Category Archives: Computer

This is the Modern  World

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Since the release of Big Sur (Version 11) in 2020 your system is locked, with a read-only file system separate from the user files, although it does not appear like that to you, the user. We have lost control of our computers. Apple systems are now so locked down and filled with security codes and devices (T1, T2 Security Chip) that we no longer understand or can even control what they are doing. This is security by obfuscation. Release Notes for upgrades typically include just a tiny portion of the actual changes, bug-fixes, and possible regressions that Apple has done. Passwords multiply and dual factor authentication has become the norm. Without the correct passwords your computer has to be physically returned to Apple Support, you only normally get 10 attempts to enter the correct one. After 50 attempts to guess your own password in “Recovery” you are permanently locked out of your own machine. Many updates are now covert, even though they have caused serious damage on several occasions. Everything is sandboxed and apps no longer have access to your own disks, files and folders, without explicit permission. System updates are now only available online, through Software Update. Applications which are not officially approved by Apple are highly unlikely to work. Starting up your computer from another external disk is essentially no longer possible. With Apple Silicon you can no longer replace or upgrade your hard disk, increase the amount of RAM, never mind attempt to service your own machine (there are no service manuals).

So all that may seem pretty awful, but maybe we are just reaching forward to the time when the computer just becomes an appliance, which runs without needing to be “serviced”. In due course it will self-upgrade and run without user interference. This is already happening in the world of phones, which are of course now very powerful computers themselves. It must also be remembered that soon nearly all the high street banks will close, your computer will become your bank and hence must be secure. Once everything is run in solid state, system on a chip, reliability increases and it either works or doesn’t. Neither you, or anybody else, can break your OSX System, it is locked. Your modern computer is already self healing, it will try and help you, that is machine learning aka AI. I already have a computer which has been used and run for nearly a year, without ever restarting, now that is an appliance.

I come from a time when computers regularly crashed on a daily basis, involving loss of unsaved work and regular restarts. There was a voodoo knowledge required to run a computer, involving selecting extensions, repairing permissions, defragmenting hard disks, clearing viruses, checking memory usage, updating again and again. All this knowledge is now redundant and soon all these problems will have evaporated. Still I would like to mention a few of the crazy computer glitches I have seen. The worst is a hard disk so full it cannot even start up. A computer needs some space to write files when it starts, without any available space you must start up from an external disk. In short, never let your your system hard disk become more than 80% full. Apple now lets you “manage “ your files in iCloud Drive, although I do not recommend this as you will soon be paying them even more money. One of the best resources in the old days was Disk Warrior, which could recover lost hard disks (HFS+ format) by rewriting the Directory, when it worked it was just like magic. Once when I was asked to install a new hard disk, I was surprised to find the new disk was in fact a book, they hadn’t opened the Amazon package! Embarrassment and wasted journeys all round. In a previous blog article I detail the folder found on an iMac which claimed to be larger than a million gigabytes (1.13 Petabytes). Best of all, I was called out to fix a computer which had stopped working. It had crashed and they didn’t know how to switch it back on!

Apple still have some way to go in their search for a perfect locked system. Some key applications such as Soft Raid, Drive DX and many others may require Kexts (Kernel extensions) to function and currently require you to run Reduced Security (available in Recovery Mode / Startup Security Utility). It is also difficult to install many third party apps without Reduced Security / Allow all apps. To access this on Apple Silicon Macs, press and hold the Power button until the display shows Loading Startup Options, then release it. This takes you to the Startup Options screen, select the Options icon, then click Continue underneath it. On Apple Silicon all the old ways to access startup commands have changed or disappeared. There are currently no third party apps to repair APFS disks (since it is not documented), you must use Disk Utility, which is slowly improving. The reported available space on APFS disks can also be wrong or misleading. I recommend switching off iCloud Drive, it can become confusing unless you really need it. You no longer need anti-virus software, switch it off. Buy a cheap external disk for Time Machine to safeguard your data, although it no longer backs up your System. Please remember your computer login password and Apple ID, they are vital, use the Passwords app for everything else. Check everything in Security and Privacy. This is the modern Apple world of computing, there is no Trash only a Bin, things work differently now.

Useful Information

Mac Attorney – Slow Macintosh?

