Stackable 2019 MacPro Rumors makes sense

So a YouTube Channel called Tailosive Tech has released a video on an inside source from apple on the new 2019 macpro.

And AppleInsider has also covered it (easier to read, especially since the edit is very trimmed, but not very covered and hurts my brain a bit as an editor).

Not only does this cover the new rumored 6K 31 inch monitor, but the new macpro, claiming the modular mac works like stackable legos, with a brain module with a soldered in cpu, and 8 slots of upgradeable RAM. Then you can add GPU modules, and storage modules, possibly modules with the unanounced thunderbolt 4, and eventually possibly third party modules eventually. Each module with it’s own power supply and cooling. And possibly not available until 2020.

This would seem to cover “modular” and why it has taken so long. Giving people an upgraded cheesgrater would not have taken this long, but Apple wouldn’t have made money off every upgrade in that scenario, while with this stackable design they would, including third party modules from licensing their propriety connector. And upgrades likely won’t be cheap. Instead of just a gpu, you are also getting a case, the custom connector a power supply and cooling system (and likely a reason for dropping NVIDIA support, as NVIDIA doesn’t like customized boxes and shapes, but AMD is all in with that).

And depending on the modules, this could be a very cool machine, though also very very expensive. Lets hope they have sone SATA modules as large ammounts of SSD storage are still prohibitively expensive. And let’s hope third party support comes quickly as a blackmagicdesign module for video i/o would be essential. And a sledless 4 drive sata raid module wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

I know this is all rumor, but it makes total sense. This lets Apple give expandability, but lets them control it completely and make money off of every bit of it. And Apple will have delivered what they said, and can charge what they want for it. It will not make everyone happy, especially since it will not be easily user upgradeable, and will be significantly more expensive than a machine that is user upgradeable, but it will ge a true pro machine.

I just hope they show it off at WWDC on June 3rd, but if they aren’t releasing until at least December 31st 2019, that may be way too early.

Camranger mini as a director’s monitor a short review

I picked up a camranger mini for my wife for christmas to use a a director’s monitor for a dslr.

The Device is mainly used to control a dslr for still photography, but also works for video, though at a very low frame rate. It is works by connecting a small device to your dslr via a USB cable and then connecting your iOS or Android device via wifi. And you can nominally control the camera from the device.

As a director’s monitor it works from framing, but not performances as the frame rate is just too low.

Still cool to be able to see without an attached monitor, especially if the camera is in motion, but a higher frame rate would be welcome.

Maybe the announced Camranger 2 which comes out this year will do better.

Appleinsider says Apple’s management doesn’t want to support NVIDIA

William Gallagher and Mike Wuerthele at AppleInsider hacve an article on how someone at Apple Management doesn’t want NVIDIA support in MacOS.

I have been talking about this for years. Apple doesn’t care about the pros. They care about what they want. And they want the companies that kowtow to them.

And the new “modular” macpro is obviously not going to be what Pros want if you can’t use the components that you want. It seems any new MacPro will only work with AMD video cards. And many video pros want NVIDIA and CUDA, as well as for science people who need proprietary CUDA support! Honestly it means that likely there will be no accessible pci slots in the new MacPro, and not even thunderbolt support for NVIDIA.

There were all these rumors that the exclusivity with AMD ended as of 2019, but it seems Apple is done with NVIDIA. Hell there were even rumors that 2xxx series work with startup unlike all non-supported apple cards, and if that is true Apple is actively supressing NVIDIA!

Now I hear from friends that the new iMac Pro is awesome, but I hate no PCI slots or extra internal storage! Hell you can get PC’s with built in Raids that don’t even require sleds for spinning hard drives. I mean a macpro with an external raid would blow people’s minds! Even if it was a “module” you could add on!

I don’t want to move to Windows. I love my surface, because I can run real photoshop, but would rather have it be a mac, and I want my computer to ge a mac, but am more and more scared that a mac will not be great for a pro.

Siri suggestions for music instead of music previosly playing showing up on IOS 12.1 iPhone X lock screen

So my iPhone X has recently developed a new problem. I use my 256 GB iPhone X as my music player, and up until IOS 12.1 when I showed the lock screen it would show whatever music I was previously playing, and let me hit play to continue playing, but with iOS 12 it is now showing a siri suggestion for music to play instead of what I have been playing!

Here is a screenshot of my lock screen showing a Siri Suggestion for Age of Man by Greta Van Fleet instead of what I have been listening to.

And the best part is that I have Siri Suggestions turned off. AS you can see in the following Screenshot.

If I have suggestions in Lock Screen turned off, why am I seeing this Suggestion instead of what music I have been playing?

Anyone who has any suggestions would be appreciated.

I have already posted on Apple Forums to see if anyone has seen this.

—-

Well not response from anyone on Apple Communities in a week. And the problem persists.

