https://techlife.app/tag/macOS https://techlife.app/archives/the-new-ipad-pro-interface-is-getting-a-major-overhaul-and-the-wonderfully-controlled-keyboard-will-be-updated-with-it.html 2022-08-08T18:02:00+08:00 Bringing the Mac back to "utility" is the change Apple has made to Apple computers as they enter the M-chip era.Even with the M1 Series chips with excellent power efficiency, Apple designed the new MacBook Pro, Mac Studio with Pro-level people in mind and prioritized the internal Pro Workflow team.So we have a Pro-class Mac with a stronger active cooling system, and room for cooling.And since it's not all about "thinness," Apple has also optimized the much-criticized butterfly keyboard, TouchBar, and sparse ports to turn the MacBook Pro back into a productivity tool rather than a "work of art.Quietly, the MacBook Pro 14 has become Apple's most cost-effective Mac of the moment, bar none, and even subsequent M2-chip offerings have failed to shake its status.▲ The MacBook Air that focuses on thinness, not performanceIn some ways, the new MacBook Pro may not be as thin and light as the MacBook Air, and it may not have the performance of the Mac Studio, but there's no denying that it's the 'most versatile' option available today.Such a trend may very well carry over to the iPad Pro lineup as well.The current iPad Pro has a shortcoming.After Apple announced iPadOS 16, the features began to align with macOS and began to pull away from iOS, as if iPadOS was a mobile system spun off from macOS.The horizontal screen represents the Pro-level sceneiPadOS 16 also emphasizes "landscape" operation, either standalone or with an external keyboard, or even with a large display "on fire"."With this feature, the iPad Pro is closer to a "personal computer" than it is to half productivity and half Lovecraft.In our previous experience, with iPadOS 16, the iPad Pro was more than capable of replacing our traditional Mac workflow at the moment, and iPadOS has somewhat unlimited potential.But it's the USB-C port that limits the iPad Pro's ability to play a more "productive" role.This is not a reference to the form of the interface, or the rate of the interface, rather, the iPad Pro already has the Thunderbolt 4 interface on it, which is already the highest specification for Apple products.Rather, the number of ports on the iPad Pro is so small that, similar to many smartphones, it offers only one USB-C port.Even though the Thunderbolt 4 has a decent amount of bandwidth and can be used for many needs all in one, for the Pro class, the single interface really limits the tooling attributes of the iPad Pro.In fact, as the iPad Pro has become more of a productivity tool, Apple has begun to make up for the number of ports.In addition to the universal connector USB-C (Lightning), the iPad Pro has been designed with a "three-pin smart connector" on its body since the first generation to facilitate the external smart keyboard.The "Smart Keyboard" category has been gradually expanded to three types: Smart Keyboard, Keyboard Smart Clip and Smart Control Keyboard.The keyboard has a USB-C port on the spindle, which is used to charge the iPad Pro via a "three-pin smart connector" between the body and the keyboard, so that the Thunderbolt 4 on the body can be used for expansion.But, the three-pin smart connector is only designed for connecting keyboards, perhaps because of bandwidth issues, and can't be used to transfer data and fast charging.The three-pin smart connector is arguably even more "closed" than the Lightning connector, so the expandability speaks for itself.Three stitches to four, one to twoAccording to conventional thinking, adding a Thunderbolt interface to the iPad Pro would turn it around, but the iPad Pro has its own "plans" for future interface configurations, as well as the Wonder Control Keyboard II.In terms of expandability, Macotakara, based on reliable supply chain sources, says that the new iPad Pro series will not change the design style, but will upgrade the "three-pin smart connector" to a "four-pin smart connector" and increase the number by one, on the top and bottom edges respectively.The "three pin" to "four pin" basically extends the bandwidth of the original connection and does not rule out a speed increase. And the increased number will most likely bring new accessories and new features to the iPad Pro.Previously, to ensure expansion, Apple was rumored to be considering introducing MagSafe magnetic charging for the iPad Pro.It was more commonly thought that the MagSafe on the iPad Pro would be similar to the iPhone, existing in a fixed area on the back and compatible with the current MagSafe charger.However, combined with Macotakara's report, the MagSafe on the iPad Pro may actually more closely resemble a similar charging form factor on the MacBook Pro, with MagSafe and Thunderbolt working in tandem.And the four-pin connector on the back cover not only brings fast charging to iPad Pro itself, but also powers peripherals attached to iPad Pro.To this end, iPadOS 16 also allows device manufacturers to create drivers for iPad by adding DriverKit.The new 'four-pin smart connector' is different from universal connectors such as USB-C, it will still be exclusive to iPad Pro and will need to be used with an additional official accessory.Back in April of this year, Apple was also granted a patent for the next generation of the Myriad Control Keyboard, which was published along with it. From the patent image, we can see that the biggest change of the new generation of Myo-controlled keyboard will probably be the folding form, as well as having Apple Pencil storage space.The iPad Pro's second keyboard now opens up to just one angle and laptop form, which is slightly one-dimensional.And the patented keyboard adds a "drawing pad mode" that provides a drawing pad form without disassembly.▲ Surface Laptop StudioIn fact, these two forms are very close to the '3-in-1' form of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio.With more forms of the new Wonder Keyboard, and a more expandable iPad Pro, and with iPadOS 16, the iPad Pro has a brighter future.Has it really become practical?With a richer interface and a more powerful iPadOS, the iPad Pro is theoretically becoming 'practical' as well.Unlike the MacBook Pro, however, the extra four-pin Smart Connector is not a universal connector, and Apple has no plans to open up the protocol.Also, the reliability of the similar magnetic pin contact interface remains in doubt, with the first generation iPad Pro, and now the wonderfully controlled keyboard, having poor contact conditions.Extending connectivity by adding contacts is indeed easily achievable, but it's rather unprofessional for a Pro device to still use a less reliable interface instead.With the addition of the contact port, it is difficult for the old accessory to be compatible with the new device, very similar to the iPad Pro when the design was changed and the contacts changed position, connecting the official keyboard must require a new purchase.After the changeover, old accessories, old keyboards, etc. also tend to raise corresponding 'environmental' issues.The main change that makes the new MacBook Pro so "practical" is the variety and versatility of ports, from SD card slots to HDMI, and the availability of MagSafe 3 and Thunderbolt 4 for fast charging.▲ Image from: The VergeBut when it comes to the iPad Pro, if the rumors are true, the introduction of the "four-pin smart connector" is just an enhancement for today's needs, not a comprehensive consideration for the future.For the new iPad Pro to become even more useful, it's really just a matter of adding another USB-C to the body. https://techlife.app/archives/ipad-will-be-the-new-line-of-apple-computers.html 2022-08-07T20:02:00+08:00 "Your next computer, why should it be a computer."That's a somewhat awkward-sounding, but straightforward tagline that defines the new product that Apple is giving the iPad Pro in 2020 after its release.However, the iPad Pro, which boasts of being a "computer", has been met with little more than a chuckle.The iPad Pro, or iPad line, was still parasitic on the iPhone, and the difference between the two wasn't that great, except for the size of the screen.In particular, both use A-series chips (M-series chips are not yet available), and iPadOS is still figuring out how to nicely neutralize iOS and macOS.Even though iPadOS previously drew on many of the renderings found in macOS, it's still essentially more of an iOS large-screen adaptation.Back in 2010, when the first iPad was created, Steve Jobs described it onstage as "a revolutionary device that created and defined a whole new category.▲ Steve Jobs with the first generation iPad Image from: macrumorsSince then, "innovation" has been a central part of iPad's development. At the time, smartphone screens were just 4 inches in size, and iPad's 9.7-inch screen was a perfect fit between the Mac and iPhone.As smartphone screens got bigger, they also started to crowd out the original market space of iPad. After a steady stream of product lines, Apple also tied 'productivity' to iPad with the Pro series.The iPad Pro has also been living up to Jobs' idea of a "revolutionary" category.The Two Rises of the iPad ProThinking back, the initial iPad Pro, released in 2015, had an A9X SoC built in and a 12.9-inch screen size that put it close to Pro-class in terms of hardware.