Apple app updates only compatible with Big Sur, but showing up in Catalina, and continuing to give notifications of updates is incredibly annoying

So I am running Catalina 10.15.7.

 

But Apple keeps sending me Updates Available, but the only available update is for Garage Band, which the update only works in Big Sur. I know they want me to move to Big Sur, but I literally can’t.

And the reasons I can’t just update to Big Sur are many. First off Catalina is running very well right now, but also I am on a job that uses Adobe Premiere Pro 2019 13.1.5, and I haven’t seen anything that shows that it runs in Big Sur. And while I would rather move to a newer version, that is what they are running at the company.

So Apple TV+ shows are glitching on their Dolby Atmos mixes for me

 So I have an Apple TV 4K and when watching shows on Apple TV+ with an Atmos mix, the center audio channel will jump to the left or sometimes right for a few seconds at a time. This us especially noticeable  with narration, and is very distracting.

I have a Sony Receiver and it works great with Atmos with blu-rays, and I haven’t noticed the issue anywhere else except Apple TV+ programs. And if I turn off Atmos the problem goes away. I doubt it is the internet connection either as I have a 1TB fiber connection. 

I have seen others say they had the same issue but with Netflix on Apple TV, but I only have the issue with Apple TV+ shows. I have posted myself, but not gotten any response. 

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.

OWC Rocketyard Blog on M1 Macs actually having 2 Thunderbolt busses with only 2 ports

 

The OWC RocketYard Blog has a really interesting article on how the new M1 Macs actually have 2 thunderbolt busses even though they only have 2 ports. This is unlike previous Thunderbolt macs which had 4 thunderbolt ports, but only 2 busses, with 2 ports split on each bus. The new M1 Macs have only 2 ports but 2 busses, and with the new ability to use USB4 Hubs to split thunderbolt you can have the more ports.

SoftRaid Beta 6 is out and works on Big Sur!

Woohooo! Softraid has publicly release it’s SoftRaid 6 beta with support for Big Sur and M1 Macs!  This is huge news, as I can never move to an operating system until SoftRaid supports it, as I can’t work without my RAID.

And it already has the Final Release of the SoftRaid Version 6 Driver included, so a RAID should be fully supported.

SoftRaid is mandatory for a RAID on a mac, so I could not be more happy about this. 

And they are working on M1 support, but it obviously couldn’t be out with development Macs as they didn’t include thunderbolt ports, so you couldn’t test thunderbolt connectivity, but are working on it now.

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.

When adding new music to Apple Music, formerly iTunes who wants it to autoplay? I sure as hell don’t!

 When using Apple’s Music, formerly iTunes to import music, why does it automatically play what you are importing? There used to be a choice in iTunes to keep it from doing this, but Apple purposely removed this feature. So now every time you import something it automatically plays that, even if you are already playing something else.

Now I don’t know about you, but importing and wanting to play are seperate things, and I would always rather chose to hit play than to have auto-play.

Why does this feature even exist? And it gets ridiculous when importing downloads of multi-disc albums, when it plays some random track off all 4 discs, starting one, then another, then another, then another.

I know apple doesn’t want me to own any of my own music anymore unless I buy it from them or stream it from them, but I don’t buy any music from them, and I wish they would have a more hands off approach.