MacRumors reporting several macOS Monterey features unavailable on Intel-Based Macs, doesn’t bode well for continued Intel Support

Joe Rossignol at MacRumors has a report on several features that are only available to M1 macs.

None seem like deal breakers, and the Portrait Mode blurred background could be something with the cameras, which would mean not supported on M1 Mac Mini.

Apple has said they will continue to support Intel Macs for some time, but slowly removing features from Intel doesn’t really seem like full support, and gives doubt to rumors of a final Mac Pro with newer Intel Processor.

Adobe Premiere Pro speeds on an M1 reported officially

Eric Philpott at the Adobe Blog has a report on the latest Pfeiffer Benchmark Reports of Adobe Premiere Pro on Apple Silicon M1, and the results are pretty unbelievable.

From first launch to final exports, everything is faster — on average 77 percent faster than comparable Intel-based systems — and editing is buttery smooth.

Launch 50 percent faster, Open projects 77 percent faster, Save projects 168 percent faster, Gradient wipe effect 90 percent faster, Lens Flare effect 66 percent faster.

Wow, those are seriously impressive results, and would speed up the edit every day. I can’t wait to see what the M2 or even M3 will do, especially if they really goose the graphics cores and allow for more RAM. I am getting more and more excited for an M1 MacPro, even with limited expansion. I mean I have been pretty damn happy with my iMac Pro.

OWC’s Rocket Yard on how to get 67% more performance on an external drive on an M1 Mac

OWC is reporting on what is obviously a bug with M1 Macs, because you shouldn’t have to connect a second display to get full speed write on the thunderbolt ports, but at least for now it seems you do.

Man Big Sur has been having some serious software issues when it comes to drives (losing support for SoftRaid for a full versions was huge!).

EDIT:

Since writing this OWC has figured out more ways to get the speed boost, check it out.

Bloomberg on new Apple Silicon for MacBook Pro, Air, Mac Mini and the MacPro

Bloomberg is reporting on rumors of the new versions of Apple Silicon. There will be a redesigned MacBook Pro, then MacBook Air, new lower end MacBook Pro and finally the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The next M1’s will support 64 gigs if RAM with 8 high energy cores and 2 energy efficient cores and either 16 or 32 graphics cores. The M1 currently 4 high performance and 4 efficiency with 8 graphics cores.

The chips for the Apple Silicon MacPro will have 20 and 40 core with either 16 or 32 high performance cores and either 64 or 128 core graphics. 

Let’s hope the MacPro doesn’t top out at 64 gigs of combined RAM, but the rest of the specs sound impressive.

If performance scales with the cores, the performance will be impressive.

Engadget is reporting that Apple’s M2 Processor has entered production and could arrive by July

Engadget has the news, and that it will again be SOC or system on chip, so integrated CPU, GPU and AI processor.

I am still hoping for eventual external gpu and memory for system and gpu, but that could be unlikely, but hopefully this will at least have support for more than 16GB of Combined RAM and a better GPU.

I hate having Mac’s future so up in the air again. At least with Intel we had a roadmap. Now we will will never know what is coming. And the pro machines won’t cone until the end of the 2 years and I will likely be disappointed with the results, at least at first.

AppleInsider reports that Mac OS 11.4 has added support for AMD Big Navi 6800, 6800XT and 6900XT

 Wesley Hillard at AppleInsider is reporting that MacOS 11.4 adds support for AMD Big Navi graphics cards 6800, 6800XT and 6900XT.

This is great news, Big Navi are what are in the new Xbox Series X and Playstation 5, are more powerful than anything in the current MacPro. It would be awesome if these cards were to be released for the MacPro and even better if they were to be added to an Pro variant of the M1 with PCI card and hopefully thunderbolt eGPU support.

There is the possibility that the M1 cards will never support PCI based graphics cards, and that would really be a shame, but this keeps the possibility alive.

Big Navi should be great for both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. I would still prefer the addition of NVIDIA, but that is unlikely to ever happen.

The Hidden cost of Apple changing it’s hardware architecture for editors and motion graphics artist is plug-ins

 

So of course Apple is moving to the M1 processor for all of it’s computers, moving away from intel. This is the 3rd hardware switch Apple has made, from it’s initial motorola processors, to power pc, to the ARM based M1 processors. And while the current M1 is very fast, but not a pro processor, especially with shared graphics and normal ram and a limit of 16 GB of total RAM. 

For everyone sticking with Apple this will eventually mean new hardware to move to M1 from Intel, though for a few years at least Apple will continue to support Intel hardware.

The hidden cost though, that is something different, and for a professional editor or motion graphics artist the hidden cost is plugs-ins.

Plug-ins can be an expensive investment, but can really help your workflow and speed things up and let you do things that couldn’t do without them. And the move to M1 will certainly be a paid upgrade, even for those still on Intel hardware. And those plugs in upgrades can cost hundreds, and over the upcoming period there are going to be a lot of upgrades to M1.