▲ First generation iPad Pro image from: futurecdnBut at that point, the iPad Pro still ran iOS and was not too far removed from the iPad, iPad Air, iPad mini, or even the iPhone in terms of system capabilities.The separation of iPadOS from iOS came four years later at the WWDC developer conference, and it was clear from the naming that iPadOS was not intended to be an offshoot of iOS, but a standalone system on par with macOS and tvOS.It's almost as if the iPad Pro lineup has been changed, with hardware innovations first and then software systems to complement them.In this way, the iPad Pro is also gradually becoming what we are now familiar with.To get closer to being a 'productivity' creation tool, Apple first gave the iPad Pro a USB-C port and designed the 'battle-hardened' Magic Keyboard.Finally, the iPad Pro waits for Apple's own M-chip, built with the same M1 chip as the MacBook, giving it even more potential and a landmark upgrade to the iPad Pro in recent years.After upgrading the chip, peripherals, and interface, iPadOS also saw "big changes" at WWDC this year.The "Front Desk Scheduler" feature and optimized support for external displays make iPadOS 16 fully productive. And the usage scenarios for these features are starting to overlap with personal 'computers' like the Macbook Pro.iPadOS 16 also functions increasingly differently from iOS, gradually going its separate way, not shadowing iOS, and the independence of iPadOS comes to the fore.Functionally significant, needs a good polishAfter showing off at WWDC, Apple is also rolling out a Beta version of the system for the M-chip iPad as expected.However, during the testing period, the "Front Desk Scheduler" feature was not stable and would frequently cause system crashes and errors. In addition, "Front Desk Scheduler" was limited to iPads with M chips, and the compatibility was so poor that it was criticized by many users and developers.iPadOS 16, which was originally intended to launch with iPhone and iOS 16 in September, will most likely be delayed to October for a better and more stable experience.Bloomberg, which first reported the software update delay, also believes that with the staggered push of iOS and iPadOS updates, Apple will have more energy to polish iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 separately.In the past, Apple has tended to provide system updates for five major pieces of hardware - the Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV - at the same time after a fall event.But as each system gets more complex, some cross-platform features are generally delayed, like the previous iPhone dual camera portrait mode and the 'universal controls' feature that took a long time to adapt and optimize for last year's launch.In recent years, the stability of several major Apple systems is not as stable as in the past, is due to more features, adaptable devices are also very cumbersome, but also due to several major systems online at the same time, the software team is difficult to focus on optimization and polishing.This time, the staggered push of updates to iPadOS with iOS can be seen as a stress reliever and a benefit to the stability of the new system.Also, longer optimization and polishing will most likely not leave some new features missing, and the system will be fully functional when released.Ultimately, however, Apple will still keep the 'front-of-the-stage scheduling' limited to the M-chip to bring a better 'experience'.iPad, Mac have become two lines of Apple computersIf the official update to iPadOS 16 is made in October, coincidentally, macOS Ventura, which also has a 'front-of-the-stage scheduler', is also thought to be pushed out in October.And it's also possible that a MacBook Pro 14/16 iteration will be released in October, with the M2 Pro and M2 Max also launching at this time.There are also rumors that the new iPad Pro with M2 will arrive as scheduled, also in October.▲ It's time to replace the MacBook Pro 14.The M-chip-based iPad Pro and Macbook are also updated at the same frequency as the M-chip. As a rough estimate, unlike the iPhone, which is updated every year, the iPad Pro and MacBook are updated on a cycle of about 18 months.October will coincidentally be a point in the update cycle where new systems come with new hardware, in keeping with Apple's usual tradition.In this way, the iPad Pro will pull away from the iPhone in terms of update frequency, as traditional computers like the MacBook generally do.In addition, iPad and iPadOS, which had previously been hidden behind iPhone and iOS, are finally coming to the forefront, and the positioning of their products and systems are starting to approach that of Mac and macOS.It could even be argued that iPadOS and macOS, which also have "front-of-house scheduling", are only approximate systems that exist on different hardware.Presumably also from iPadOS 16 onwards, in Apple's plans, the iPad Pro will play a similar role to the Mac, mainly as a 'productivity' tool.▲ Touch support and the Apple Pencil are an advantage of iPad ProBut they interact differently and have different market segments, with iPad Pro being closer to the 'creative crowd' and Mac offering the traditional PC way of working.Apple computers are no longer just Macs. iPad Pro is getting closer to being a non-traditional personal computer, and iPadOS is evolving into a new system that is independent of iOS.When we previously reviewed the iPad Pro, we argued that iPad was gradually redefining and expanding the scope of the personal computer. And in experiencing the iPadOS 16 beta, with the display and desk scheduling, it almost perfectly replaces the MacBook Pro for the appropriate tasks.When you hook up iPad Pro to a monitor and start acting as a "productivity" tool, the process of discovery is a lot like it once was when you first started using a personal computer.And as iPad's market share continues to soar and the new generation continues to grow up, iPad is what the 'personal computer' was meant to be for them. https://techlife.app/archives/how-to-improve-image-clarity-using-ai-waifu2x.html 2022-07-26T17:08:00+08:00 How waifu2x can save your macOS retouching experience by "taking the veil off" your images with AIWe need pictures, clear pictures.From traditional media to online communities, images have always been among the fastest and most visual information carriers, no matter how much the way of creation has changed. Although there are countless ways to search for images on the Internet today, it's not always easy to get access to high quality images outside of dedicated stock sites. In the past, we used "search engines + keywords" to search for fishing material in a wide net; when artificial intelligence started to emerge, using "image search" to trace the source of images became the main way to get high-definition material.Nowadays, it is not only possible to "HD" images directly using AI technology, but it has also developed into a simple and efficient image restoration technique. Especially with the help of some open source tools and models, ordinary users can also use this technique to restore images and videos on their phones and computers. waifu2x is one of the well-reputed and well-maintained options.Finally, a developer has brought it to macOS.What is waifu2xConvolutional Neural Networks (CNN) is a class of deep neural networks commonly used in visual image analysis. Since its convolutional layer splits and filters the features learned by the machine, even a certain degree of displacement and deformation of the input object does not affect the resultant output.waifu2x is an image processing algorithm that uses deep convolutional neural networks to restore and scale images or videos in high definition. Compared with traditional interpolation algorithms, waifu2x's Super-resolution imaging (Super-resolution) + noise reduction mechanism can avoid jaggies, blurring, and color blocks to the maximum extent, and improve the sharpness and purity of the image, thus achieving improved visual perception. Initially, waifu2x was mainly used to repair ACG content. With the widespread adoption of this technology and the popularity and depth of machine learning techniques, various waifu2x GUIs developed by third-party developers gradually became mainstream, and many waifu2x-based models were trained for application to specific content images. As a result, waifu2x has greatly improved its ubiquity and significantly lowered the threshold of operation, and there have been many easy-to-use waifu2x software on Windows platform, but for various reasons of software adaptation and hardware compatibility, the situation on the macOS side has been somewhat lackluster.The waifu2x software available for macOS has long been flawed in function, performance, and stability to one degree or another, but these slightly flawed creations are generally the work of enthusiasts, and there's no excuse for the problems. Well, GitHub's independent developer @Vaida has brought us a much better waifu2xExtension.waifu2xExtension is easy to use and powerful. After following this article and completing the basic configuration, we can use waifu2x for image processing on macOS elegantly.*The demo content in this article is from version 5.0 Beta 8 and cannot be guaranteed to be consistent in operation and functionality with future updated software versions.algorithm modelwaifu2xExtension comes with the algorithm model waifu2x-caffe, which can be installed directly and works fine. However, if you need to process more complex images and get the best results, you must install a specific algorithm model. waifu2xExtension supports six algorithm models, which are.Real-CUGAN ncnn Vulkan - Custom AI super-resolution algorithms for ACG contentReal-ESRGAN - AI super-resolution algorithm that favors ACG content and has generalizability (fast, less effective for faces and text content)RealSR ncnn Vulkan - AI super-resolution algorithm that favors real contentCAIN ncnn Vulkan - AI video framing algorithm that can only be used for 0.5 time points (two frames interpolated into one frame)rife-ncnn-vulkan - AI video framing algorithm that can only be used for 0.5 time points (two frames interpolated) (faster and very good)DAIN ncnn Vulkan - AI video frame-completion algorithm with support for arbitrary point-in-time interpolation (slowest, highest footprint, very effective)You can download algorithm models on demand and place them in the same fixed path, here it is recommended to create a folder directly in the Manuscript dedicated to models for subsequent updates. waifu2xExtension can also use algorithm models that are not in this list, but compatibility issues may arise.Installation and useAfter installing and opening waifu2xExtension on macOS, you can access the model management interface of waifu2xExtension