FCP.co on new MacPro’s

FCP.Co has 2 articles from 3D designer Peter Zigich on possible, though pretty out there designs for a new MacPro which Tim Cook has promised we will get this year (hopefully at WWDC).The first is on a modular tower, and the second a smaller design using low powered AMD chips (wouldn't that require a new OS and apps?).Interesting ideas, though I doubt either will happen. I am hoping for something really powerful, and better would be the ability to use PC videos cards without Mac supplies firmware as long as you have drivers, and releasing the 2 GB of video ram limit, NVIDIA TESLA support would be great too, as well as many hard drives as you can stuff in there!

iPad app Readdle Docs reborn as Documents

Macstories has the story on this excellent app, that I have been a fan of for sometime, which has been rechristened Documents, and made even more powerful, with the ability to play audio and video.I have used this app for sometime, and pretty much use it and iBooks for my document needs.

Problems with Amazon Cloud Player

So I am having problems with Amazon Cloud Player. I had wanted iTunes Match, but am way over the 25,000 song limit (the Big Finish Doctor who stories I listen to add so many tracks), but also wanted streaming.Now there are a couple of problems with it for me, the first and foremost being it's inability to do anything but try and match songs ripped in Apple's Lossless format, as that is most of my library that I have ripped from CD (and the reason I have an 120GB iPod Classic so I can carry a lot of music, though not even close to all) and it doesn't seem to match all that well. The addition of Auto Rip has been a big help with this as I have gotten most of my music since 1998 from Amazon, so I hope they keep ripping and keep filling in albums.Also the music uploader crashes ALLOT! Now maybe that has to do with my library size, but if it is going to crash that much it needs to be smarter, as it has now duplicated all of my playlists 9 times, and I have a hell of a lot of playlists! And I can barely manage my playlists via the web interface. I can maybe delete one playlist before either it stalls out (allot in Chrome, though I have tried it in Safari and Mozilla as well both on my Mac at home running 10.8.1 and on my work computer running 10.6.8) or gives an error message about not being able to do that now.And while the yellow buttons usually mean you can use the keyboard in the Amazon Cloud Player Interface, it doesn't work for this OK, which I get constantly.And if it isn't that, with Chrome i get constant timeouts when using Cloud Player. the page freezes all the time, especially when I am trying to manage my playlists.At least I could do most of the deleting with the keyboard if I could get it to work in the web interface, but it stalls out or gives me this message all the time. I can delete the tracks via the iOS interface, but it slow and a pain using the slide. I need a batch edit or delete feature, or a duplicate finder. Heck I would even like a way to reset the playlists and re-upload them from iTunes.I tried e-mailing Amazon about that, and they said to contact them, so I did an online text chat. Now they are putting in a technical note, especially since I am having all the crashes in uploader, but basically it sounds like they can't access your personal cloud player, so you have to deal with the playlists, so I have to go through my thousands of playlists times 9 and delete them myself!!!! And I pay for this service? YOUCH! Not like I added the multiple playlists, Amazon Uploader managed that little doozy for me. Now they say they will contact me…

Review of NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680m Graphics Card

I have been interested in the new top of the line Graphics Card for the new 2012 iMac, which is an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680mx, and was wondering how it faired against my Desktop GTX 670. Everyone has been claiming it makes the iMac the most powerful Mac Editing machine out there, but I doubted it, as I have not seen any speed test against equivalent graphics cards. The 680m is actually a 680 slowed down.I found a EuroGamer review of the GTX 680m, which tells me what I wanted to know about a 680M, but not a 680MX, but I found a review of that at Notebook Check.Here is some of what they have to say:Compared to the GeForce GTX 680M, the GTX 680MX features 1536 instead of 1344 CUDA cores and higher memory clocks (720/2500MHz vs 720/1800 MHz)the graphics performance of the GeForce GTX 680MX should be 15 - 25 percent above the GTX 680M and similar to the Desktop GTX 580.And specs on the GTX 680mx from NVIDIA's site.CUDA Cores - 1536Core Speed - 720 MhzMemory Speed - 2500 MhzTexture Fill Rate (Billions per second) - 92.2Max RAM - 2GBAnd as for the GTX 670 from NVIDIA's site.CUDA Cores - 1344Core Speed - 915 MhzMemory Speed - 2500 MhzTexture Fill Rate (Billions per second) - 102.5Max RAM - 4GBSo the iMac has more CUDA cores, but it's speed is not as fast, and it's memory speed is less than half the speed.So basically the 680MX it is a really powerful mobile graphics chip, but not as powerful as it's equivalent Desktop GPU the GTX 670, and is more in line to a last generation GTX 580.And yes it is not the easiest thing in the world getting a new generation NVIDIA card running in your MacPro, but it is not that hard, but should put your speed above that of the top of the line iMac GPU, and have more processing power, making it still champion, even though it is such dated technology at this point. Have to love expandability though as an old machine can still hold a performance edge, which is something the iMac will never have.Lets just hope Apple makes a really good new MacPro this year.

2012 iMac faster than Mac Pro with Radeon HD 5870 in DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro CS6

Bare Feats has run the tests, and the 2012 iMac 27" 3.4GHz Core iMac with 32GB of RAM and the GeForce GTX 680MX GPU actually does beat the MacPro in Resolve and Premiere Pro, but that is a MacPro with the Radeon HD 5870 GPU. Not really a fair test unless you have an NVIDIA CUDA card in the MacPro. As the MacPro still beats the iMac in 2 out of 3 CPU tests.I have a feeling my non Mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 4096 MB would slaughter the iMac in anything CUDA aware, which would be Premiere Pro, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve.

Google has released Google Maps for iOS

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OK all, time to all take a collective breath, Google has released Google Maps for the iPhone and iPad. Download it and stop complaining about Apple Maps!Yes I don't like Maps too well either. Sure the 3D thing on new devices is cool, though useless. And I don't see why older devices can't do turn by turn. And I do hate the colors, and the traffic has been totally useless, but I just moved to alternatives. And have been really enjoying VUZE for traffic, but now Google Maps is back, so...EDIT: ArsTechnica has a great article on it, including it's shortcomings. The biggest that it doesn't access your contacts from anywhere, not iOS or from Google itself, so you can't just type someone's name to get their address (THIS SERIOUSLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED).And they tell you how to activate privacy, though it looks like it will then also turn off your helping with traffic.

Matrox DS1 Thunberbolt Docking Station

MacOSRumors has the news on this Docking Station for a Thunbderbolt equipped Macbook Pro.It has a Gigabit Ethernet Port, Two USB 2 ports, AUdio in and out jacks, and either HDMI or DVI port (depending on the model).A very cool idea for around $250.

CNET on the 7 Features dropped from iTunes 11

CNET has an article on the 7 features Apple dropped from iTunes 11. These are Cover Flow (which I don't miss), de-duper (now you need to use 3rd party applications, the excellent iTunes DJ for creating easy continuous mixes, Gapless Playback Editor (works for old Gapless albums, but not new ones, so all my new live stuff will have gaps), Multiple Windows (as you can tell from my previous post my other biggest piss off), the other Sidebar (which was just a link to the store and I will not miss) and quick volume control in the mini player.I hate when Apple upgrades and removes features! It is the dumbing of the Mac and I don't like it!And honestly so far I haven't been so impressed by the much vaunted speed of iTunes 11. Maybe my library is too big, but scrolling still does not seem that fast to me.