bobolicious

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bobolicious
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  • The cheesegrater Mac Pro could still be the best Mac ever made

    boboliciousbobolicious
    zimmie said:
    I have a macpro4,1 with updated firmware making it a 5,1. Two six-core Xeons, 96 GB of RAM, terabytes of SSD space. It's a beast of a machine, and I like it a lot. I wouldn't call it the best Mac Apple has ever made, though. The Mac Studio is better, hands-down.

    It's surprisingly hard to add Thunderbolt to a classic Mac Pro. It will work ... as long as you boot into Windows first, and don't hot-plug anything. Oh, and it doesn't do USB over the port, which is important for me. I use a 21.5" Ultrafine 4K which accepts DisplayPort over USB-C but needs the single USB 2 channel for brightness control, audio, and so on.

    The firmware doesn't support booting from an NVMe drive. Sure, you can boot from a thumb drive or a small SATA SSD then chainload to an NVMe drive, but something non-NVMe must be in the boot path.

    The power distribution is pretty weird. The power supply has plenty of headroom, but you only get two aux power connectors for GPUs, and they have a weird capacity (120W each, rather than the more common 75W or 150W each). Some GPUs (e.g, the Radeon RX Vega 64) draw exclusively from the aux power connectors, which can cause the system to brown out, even though it has plenty of power budget left (the 75W allocated to the slot isn't used). Wouldn't be safe to draw more over the two aux connectors, which is why there should have been more than two.

    It's also huge. If you haven't seen one in person, it's almost certainly bigger than you expect. And heavy. And the "handles" have fairly sharp edges, which make it unpleasant to move around on a regular basis.

    There are undeniably a lot of tradeoffs with the old Mac Pro. They're worth it for me, but they're not for everybody.
    I can boot Mojave on a 5,1 NVMe ?  

    It is indeed my favourite mac, with the 2011 i7 mini not far behind for different reasons. Both support multiple user replaceable and upgradable storage (raid) and ram, and have discrete GPU, while acknowledging the chip speeds are now out gunned.  The 5,1 will run a VEGA 56 GPU, and with 12/24 cores I understand it as faster in ways than the 2019 pro when it launched. The 2018 i7 mini offers ram and eGPU upgrade potential, however storage is at the mercy of the mothership, and is that by design vs technical...?

    The 2013 Pro seemed to usher in an era of underperformance by design (for profit?) without Crossfire (multiple GPU) support on macOS, vs enabling such in Apple's proprietary apps such as FCP.  Is such arguably more support effort than mGPU system support ? Rough benchmarks suggest that a dual D700 with Crossfire might target VEGA 64 GPU comparisons, and this all the way back in 2013. Would such make that model still relevant...?

    The only faster than v56 GPU on ARM seems the Ultra, which is completely non upgradable, so while it may seem impressive now, will it fall into the accelerated obsolescence cycles that seem to have been increasing since 2011, with macOS upgrades and support down to 3 from 6+ years, from a time when upgrades seemed on merit vs shareholder calendar...?

    I am reminded of the abandonment of MacWorld - suggested to remove the calendar timing pressure such put on development, which I might assume is only getting more complex with time...?
    JMStearnsX2watto_cobra

  • Russia tried to hijack some of Apple's internet traffic for 12 hours

    boboliciousbobolicious
    ... is this a good reminder of the potential vulnerability of (especially large, high value) cloud services with so many potential attack vectors ...?

    ... is it the opposite of the concept of the internet in terms of communication reliability of multiple web connections ...?

    The Kremlin apparently went low tech: www.cnet.com/culture/kremlin-finds-way-to-avoid-leaks-typewriters/
    sconosciuto9secondkox2jony0Alex1Nwatto_cobra

  • LG UltraWide 40WP95C-W Thunderbolt Display review: A curved display with plenty of space

    boboliciousbobolicious
    entropys said:
    The studio display’s actual display is hard to beat, true. 

    Where it falls down is ports and the incredible decision to not offer an adjustable stand as standard in the box. It actually angers me a bit to contemplate the meeting at Apple where that decision was workshopped. The Apple engineers sold us out to the margin calculators.

    So here we are, where LG has produced a larger display, more flexible ports, and an adjustable stand capable of handling a heavier display, at a similar price.
    ...
     
    ...does most everything the post 2011 Apple does tighten the financial 'margin' for those with a life investment in the platform ? Pre 2012 my sense was Apple pursued profit to enable better serving customers as a development priority, yet since then my sense is Apple has been pursuing shareholder profit as the end goal and at the expense of customers... Is it their option, and in the end ours to support...?
    watto_cobra

  • Jony Ive is no longer consulting for Apple

    boboliciousbobolicious
    ... Pro customers can't adjust internal storage or ram for need let alone take advantage of imminent GPU/CPU options on a $4k 'pro' studio mac...
    Is it time for an efficacy reality check...?
    AI_lias

  • Jony Ive is no longer consulting for Apple

    boboliciousbobolicious
    Perhaps for consideration...

    Left Brain                 Right Brain
    Cook            Jobs                 Ive
    Cook                                     Ive
    Cook
    DAalseth