in the software settings. Whether you are installing a model for the first time or updating it, just select "Open Finder" on the right side of the corresponding option, and then select the folder of the corresponding model in the pop-up access window. As shown in the image, models that have been installed will display the installation status and file size to the left of the name and below, respectively, but You can right-click on the model that needs to be updated and select "Show on Github" in the menu to quickly jump to the release page and download and install the update manually.In addition, waifu2xExtension supports TTA (Test Time Augmentation), a technique designed to process the input image with various transformations, including cropping different areas and changing the zoom level, to create several different versions, which are then compared to adjust the output for better image quality. . If your mac has poor performance, turning off this feature by checking "Disable TTA" in the settings can improve processing efficiency, software stability, and wait times to a certain extent.With the addition of support for multiple models, waifu2xExtension adds a "Import - Process - Export" process to the normal waifu2x software, as well as processing and export settings (currently including image content, scaling, and noise reduction parameters, with more options to be added in the future. Processing - Export" process than the normal waifu2x software, adding the process of selecting models, as well as processing and export settings adapted to each model (currently including image content, scaling and noise reduction parameters, with more options to be added in the future).Use the "Add" function, or drag the files or folders to be processed directly into the main window of waifu2xExtension and click "Done" in the upper right corner, the software will integrate the available models and options in the export screen for selection and adjustment, then click "Done" in the lower right corner of the export screen to process the current settings and export the files.SummaryThe waifu2xExtension is probably the best waifu2x front end for macOS at the moment, and its advantages consist mainly of the following.Support a variety of image and video formats, not only for image HD processing, but also for video framingSix additional optional algorithm models are supported to select the best quality for different styles of images by switching algorithm modelsAll built with SwiftUI, which runs with great efficiency and stability on macOSSupports hardware acceleration by invoking ANE on M1/M2 macs, significantly outperforming traditional CPU/GPU acceleration in terms of processing time at the same power consumptionSupports completely offline operation and privacy friendlyThe latest waifu2xExtension 5.0 Beta 8 version has rewritten the software, some features of the old version are not yet live on the new version. If you need advanced features such as pre-export preview and model comparison, you can use the 4.1.3 stable version first, and then upgrade when the 5.0 version is fully developed.colored eggWe used waifu2xExtension to restore the illustrations of fan submissions from the "Cooking Machine Network" period to a standard of "clearer than the original". https://techlife.app/archives/the-first-generation-of-macbook-pro-with-touch-bar-has-been-ruthlessly-phased-out-by-apple.html 2022-07-13T04:02:00+08:00 Apple products tend to have long life cycles.The iPhone 6s, which was a godsend in 2015, even supports iOS 15 and has been with many users through the 'seven-year itch'.It wasn't until this fall's iOS 16 that the iPhone 6s generation was classified as an unsupported model.▲ Samsung Galaxy S6 edgeThat's a lot of time for a smartphone in seven years. Flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Xiaomi Note from the same era are now long gone.Smartphones are changing quite quickly, and with that comes a much higher frequency of switching.Therefore, it is very special when a phone has 6-7 years of system updates and hardware maintenance.But when replacing a smartphone with a laptop, the maintenance cycle of just a few years may not be as comforting."Vintage obsolete products"There is a list on the Apple website that is updated from time to time. It is not a ranking of the popularity of new products on sale, but rather a 'retro obsolete' collection of products.Included in this list are iPhone, iPad, Mac and other products that Apple has discontinued.Products that are mostly 5 to 7 years old in terms of release will no longer be eligible for repair services from official Apple or third-party authorized repairers.▲ The loss of official support requires finding a personal repair facilityOf course, subsequent software updates are also discontinued along with support, unless an emergency update is released due to a major software vulnerability.To put it bluntly, these products are officially labeled as 'obsolete'.▲ MacBook 12Earlier, the 2016 MacBook Pro line was added to this list, along with the 2015 MacBook Air, 2016 MacBook, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and 2015 iMac.Among other things, the 2016 MacBook Pro line features new design concepts, like the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard, and is also the ultimate in thinness and lightness for its time.▲ Touch Bar is more like a fun featureThis thin and light design style is something Apple continues to use today, even with this year's M2 MacBook Pro.Now Apple has included the first Touch Bar MacBook Pro in the 'retro' list, and hints that the once thin and light design is obsolete and that M-chip Macs are the dominant design.Comments from both sidesThe expansion of this list is actually a pretty normal thing to change. It's just that many of today's MacBook Pro 2016s are more than capable of doing a lot of work in terms of performance, and are even still capable of carrying the load for a while.After Apple's update to the list, what was expected to be a calm as usual was a heated standoff in the comments section of many forums. "Leave not a tear behind." Remember that while the iPhone 6s line made this list with a whiff of merit, the MacBook Pro 2016 is a very different story, carrying a bunch of controversy.After improving its design in 2016, the MacBook Pro began to drastically reduce the space inside the machine in order to be thin and light.This brings up several issues, one being the reduction of the battery capacity to 50Wh, the introduction of the butterfly keyboard, the cuts to the cooling system, and the lack of screen lining prep.▲ MacBook Pro's New and OldIt's no coincidence that the MacBook Pro 2016 is powered by Intel's sixth-generation Core processors, and it's around that time that Intel's low-voltage processors became less efficient.The four aforementioned issues make the once very durable MacBook Pro suffer from poor battery life, keyboard stuttering, heat buildup issues, and 'stage lighting' hardness.▲ Single heat pipe cooling designFor this reason, Apple has also started many rounds of repair programs, replacing the screen cover, replacing the keyboard, and with any luck, replacing all but the bottom cover and motherboard with new ones.These flaws have led to a "mixed bag" of "new design" MacBook Pros.Not to mention, it also comes with a power hungry Touch Bar, for which there is no separate ESC or physical function button, and although it has a Pro suffix, many of its functions are not so Pro.▲ Back to practicality with the MacBook Pro 2021And all of the above is set right by the MacBook Pro 14 (2021), reinventing the Pro Series for productivity.By making the first-generation Touch Bar MacBook Pro obsolete, Apple is saying goodbye to the "compromises" of the past."It's just too fast." Apple designed the Mac to last about five years. Five years is a long time for a smartphone, but five years is not a long time for a personal PC.Many users have MacBook Pro 2016 or even older models still in service, and heavy productivity (e.g., video, retouching, creative work) aside, the Mac's performance is more than adequate.Not to mention, the previous MacBook Pro had a natural advantage over its competitors in terms of memory and storage speed.In addition, the MacBook Pro 2016 also brings support for eGPU (graphics docking station) with the full shift to the Thunderbolt 3 interface, and the combination of the two will give the MacBook Pro a qualitative boost, especially when faced with productivity scenarios that require GPU acceleration.Even though the original MacBook Pro had many hardware flaws, it's a bit of a one-size-fits-all approach to a PC that already has a longer replacement cycle, with a "phase out" age similar to that of a smartphone.The system is down for maintenance, forcing "obsolescence"It was actually a foregone conclusion that the macOS Ventura would soon be classified as obsolete after it was announced at WWDC that it would not support the 2016 MacBook Pro.The hardware is viable and the system software stops being maintained, as is the regular practice for many Apple obsolete products.After the advent of the M-chip, new versions of macOS will always favor the 'eco-build' of Apple chips.But with cross-platform features like Universal Controls already supported on macOS Monterey in MacBook Pro 2016, and the previous Sidecar (screen mirroring) feature, many of these linkage features could actually be extended to the Intel version of the Mac if Apple wanted to.As for macOS Ventura, it's also possible to cut some features and get a major version of the system overhauled.▲ On the iPad, only the M chip supports front-of-house scheduling, so it's not a chip barrier of its own creation.The reason why the threshold is set directly at the system and software level is actually a cost removal exercise of sorts.Older products can be understood as fragmented devices, and Apple changes the system version every year, and the additional adaptations to fit some older devices will eventually add to the development costs.In addition, after the system stops being changed, the aftermarket can also eliminate the need to spare the corresponding parts, reducing the operational costs of the aftermarket.