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.

AVID updated for Monterey 12.1 and Apple Silicon M1, but not natively

Yes AVID has finally added Monterey Support 12.1 as well as M1 Support in AVID Media Composer. Of course M1 support is only through emulation, it is not a native app. Amazing how Black Magic Designs and Adobe have been able to release true M1 support so much more quickly. And getting rid of Dongle support on Mac doesn’t seem like a good idea either.

You would think it would be so much easier at this point, but AVID is still so slow to respond. I mean there won’t be Intel Macs at all soon. Come on AVID, get on the ball. I know they are always slow with updates, but come on. And yes I know that AVID has to have systems that work on so many systems to keep going, but if you get a new license you only get recent versions anyway.

Honestly even with all the recent updated whenever I get on AVID I feel like I have stepped into the past and not in a good way. Even getting footage from DaVinci Resolve is not as simple as it is with Premiere. I know backwards compatibility, but AVID users really need to try out Premiere Pro with Productions and a single compression format (like ProRES) and see how well Premiere runs.

Nick Lear at ProVideoCoalition on Using the iPhone 13 Pro as your B Cam

PVC again for the win, damn this is a great site.

Nick Lear has an awesome article on using an iPhone 13 as a B Cam and the pitfalls it entails and how he got it to work. And the things you don’t realize, like yes you can and should shoot with ProRES, but if you do you can’t shoot in LOG in Filmic Pro and the possibility of using Cinematch to help with balancing.

Charlesoft has updated it’s Mac archive utility Pacifist to 4.0.2 with Apple Silicon and Monterey Support

Charlesoft has updated it’s awesome Mac Archive app to version 4.0.1, it is a complete rewrite in Swift with Monterey and Apple Silicon Support.

It’s features include:

  • open a wide variety of file archives, including:
    • macOS .pkg package files,
    • .dmg disk images,
    • macOS asset catalogs,
    • Mac OS 9 Installer Tome files, and
    • .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .xar, and .yaa archives,
  • examine and extract individual files and folders,
  • inspect install scripts and other package resources to make sure that a package is trustworthy before installing it,
  • analyze existing installations on your system, to help you determine who installed a particular file on your system,
  • view archive contents straight from the Finder via QuickLook,
  • view and extract files from archives via your choice of a slick GUI or an automation-friendly command-line interface, and even
  • inspect the contents of .zip files (and other supported types) over the Web without downloading the entire archive first.

I love that it lets you go into an installer and just extract what you want from it. This is such a powerful tool for $20.00 and I have owned various versions for years.

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac is reporting that TSMC will begin pilot production of 3nm chips in 4th Quarter 2022

Chance Miller is saying that TSMC begins pilot program of 3nm chips, could be used in 2023 iPhones and Macs.

This will be huge for Macs if it happens, because this means more efficiency for the same power wattage and more efficiency, and though it won’t be till 2023, it could be major for the new Pro Macs with smaller chips making less heat, since the likely multiples of the M1 Max and M1 Pro will certainly create more heat.