Chip Loder has this article on How to store extended file attributes in iCloud.
I hate that any of this is necessary, because iCloud should not be doing anything to your files. It is the whole problem with iTunes and it’s cloud services that can ruin your whole iTunes Library.
Apple needs to fix this, but I think they see it as a feature not a bug.
Jeremy Reimer has an amazing 3 part article on the history of the ARM processor. It is excellent and as in depth as all their articles tend to be.
Since all of Apple’s machines except the Intel MacPro are based on ARM this is an important history for any hard core Apple User.
Dan Moren at Six Colors has this article on Apple Watch’s Camera Control, which I had never used before, but have since and ti is totally amazing. I didn’t realize you could do this and it is so much better than just doing a timer shot.
Bradley Chambers on 9 Apps to Try to Unlock the Full Potential of your New Mac.
I currently use 4 of them, 1Password, TextExpander, Fantastical and CleanMyMac X and so am going to take a look at the other 5, as so many I already think are great.
Filipe Esposito at 9 to 5 Mac wrote this article and I couldn’t agree more.
There is some pro-ish software, with the recently released DaVinci Resolve being the most powerful software on the iPad.
Apple needs to make the software more powerful, because the hardware is already as powerful as it needs to be.
Amazing that it can beat a M1 Ultra in Final Cut, though it is a bit behind in Premiere, and Geekbench. Makes me really excited for the M2 Ultra.
Honestly I was thinking about writing a post like this article, but Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac has beat me too it.
The recent pate of articles from Gurman and their bad news on the Mac Pro has really had me thinking. No Quad Apple Silicon means no performance boost over the Studio. No memory upgrades makes sense, but no external graphics card, means a decided lack of expansion, and a need to spend more upfront, without the possibility of later upgrades.
As for PCI Expansion, sure a video i/o card from black magic would be cheaper than external, and you could put in a fast ssd pci card, but those are damn expensive. Maybe an Apple Accelerator, but like the one in the current, you know it would be quickly added to the next chips, so why bother.
And having more options for storage, I would love that. I so miss my 4 internal slots for spinning hard drives, but more likely I see room for more proprietary Apple SSDs, which would be too expensive and likely not user upgrade-able.
The one thing no articles I have seen talk about would be more Thunderbolt ports, which would be great. I already use two Thunderbolt 4 Hubs, and still lack for ports, but is that and better cooling and maybe room for a second hard drive worth thousands more?
The answer is no. There needs to be a realistic reason for a Mac Pro to exist.
So maybe Apple waits till the M3, when they can do a quad chip design and really do an insane machine, and they go for an iMac Pro right now. I would be dissapointed, but not surprised. Mainly disappointment because I would love to move to 32 inch monitors for my next machine.
Jeff Greenburg at OWC has an article on tests they ran on an EGPU on an Intel Mac, and what it can provide.
And an EGPU will boost an older Intel mac, but of course it isn’t a new Apple Silicon Mac, so you might want to save up for that.
Sami Fathi at MacRumors has reported that TSMC has started 3nm production as of December 29th.
This will likely mean the rest of the M2 line for the MacBook and for the eventual MacPro will be 3nm which will save power and be more efficient, and of course will eventually make it’s way to the iPhone and iPad as power savings and less heat is better across the line.
Mark Gurman’s report in his PowerOn newsletter at Bloomberg that Apple has killed the M2 Extreme, which would be 4 M2 chips linked together like the M1 Max is 2 M1 chips linked together.
This is awful news, as it means the MacPro won’t have much differentiation from the Mac Studio. It isn’t like they can add additional memory slots as that isn’t how memore works with Apple Silicon. It could have more hard drive slots, maybe some sort of pci expansion, but that seems doubtful because of the way the graphics work. So more Thunderbolt ports, that seems likely, though still Thunderbolt 4.
With only a M2 Max, why make a macpro? Especially when the Studio gets upgraded to the same chip. Allot of Thunderbolt 4 ports would be great as Thunderbolt 4 hubs aren’t cheap. Still with Apple prices will some hard drive slots and extra ports will this even make sense financially.
This is certainly worrying. It could also mean a wait till M3 for the MacPro and just do an M2 Mac Studio till then.
We will have to wait (probably a while) and see.