▲ macOS MojaveLooking at the successive iterations and supported versions of macOS, the previous boundary was mostly 7 to 8 years (El Captain even supported MBP up to 2007), while macOS Ventura shortens the time to 5 years.Combined with the fact that Apple is recently putting more effort into the development of the M-chip, the idea behind this could be to prompt older users to quickly transition to the M-chip and enter the ecological barriers that Apple has created.In the first phase of the full shift to Arm, the M1 had quite an accomplishment, perfectly positioned to move the Mac from the Intel platform to Arm within two years and receive positive feedback from the market.Even as the PC market is shrinking this year, Macs are starting to buck the trend thanks to the strength of the M chip, with global shipments of Macs up 9.3 percent year-over-year, according to Gartner.And the subsequent growth trend may require the exclusion of older models from the new system, prompting the hardware to be phased out together by means of the system software stopping the turnover.Such an approach would be less difficult for Apple to adapt the system, speed up product changeover, and gain Arm PC market share and PC market growth faster. It's just that setting the bar on software would be too ruthless for older users and older devices. https://techlife.app/archives/beggar-s-edition-m2-macbook-pro-hard-drive-speeds-cut-in-half-basically-say-goodbye-to-productivity.html 2022-06-28T20:03:00+08:00 In 2007, Steve Jobs changed the name of Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. and the focus shifted from Macs to mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.At that time, the Macintosh, which had made Apple's name, also receded into the background.However, with the release of the M1 family of chips, the introduction of ultra-high power efficiency has also brought the Mac back to center stage after a complete shift to Arm in recent years.▲ Craig Federighi, Apple's VP of Software, exclaimed twice at the launch event about the M-chip: How cool is that?In this way, the Mac, which has ushered in a new era of Arm, evokes the "Apple computer" era that many people once had.At WWDC, which ended this year, the M2, as expected, and the newly designed MacBook Air really stole the show from iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, and a host of other software.▲ WWDC is over and all I remember is the newly designed MacBook AirMuch of the discussion after the conference also focused on the hardware, with a new core design and a new process for the M2, which completely brought Apple computers into the Arm era.While the MacBook Air, the most expensive Air series ever, still features an 8GB+256GB combo that lags behind Windows PCs in its price range, there's still a lot of buzz among wait-and-see users about how to spend their limited budgets on the 'cutting edge'.Should I upgrade the memory or the SSD capacity? I'm sure this is a question that many Mac users struggle with during the purchase process.▲ Same $1,500 price increase, what's your choice?Thoughtfully, Apple's official website uses an even upcharge of $1,500 for both doubling the memory and doubling the storage.In Apple's measurement system, memory is just as important as storage, there is no higher or lower or more expensive.In the past, when making Mac consumer recommendations, I've been more inclined to double my limited budget on memory - after all, storage can be external or in the cloud, so there's a lot of flexibility, and $1,500 is enough to buy two 1TB high-speed removable drives.The memory that has been packaged on the motherboard for a long time is difficult to expand by any reasonable means, not to mention the unified memory architecture used in the M-chip, which makes expansion even more difficult, so it's better to spend $1500 to get it all in one step.▲Amazing image via: ifixitOnly, the M2 MacBook Pro may have completely changed the focus of the memory priority upgrade.During our tests doing M2 MacBook Pro videos, the M2 MacBook Pro lagged far behind the M1 MacBook Pro in decompressing a 13GB zip (7z) archive (containing small files, large files, and a clip project).▲ Left: M2 MacBook Pro, Right: M1 MacBook Pro Image from: MaxTechIn addition, YouTuber Max Tech directly tested the read and write speeds of the standard 256GB versions of the M2 and M1 MacBook Pro with BlackMagic and found that the M2 MacBook Pro was half as fast.The 512GB, 1TB version of the MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is unaffected and is on par with the M1 MacBook Pro. ▲ Dell XPS 13 Plus vs M1 MacBook Air SSD Read/Write Speed Comparison Image from: MaxTechThe original M1 MacBook Pro's SSD isn't exactly fast, being close to PCIe 3.0, so cutting it in half would be a bit unworthy of the Pro name.Today, many Windows laptops are already using PCIe 4.0 SSDs for a better experience. The drive's read and write speeds are already well beyond those of the M1 MacBook Pro.Remember that at the MacBook Pro 14/16 launch last year, Apple marked the new device with a new SSD that spikes storage speeds to 7.4GB/s directly on the Keynote.In subsequent real-world tests (also for BlackMagic), only capacities over 4TB will reach such peak write speeds, with the standard 512GB and high 1TB writing at roughly 4600MB/s to 5800MB/s, which is probably at the level of high-speed PCIe 4.0.▲ It's always right to pull the configuration to the top Image from: MaxTechThe MacBook Air/Pro pulled ahead with a high-speed SSD before solid-state was commonplace in Windows notebooks.By the M2's MacBook Pro 13 (256GB), its hard drive speeds were already lagging behind Windows laptops by a significant margin - less than a decade, and the tide is turning.▲ An empty plate space is reserved for imagination Image from: MaxTechAnd to find the reason for the M2 MacBook Pro's storage slowdown, Max Tech and Create Tech took it apart and compared it to the M1 MacBook Pro.In the original SSD socket, the M2 uses just one NAND flash particle, while the M1 uses two 128GB NAND flash particles.▲ Don't Blink Image from: MaxTechSuch an approach is most likely the reason why the M2 MacBook Pro storage has been dramatically slowed down.The principle is actually similar to that of dual-channel and single-channel memory, with more NAND storage particles having more channels and naturally higher data throughput and speed.And for the first time, a configuration with just one NAND flash particle is available in a MacBook Pro product.▲ 128GB are made up of two 64GBs Image from: ifixitIn checking iFixiit's MacBook Air/Pro teardown tutorials from 2016 to 2021, both the 128GB entry version and the 1TB high end, Macs are paired with at least two NAND flash particles on the motherboard to achieve normal and reasonable speeds.A single NAND flash memory particle configuration can help reduce costs somewhat. But for the MacBook Pro, which doesn't cost much, such savings can significantly impact the experience.Today, the M2 MacBook Pro has a write speed of 1400MB/s, which may not be as noticeable in many light experiences as it is in the numbers.▲ The M2 MacBook Pro (left) multitasks frequently and there is a delay in loading web pages, which is acceptable Image from: MaxTechBut the M2 MacBook Pro has only 8GB of memory, so when it's full and the SSD is used as virtual memory, there's a world of difference that can dramatically affect normal use. ▲ M2 MacBook Pro I won't win as long as the memory is full Image from: MaxTechIn testing, the M2 MacBook Pro lagged significantly in both exporting photos in Lightroom and exporting videos, and even crashed outright when composing HDR photos in Photoshop.Admittedly, the M2 onboard makes the MacBook Pro extremely competitive, but that, coupled with low-speed storage that's already out of step with mainstream standards, makes it hard to justify the near $10,000 price tag.For now, the storage drop is limited to the M2 MacBook Pro 256GB standard, with the 512GB premium version unaffected. Whether this is the case with the new MacBook Air, which will be available in July, is unknown at this time.Those who are ready to get their hands on a MacBook Air first might want to wait and see the first wave of feedback, or just upgrade to 512GB capacity to circumvent the storage slowdown.When you add in the $1,500 memory upgrade, the new MacBook Air starts at $12,499, and it seems like the MacBook Pro 14 2021 smells even better.After the M-chip era, there are corresponding scaled-down versions of the M1 and M1 Pro in the lower MacBook Air/Pro devices, which can be interpreted as the i3, i5, and i7 versions of Apple's M-chip.Technically speaking, such different configurations don't make a world of difference to the experience, it's nothing more than an 85 to 95 point difference. The same is true for higher capacity storage (2TB, 4TB), it's the upper limit that is raised.The M2 MacBook Pro's storage speed reduction is instead a dip in experience, bringing the original base model (8GB+256GB) 75+ points below the pass line and reducing it to a high-end netbook, which it really shouldn't be.Whether the new MacBook Air that follows circumvents this, or whether the subsequent MacBook Pro 13 will retain this configuration, will have to wait for Apple's next move.For the average user, it's best to avoid the M2 Mac with 256GB of storage for now. https://techlife.app/archives/how-to-clean-chrome-s-dns-cache.html 2022-05-22T01:40:00+08:00 When doing web development, we often modify the hosts file for testing, but occasionally we find that changing the hosts file does not take effect immediately. This is due to the fact that the browser itself caches the DNS (domain name pointing). In addition to caching, since HTTP 1.1 supports connection reuse, if the page was previously opened, then even if the DNS cache is cleared, the connection will continue to connect to the old domain pointing address again due to reuse. If the connection is multiplexed it will be necessary to manually close the active connection.View the actual connection addressViewing the actual connection address can be done through the network panel of the development tool.Clear cache methodType in the address bar: chrome://net-internalsUnder the DNS tab, click "Clear host cache" to clear the cache.Method to close active connectionsType in the address bar: chrome://net-internals.under the Sockets tab, close active connections.One more way to clear the macOS DNS cachesudo dscacheutil -flushcache sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder https://techlife.app/archives/the-mac-has-no-game-and-the-m1-is-useless.html 2022-05-16T19:53:00+08:00 The closest the Mac has come to the gaming market would be when Steve Jobs first returned to Apple and reorganized the Mac product line.