Apple’s iMac Pro hasn’t received a lot of updates since it was first announced at WWDC earlier this year in June. Over the weekend, however, news broke out from Steven Toughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo that the iMac Pro will feature an A10 Fusion coprocessor.
Using the leaked code, compiled and explained by Jonathan Leon, the A10 Fusion chip will bring functionality to two new features. The first feature is where the iMac Pro will have always-on “Hey, Siri” voice command support. This is similar to what’s found on the recent iPhone’s. Rambo also posted a video of the feature working on a Mac.
Confirmed: "Hey, Siri" is coming to the Mac pic.twitter.com/Dw9bRAzbxD
— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) November 18, 2017
The other feature, pointed out by Pepijn Bruienne, is that the A10 Fusion will be used for a less user-interacting function. Apple plans to use the A10 Fusion as a coprocessor to enable SecureBoot on the iMac Pro. Basically, what this means is that Apple’s A10 Fusion chip will handle the initial boot process and process appropriate confirmations before passing everything off to the regular X86 Intel processor in the iMac Pro.
The introduction of the A10 Fusion chip is an interesting one because one feature will allow users to interact with their iMac Pro with the “Hey, Siri” functionality while the other feature will provide an internal feature to boost security. Apple is experimenting with an increased level of control over their software. Apple already has much control over its software and products already, but now is experimenting with additional security parameters to further boost its control.