Eclectic Light – Mac Troubleshooting

Mr Macintosh – Old System Installers

The Magnificent Robodevco Disaster

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In 1982, at the instigation of Patrick D. Martin, I became the photographic co-ordinator for Robodevco. This later became The Roboshow, where a prototype multimedia computer controlled a forty-three screen, three dimensional sound experience. It was hosted by ‘Q’, a virtual robot at a large warehouse off Torriano Avenue in Kentish Town, London, 1985. It proved to be a “a completely new screen sensation”.

Before the Roboshow there was the Technocab, the most enjoyable part of the whole experience. This was a blacked out London taxi cab containing a Trinitron TV and a BBC computer. Due to the size of the huge cathode ray tube monitor it was a one person experience with binaural headphones, like a solo cinema. The cab would start up as if going on a journey, often dry ice was involved, sometimes we rocked the cab to simulate movement. A taste of what you would see (2 mins in) is contained in the following video, the Roboshow Electronic Press Kit. This low-res video features my stills animated with Bob Lawrie of Blink Productions, as well as the triggered micrographics of Richard Brown.

On the strength of this intense experience nearly a million pounds was raised to fund the Roboshow experience, which was intended to be franchised. A prototype multi screen cinema was constructed and the images would fly around the space in a truly fresh and disorienting manner, after being introduced by Q, a TV robot. Out on location Q was sometimes an American football style roller skater with a video boombox, who featured in the video shot by Charlie Arnold.

The Roboshow garnered a lot of good press, being featured in The Observer, The Face and New Scientist. This description of the show was published in the Evening Standard, January 1987:

“We went into a room that seemed smaller than it actually was because the 20 chairs on the raised platform were pointing towards 50 TV screens that ran around the front and side walls. There was one big screen in the middle.
The lights dimmed.
A rollerskater zoomed straight across our line of vision from left to right with an accompanying sound effect that seemed almost three dimensional. The show had begun– and for the next seven minutes images flickered, jumped, danced and propelled themselves across the screens. Sometimes it was the same picture. Sometimes it would break up so you were seeing the same thing from divers angles on different screens.
It is an experience 50 times as intense as watching regular TV because of the interplay between the screens and the meganess of the sound system.”

These are some of the quotes from the Robodevco Press Pack, which demonstrate why Roboshow garnered so much attention:

“Totally wild … any explanation would fail. to do justice to this experience”
Bruce Dessau, City Limits, Aug 21 ’86.

“The next medium to take over where Cinema left off’
Televisual, Nov ’86.

“Q makes Max Headroom look about as wacky as Sooty”
Direction, Oct ’86.

“Superb -look forward to seeing it in Piccadilly Circus”
Juliet Rix (BBC Newsnight).

“The technical possibilities are extremely exciting”
Roma Felstein (Broadcast).

“Very impressive”
Barry Fox (New Scientist).

“The most important development in Entertainment since they got rid of the Proscenium Arch”
Anthony Horowitz.

This is my photograph of the actual prototype Roboshow in Kentish Town. It was intended to expand the show and run it at Paul Raymond’s Revuebar Boulevard Theatre in Walkers Court Soho, London. Unfortunately this never happened.

It is important to remember that all this was happening before the advent of the internet, digital cameras, HD video or flat screen monitors. In fact analogue video was equivalent to 720×576 pixels at best, that is 625 (576 visible) interleaved scan lines in a 4×3 format. At the time Video 8 with it’s small form factor was the most exciting camera development, but most video was filmed on large and heavy U-matic cameras. Nevertheless The Daily Mirror observed that “the revolution starts here… Shock the music industry and change the world of video”. For an in depth explanation of all this technology the article in The Games Machine magazine, dated August 1987, reveals the many participants and innovations involved:

As well as the visuals, audio was an integral part of the experience. A holographic cassette was produced with music by Phil Nicholas, a Fairlight programmer, later to work with The Willesden Dodgers, Stock Aitken Waterman and Def Leppard, among many others.

