AnandTech on the recently announced Apple Silicon M2 Chip

Ryan Smith has a must read article on the recently announced Apple M2 Apple Silicon chip that is in the new Air and low end MacBook Pro.

Basically while it can be more energy efficient, it can also run more power and be more powerful. And it is larger than the previous generation, and it also includes ProRes acceleration instead of just H264 acceleration in the chip. Also it has more memory capacity, 24 vs 16 and at 100GB/sec vs 68GB/sec in the previous M1,

And the larger chip will have Max and Ultra versions and I am betting the quad version that will be in the next Mac Pro, which makes me happy that they didn’t yet release the MacPro as if it is based on this it will beat out the current Mac Studio, though will certainly be quite expensive.

9To5 Mac reports no M1 mac supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10 GB speed

Ben Lovejoy has the slightly confusing report.

It seems M1 macs don’t support 10gb USB 3.1 Gen 2 and only 10gb for USB 3.2 which should reach 20gb, so don’t officially support usb 4 which would have to include both of those.

So it basically supports the 5gb of Usb 3.1 Gen 1, and 3.2 is dual, so 2 5gb, but full thunderbolt 4 40gb.

Intel macs supported USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10GB, but also only supported USB 3.2 at 10gb.

I don’t know if this is licensing, saving money or just bad implementation on their own chip design. This is a huge mistake and one I wish Apple would deal with in the future (i bet it is hardware and not software).

Apple Cheated on it’s graph comparison between M1 Ultra GPU and the NVIDIA RTX 3090

I have been seeing this in video reviews of the Mac Studio and here at 9to5 Mac by Ben Lovejoy. Basically this is true for these power levels, but the NVIDIA card they are comparing too can go much higher on wattage, and thus is much more powerful, and the new 2090 Ti can up to 450 watts of power, so Apple has cut the top of this graph, so it is really only showing till the top of the M1 Performance, but the other video card goes much higher.

I had seen a few videos fix the graph, and found this post from iPhone Hacks that has a fixed version of the graph from MKBHD.

This adds the power curve of the NVIDIA 3900 and the Ti should go further than this.

So yes the Mac Studio may use less power, but it gets whipped by the top of the line NVIDIA card.

It may be the most powerful Mac Graphics card, but not the most powerful graphics card that is for sure.

Adobe releases After Effects April 2022 (Version 22.3) with Apple Silicon Support

Adobe has released After Effects April 2022 (Version 22.3).

This brings native Apple Silicon M1 Support to the production version of After Effects. Still not sure about M1 Ultra Support as of yet.

It also includes Frame.io integration with the free account you now get with you adobe account.

3D Extended Viewer for 3D previews.

Scene Edit detection for which I have been using Magnum 3 from AE Scripts. Love that this is built in now.

Binning indicators for 3D layers to see how layers are composited.

And constrained shapes, where you can create perfect squares and circles by holding down the shift key when you double click the rectangle or ellipse tool.

And in the Beta, Separated Dimensions Preference.

So you can have x, y as separate lines.

Max Tech on the M2 Extreme chip for the Mac Pro

This one goes into the weeds, but I think hits the nail on the head for the processor for the Mac Pro. It has to be a dual ultra, but that means likely a M2 dual Ultra, the M2 Extreme.

I am still not sure on the expandable ram, as it would be so much slower than the RAM in the chip, but pci expansion does make sense for so many things. And all the extra thunderbolt they could add.

Not part of this video, but what if this is right and it is a smaller MacPro and the processor is on a daughter card that could be upgraded, leaving the pci slots and extra ram if that is workable. That could be an ”upgradeable” Mac Pro for sure.

Well the Mac Studio has gotten me excited for the Mac Pro, though if it really is an M2, I think WWDC might ge pushing it, and the 2023 rumors may be true.

A Bunch of Sites and Video Reviews of the Mac Studio and Studio Display and it is good


Stu Maschwitz has his post with speed tests. And Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition has part 1 of Mac Studio for editing.

Scott Simmons has cables plugged in like Ido

9to5 Mac has a slew of reviews a swell as their own quick look by Chance Miller. And MacStories with it’s reviews roundup has a bunch more.

And I like the review from SixColors, because he has so many cables attached already which makes it seem much more real of a user, or at least one more like me.

So many of the early YouTube reviewers blow my mind, as their review space is so pretty. My office is not, most people would call it a pig sty (or maybe shar pei sty), but mine is used everyday and I have dogs. My wife would love to come in and clean, but I would never find anything. And it is especially messy now with me having a broken foot and all. Just blows my mind that their “work space” is so clean. I mean I have so many things connected to my mac it is a joke (2 thunderbolt 4 hubs and countless usb hubs). And just all the hard drives from work!

I so want a Mac Studio, but i also want to see what the MacPro is. I just don’t see how expandable it can be. Not chance of changeable RAM as it would be so much slower. Maybe it could have PCI, but not a graphics cards, so I doubt it.

And I have seen some people saying they can’t do the same thing with Ultra, so a 4×4 version would be seen as 2 processors, and then wouldn’t have double bandwidth and maybe not even double the ram, as it could only use the main bank, but lets hope that isn’t true.

I really hope that it has a dual Ultra, but I am not sure I could afford that anyway, so this could be my next machine.