▲ Image from: bekiaAt the time, Jobs said they had "launched a new program" to bring gaming back to the Mac, and was adamant that "gaming are very great for the Mac".And at MacWorld in 1999, a high-profile presentation of the upcoming Mac debut of Halo by Bungie Studios was held. (Halo) by Bungie Studios.▲ Halo demo shown at Macworld. image via: AppleFor this masterpiece, Steve Jobs had high hopes, as much as introducing Apple's products, saying that Halo would be the coolest game ever.However, Halo has since become a Microsoft Xbox exclusive, and has directly contributed to Microsoft Xbox becoming one of the "Royal Three" in the console market today.The Mac, on the other hand, brushed aside 'gaming' and never had a 'highlight' again.All the way to the advent of the M1.A few days ago, game developer Feral Interactive brought two of its games, Total War: Rome Remastered and Total War: Warhammer 3 ported to the M1 series for the Mac.It's also one of the few game development teams that has been aggressive in porting games to the Mac platform. Back in the days of Intel, Feral Interactive was very active in migrating a number of games to the Mac platform.▲ Image from: 9to5macAdapting games for the Mac is a lot of experience.In the interview, Feral Interactive was outspoken about how the power of Apple's M1 chip combined with the Metal API has greatly improved game development on the Mac platform.The Feral Interactive team is very optimistic about the future of gaming on the Mac platform, which has moved to its own chips, and believes that there are new opportunities for the Mac in the gaming market.If you read it that way, it's kind of like the Mac is getting close to the gaming market again.It's just that it's a different time, and while it was lamentable that the Mac platform lost Halo before, this M1 Mac is a missed 'moment'.A good opportunity for MacAfter its high-profile debut at Macworld 1999, many Mac users were looking forward to Halo, and likewise, Bill Gates took a glance at the game.▲ Image from: gamerantUnlike many Mac users who waited patiently, Bill outright acquired Bungie Studios to improve Halo into an FPS game and became an Xbox exclusive hit, becoming a phenomenal combination for the gaming market at the time.Robbie Bach, who was the head of Xbox at the time, has recalled in the book, that snatching Halo from Steve Jobs back then was one of the three most important things the Xbox could do to survive in a fierce gaming market.▲ Microsoft Xbox Series X.The other two are the creation of the Xbox Live business and maintaining strong partnerships with gaming companies like EA and Activision.Later, many media and analysts lamented that if Halo debuted on the Mac and was platform exclusive, the Mac and Apple would surely be the head player in the gaming market.The reason for this is that it was in the 'golden age' of end-game and console gaming.At that time, not only was Microsoft's Xbox on fire, but Windows PCs for the masses were also becoming popular, even as they began to eat their way up the enterprise market that Macs prided themselves on with their lower barriers.You know, Steve Jobs only returned to Apple in 1997, and before that, Apple had become a mature capitalist company, where profit and profit were the motivation for many of Apple's decisions.The Power Mac G3 with expansion support was released at MacWorld 1999.This was also true of the Mac, once a popular platform for game developers, which was a popular platform for game development thanks to its graphics performance and scalability.At the time, Macs were primarily for enterprise users, providing work PCs for employees. Apple executives didn't want to associate Macs with gaming, and marketing began to portray them as synonymous with "productivity.▲ Macintosh promotional page "Macintosh is Productivity". Image from: appleinsiderAfter the PC was gradually brought into the home, the Mac was advertised as a 'learning machine' for the student community, with no mention of gaming.Apple didn't take advantage of the rapidly changing opportunity, but Microsoft's Windows did. Contrary to the Mac, Windows is primarily a home platform and gaming is their top priority.Bill Gates even took it upon himself to go down and make TV commercials for Doom (Doom), which is powered by the Windows platform.In the same way that the Mac was a hotbed for game developers at the time, the Windows platform, with its lower barriers, greater developer friendliness, and official willingness to optimize for developers, became the new 'hotbed'.And the Mac is also equated with 'productivity' and 'work machine'.▲ Image from: fastcompanySteve Jobs returned, and even as he began to work his way back, both Apple and the Mac were in a state of disarray, and it was difficult to compete with the growing Microsoft.A series of business decisions and business competition have cost the Mac a 'great opportunity' to enter the gaming market.Bad chance for the MacTime is a wheel, and the market for games lost on the Mac is finally being won back on iOS.A good opportunity for the Mac is actually when endgames started to sprout. And the release of the iPhone was the night before handheld gaming exploded.With the advent of smartphones and innovative interactive experiences, the iPhone has revolutionized the way people interact with machines. As a result, many new interactive forms of handheld games have come on the scene.Unlike Android, the iPhone has prided itself on being a closed ecosystem since its release, with all software needing to be downloaded from the App Store and subject to a 30% cut to Apple.This rule later also pitted Apple against Epic. In a survey report on App Store games, Apple made about $8.5 billion in profits from games in 2019.That figure is $2 billion more than the profits Sony, Activision, Nintendo and Microsoft made from games combined in the same year. And according to Sensor Tower's [data](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-28/apple-terminates-epic-s-developer-account-in-midst-of- lawsuit?srnd=technology-vp&sref=9hGJlFio), Apple will make $15.9 billion in revenue from the App Store in 2021, and games will make up 69 percent of that.App Store revenue is still growing steadily, and the number of game apps in it is gradually improving. At Pocketgamer's stats, there were nearly 30,000 more games in May this year than a year ago, and the total was over 1.01 million.More crucially, the overall handheld gaming market is likewise still growing, with Newzoo's just-released report shows that handheld gamers are expected to reach 3.09 billion this year, increasing total revenue to $20.31 billion and projecting revenue to come to $222.6 billion in 2024.For comparison, PC gaming revenue will top $41 billion, up just 2% year-over-year.In other words, it's already a great opportunity for handheld gaming at the moment, and for PC platforms like the Mac, the big picture is gone.Even though the M1 series is a big jump in power consumption ratio and even GPU performance (compared to core) compared to previous Intel processors, it is not attractive enough for the PC gaming market, which has limited growth and low market volume.The 'attraction' here is the PC gaming market, but also macOS, input and output, etc.You know that many of the big 3A titles use Microsoft DirectX, and macOS previously only supported OpenGL, and its gaming experience was poor until 2018, when Apple dropped OpenGL and developed Metal, and the big ports became possible.The PC market has actually been shrinking so far this year, with SA stating shrank by 7% overall in the first quarter, but with a strong M1 series chip, Apple bucked the trend by growing 4% to fourth in the world, though with only 10% of the market share.In contrast, the Windows platform has an 84% share. macs still haven't reversed the 'niche' label and are far less total than Windows PCs.With the need to re-adapt the low volume Mac on one hand, and the high volume of handheld games on the other, it's more likely that game studios will prefer to focus their resources on handheld games, or stay with the original Windows platform and focus on subsequent 3A development.Regardless of the trade-offs, making Mac games is not the best option. macs are under a not-so-great opportunity right now.ARM architecture is not the 'savior' of Mac gamingIn addition to being Apple's own chip, the M1 series also has the distinct feature of not being a traditional X86 architecture, but an ARM architecture similar to that of the iPhone and iPad.The upside is that the power consumption ratio is excellent. The downside is that absolute performance is not as good as traditional X86, and that much of today's software is also poorly compatible with ARM.▲ Initial work on Maya on M1 Mac via Rosertta 2 translator. image via: appleinsiderBut for Apple, the software migration has been experienced before, and Rosetta 2, which was introduced two years ago for the platform switch, worked much better than expected.As for absolute performance, it's addressed directly with a stacked core count, and even in some scenarios, the M1 series SoCs are capable of wrestling with professional-grade desktop GPUs.