Mac

iMac Pro teardown, lots of pics

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There’s a lot to love in this teardown. The insides of the iMac Pro are gorgeous. What a clean looking design.

With the iMac Retina 5K, to change out RAM, you popped open the rear door and had at it.

With the iMac Pro, you’ll pretty much need to jump through all the hoops iFixit did. That said, the good news is, you can still upgrade the RAM yourself:

We waste no time in testing a little upgrade: How does four 32 GB modules for a “Maxxed” total of 128 GB sound? After speedily reassembling everything, we’re pleased to report that the result is epic.

No doubt.

iMac Pro benchmarks running Pro apps

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A solid case study comparing the new iMac Pro, iMac 5K, a 2013 Mac Pro, two flavors of 2010 Mac Pro.

Just one example: In the Final Cut Pro X export test, the iMac Pro is three times as fast as the 2010 Mac Pro. How far we’ve come. Makes me really curious about the performance we’ll (hopefully) see in the 2018 Mac Pro.

Apple’s Mac/iPad twists and turns

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Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note:

Apple execs have had to eat their words after strong but imprudent pronouncements. For example, thus spake Steve Jobs at an August 2010 iOS 4 event:

“It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.”

And:

When Jony Ive explains that Apple didn’t make a stylus but something “more profound”, a Pencil, we welcome the change of mind while smiling at the language Apple’s Chief Design Officer uses to share his insights in the matter of writing instruments and bridging the gap between the analogue (using Sir Jony’s British spelling) and digital worlds.

But this is more than Jean-Louis pointing out Apple crow-eating opportunities. As you read his (as always) well-written reasoning, you’ll explore the real premise:

How far will reversals go?

I’ll start with something I consider unlikely: The introduction of tablet features to the Mac. For Mac laptops, Apple has issued a strong edict: The ergonomically correct way to use a laptop it to keep your hands on the horizontal plane, no lifting one’s arm to touch the screen, no matter how tempting. The MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar keeps our hands where they belong, on the desk.

This is a terrific read. But I agree with Jean-Louis, a Mac iPad merger is not likely. But he does go down an interesting path. An ARM-based Mac? I definitely can see that happening.

Especially with this precedent.

The puzzling price of AppleCare+ for the iMac Pro

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Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider:

Apple is making the decision for customers acquiring the iMac Pro to pick up AppleCare+ with their purchase easier, by keeping the price of the extended warranty service the same as for the iMac despite the increase in hardware cost.

AppleCare+ for the iMac Pro is $169, same as the iMac. AppleCare+ for the Mac Pro is $249.

I’ve always seen AppleCare as an insurance model. More expensive devices equals more expensive coverage cost.

Begs the question, when the Mac Pro ships next year (fingers crossed), will AppleCare+ coverage be priced in line with the iMac Pro? Is this a new cap on AppleCare?

It also begs the question, will the coming Mac Pro be cheaper than the iMac Pro?

Why? Well, the iMac Pro ships with an integrated 5K display. Presumably, the Mac Pro will be standalone. It might have more expensive components, but my thinking is, the cost of the 5K display should more than offset that cost (Insert “I’m no expert caveat” here).

iMac Pro first impressions: Beauty of a beast

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Rene Ritchie, iMore:

This isn’t a beloved tower reimagined inside Darth Vader’s helmet — an OpenCL monster designed for a future that never quite materialized. This is the same iMac many of us already know and love, just gutted of its consumer-grade engine and rebuilt for a very different kind of pro. The kind that was already sold on the all-in-one but always wished it was hit by enough gamma rays to make it more hulkingly pro.

And that’s exactly what Apple is delivering: A sleek space-gray chassis filled to the aluminum limit with next-generation Intel, AMD, and Apple muscle. Starting at $4999.

This is richly researched, well written. Rene has pulled together a real technologist’s view of the iMac Pro. There’s a lot to learn here, especially the deep dive into the Intel Xeon W processors at the heart of the iMac Pro.

Just go read it. Does this guy ever sleep?

Apple Lisa: The computer that was a proving ground for the Mac

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Stephen Hackett, MacStories:

When thinking about the earliest days of Apple, it’s easy to recall the Apple I, the Apple II line and the Macintosh. However, there’s one more computer that defined Apple’s early years. This computer was ground-breaking but incredibly expensive, and exposed many things wrong within Apple itself.