And while DaVinci and Final Cut Pro X already run on M1’s and the Premiere Pro Beta runs on M1, to get your old plug-ins to run you have to run them via Rosetta 2, which means running the Intel based versions of the host software to get the plug-ins working. And that is going to mean running the software slower through emulation, and could cause many issues and add more stability issues.

Now of course subscription based plug-ins will have the price included in the subscription, but the lack of more money for the upgrade might mean a lot longer before they upgrade to M1, even if it should mean they should upgrade sooner since you are already paying monthly or yearly for the software.

And yes the fact that our Intel Hardware will last a few more years with upgrades means that the upgrades will happen over a few years, so we can pay it, but for me it is a lot of plug-in upgrades, that will be followed by an expensive hardware upgrade to whatever form Pro M1 Macs take.

And of course their will be the exceptions, companies that treat their customers correctly and will upgrade to the new architecture without charging anything. One such company is RE:Vision Effects, which I got an e-mail from and they are developing M1 versions of the current versions of all their plugs ins. And have already released OpenFx and Twixtor M1 betas for FXPlug versions and RSMB for FXPlug is next.

Apple’s new M1 24” iMac is an impressive and beautiful consumer machine.

 

So one of the things Apple released yesterday, was there new 24” inch iMac in up to 7 colors like the iMac was originally. And this is an impressive and thin Machine, at only 11.5 mm thicks, wow!

And with the impressive performance of the M1 chip and a beautiful 4.5 K 24” display thus will be an impressive machine for many users, though it is obviously not meant for pros, and especially the $1299.00 base Machine which only has 2 thunderbolt/ USB 4 ports and unlike it’s bigger brothers doesn’t include gigabit ethernet on the power block (and a pro machine would have 10 GB ethernet).

The higher end machines for $1499 and $1699 have one more gpu core and 2 usb 3 ports as well as the afore mentioned ethernet, and their magic keyboard includes touch id (which are also color matched to your machine), though one with a numberpad is an extra cost.

And the 16GB unified memory for both CPU snd GPU will be further hampered by the larger display, and lack of cooling fan for pro work.

I really look forward to seeing what the pro variant of the m1 chip is and if it has external graphics support, or even pci support. And any pro iMac will need to be thicker and have a fan, and maybe a bigger display.

Strangely this computer is so thin they couldn’t keep the headphone jack on the back and had to put it on the side, which is certainly easier to use.

I like that you can order one with a vesa mount instead of the included stand, since the stand doesn’t have height control. Maybe an iMac pro could include height control as well, as long as it doesn’t cost as much as the stand for the MacPro HDR display.

And with Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci working well on M1 Macs and Premiere having Beta support the future looks bright for M1 pro users, though it isn’t here yet. And an expensive plug in upgrade cycle to M1 support is certainly in our future.

Still for most users this should be an impressive machine, though why the chin? I know iMacs have had it for a while, but I would rather not have it and have the display edge to edge.

The wait to see the M1 Pro Chips is killing most pro users right now, but hopefully Apple is using the time wisely, and going to really blow us away with what they release.

This machine is really quite impressive, and many users will be very happy with it, but does anyone think it is weird to not have an Apple logo on the chin?

I can’t wait to see one, though with the pandemic that may be a while.

AppleInsider is reporting that a new iMac Pro is going to come out in 2021 with M1 Hardware

 So AppleInsider is saying that a component manufacturer is saying there will be a new iMac Pro in 2021, which is good news. As the article says the iMac Pro could easily have been a stopgap machine while they waited for the new MacPro, but having one I can say I am happy there will be a new one.

It is a powerful machine, and it will answer the question of if Apple is going to have external GPU’s or rely on their on chip M1 Graphics for their Pro machines.

Of course I am on the side of wanting support for PCI based GPU’s, as Apple has does not have any experience making high end pro graphics cards, and I would be much happier having that than a ramped up iPad chip, unless they really ramp it up significantly. I also would like to see video RAM instead of the M1’s shared RAM, which sure is fast, but straight video ram is going to be faster, and better for high end.

Just check out Bare Feats tests on DaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 4 (For M1 Macs) that is blown out of the water by an IMac Pro and even more so by a 2019 Mac Pro.

Bare Feats does speed tests on M1 MacBook Pro on DaVinci Resolve 17 and it shows the power of GPUs

 

Bare Feats has run speed comparison tests with DaVinci Resolve 17.0 beta 4 on the m1 MacBook Pro and the 2017 iMac Pro, 2 variations of the 2019 MacPro and the 2013 MacPro.

And the results are not surprising, the M1 currently gets stomped in 4K Noise Reduction by more than 2x, almost 3x for the slowest Mac (the 2017 iMac Pro Pro Vega 64).

And at least currently it seems to show the power of GPU adds to Macs, over what the M1 can do. Now surely the M1 will scale, but we will have to see just how far it goes.