▲ Double the chip, double the performance.In fact, the key thing is the ARM architecture, which means that the M1 series Macs can run iOS apps directly, so the number of Mac games that were lacking explodes straight away, and there seems to be a bright future ahead.In reality, the gaming ecosystem in the App Store isn't that glamorous. To expand its 'handheld' business, Apple launched its game subscription service Apple Arcade in 2019.At launch, it was backed by veterans such as Ubisoft, Capcom and Sega, while also allowing gamers to experience the new game at a lower price.Many game developers are very positive about Apple Arcade, saying that with Apple's support, they are able to focus on game levels, plots and interactions, rather than spending their energy thinking about making money.Whether it's hardware like game consoles or services like paid subscriptions, it's the games themselves that are central to the gaming business, and Nintendo is a prime example of this.▲ Games Wonderbox.Apple Arcade is a big deal, debuting over 50 games and expanding to 100 by the end of the year, with updates at a frequency of 4-5 games per week.But as we enter 2020, updates are slowing down, with just over 30 new games added in 10 months. To add insult to injury, there are no big debut titles like Pascal's Contract in the Apple Arcade, and only a few new titles from established studios, with games of varying quality.The M1 plus XGP might be the right way to go.SensorTower had statistics on paid game revenue within the App Store in 2015, which was about $642 million, or 5.4% of total revenue. For Apple Arcade to reach that level, it would take roughly 11.7 million users subscribing for 11 months to turn it around.However, the game subscription real estate model has a lot of potential in the U.S. According to App Annie, subscriptions make up 7% of the handheld game market.The Xbox Game Pass subscription service, went from 10 million to 15 million subscriptions in less than six months.The problem with Apple Arcade is still the 'game'. Apple is too keen on exclusivity and over-vetting, and many game studios are not as enthusiastic about development, and the home office for the 2020 epidemic is slowing down development.Now, it seems that Apple has also started to change the mindset of Apple Arcade, instead of relying on "exclusives", it has lowered the bar and introduced some classic IP ports and "big titles" that were already available in the App Store, trying to improve the lack of Arcade games.But for now, Apple Arcade isn't enough to carry Apple's gaming business, and as for the ARM-embracing M1 Mac, it's going to be a bit hard to turn it around on Arcade in the near future.Mac is not the platform of the future for the gaming business eitherWhether it's the Mac that brought Apple back from the dead during the Steve Jobs era or the M1 Mac that now embraces the ARM architecture, Apple has been keen to make a big splash in the gaming business since the beginning.But whether it's the misguided loss of Halo, or Apple Arcade's somewhat pushy exclusivity strategy, Apple's proverbial kick in the pants always falls short.Apple's self-published SoC is well established, and it's just a few 'phenomenal' games away from 'igniting' the gaming business. But for the desktop Mac, it may no longer be the center of all Apple's business.▲ Apple AR Glasses Hypothetical. Image via: wccftechThe highly anticipated 'phenomenon' game is more likely to be based on Apple's next AR business, which is set to replace the iPhone. Compared to traditional desktop games, AR virtual reality will have a new logic and presentation of game interaction.This is more of an advantage for Apple, who has been following along, after all, now that they have their own chips, they are able to start building their software environment earlier and are able to invite game developers to adapt and debug ahead of time.It's like the Mac in the beginning, with a good enough hardware platform to attract enough game developers to build a lineup of games for it, only this time Apple might not get 'poached' so easily.As for the Mac, the strongest label may still be 'productivity'. https://techlife.app/archives/tech-morning-news-20220510.html 2022-05-10T20:01:00+08:00 What you may have missed that's newApple announces the discontinuation of the iPod touchOn May 10, Apple announced that iPod touch is being discontinued and customers can purchase iPod touch through Apple's official website, Apple Retail Stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. sourcePhoto: AppleDJI Announces DJI Mini 3 ProOn May 10, DJI announced the DJI Mini 3 Pro aerial drone. The DJI Mini 3 Pro aerial drone weighs less than 249 grams as standard (including smart battery, paddle and microSD card), features 1/1.3-inch dual native ISO sensors, dual vision sensing systems for forward, backward and downward vision, ToF and APAS 4.0, and supports 4K/30fps HDR images and 4K/60fps video recording. The DJI Mini 3 Pro is equipped with the DJI Mini 3 Pro Smart Flight Battery, which can last up to 34 minutes, and the DJI Mini 3 Pro Long Life Smart Flight Battery, which can last up to 47 minutes. The DJI Mini 3 Pro is available in three versions: the standard version, the DJI RC-N1 Remote Control Kit, and the JI RC Remote Control Kit with Screen, priced from $4,198. sourceDJI Mini 3 Pro | Photo: DJIThunderbird Announces the Viper V2 ProThe V2 Professional Edition is a wireless gaming mouse that weighs over 20 percent less than the Thunderbird Viper Ultimate Edition, weighing just 58 grams overall. The Viper V2 Professional also features the The Thunderbird Viper V2 Professional also features third-generation Thunderbird optical mouse micro-motion and Type-C charging port, supports HYPERSPEED WIRELESS wireless technology, and offers approximately 90 million clicks of life, approximately 80 hours of battery life, and multi-device connectivity support for $1099. sourcePhoto: ThunderbirdTmobile Genie Launches Little Red Box ProOn May 10, Tmall Genie launched the portable smart projector Little Red Box Pro, as the second generation of this series, Little Red Box Pro adopts G3 continuous curved and polished glazed design in the exterior design, and the hardware is equipped with a highly translucent coated lens, 500 ANSI lumens projection brightness, 1080P physical resolution, fully automatic focus and omnidirectional automatic keystone correction, and equipped with 1 HDMI, 2 USB 2 0 ports. It also features 1 HDMI, 2 USB 2.0 ports, and a 3.5 hour unplugged battery life. The Little Red Box Pro will go on sale on June 1, and the exact price has yet to be announced. sourcePhoto: Tmobile GenieFist Game Sues Mu Pupil Technology for PlagiarismOn May 9 local time, Tencent's Fist Games formally filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Byte Jump's Shanghai Mu Pupil Technology, which Fist Games states in its suit that Mu Pupil Technology used plagiarism tactics to develop and market its handheld game Endless Duel, including using content, trailers and other promotional materials from Fist Games' League of Legends handheld game to create game content and compete with the League of Legends Handheld game to compete. This is the second time that Fist Games has filed a lawsuit against Mu Hit Tech, having appealed to the District Court for the Central District of California back in 2017, but eventually settling for only $2.9 million. sourceAMD's older graphics cards get 'Light Chase' driversThe Mesa library has recently updated the source code for the Radeon Vphoroniulkan driver, RADV, to give some older AMD cards Vulkan raytracing support at the driver level. This version of the driver supports GFX6 (GCN 1.0 architecture), and while ray tracing can be very hard to run on older cards without a dedicated unit, tests have shown that older cards can run at frame rates from 13 FPS to 250 FPS under certain workloads, which is a significant increase. sourceJust look at the gossip.Netflix plans to launch a lower-priced subscription slot with ads in the fourth quarter of 2022 while cracking down on the password-sharing phenomenon, The Verge reports, citing The New York Times. According to Netflix's earnings report released last month, Netflix's first-quarter net income fell 6 percent year-over-year and it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the quarter, the first time in a decade that Netflix has seen this happen. sourceThe Wall Street Journal reported on May 10 that due to epidemic restrictions that prevented the normal dispatch of U.S. engineers to China, Apple gave local Chinese engineers more access while remotely overseeing and ensuring that the annual hardware product cycle was working properly through live video feeds, augmented reality, and other means. Key aspects such as product design are still handled at Apple's California headquarters. source https://techlife.app/archives/history-of-macos-server-s-demise.html 2022-05-10T00:01:00+08:00 Perhaps Apple's most non-existent service: the history of macOS Server's demiseOn April 21, 2022, Apple officially discontinued support for macOS Server, the server software package for macOS, in a support document. In fact, the main features included in macOS Server have been integrated into the operating system since the release of macOS High Sierra in 2017, and after nearly five years of constant obsolescence, the service has finally come to the end of its life history later than expected. As of April 21, 2022, Apple has discontinued macOS Server. Existing macOS Server users can continue to download the application and use it with macOS Monterey.In the post-Jobs era, the Apple company that fits the popular perception has always been a consumer-oriented Silicon Valley company, one that today designs and sells products that are highly integrated for different user needs rather than packaged solutions for businesses and organizations. While most users have nothing more than a "sorry to know you this way" attitude toward macOS Server, the history of this barely-there service goes all the way back to 1993 - and if every successful business company goes through a very difficult and dark period in its long history, the '90s were certainly the time. If every successful business company goes through a very difficult and dark period in its