The Lisa launched 35 years ago next month. Today, it is mostly considered as a precursor to Mac. While that is true, it doesn’t come close to doing this computer justice.

Apple Lisa was an incredibly important part of Apple’s history. This is a terrific read. Don’t miss the embedded and linked videos.

iMac Pro, available to order today, price ranges from $4,999 to upwards of $13,000

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From Apple’s press release:

Apple today released iMac Pro, an entirely new product line designed for pro users who love the all-in-one design of iMac and require workstation-class performance. With Xeon processors up to 18 cores, up to 22 Teraflops of graphics performance, and a brilliant 27-inch Retina 5K display, iMac Pro is the fastest, most powerful Mac ever made. iMac Pro delivers incredible compute power for real-time 3D rendering, immersive VR, intensive developer workflows, high megapixel photography, complex simulations, massive audio projects and real-time 4K and 8K video editing.

There’s a lot more detail in the release. This is one beautifully designed, incredibly powerful machine.

But it’ll cost you.

I went on-line and worked through the various configurations.

The standard configuration priced out, as announced, at $4,999. I suspect that will be plenty of power for most users. Here’s what you get for that $5K:

  • 3.2GHz 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
  • 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
  • 1TB SSD
  • Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8GB of HBM2 memory
  • Magic Mouse 2 – Space Gray
  • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English – Space Gray

If you select all the hardware configuration extras, that bumps the price up to $13,199. Here’s what that looks like:

  • 2.3GHz 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz
  • 128GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
  • 4TB SSD
  • Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory
  • Magic Mouse 2 – Space Gray
  • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English – Space Gray

It’d be interesting to see some benchmarks comparing these two configurations.

The $4,999 standard configuration promises delivery by December 28th.

The $13,199 souped up, hot rod configuration shows delivery at 6-8 weeks (Jan 25- Feb 8, if ordered today).

Ars Technica: iMac Pro first review

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If you are considering buying an iMac Pro, spend the time to read through this Ars Technica review. There’s a lot of practical detail in the review, and a section on some of the major software that folks will run, with the goal of major speed increases/time savings.

Apple increases Mac trade-in values to up to $2,500

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple today increased its trade-in values for select Mac models released in 2009 and later. In partnership with buyback company Phobio, Apple now offers customers up to $2,500, compared to up to $1,500 previously.

Want to get a sense of the trade-in value for your old Mac? Head over to the Phobio site (that’s Apple’s trade-in partner).

Apple announces iMac Pro, available this Thursday

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Very exciting news. I suspect Apple will sell a bunch of these, especially to folks tapping their feet waiting for an update to the Mac Pro.

Though there’s no pricing on the Apple site quite yet, it was originally announced with a base price of $4,999.

Apple reveals 2017’s top charts, but don’t try to buy an iOS app from your Mac

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I enjoyed going through Apple’s tops of 2017 list.

But, it did remind me of one broken piece of Apple’s app-purchasing system, still unaddressed after all this time. To see it, you have to open the list on your Mac.

On your Mac, if you click on Apple’s top movie link, after a bit of shuffling, you’ll be taken to an iTunes page listing the top movies of the year. Click on a movie and you’ll be taken to that movie’s iTunes page so you can rent or buy.

BUT.

Still on your Mac, still looking at that same best of list, try clicking on an app. To save you time, here’s a link to the iPhone game of the year, a fun little number called Splitter Critters.

You’ll be taken to a Safari App Store Preview page, with this note embedded on the page:

Used to be, you could click a link of an app you want to buy, the app page would open in iTunes, and you could purchase the app, even from your Mac. For a while, app links that used to work took you into the void, clearly broken. My hope was that this was a temporary situation, that Apple would work through their changes with iTunes and, eventually, restore the ability to buy an iOS app from a link shown on a Mac.

Why is this important? Why care about an iOS app that will never run on a Mac? It’s all about app developers and bloggers making a living.

