spliff monkey

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spliff monkey
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  • Apple silicon Mac documentation suggests third-party GPU support in danger

    KITA said:
    rob53 said:
    The A12Z Bionic is up to 8 GPU cores. The Most powerful and expensive GPUs have cores in the thousands. What would it take for Apple to create its own separate 500 core GPU SoC or maybe only a 100 core GPU with the ability to use several of them in a blade setup. There's nothing stopping Apple, other than patents, from making whatever they want to any way they want to. Look at the Mac Pro. It's a fantastic workstation. 
    The Mac Pro is not a fantastic workstation,


    Of course you don’t have to spend $14k on one. I purchased one for my studio for about $7500 including some aftermarket upgrades. I’ve owned many Macs since the time they used to be beige and the new MacPro is basically the absolute best Mac ever built. The performance is top notch (it’s not always just about benchmarks) and there are a slew of other reasons you failed to even include in your “analysis” like noise level(which is basically 0 ), top notch components, build quality and materials, overall design (the slip cover chassis is brilliant), expansion options and aesthetics.
    Rayz2016KidGlovesjdb8167watto_cobra
  • Adobe fixes Premiere Pro bug that blew out some MacBook Pro speakers

    I say this is primarily Apples fault.

    The amplifier circuitry that drives the speakers should have had some sort of protection built in to limit the maximum amount of power that could be sent to the speakers.
    From a liability standpoint this is my so easy. While without a doubt a good idea, nothing requires such a protection mechanism from Apple. Therefore, you can argue that the damage it is the consequence of a defect of Adobe’s software which makes them liable. 
    However, I’m not sure what the fine print of the EULA says. I’d be surprised if they wouldn’t have some CYA passages in it to this effect. 
    Undoubtly, as a token of excellent customer service, Apple and Adobe might - separately or jointly - nite the bullet and comepansate affected users. 

    It is standard practice in the electronics industry to put protections in place for any component that could possibly be damaged by some unforeseen issue.

    We have current and temperature protections for lithium batteries/charging circuits, current limiting for LED lights, thermal throttling for processors and so on. Apple is usually on top of things, but this time they made a mistake.
    While I’m aware about the standard practice, I don’t k ow regarding this specific case. What’s state of the art regarding speakers? Do others manufacturers protect them against overload? Or can you kill any speaker with the “right” input?
    You can kill any speaker with the incorrect input. Too much power, impedance mismatch etc. can both lead to blown speakers. I have personally never seen a speaker than is built to prevent such a thing on the input side. I have seen “circuit breakers “ that trip but only for the power supply if they are powered speakers. The wrong audio input will still destroy even the best studio speaker and its common that engineers who listen to their tracks at high volume eventually blow out their speakers. So you don’t even have to go that wild to create a failure and it totally effects too end speakers. 
    dysamoriawonkothesane
  • Look to the new Mac mini with Thunderbolt 3 to predict what the 'modular' Mac Pro will be

    I’m a little “worried” Apple won’t replace the cMP with something decent. It seems most are keeping healthfully low expectations and are starting to make adjustments as well.

    I’ll continue to use their iPads, iPhones maybe MacBooks (they’re good, just iPads are a better fit for me in mobile), but for work I may have to make the transition to a hackintosh or god forbid windows. 

    The reason? Well my current 2012 cMP (granted with some heavy Mods) is running 12- cores at 3.46, 128gb ram, a 1080ti, a highpoint 7101 4x- m2 ssd blade NVMe raid card on 16 lanes, usb C, 16 TB internal storage on Ssd, 4K 10 bit broadcast I/O. It’s gone through several iterations before that. 

    Anything that can do less than that or have a shorter lifespan potential is a serious downgrade and an absolute no go. 

    If the new MP ends up just a stack of pricey Apple parts intended to replace a series of PCI slots it really seems like a solution looking for a problem.

    I’m thinking of the Black Magic EGPU. It’s cool, but it’s custom design compromises what the original concept was designed to accomplish (modularity) at a extreme price premium, just to optimize the platform. I guess it depends on what you want. Flashy and bespoke or something that works “off the shelf” and comes in about 20-30% less expensive that may or may not be “fit and form” perfect. 

    A tower about half the size of the cMP with PCI 3.0 seems like a much simpler solution. Apple can design and fabricate it without much hassle (we know they don’t like spending time on these “pro” systems anyway.

    If they do stick with a similar look in a smaller package, it would be a clear signal to pro’s Apple is listening and knows what they want.  Make it available in space grey and we’ll all have orgasms. “Another classic in the making”. Great tag. 

    They already have enough to scrap from the cMP (ditch the giant optical drives, the giant heat sink, the ridiculously huge power supply, the 3.5” Hd’s and replace them with SSD and M2. The new iMac pro is a great template in terms the internals. There’s not much to work out on that end. (IMO they are wasting Xeons on that machine). 

    A nice “core” package with a few upgrade options like processor (single or multiple cpu configs) would make for really nice expandable package/ range or options. 

    For those that need even more expansion, make a really nice expansion chassis available where the user can add a second GPU, more drives, more expansion cards etc. Maybe they can work out a unique interconnect to take advantage of native pci performance. If you don’t need all of that there are plenty of thunderbolt 3 third party options for lighter weight work, albeit you may have to make several
    purchases and may have to share TB3 bandwidth. 

    I feel like the expansion chassis and how it connects to the “core” are what would define a real “pro” system more so than most of the parts inside. The user wants to add those and they don’t want to not can they rely on Apple for all of those parts.  The more they lock it down the fewer third party options would be available. 

    I couldn’t imagine buying a whole box when all I want to do in the future is a “usb4” or  new 9K broadcast monitor card. I would have thrown out my tower at least 3 times in that scenario. 

    Also whatever chassis they conceive should work with the IMac Pros an the MBP’s for those that need it, thus expanding the range of “pro-ness” to three and not just one of their most respected lines. 
    entropysStayPuftZombiewilliamlondoncornchipfastasleep
  • 'Galaxy S9' packaging leak hints at single rear camera sensor with variable aperture

    The ONLY thing that caught my eye in this, was the variable aperture lens.

    As a semi-pro photographer, this would be a nice-to-have in the iPhone, if it can deliver a tangible benefit, since the lens and sensor are so small...
    What would you hope to gain by having 1 aperture smaller in a smartphone? 1.4-2.8 is not a huge difference in DOF. Also, since most phone cameras adjust the chip gain for exposure, you can achieve the same effect by just cutting the gain which would improve the quality anyway. Now if they said it was “dual aperture” and the 2nd aperture was f8 or f11 etc I’d say it might be useful, but even then needing “more depth of field” isn’t really a problem with a smartphone. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. 
    spheric
  • Video shows 10-year-old unlocking mother's iPhone X via Face ID

    Soli said:
    I'm surprised that is an issue since it projects IR and captures IR. Why are external visible light sources even needed?
    Well, obviously theres much more infra-red light under sunlight than just a bunch of dots from a near microscopic sensor. I would imagine the sensor would render allot like monochrome IR film under sunlight and would resemble a “greyscale” image. Without ambient light it would just be a bunch of points with no detail in between. 
    bb-15