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.

Excalibur for Premiere Pro adds quick keyboard shortcuts for Premiere Pro and is $25 off till the end of the year

 

Knights of the Editing Table has released a new extension plug in for Premiere Pro on Mac and Windows that adds quick keyboard shortcuts to Premiere Pro to speed up your editing workflow, it is called Excalibur. Check out the video above or their page on how this can speed up your workflow.

This looks very cool. I already use Launchbar from Obdev to do similar things for the Mac, and Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot has one for After Effects called FX Console.

I wouldn’t have known about this if it wasn’t for the article about it at ProVideo Coalition by Scott Simmons who beta tested it.

I purchased this and will be testing it out, as I love speeding up my workflow. My biggest frustration has been getting used to things like this and then having to go work in an office and not having it, but with the Covid Pandemic forcing my editing to be from home, I can safely use it for the time being.

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.

Why do the font engine in After Effects no include the ability to underline text?

 

So this the font style selection box in After Effects, which lets you select faux bold, faux italix, Upercase, UpperLower Uppercase and subscript settings.

Premiere Pro is exactly the same as After Effects.

This is the Type Options in Photoshop, which includes Underline and Strikthrough, as well as more options.

Why is there no Underline option in After Effects and Premiere Pro? Sure you can add a line if you want to, but it won’t follow the text.

Really this is the dumbest thing. WHY WOULD YOU NOT IMPLEMENT AN UNDERLINE ADOBE?

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OK so the latest version of Premiere Pro’s Essential Graphics now includes the underline function, but not After Effects. This makes it even weirder and more glaring.

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.