App developers need publicity for their apps. And that publicity often comes from blogs (like MacStories, Daring Fireball, iMore, 9to5Mac, Six Colors, iDownloadBlog, etc.) When a blog links to an app, the best chance a developer has to close the deal with a reader is if that reader can click on a link and buy the app right then and there.

If the reader happens to be reading about the app on a Mac, there is no chance to close the deal with a simple click and purchase. At the very least, they have to remember to make the purchase the next time they are on an iOS device. This is bad for the developer and, ultimately, bad for the blogger. It widens the gap, reduces the intimacy between the writer who recommended the app, and the reader. And it lessens the chance that a blog will be able to make a bit of money from an affiliate link.

My two cents? Apple should fix this. As is, this makes the Mac a bit of a second class citizen.

How to allow remote access to your Mac

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Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld, pulled together some advice on remote access between Macs (pretty easy, though worth the read) and between Macs and other platforms (not so easy). Interesting.

KGI: Apple to adopt faster circuit board tech across Apple Watch & Mac lineups in 2018

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Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is today out with a new investor note, obtained by 9to5Mac. In the piece, Kuo breaks down how Apple is working to integrate faster and more versatile circuit boards across its product lineup come 2018.

Currently, the iPhone 8 and iPhone X both use a new flexible circuit board made from liquid crystal polymer. Both phones use it in their antenna designs, while the iPhone X also uses it in its TrueDepth camera. This LCP FPCB technology allows for high-speed and low-latency data transfer.

More detail in the post, but nice to see this terrific, space-saving, performance-increasing tech making its way over to the Apple Watch and Mac.

Makes me wonder if this is part of the supply-chain scheduling driving the iMac Pro and Mac Pro. The iMac Pro was announced at WWDC, said to ship this month (December 2017). And the Mac Pro is, well, anybody’s guess. But good to know this tech is coming.

Mac vs iPad

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Gabe Weatherhead, MacDrifter:

When my 10.5″ iPad Pro arrived I decided to do a little experiment. You see, I honestly believe that the iPad, iPhone, and other micro super-computers are the future of computing and I want to force myself out of old-man complacency. Five months ago I committed to that experiment and avoided using my Mac unless there was absolutely no way to do something on my iPad or iPhone. Last week I ended my experiment and I have a few opinions (big surprise).

I use my Mac, iPhone, and iPad in a mix throughout the day. My iPhone is always with me, gets all the looks when I am away from my desk. My Mac gets all my looks at my desk. And my iPad gets the rest, those times when I am bopping about, laying about, or in a car (not driving!)

[Of course, my Apple Watch gets its share of looks, no matter the device I’m using, but in my view, does not impact the Mac vs iPad argument.]

Gabe’s piece really captures my feelings about the Mac, why it is the best solution for certain (but by no means all, or even most) situations. Here’s a taste:

I do a lot of text editing, so this is a category where I feel friction the most. There’s really no comparison for me. Text editors on the Mac are more feature rich and I can edit faster than on iOS.

Friction is a perfect word. The Mac is customizable to the point where I can really get at those friction points, ease them to make my process more efficient. iOS, on the other hand, is more portable, easier to get going and, for me, always with me every second I’m awake.

Apple has found a perfect blend of devices. At least for me and my habits.

That said, read Gabe’s piece. See if it resonates for you.

The Touch Bar makes the Mac more accessible to me

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Steven Aquino, responding to Marco Arment’s fixing the MacBook Pro post, specifically this point Marco made about the Touch Bar:

Sorry, it’s a flop. It was a solid try at something new, but it didn’t work out. There’s no shame in that — Apple should just recognize this, learn from it, and move on.

From Steven’s response:

Arment’s recommendation that Apple “back away from the Touch Bar” reiterates a popular sentiment in the Apple community: in blunt terms, the Touch Bar sucks. I’ve read many articles and heard many podcasts where prominent members of the community deride the feature and question its future. These criticisms, while legitimate, sting me personally because I like the Touch Bar.

Read on for the details, but I agree. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Touch Bar is an important concept. Let it evolve into the thing it was born to be.

Apple starts pushing High Sierra on unsuspecting Mac users

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Adam Engst, TidBITS:

If you’re running macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier, and do not want to upgrade to 10.13 High Sierra right now, be careful because Apple has started pushing High Sierra to older Macs and making it all too easy to upgrade inadvertently. In short, if you get a macOS notification asking you to install High Sierra, click the Details button to launch the App Store app, and then quit it.

