Rogue01

I would not say the iMac is better than ever.  The 24" is a poor design.  No SD slot, headphone jack on the side, Ethernet in a power brick?  Limited to 16GB of RAM, limited to 2TB of storage, no dedicated graphics, and the M1 has slower multi-core scores than Intel.  Without improved graphics, the prior models with dedicated GPUs smoked the M1.  Once Apple makes an iMac with the M Pro and M Max CPUs, like the new MacBook Pros, then they will be worthy once again...and bringing back the 27" model.

I got a Mac Pro 1,1 for free from someone on Facebook.  After buying two used 3.0 GHz quad-core Xeons on eBay for $50 and updating the firmware and SMC to the Mac Pro 2,1 firmware, it is now a '2008' Mac Pro with 8-cores.  Great for running older software.  That $50 CPU upgrade doubled the performance of the original Mac Pro 1,1, and that was already 3x faster than the Power Mac G5.  Those Mac Pros 1,1 to 5,1 were the best Macs.

I wouldn't call the Apple Silicon transition 'successful'.  It has been over two years and Apple just now replaces the M1 with a new CPU, and they still don't have a replacement for the Mac Pro?  How is that successful?  Apple finished the Intel transition in 270 days and had newer and faster models the following year, and continued to do so for 15 more years.  Granted there is a supply chain issue, but the Apple Silicon transition has been slow as molasses.  There used to be high-end, high-performance iMacs. Now we are stuck with a single model with a low-end base model CPU (M1) that maxes out at 16GB of RAM, when the model it replaced maxed out at 128GB of RAM.  Everyone thought the Macs would come down in price with Apple making their own CPUs, but it has been the opposite.  The Macs are now more expensive than ever, and new models come with an unpleasant price hike.  And now you are forced to pay the Apple-Tax for memory and storage at the time of purchase.  No upgrading later.

Watch the old Apple keynotes in which Steve Jobs introduced new models that were faster, but less expensive, or the same price as the outgoing models.  Speaking of this trip down Mac Pro memory lane, Apple made a point to show that the new Mac Pro started at $2,499, but the equally configured PC was over $4,700.  Now Apple's base model Mac Pro is $5,999, and the 2020 iMac 27" with 10-core i9 and 5700XT graphics beats it on most benchmarks, and cost less (at the time).  Of course the Mac Studio beats it hands down.  Yet Apple still sells it for $5,999.

Big Sur 11.6.6 caused the mail attachment bug.  A permissions error appeared when trying to open an attachment in Mail and Outlook.  Caused a lot of IT calls for those that had not yet upgraded to Monterey.  So the solution is 11.6.7 or Monterey 12.4.

canukstorm said:

elijahg said:

StrangeDays said:

Gruber has already said it’s only OK to his eyes.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/04/26/studio-display-camera-firmware-beta

Seems a bit weird that it apparently uses a similar camera to the iPhones but the quality is so poor. Seems like they cheaped out on it and are trying to fix it in software, probably by applying the same algorithms that the iPhones use. Has anyone done a teardown to find if its the same sensor to the iPhone 13?

9to5mac has a great article on why the Studio Display's poor webcam quality is a hardware, not software, problem.  And by hardware problem, they don't mean the webcam is defective

https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/26/apples-studio-displays-poor-webcam-quality-is-not-a-software-bug-after-all/

That is a great article, and it is accurate.  The ultra-wide camera in the iPhone is lousy compared to the regular 12MP camera.  Ultra-wide shots are much lower quality.  The new iPhone 13 Pro uses the ultra-wide camera for the new Macro feature, and the photos have a lot more 'noise' in them because of the ultra-wide camera.  Turning off the Macro feature actually gives you better results with up close photos that are within the focus range of the regular 12MP camera, which is pretty close.  Apple used the iPhone 11 ultra wide camera in the studio display, so you can't fix bad hardware with software.  There really was no need for center stage on a big 27" monitor in which you are sitting in a fixed position when using the camera.  Maybe Apple will get it right with the 2nd version of the Display, in 2 to 3 years, with their current track record of upgrades.