Appleinsider on managing expectations for the new MacPro

AppleInsider has a great article on managing expectations for the new MacPro. It is basically saying what I have been thinking that the Modular MacPro is just going to use Thunderbolt 3 to expand and not be a new cheesegrater with PCI slots.

And it really begs the question if it is time to move to Windows. I really hate windows compared to Mac OS, but I want choice, I want an NVIDIA card and from the whole Mojave fiasco it looks like that is not happening.

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!

Will NVIDIA release video card drives for Mac OS Mojave?

So Apple has released it’s latest OS, OS X 10.14 Mojave, and it dropped Open CL support, breaking many legacy programs and also unfortunately breaking NVIDIA’s CUDA.

Apple has released a list of cards that are compatible with Metal and will work with Mojave. It lists 2 old Mac Edition NVIDIA cards as working (though with really old drivers that won’t work with any modern card) and a slew of AMD cards (also with issues I will get into later).

So for many OSes NVIDIA has been releasing Web Drivers and CUDA drivers that gave support to 3rd party NVIDIA cards within a MacPro 5,1 (or flashed 4,1).

Unfortunately it seems that Mojave broke CUDA support, and NVIDIA has not been able to get it working, so they haven’t even released Web Drivers. The link says that they need to work with Apple to get it working, which may mean it will never happen. As Apple has only released machines with AMD cards since someone at NVIDIA leaked the specs on a computer before a Steve Jobs Keynote.

So anyone with an NVIDIA card can’t upgrade to Mojave (well you can but without any video card acceleration it will be a mostly useless computing experience).

This does not give confidence that the promised new Mac Pro for 2019 will be able to use NVIDIA cards either. And I for one have been greatly impressed with NVIDIA cards and CUDA acceleration.

And the issue above with AMD cards come into play here. AMD cards do support metal and do it very well, but they are continually beaten by NVIDIA cards not only in performance, but especially in power consumption and heat generation.

And the fact that AMD cards will work in a MacPro 5,1 in Mojave is great (though without any boot screens as they are not flashed for Mac), but the power consumption of those cards is not. So even the consumer Radeon RX 580, 570 or even 560 can draw too much power for a MacPro and cause power spikes and crashes. The solution is to either hack your mac’s power supply by tapping into all the power cables to draw enough power, or run an external power supply for your video card (made more difficult since all my PCI cards are full with a USB 3 card, a Blackmagic card and an ssd hard drive).

And NVIDIA cards use so much less power that you can easily run an NVIDIA GTX 1080 8GB in a MacPro and it will outperform an RX 580 (check this out at Barefeat). And sure the RX Vega 64 beats the GTX 1080, but it requires an external power supply and if you were going to go that the GTX 1080Ti beats the AMD. And it gets even worse if you check the Metal scores, as even the GTX 1070 beats the RX VEGA 64 significantly in Metal scores, and the Vega 64 has huge issues with Fans and drivers support.

So will NVIDIA fix CUDA, or are they giving up on Mac? And if they are giving up on Mac what is the solution for us NVIDIA card users in our old MacPros? The new MacPro is still vaporware. So it looks like sticking to High Sierra is the only solution and hope Adobe keeps supporting High Sierra till the new MacPro comes out.

And then it will be time to see if it is time to move to Windows or get a new MacPro.

EDIT: Mojave was released September 24th and it is October 27th. Am really starting to think this is not happening at all.

My iPhone X doesn’t charge unless I unlock it when connected with any cable

I have been seeing reports all over of the new iPhones not charging unless the screen is turned on, and in fact that is what the iOS 12.0.1 update purported to fix, but my iPhone X has not charged unless I unlock it since I got it. It will charge wireless while the screen is off, but if I plug it in, I need to unlock it or I don’t get any charge. And yes I have tried 6 different cables and I have the issue with any cable and different chargers or my MacPro 5,1.

This is super frustrating and in fact I have had quite a few days where I go to use my phone and it is almost dead though was plugged in all night.

Adobe working on a full version of Photoshop for the iPad, some thoughts

So it is being reported that Adobe is working on a full version of Photoshop to work on the iPad. And they do need a better version as their current iPad apps are all very limited, and blown out of the water by apps by other vendors, but I am still wary.

I have an original iPad pro and an Apple pencil and was overjoyed to start doing real artwork on my iPad, but my experience so far has been so bad that I have basically given up. I just don’t think that iOS is a robust enough system to support it. Even in the best apps I have had way too many crashes that make me lose all the work that I have done, till where I have just given up and use my Surface Pro, which is a real computer with a robust OS and full versions of apps.

And dealing with documents is just so convoluted on the iPad, that it isn’t easy to get documents on and off easily, except by saving them to cloud services, but that isn’t just an integrated system wide feature.

It has really made me think that the iPad is not a pro device and can’t be used as such. It is much more a web terminal and game system with some ability to play with more powerful apps, but not really a computer that can be trusted with my pro work.