Here is a promo pic of Patrick Martin, Phil Nicholas and Marcus Kirby taken at Robodevco headquarters:

By 1985 I was fortunately working for New Musical Express and so mostly avoided the machinations involved when new directors and accountants were appointed to Robodevco. The freelance crew (who made the Roboshow) were encouraged to sign contracts to make them rich when the project succeeded, yet were to become liable for large debts as bank guarantors without real equity. Thankfully I did not sign up. Ultimately, after the failure to produce an actual show, this led to arguments about the structure of the project and ultimate dissolution of the company. The directors became XYLO and took the technical assets which opened at a disco called Zhivagos in Darlington in 1988. RIP.
Meanwhile Patrick regrouped and formed Psychovision with a new Technocab, but this time in a Dodge van. I went to the grand unveiling at Chelsea Harbour, but disastrously the new van was not yet finished. Shamefully the many punters were told it had broken down on the Westway. Eventually the Dodge Technocab aka Psychomobile did surface at Covent Garden:

There was some mitigation for the previous disasters when in 1992 Psychovision created a 5 screen show for the Victoria & Albert Sporting Glory Exhibition which was later screened as part of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In 2011 Justin Kirby made Roboshow Reboot, a website to document this story, but it has long since disappeared. Here is a brief 44 second clip of my submission for this. It sure all was groundbreaking fun while it lasted…

To conclude here is the full interview Richard Brown made for Roboshow Reboot at the Rewire 2011 conference, which sums up the whole story very well:


M1 Studio – Don’t believe the Hype

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Studio1920Well it was the M1 Mac I had been waiting for, so on announcement day I plumped for a Mac Studio with M1 Max, 24-core GPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The migration from a Mac Pro 2010, 2×3.46ghz and 96GB Ram went smoothly considering I was coming from the 2018 Mojave 10.14 system. As you can see I am using all the ports on the back, grateful for their inclusion. One of the main reasons for this update was simply to be on a modern and supported system, yet I am hard put to find any useful improvements in the system software.

In fact I am disappointed that there are still so many glitches after all this time, there should have been plenty of time to iron all these out. Firstly it took the Music app 40 hours to re-index my iTunes library after several crashes. In addition the Music app still appears to be in development, being unable to scroll artwork, so this is all you get, half a picture, and the rest is missing:

Screen

No Scrollbar !

Surely it can’t be that difficult to make a scrollbar like we had in iTunes. In addition you can no longer drop music into a playlist – it appears briefly then disappears. I then have to go and hunt for it in the Recently Added Playlist. Of course I was also faced with the plethora of permissions issues, simply to use an attached disk, slowly I am overcoming them. My Keychain refused to transfer, so I was forced to use Two Factor authentication, despite Apple saying it was optional, still dealing with issues arising. It then took 12 hours to update Final Cut and X-Code, while Apple System Status said everything was OK – oh no it wasn’t! On the monitors front the system regularly refuses to respect my 2 monitors, forcing everything onto one screen, especially after trying (it takes several times) to sleep the computer. I was plagued with the notorious flickering HDMI connection initially, making the 4k monitor run at 50 instead of 60hz, seemed to assuage the problem, but not an ideal solution. This problem has now been resolved, but the Sleep function appears to be broken. I was also surprised to see the spinning beachball so regularly on this fast computer, in particularly just looking up recent items can cause it. I had none of these problems on my 12 year old Mac Pro, so I was expecting better.

There have been lots of minor changes for the sake of it. Overall there are some improvements with connectivity and the neural engine, yet in day to day usage the computer is not much faster than the old Mac Pro, despite the hype and carefully chosen speed graphs. I would call it incrementally faster, seconds here and there, some things still take a long time! The neural engine certainly makes video encoding a breeze, that is many times faster. I have noticed the computer settling down after a few weeks usage, this may be due to Trial aka triald which uses machine learning to improve usability. This is good but apparently allows parts of macOS to be automatically updated regardless of your settings, which I am not so keen on. There are also some documented problems, which I have avoided or worked around such as the issues with kexts (kernel extensions) which are being deprecated, but can still provide useful functionality. Yet, since the Library is now locked , you can no longer delete old, unused kexts! It should be noted that MontereyOS still cannot provide SMART monitoring of external disks without a kext. It is also now nearly impossible to make a proper backup disk of your system. Of course I had to lose all my old 32 bit apps and regret the loss of iView Media Pro and several disk repair apps. I have found a useful replacement for Media Pro in Photo Mechanic Plus, but there is a lack of repair and analysis apps for M1 Macs. More seriously there appears to be a variety of issues with the Thunderbolt ports, which do not give the advertised speed of 10GB/s for USB3.1. If in doubt use an expensive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure as I had to (see OWC Envoy Express 2TB NVME SSD above). My favourite Mac Guru Howard Oakley says: Lack of support for 10 Gb/s SuperSpeed+ in USB 3.1 Gen 2 is arguably the most serious failing in what has otherwise been a very successful transition.