long history, the '90s are certainly the 'Middle Ages' of Apple's history.Since Jobs was ostracized within the company from 1983 until he left in 1985, Apple's product line has been in disarray as his control has weakened. The old Parisian wanted to turn Apple into the Chanel of Silicon Valley, and as soon as he took over, he called off all projects at the low to mid-range end of the market, hoping to boost profits per product. Garci's idea was supported by then-CEO John Sculley, and thanks to Apple's brand appeal, Apple products were selling at increasing prices thanks to the collaboration of the two wise men, and their rising sales gave them the confidence to continue the strategy, not realizing that this abnormal growth was essentially consuming the company's The company's long-established reputation. "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?" Scully's Silicon Valley Chanel smelled good from 1985 until the 1990s, and then it didn't. Sales of Apple products began to fall short of expectations in 1990, and have declined every year since then. While the rise of the IBM PC and its compatibles was the main reason, Gacy's approach to positioning and pricing Apple products away from the average user did play a role in contributing to the decline. After a roller coaster ride on the earnings front, Scully seriously reflected on his major decision making mistakes, which resulted in getting the French out and bringing the Germans in - with Apple Europe CEO Michael Spindler as the new COO, trying to Apple Europe CEO Michael Spindler became the new COO, attempting to bring Apple's skewed tech tree back on track by relying on precision German craftsmanship.Michael Spindler brought PowerPC and also NewtonWhile the previous strategy proved to be an exhaustive one, the Scully, who had gotten a taste for it, didn't want to give up the cake that was about to arrive. It was clear that cutting the leeks of the average consumer was not a long-term solution, and on March 22, 1993, Apple officially launched its server line, Workgroup Server, to compete head-to-head with IBM, which had long dominated the enterprise market. Unfortunately, Scully did not expect to win, and he was removed from the board on October 15 of the same year and replaced by Spindler.Apple's Workgroup Server was not a success, even without comparing it to IBM. With the exception of Workgroup Server 9150 in February 1996, all the other Workgroup Server servers were based on Macintosh computers of the same era. Perhaps for this reason, Spindler and his successors kept Workgroup Server until Steve Jobs returned like lightning in 1997, when Apple axed the project in a radical product line streamlining process - and then replaced it with a further rackmount server Xserve.Xserve G5, Apple's last generation of PowerPC-based serversThe early Xserve was still essentially a PowerPC processor-powered computer, only with Mac OS X Server 10.0 preinstalled. The first version of this operating system was first released on March 16, 1999, on the NeXTSTEP platform developed by NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded during his time away. Apple brought Jobs back by acquiring NeXT, and NeXTSTEP rightfully replaced the aging Mac OS 9 (collectively known as Classic Mac OS), which became the basis for Mac OS X (renamed macOS in 2016 and still in use today) and even iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.NeXTSTEP operating system user interface - yes, everything Everything Runs DOOM The original Mac OS X Server 1.0 was a highly experimental blend of Mac OS 8.5, the NeXTSTEP platform, and various open source components, designed to open the way for a full commercial release under development. Mac OS X Server for the enterprise, both of which were released on March 24 and May 21, 2001, with the starting version number jumping to 10.0, corresponding to the Roman numeral X in the naming. Mac OS X Server kept pace with Mac OS X for the next decade, until Apple discontinued support for Mac OS X Server when the last generation of Xserve Xeon servers was discontinued on January 31, 2011.Mac OS X Server 1.0 installation CD sold in a boxed set, not very well done but expensive Xserve + Mac One of the main reasons why the OS X Server combination was not destined to compete with IBM's solution was that Apple refused to loosen its grip on its own product and wanted businesses to be able to manage their work as "elegantly" as they would with a regular Mac OS X. However, Mac OS Server's closed-source and open-source component format makes it difficult for enterprises to customize server functionality, and the deep hardware and software bundle forces up maintenance costs and upgrades, all for the price of a nice graphical user interface.Businesses weren't buying, and Apple was forced to turn its attention to smaller, more easily deployable products for offices and schools. Because Mac OS X Server is essentially Mac OS X plus a dedicated server component, Apple changed its strategy: Starting with Mac OS X 10.7, Mac OS X Server will be sold as a software package rather than a standalone branch operating system, and any user will be able to install the package on a qualified Mac computer and use it as a server. With this shift in focus, Apple hopes to create Mac-built office and educational environments in offices and schools where administrators can manage the devices of their organization's members directly on their own Macs using their existing networks without deploying additional servers. This is the best use of macOS Server The most important feature of Mac OS X Server in package form is the description file Manager, a feature that allows administrators to stay in sync with them by creating a profile containing information such as user accounts for mail, calendar, contacts and messages, system settings, enforced restrictions, and PIN and password rules, and other members of the organization can simply install the profile and deploy the device. Interestingly, the profiles also allow administrators to push agency-licensed apps purchased through the App Store bulk purchase program directly to designated devices without using an Apple ID, a loophole exploited by the various "Apple Helpers" that have proliferated over the years to supposedly "install apps without an Apple ID.Beginning with OS X 10.11, released on September 16, 2015, no new features were added to Mac OS X Server, a version known as Server 5.0 and the last major update to Mac OS X Server; on September 20, 2016, OS X was renamed macOS, and with it, Mac OS X Server was renamed macOS Server. Starting with macOS Server 5.7 on September 28, 2018, Apple removed features from macOS Server other than the Description File Manager, Open Directory, and Xsan, which seemed to foreshadow the fate of macOS Server.The December 8, 2021 release of macOS Server 5.12 with macOS 12 is the last version in which the description file manager will be replaced by a more lightweight MDM solution - Apple has found a home for all of macOS Server's features, from the server to the Mac computer, from a standalone operating system to a package sold separately as "DLC". macOS Server has failed to grow into the great UNIX branch that Apple intended. The situation of macOS Server today reflects the nature of Apple as a so-called "consumer goods company" in the technology industry - a company that can change everything with the iPhone, even "again". Apple can change everything with the iPhone, and even "change everything again," while macOS Server can only change itself. https://techlife.app/archives/how-does-macos-manage-with-so-many-cores-in-the-m1-cpu.html 2022-05-06T17:50:00+08:00 How does macOS manage with so many cores in the M1 CPU?Editor's note: This article originally was published on Dr. Howard Oakley's personal blog and has been translated, annotated, and posted with the author's permission. This article has been modified to some extent to add detail and to facilitate understanding by the general reader. In January 1984, Apple began designing, developing and marketing the Macintosh line of personal computers. In those nearly 40 years, Apple has written many milestones in the history of technology, including three very important points - the migration from the Motorola 68000 architecture to the PowerPC platform in 1994, the migration from the PowerPC platform to the Intel x86 platform in 2005, and the migration from the Intel x86 platform to Apple Silicon in 2020. The migration from the Intel x86 platform to Apple Silicon in 2020.On November 11, 2020, Apple launched the M1 chip in Cupertino, California. Not only was it Apple's first ARM-based processor for personal computers, but it was also a powerful processor that made even the long-suffering Geekers feel excited.But the visible scenery is always separated from the unseen effort. As a chip designed and optimized specifically for the Mac, how exactly does the system schedule programs on the M Series processor.About Dr. Howard OakleyHoward Oakley Dr. is currently a Mac software developer and founder of the website Eclectic Light Company. His love affair with the Mac began when he fell in love with the Macintosh SE and Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, and he's been addicted to them ever since.Asymmetric processor architectureIn previous Intel processor models of the Mac, all the cores of the Intel processor were identical, so this processor was a Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) architecture. What the system has to do is really simple: keep the load on each core roughly similar.Opening the CPU History window of the Activity Monitor on an Intel processor Mac, we can notice that the chart is divided into two columns, with the odd-numbered cores on the left being the real physical cores and the virtualized cores from Intel Hyper-Threading technology on the right. You can see that under high load, the system spreads the load evenly across all cores, while under lighter load the system places the load primarily on the real physical cores. The horizontal axis is time, and the vertical axis is load, with