DPReview on 5 Big Improvements probably coming to Apple’s next MacBook Pro

DL Cade has a great article on possible new features of the next Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. It is very good read, but a couple of things on graphics really stood out for me.

According to several different leaks, the M1X SOC will be available in 16- and 32-core variants that could offer performance on par NVIDIA’s GTX 1650 and RTX 3070, respectively, while sipping less than half of the wattage. If these rumors turn out to be true, the M1X will offer the most powerful iGPU experience on the market, offering more than enough power for most GPU-accelerated photo and video editing tasks.

However, even if the M1X meets these expectations, we would also love for Apple to bring back support for eGPUs. For now, only Intel-based MacBooks support eGPUs, but according to French publication Mac4ever, M1 Macs can detect eGPUs when they’re connected, just don’t have the necessary drivers to put them to use. This could simply be a holdover for Intel-based Mac users on Big Sur, or it could be an indication that eGPU support is coming for more “professional-grade” users of Apple Silicon Macs. We sincerely hope it’s the latter.

Both of these are exciting. The current M1 scared me without it’s external GPU support and while that might or might not be coming, the possible performance of the GPU cores is fairly impressive, especially if they really make one with a lot more graphics cores. I still hate the ram being shared, and soldered since it will be so expensive, but if you can get at least 128 GB you will likely be pretty damn powerful. All speculation now though.

Blackmagic Design updates DaVinci Resolve to 17.3

Blackmagic has updated it’s DaVinci Resolve software to 17.3.

The big feature is 3x faster with Apple Silicon M1 enabling 8k editing and grading. As well as H.265 encoder enhancements.

It also includes the ability to rotate garbage mattes.

Another great sounding free update. Can’t wait to give it a try.

Bloomberg thinks Apple will hit it’s 2 year deadline on Apple Silicon and release a MacPro

So both 9to5 mac and AppleInsider are reporting that Mark Gurman at Bloomberg believes Apple will hit it’s 2 year deadline on Apple SIlicon in it’s whole lineup including a new MacPro.

With the whole microprocessor issues hitting the world right now this will be impressive if true, but I assume they don’t need too many MacPros compared to their other machines, though that depends if the price is right.

The rumors point to a very powerful machine for the new MacPro. Who knows if it will be expandable or have any PCI slots, but if it has Thunderbolt 5, that might not be an issue. If they don’t have PCI slots, will they still offer an Apple Afterburner, or if they have a version of the MacPro with it built in?

If the Mac Pro is like current M1 macs it will likely not be expandable after the fact, so might need a larger initial expense, maxing out RAM and everything else you need because of lack of expansion ability after the initial purchase. And you will really need to maximize the RAM since it will likely share the video ram with the normal ram like all the M1 Macs do.

MacRumors reports that Monterey Beta 4 includes Live Text for Intel Macs

Sami Fathi at Macrumors is reporting that the latest Beta of MacOS Monterey includes Live Text for Intel Macs.

This is great news. I have to say I really hated that Apple was already disabling features for non-Apple Silicon Macs. And while they are still doing that, this is one of the features I was most likely to want of the missing features. Honestly they should have feature parity until at least their is a Pro Apple Silicon released. And sure they have specific new hardware in M1 and Apple Silicon, but it isn’t like you couldn’t write something to let Intel run this, as they have proved here.

9to5Mac reporting on a new intel Mac Pro

Jose Adorno at 9to5Mac is reporting that a leaker says that Apple will release one more Intel Mac Pro and it will be based on the Intel Ice Lake Xeon W-3300.

Not only would this give a nice boost to the Intel Mac Pro line, it would make up for the fact that they made a modular machine that could be easily upgraded and never bothered releasing a single upgrade for it. And as the article says they are also working on the Apple Silicon version of the MacPro, which will likely be a smaller version of the MacPro, more like a Cube, and it will likely not be upgrade-able, so it would be smart for Apple to release one more upgrade-able machine before they dump the idea of upgrade ability all together.

It seems likely that the Apple Silicon based MacPro will be like every other Apple Silicon with soldered Memory, and fixed gpu on the motherboard, and without the ability to run an external GPU. Now hopefully that also ends up being shown in the price which should be allot less than a fully loaded Intel MacPro, but I doubt it will still be considered inexpensive.

Adobe Illustrator has been updated with M1 support and the ability to rotate the canvas

This morning Adobe updated Illustrator to version 25.3 it’s June 2021 release. It has 2 new features.

Rotate View has been added. Now you can easily edit in a rotated view and quickly return to a normal view.

And full Apple M1 support has been added.

I do love that Adobe is steadily adding full M1 support to creative cloud.

Adobe has updated Premiere Pro to 15.4 with Free Speech to Text and Full M1 support

So I woke up way too early today because the air conditioner is not working too well, and I was too hot to keep sleeping and low and behold Adobe has updated Premiere Pro to Version 15.4!

This update brings the amazing Speech to Text out of Beta and into the normal version and out of the Beta program which I have been running for a bit. This quickly became my favorite feature when cutting testimonials, and I am so happy that i is available to all. It also includes new Transcript Editing Tools and the ability to Generate Captions Automatically.

And adds native support for Apple M1 Computers which was previously only available in the beta.

Other new features of Note:

New Titling and Caption Styling Tools.

You can now upgrade Legacy Titles to Essential Graphics. ARE YOU LISTENING AVID?

Color improvements with Tetahedral LUT interpolation. And the beta now includes a colorized vectorscope for more detail in grading.

The Speed of Saving of Team Projects has improved thanks to a new file structure. And in the Public Beta is progressive project loading to work faster, and improved media relinking.

You can now also label colors and clip names and have the option of limiting changes to the current sequence or applying changes to your source media.

Faster Scene Edit Detection.

On Windows you get automatic Audio Device Switching.

And CUDA and OpenCL have been discontinued completely in favor of Metal on the Mac.

Looking forward to running it through it’s paces, this is huge news.

BlackMagic RAW has been updated to 2.1 with improved Premiere Pro Performance and M1 Support

Blackmagic Design has upgraded it’s BlackMagic RAW plugin to version 2.1 with M1 support and improved Premiere Pro Performance.

  • Added native support for Apple Silicon on Mac.
  • Added optimised CPU decoding for clips captured by Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K.
  • Added Blackmagic Generation 5 Color Science Technical Reference document.
  • Added support for Panasonic Lumix S1H, S1 and S5 Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Added support for Nikon Z 6II and Z 7II Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Blackmagic RAW Adobe Premiere Pro plugin performance and stability improvements.
  • General performance and stability improvements.

Improvements to performance are always welcome and M1 support is as well.

9to5Mac is reporting on the possibility of a an upgraded Intel Mac Pro before the move to M1

Change Miller at 9TO5 Mac is reporting that the Xcode 13 Beta has a reference to scalable Intel Ice Lake Xeon processors, which would be a big upgrade from what is in the current Intel MacPro.

It would be nice to see new video cards offered by Apple too since they are supporting more current video cards in the latest versions of Big Sur.

The Mac Pro is supposed to be this upgrade-able machine, so it would be great to see Apple actually make some upgrades available before the completely EOL it. Otherwise all the upgrade ability talk was just bullshit, because they knew that Apple Silicon was coming.

This would be a good boon to editors though to have one last MacPro with the best processor available.