I am not a fan of the TidBITS headline here, but I do get the point. Though the update notification does call out an upgrade to macOS High Sierra, it does look like most other updates. And as many users do when they are confronted with a license agreement or privacy policy, it is very easy to click Install without reading the details.

This is good to know, worth passing along to folks in your community running older Macs.

Watch these BMW gestures and think about bringing them to the Mac

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[VIDEO] This morning, I dug around and found the video embedded in the main Loop post, which shows off the gestures available on the latest BMWs (they’ve been available for a few years, but the sensors/gestures have evolved each year, getting better and better).

Think about the idea of having a similar set of gestures available on the Mac. The idea of tech on your phone or Mac sensing your presence, attention, or movements, clearly add value to the user experience.

The idea of a touch screen Mac is different than a gesture-aware Mac. I think the gestures on the BMW would work well on a Mac. Not necessarily the same gestures, but similar gestures. Especially if the gestures could be subtle.

Imagine an incoming phone call, while you are typing away at your Mac. You lift your hand from the keyboard, make a quick swiping gesture, and the call is dismissed. Or you make a c’mon gesture, and the call is answered.

I see a lot of possibilities here.

Face ID on the Mac

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Thoughts on the idea of Apple adding facial mapping and Face ID to your Mac. […]

Safari uses much less memory under macOS High Sierra

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Kirk McElhearn:

It’s time to tip a hat to Apple for a major change they’ve made in their latest desktop operating system, macOS High Sierra. Last year, I wrote about how Safari was a memory hog. At times, it would be using 5,6, even 8 or 9 GB of memory. I would have to quit it every few days to get it to stop being sluggish.

Since the release of High Sierra, I have noticed that Safari’s memory usage has dropped a great deal. Right now, with my iMac running for more than four days, Safari is only using about 3 GB of RAM. And this with more than a dozen tabs open.

  1. I’ve noticed the same thing on my setup.
  2. Notice Kirk is using iStat Menus, a nice little utility, wraps a lot of information in a tiny interface, all under a single menu bar icon. Check it out.

Deleting and reinstalling default apps in iOS 11, and the infinite loop of sadness

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This article talks you through a pretty obvious and straight-forward process. But 3 things:

  1. Important to note that you can now delete built-in apps like Weather, Stocks, etc. Delete them just as you would any other app.
  2. Finding the originals if you decide to go back is the trick. You can search the app store, but the article has a list of links to the originals. Bookmark the article. A nice resource.
  3. If you click on the App Store links on your Mac (DO NOT DO THIS), you’ll plunge down the infinite loop of sadness, as Safari tries to get iTunes to do what it is no longer programmed to do.

“Maybe it’s a piece of dust”

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Over the past few days, there was a wave of discussion, back and forth across the net, about the MacBook Pro keyboard. Head to the main Loop post for all the gory detail. […]

Selling your MacBook Pro with Touch Bar? Apple recommends this step

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Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

If you’re selling (or generously handing down) your MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, Apple recommends an extra step when erasing your data before parting ways with your machine. This step requires an obscure Terminal command that you wouldn’t assume and isn’t required on Macs without the Touch Bar.

Here’s the Apple Support document titled What to do before you sell or give away your Mac.

Check out step 6, “If you have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, clear its data”.

Begs the question, what is specifically stored in the Touch Bar that requires cleaning? Good to know that this step is necessary, but a bit of a mystery. Anyone know the specifics? Please do ping me.

Nice find, Zac.

UPDATE: And the answer is, this script removes your Touch ID data from your Mac, as proved by Stephen Hackett, written up on this 512 Pixels post.

Apple still offering free delayed battery repairs for some 2012 and early 2013 MacBook Pros

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display released in Mid 2012 or Early 2013, and your notebook qualifies for battery service, the repair should be free if you are willing to wait for around one month.

To check if your MacBook Pro battery needs service:

Click on the Apple logo in the menu bar. Then, click on About This Mac > System Report > Power. In the Health Information section, the condition should say “Service Battery.”

Good stuff. Pass this along.