time getting progressively closer to the time from left to right but the Apple Silicon on CPU is completely different, as its processor section is all made up of two different CPU cores, one called the Firestorm High Performance core (sometimes abbreviated as P-core) and the other called the Icestorm High Efficiency core (sometimes abbreviated as E-core), this asymmetric processor is called asymmetric multiprocessing (Asymmetric Multiprocessing, abbreviated as AMP, ASMP) machine, or Heterogeneous computing (Heterogeneous Computing) processors.In total, four chips have been released in the M1 series, starting in 2020 and ending today, namelyM1 (2020)M1 Pro 与 M1 Max (2021 年)M1 Ultra (2022 年)The E core has 5 frequencies to choose from and the P core has 15 frequencies to choose from via powermetrics we can tell that The E core has a maximum frequency of 2064Mhz, while the P core is split between 3204Mhz for the M1 chip and up to 3228 MHz for the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra. If the system remains as before, it will not only waste more of the middle gear on the P-core, but also make programs running on the E core significantly slower.In addition, the M1 and M1 Pro/Max/Ultra have completely different combinations of E and P cores, and each processor has a choice of different CPU counts. "This logic is intuitively cumbersome. To simplify kernel management, macOS divides kernels into 2 to 4 clusters of the same type, depending on their function; clusters can be understood as groups. However, the kernel numbering at the system level is the same as the kernel numbering shown in powermetrics, but not the same as the kernel numbering shown in the activity monitor; so for consistency, the text will use the activity monitor's kernel numbering rules, but number them according to system clusters. Under macOS Monterey 12.3.1, the functional clusters for the three chips of the M1 series are as follows.M1 consists of one E cluster (containing 4 E cores) and one P cluster (containing 4 P cores) named E and P0, respectivelyM1 Pro/Max consists of one E cluster (containing 2 E cores) and two P clusters (each containing 4 P cores), named E, P0, and P1M1 Ultra consists of one E cluster (containing 4 E cores) and four P clusters (each containing 4 P cores), named E, P0, P1, P2, and P3 In theory, all the cores within a cluster will run at the same frequency, and usually (but not always) keep the load on each cluster's " the load on the cores' is roughly similar. In extreme cases it may even happen that the system schedules all the tasks on one core in a cluster in a single stream. For example, Logic Pro importing material would be an extreme case of how thread control worksIn actual application development, macOS does not provide a public API for applications to use specific cores, core types, or clusters directly; instead, applications are typically managed by Grand Central Dispatch using QoS, and macOS then uses these settings to determine the management policy for specific threads.In practice, threads with the lowest QoS will only be dispatched to the E core cluster, while threads with higher QoS may be dispatched to the E or P core cluster. Although the dispatch can be dynamically modified via the command tool taskpolicy or the function setpriority() in the code, it is only available for higher QoS threads. The "lowest QoS threads only run on E clusters" rule remains the same.The threaded QoS for installing Xcode via the macOS App Store is the lowest possible, and does not use P-core macOS at all Its own policy is to run most background tasks at the lowest possible QoS. This includes Time Machine's automatic backups, Spotlight index updates, and Archive Utility's compression and decompression. It's worth mentioning that many people may have an intuitive feeling about Archive Utility: downloading a copy of Xcode in xip format and decompressing it takes a long time, but this is because a lot of code is restricted to the E core, and users can't actively move it to the P core.Background threads (Background threads)Because the E core clusters on the M1 and M1 Pro/Max chips are different in size, with the former having 4 E cores and the latter only 2, there is a difference in how the minimum QoS threads are loaded and run on the M1 and M1 Pro/Max.When running a thread with a QoS of 9 on an M1 chip with 4 E cores, each E core runs at around 1000M (1 GHz), while in an M1 Pro/Max with only 2 E cores running the same QoS of 9, the E cores also run at 1000 MHz if there is only one thread, but if there are two or more, the frequency of each E core increases to 2064 MHz. This design ensures that the E cluster in M1 Pro/Max provides at least the same background task performance as the M1, even if the cluster size is different.Of course there will still be exceptions here, threads like backupd that have the lowest QoS will always run at ~1000MHz even on M1 Pro/Max if they are also limited by current from I/O.User initiated threads (User threads)All threads with a QoS higher than 9 are handled in a similar way, the difference between them is simply that they have different priorities. High QoS threads are eligible to run on any of the cores or clusters, though they are handled differently on M1 and M1 Pro/Max.On M1, since there is only one P cluster and one E cluster, and a total of 8 physical cores, only a maximum of 8 threads can be assigned to these two clusters at any one time, with each cluster being allocated 4 threads. If the number of threads to be assigned at the same time is less than or equal to 4, the system will try to run them on the P cluster, unless there are more threads of higher QoS level waiting to run in the current queue, in which case the E cluster will be used additionally to run such tasks. In the above case, the maximum frequency of the P-core will be 3GHz and the maximum frequency of the E-core will be 2GHz, which is twice as high as when running threads with a QoS of 9.However, M1 Pro/Max has 3 clusters, two clusters with 4 P cores each, and one E cluster with 2 cores. If the number of threads to be allocated at the same time is less than or equal to 4, the system will actively divide the threads into the first P (P0) cluster, and the second P cluster will remain unloaded and inactive at all times; if there are more than 4 threads to be allocated at the same time, the extra threads (greater than or equal to 5 and less than or equal to 8) will be allocated to the second P (P1) cluster; if there are more If there are more threads (greater than or equal to 1 and less than or equal to 2) etc. running at this time, then these processes will be reallocated to the E cluster. In the above case, the maximum frequency of the P-core will be 3228 MHz and the maximum frequency of the E-core will be 2064 MHz.The M1 Ultra chips have a total of 5 clusters, each with 4 cores. They have roughly the same strategy as the M1 Pro/Max, except that the 4 P clusters are called in preference before the E clusters are used.However, there are two cases where the code appears to run only on a single core.The first happens during the boot process, when the code runs only on a single E core before the kernel initializes and runs on the other cores. The other happens when, after downloading the macOS update and in the 'ready' phase, the 5 update threads of macOS are given active residency on just one P-core on the M1 Pro/Max chip, the first of the 2 P-clusters (P0, labeled Core 3 below). This uncommon activity resides all the way through the 30 minutes it takes to prepare to install the update. Patterns under load (Patterns under load)Here are a few typical examples of macOS policies affecting scheduling, taken from the CPU history window of the Activity Monitor. The diagram above shows a range of loads on the M1 chip from progressively more CPU-intensive threads. As mentioned above M1 has two clusters E and P0, each of which is divided here by a blue box. Starting from the left, the load of the 1st to 4th high priority processes is all taken up by cluster P0, while the load of the subsequent 5th to 8th processes is progressively taken up by cluster E to start with. This graph, on the other hand, shows the changing load of M1 Pro under heavy load, with some threads being background processes and others being high priority processes, and while the vast majority of the load is carried by the E cluster, the P0 cluster also carries quite a bit of the load, while the P1 cluster is primarily used to handle some of the peak load. The last figure shows the operation on the M1 Ultra, where the author himself has rearranged the corresponding cores into their corresponding clusters, with E is at the top, and P0 to P3 are arranged sequentially from left to right and top to bottom starting from the second row. The load shown in the figure is a very typical situation - the first few minutes after the system logs in, you can see that E and P0 carry the majority of the load, and in the early days when the load is heavier, the system schedules more tasks to the remaining 3 P clusters from P1 to P3 to complete the tasks faster.Currently, the Activity Monitor does not provide one important piece of information about M-Series processors - the cluster frequency. With the CPU at 100% load, which is equivalent to active residency, the cluster completes instructions at frequencies below 1000MHz less than half as fast as the same cluster at 2064MHz. Unfortunately, the only means of obtaining frequency information is currently the command tool powermetrics.Below is a summary of macOS management of the CPU cores in the M1, M1 Pro and Max chips. Information on the M1 Ultra is still being compiled and will be added as it becomes available. If you are using the M1 Ultra, are familiar with it, and would like to help, please feel free to contact the author, Dr. Howard Oakley.This June, Apple will (probably) announce the successor to its M1 series at WWDC. At that time, it may be possible to see their core architecture and the management policies offered by macOS.Thanks to Walt for the info on the Ultra and the screenshots under load.