Jason Hiner (MacRumors):

In an exclusive conversation with The Deep View ahead of WWDC 2026 in June, Doug Brooks, senior product manager of Apple silicon, discussed how Apple’s long-term investments in neural processing, unified memory, power-efficient computing, and hardware-software integration have positioned its devices for the AI era.

He also explained why Macs have become a favorite platform among AI developers, why Mac minis and Mac Studios are emerging as the preferred AI agent machines, and how Apple sees the future of on-device AI across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

[…]

“We build a chip knowing exactly what systems it’s going to go into. The chip can influence the system design, and the system design can influence the chip requirements. They’re married together very tightly. I’d actually go a step further and include software in that equation. As we enable new capabilities in the chip, we want to make sure those capabilities are exposed all the way through the software stack so developers can benefit and customers can benefit. Because if those transistors go unused, what’s the point? It’s not about adding something and hoping somebody finds a use for it. We want those capabilities available to solve real problems. I think that’s what allows us to build better systems and ultimately better products.”

It seems like a lot of it is just that developers like macOS.

Previously:

• OpenClaw (Formerly Moltbot)
• Mac Studio 2025
• Mac mini 2024
• Why Apple Believes It’s an AI Leader

Update (2026-07-10): See also: Hacker News.

Howard Oakley:

Hot Macs have their own paradox: open Activity Monitor, select the CPU view, and at the top of the CPU % list will be kernel_task hogging the CPU cores with 100% or more, rather than its usual 4% or so. Kerb any temptation to kill it and hope it goes away, as it has taken control of your Mac to let it cool.

[…]

There are rare occasions when fans blow full on and kernel_task goes wild without any thermal problem. In Intel Macs, resetting the SMC is usually curative, but this could instead be the result of a fault in a thermal sensor, or in the SMC. Hardware diagnostics should tell you more. By far the most common cause of persistent problems is dust and debris in the air ducts, and in the case of some Intel Mac notebooks overheating of the left USB-C ports. For more details, see Apple’s note about kernel_task, which also confirms what I have written here.

[…]

If your Mac is showing early signs of thermal strain and still running, encourage heat loss by immediately[…]

Paul Haddad:

It boggles my mind that the biggest software company in the world, with total control of their hardware/software stack is totally incapable of shipping an OS that doesn’t include one or more daemons who just endlessly waste CPU cycles.

Bonus irony points because dasd’s purpose is supposedly to schedule low priority background processes.

Howard Oakley:

Continuing with the results from file compression, it’s straightforward to calculate the total energy required to compress the test file using the P and E cores:

• When compressing using the ten P cores, power used was 51 W for a total of about 8.4 seconds, thus 428 J, or 43 J per core.
• When compressing using the four E cores, power used was 255 mW for a total of about 150 seconds, thus 38 J, or 10 J per core.

[…]

In omitting GPU power from Energy Impact, many power- and energy-intensive tasks will appear far less demanding than they really are. This is becoming even more important now Apple silicon chips are being used increasingly to run AI computation locally.

Neither powermetrics nor Activity Monitor provide any estimates of power or energy used by other parts of a Mac, such as memory or the internal SSD, although those can also be important determinants of battery endurance and heat generation.

Previously:

• “If You Can’t Stand By a Feature, You Shouldn’t Launch It.”
• The LG UltraFine 5K, kernel_task, and Me
• Throttling Due to Thunderbolt Left Proximity Sensor

Update (2026-07-02): Howard Oakley:

This article explains how you can improve your Mac’s cooling to cope better with extreme summer temperatures.