MacRumors on Apple’s Most Questionable Design Decisions in Recent Memory

Tim Hardwick at MacRumors has written a really enjoyable article on Apple’s Most Questionable Design Decisions in Recent Memory.

Honestly he hits the nail on the head on all of these, and I still remember my disappointment on the trashcan Mac Pro when it came out, though amazing how something similar with Apple Silicon, without any expandabillity except for Thunderbolt 4, and now I am excited for it.

How things have changed! Of course the built in Pro Res acceleration will certainly be a boon for editing, but I guess also running on an iMac Pro for the last few years has shown me that I don’t need that much expandability except for more damn Thunderbolt 4/USB C ports (as I already have 2 OWC Thunderbolt 4 hubs, and could use more ports).

AppleInsider reporting on a fouth M1 Chip which would be 12 Core for an updated iMac Pro

Malcolm Owen at AppleInsider is reporting on a Fourth M1 chip with 12-core CPU may arrive in updated iMac Pro. This would be something above the Apple Silicon M1 Max, which is 10 core (8 core with 2 efficiency cores), so this would likely be 10 core with 2 efficiency cores. This sounds like a last M1 before M2 chips come in.

Maybe this makes the iMac Pro a bridge between the current Mac Book Pro and the Apple Silicon Mac Pro which has yet to be announced. it had seemed that the dual and maybe quad M1 Max chips rumored for the Mac Pro would also be for the iMac Pro, but this might mean it is an in between.

Let’s hope the iMac Pro has more than the current 4 Thunderbolt ports, 8 would rock, but 6 would be helpful.

9to5Mac on Automated workaround for overnight bluetooth battery drain on MacBooks in macOS 12.2

Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac posted about Jordi Bruin’s FluTooth App which disconnects Bluetooth when you close your macbook and engages it again when you open your macbook, so it won’t drain overnight.

Of course this isn’t a solution for people who use their MacBooks in closed position with bluetooth accessories this won’t work, so we will has to wait for an apple fix or manually turn bluetooth off and on at night.

Macworld on Apple Silicon Mac Pro

Jason Snell at Macworld has an article, Forget Everything you know about the Mac Pro which is speculation on Apple Silicon.

Of course we know some, like a bigger version of the M1 Max with more cores and more graphics cores and more memory.

And of course that means a smaller box than the current Intel Mac Pro.

And of course less expansion, because it is unlikely to have PCI slots especially since it doesn’t need an afterburner since it is built into the processor now, and only thunderbolt for expansion.

So really we are not saying anything new here. And sure it is all speculation.

I personally hope for more storage options. It would be great to have at least 2 banks of raided SSD’s, as I am sure there won’t be any room for spinning hard disks (though I would love a bank of 4, but am sure that will need external needs).

Honestly the New MacPro will likely be pretty damn small, but with some fans to cool the processors down for better performance.

Appleinsider on the 2019 MacPro being 3 generations of PCI Behing

Mike Peterson has an article on the 2019 MacPro, likely the last one with expandable PCI, is now 3 generations of PCI Behind.

This is because PCIe 6.0 has officially been released, though there is no hardware that supports it yet, while the 2019 MacPro is on PCI 3 which was released in 2010. It is pretty bad since PCIe 4 was released a 2 years before the MacPro, and PCIe 5.0 has been out since 2019.

I am still excited for the next MacPro, though I doubt it will have any user available PCIe slots anyway, though hopefully it’s hard drive attaches faster than PCI 3. Likely it’s only expansion will be Thunderbolt 4 (which it will hopefully have more than 2 buses and 4 ports).

Larry Jordan did an Apple Motion Speed Test and it is slower on the new 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro than a 2017 Intel iMac

Larry Jordan did a speed test of Apple Motion on Intel Vs. Apple Silicon and Apple Motion got slaughtered.

Now I don’t think this has anything to do with the hardway, but more not been working on the code for Motion, instead focusing on Final Cut, but it is disturbing since it is pretty much as shared graphics engine between the two. And interestingly it gives more perspective on AVID being so slow on updating for M1, because you obviously need to really update the code to make it faster, and if even Apple is slow to update, then how can you expect 3rd parties to be fast (with the exception of Blackmagic who could not be faster on their updates).

Let’s hope Apple gets on this and updates the Motion codebase, as for me the best features of FCP are what Motion can do.

9to5Mac is saying Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be less upgradable than 2019 model, which only makes sense.

Ben Lovejoy over at 9to5Mac is reporting that they are hearing that the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be less upgradable than the current Intel version.

And this seems like a pretty big duh, of course.

The Apple Silicon MacPro will have to set itself apart with impressive CPU and GPU power as you are not going to be able to add either of these and I am even doubtful of PCI support. And I doubt there will ever be external GPU support through Thunderbolt on M1 Macs either, unless apple ever figures this out for their own hardware, but likely they would just like you to buy a new machine.

I am tending to doubt their will even be additional bays for RAM or Hard drives, though with a likely dual or quad M1 MAX, it will certainly be larger than a Mac Mini and need more cooling, but I doubt it will need to be too much bigger.

I would like to see more Thunderbolt ports though. The 4 Thunderbolt Ports on my iMac Pro are kind of a joke, and the MacPro has more and the video cards also add 4 additional ports, so 8 or more thunderbolt ports would be awesome (and 12 would be better, or at least 8 thunderbolt and 4 USB.

And maybe the ability to have 2 raided hard drives for video, but with the prices Apple charge for SSD hard drives, that would cost a fortune, but it would be great for video editing.

Any which way it will be the raw processing power of the chips and the included ProRES accelerators that really makes this machine rock and roll for video editors.