BBEdit 12 — A powerful new upgrade

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BBEdit 12 is now live. It’s a powerful update, with tons of new features.

I had a chance to see a pre-release of this new version and I have to say, it’s incredible how much work Rich and the team did here. My two favorite features? Canonize and Columns.

Canonize is a search and replace supercharger, letting you build a master transformation file filled with all sorts of search and replace commands. You can even Canonize a proper case spelling of a word. So you could ask Canonize to replace all instances of noerr, NOERR, NoErr with noErr by just including noErr in your list.

Columns lets you select, copy, and rearrange columns of text or data. If you ever spend your time mucking around with datasets or delimited text, you’ll love this feature.

These are but two of many new features, the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s a summary of the high points, and a deep dive set of release notes.

On pricing:

BBEdit 12 has a suggested retail price of US$49.99. Owners of BBEdit 11 can upgrade for US$29.99. Owners of BBEdit 10 or earlier (including customers who purchased BBEdit in the Mac App Store) can upgrade for US$39.99.

Anyone who purchased BBEdit on or after March 1, 2017 is eligible to receive a free upgrade.

BBEdit is one of two of my must-have Mac utilities (Keyboard Maestro being the other). A no-brainer upgrade.

Nikkei Asian Review: Apple to switch Macs from Intel to ARM

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Nikkei Asian Review, first on Apple rolling their own modem chip:

Two other chip industry executives also echoed Li’s view that Apple will develop its own modem chips or at least boost its related capabilities – a view bolstered by Apple’s poaching top Qualcomm modem chip engineer Esin Terzioglu earlier this year.

But Li added it is was unlikely that Apple could quickly roll out such components within two years. Modem chips have a very high threshold to develop and need to fulfill requirements of different operators worldwide.

A veteran chip industry executive estimates that it would require more than a minimum one thousand engineers to work on such a project.

As far as Macs go:

Core processor chips for the MacBook range is another area Apple is trying to venture into.

Two industry sources say that Apple is trying to cut its dependence on Intel when it comes to notebook chips and instead build those using ARM architecture, referring to the SoftBank-controlled British chip designer.

“Notebooks are becoming thinner, while consumers are demanding better mobility and longer battery life. That gives ARM’s architecture, which is known for its power efficiency, a very good opportunity,” a chip industry executive said.

And:

Apple also aims to design its own chips that could integrate touch, fingerprint and display driver functions, sources say.

“Apple has hired engineers from Taiwan’s No. 1 display-driver chip designers Novatek and panel makers of AU Optronics as it wants to control next-generation display technology and some related key components,” said a Taiwanese chip industry manager.

Apple switching Macs to ARM chips has long been a topic of speculation. And there are significant technical hurdles to overcome. Interesting, but take with a grain of salt.

How to do a clean install of macOS High Sierra

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Luke Filipowicz, Lory Gil, iMore:

Downloading and installing a new OS gives you the opportunity to do some major house cleaning if you so desire. If you feel like you’d like a fresh start with macOS High Sierra, you can always opt to do a clean install: Just follow the steps below, even if you’ve already installed macOS High Sierra.

A clean install does give you a chance to shake out the leftover cruft from legacy installs. Me, I always keep several copies of backups, untouched, so I can go back and retrieve old apps/data I was sure I’d never need again.

Good post.

macOS 10.13 High Sierra: The Ars Technica review

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This is a detailed review, definitely a solid place to start learning about macOS High Sierra.

Before you update, you might want to read the section on APFS, the Apple File System called A one-way ticket to APFS-ville (if you have an SSD).

The High Sierra installer does do one major thing that the Sierra installer didn’t do. Behind the scenes, it converts your boot partition from the longstanding HFS+ filesystem to the new APFS.

Well, it does that for most Macs, anyway.

Though most people will never even know what’s happening, there are plenty of caveats and details to know about how the APFS conversion happens, the cases when it doesn’t happen, and why it doesn’t happen when it doesn’t happen.

Read this section, consider your Mac’s particular configuration. Do you have a spinning hard drive? Do you have an SSD that you installed yourself? Do you have a Fusion drive setup? None of these are dealbreakers, but it’s worth spending the time to read about these cases before you do the upgrade.