apple’s pro machines like how automatic graphics switching works. Anyways, whether this enters a public release or not is an internal matter of Apple’s core team. But, anything that gives a MBP user long-term benefits and let them be more productive in less time is fantastic.
