9to5Mac on Gurman talking M1 Mac Pro, Mac Mini Redesign, and iMac Pro

José Andorno at 9to5Mac has this article on an interview Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman gave.

It is really interesting that it says there was a M1 MacPro ready but they decided to wait for the M2, which means they won’t make the 2 year promise on the move to Apple Silicon.

Honestly it is likely because the M1 could only do dual, and the performance would not have been hugely more than the Mac Studio if there was not a quad option. So likely the M2 can do Quad.

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.

Appleinsider on the fact that the new M1 Macs support USB 4 instead of just Thunderbolt 3 before Intel has even released support for it’s own standard

 AppleInsider has an article on how the new M1 Macs in fact support USB 4, and not just Thunderbolt 3.  I hadn’t realized this at all, but it makes sense as it is new open standard, but amazing that it is before Intel managed to release it. They do need to add more ports though, 2 ports on the laptops when it includes charging is nuts. I have problems with only 4 thunderbolt 3 ports on my imac pro as is.

MacWorld article on how you to think of memory differently with new Apple M1 Chip

 

MacWorld has an interesting article on how you have to think of memory differently because of how it is used in the M1 chip and because it is part of the processor it is so much faster.

I still hope for external graphics card support in the MacPro, but think it is less and less likely that will happen, but maybe I will pleasantly surprised. And if not just how much memory will a pro need to run the graphics and system memory? And it won’t be expandable, you are stuck with what you buy.

Apple has released the first M1 Macs with it’s second processor transition

 

Apple has released it’s first 3 Macs with the M1 chip it is designing itself making for the 2nd processor transition in the history of the mac and the first ARM based Macs, now on the same platform as the ipad and iPhone.

Apple’s stats make it look really fast and the first benchmarks make it a very impressive machine and 3 of the fastest macs apple has every released.

Of course for now it is useless to me as Adobe software does not yet run or at least run well under Rosetta. Still the performance of Final Cut Pro sounds impressive and I love that the latest beta of DaVinci Resolve 17.1 runs on M1 Macs already. And Adobe has a beta of Photoshop out as well.

What scares me is the single thunderbolt channel and only 2 ports and the fact that it can’t run an external graphic card even with it’s thunderbolt port.

And what is even scarier for me is that the M1 shares it’s memory between the graphics card and the onboard memory. So you had better get the 16GB because you are sharing them with the video processing. If this continues you will need to really get more RAM on high end machines (which hopefully won’t top out at 16GB as the current machines do.

Still the processors do have impressive performance already so the higher end version will likely be very impressive.

And it is amazing that basically the MacBook Air is only different in a single GPU core being disabled, and the MacBook Pro and Mini having fans to cool the system down.

I look forward to what the truly pro Apple M1 Machines will look like, but I don’t look forward to the software update cost that will go along with it, and the software that will break and end up going by the wayside.

Apple Announces new iPad Pro and Pencil, MacBook Air and Mac Mini

Apple had a Keynote today, and announced some cool new products.

The new iPad Pro looks impressive, as does it’s new wireless charging Pencil, and I love my 1st Gen 12.9 inch iPad Pro, but still don’t see it as a pro device. And I can’t see how the hard edges will make it easier to hold. Still I want one. Especially as it is lighter and thinner (though the camera sure looks to stick out allot! And I still don’t see it as a pro device, though I use mine every day! The near $200 price increase totally sucks though!

The New MacBook Air is impressive as well, finally getting retina, but also moving exclusively to USB C Thunderbolt ports. This is what my wife needs for sure.

And finally a new MacMini in quad and 6 core models, and you can even get 10 Gigabit Ethernet as an option, which will make it much more useful in high end facilities!

And they announced, though did not price, that in late November, the MacBook Pro will be getting optional Radeon Pro Vega Graphics as an option. If only they would get rid of the damn touch bar and give back function keys and make the screen touch based! Can’t get everything.

And OF COURSE NO MENTION OF THE 2019 MACPRO! I am already worried about it, especially since Mojave basically does not support NVIDIA cards (and they already have released the first point release of the OS today). So what is the point of even having PCI slots if you can’t use the most powerful and power efficient graphics cards in them!

Sonnet releases Enhanced xMac mini Server

xmacminiserver_scenario2a

Creative cow has the press release, but you can check out the new xMac at Sonnet’s site. Using thunderbolt to expand a Mac Mini is a brilliant idea now that not only is there not an X-server anymore, but the MacPro has not been upgraded in ages, and though we have Tim Cooke’s promise of a new MacPro, this may be the best Mac Server solution going right now, as you can expand it with many PCI cards, and make a real server, with an inexpensive Mac Mini.

The new Mac Mini

Apple has updated it’s Mac Mini. For $599 or $799 you either get a dual core i5 or a quad core i, though with only the intel Graphics HD 4000 for graphics. And for $999 you get the server version with 2 hard drives and Mountain Lion Server.

Still a very powerful desktop computer in a very small size, though not for CUDA unless you added a thunderbolt expansion chasis for way too much.

Impressively this can also be built with a Fusion drive for added speed.

Big day for Apple, 13″ MacBookPro, New Mac Mini, new iMac with better NVIDIA graphics card, iPad 4 and iPad Mini

So Apple is busy making announcements, but they have a new 13″ MacBook Pro (Sans NVDIA graphics card), a new thinner iMac with a better NVIDIA 660m graphics cards (Hurray CUDA) and improved Mac Mini, the new iPad 4 (or iPad with Retina Display which is faster, with lightning connector for same price after only 6 months) and the overpriced iPad mini starting at $329 for WIFI 16GB.