A part of me thinks this is all a brilliant sales pitch to make us buy new computers. Simply refuse all updates to the old ones, tell us they are no longer supported and slowly make them incompatible. Yet people have still managed to take old Mac Pro’s past the 2018 Mojave system, by hacking and “illegally” installing newer systems. Why can’t Apple themselves do this, if the hardware is capable?

Despite all the aforementioned I would still recommend an M1 Mac (see Do not buy an old Intel Mac). Things can only get better!

Update 26/05/22

Bargain Samsung 32” 4K Monitor for £250!

samsungfore

I bought a Samsung M70A monitor for only £250, matching my much more expensive BenQ PD UHD monitor. It was cheap since it has been superseded by the M80. This is allegedly a smart monitor and does have USB-C, but I have resolutely switched off all the smart possibilities and ended up with a 100% sRGB display. A few caveats: there is no proper profiling, but using a Spyder Pro monitor colour calibration tool it now looks great and runs full sRGB 3840 x 2160 @ 60.00Hz. In addition, despite being sold as a 32” monitor, it is only 31.5”, still Samsung make cheap good looking screens.
PS. If you require the sRGB Colour Profile to make this a good monitor drop me a line!

Prisoner of iCloud

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icloud-drive

Well the idea of all your files on all your devices sounds great, but it is a chimera. Firstly they are not necessarily on your device, but can be in the cloud. Secondly you will soon be paying for this privilege, Thirdly they are not always accessible, in effect they cannot be relied upon.

If you have a small hard disk, files are “evicted” to iCloud. Soon you can no longer download them all and you become a Prisoner of iCloud. Keep paying the ransom! This may sound like a bad joke, but your old unused files can be deleted by Apple after 6 months. The terms Apple sets for iCloud specifically exclude any liability for loss of data. Also iCloud doesn’t work perfectly all the time, so do check Apple’s service status page.

My personal advice is never to use iCloud for data backup, although it can be useful for sharing and syncing data between devices. iCloud is not Time Machine, which backs up data to a local hard disk. You cannot backup an entire Mac to iCloud, but you can use it for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. You will be paying for this, since you will soon use up the free 5GB allocation.

Much better value is to buy a 2TB hard disk for about £55, like the Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive, USB 3.2, and store or backup your data on this. You will no longer be a prisoner or have to pay the ransom. Apple will charge you over £80 per year to backup this amount of data to iCloud.

To delve a bit deeper, if you are using iCloud Drive (which Apple encourages, it earns them money) beware of this symbol:

itunes-icloud-

This means the data is stored in the cloud and you do not have full control of it. If it is a large item like a video, it may take hours to download. You may also see this icon in iTunes, where there are 6 possible iCloud icons. Unfortunately you have very little control over items that may suddenly go to the cloud. Your only control is basically on or off, but do not play around with this, since it may take hours or even days to re-sync an iCloud Drive.

So some advice, since there many options about what you can sync. I personally sync Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Safari, Notes, Find my Mac. Reminders, Siri and Keychain may also be useful to sync via iCloud. These are all small items and should be free to sync. Since I am a photographer I do not sync Photos, that would be an expensive nightmare. For some people it may be useful, but you will soon be paying for more storage. Also do not sync items you may not use like Stocks, News, Home. If you use iCloud for i-device backups remember they are a space hog, and to delete out of date or unused devices. Obviously I do not use or recommend iCloud Drive. Do not “Manage” your files in About this Mac / Storage, unless you are aware of the consequences, it switches on iCloud Drive. Before deleting anything from iCloud, be sure you won’t need it again. Once it’s deleted from iCloud, it’s gone forever.

macos-big-sur-system-preferences-apple-id-icloud-drive

Do NOT tick all these boxes!

My favourite article on iCloud problems is by Howard Oakley, it is quite long and there is no magic bullet. To conclude, keep in mind that the Italian antitrust regulator has found that Apple’s iCloud terms and conditions are unreasonable and unfair to consumers, and may breach consumer protection laws. Best of luck navigating the modern world of cloud computing!

Recommended Free OSX Apps

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Free Apps

These free apps are my favourites, there are many more. They have all recently been updated. Only Handbrake has a Universal Apple Silicon version at present, though I am sure that will soon change and in any case all these apps should work well under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon. Some apps have a paid for variant, or request contributions – I’ll leave that up to you. The free versions all work fine as of December 2020.

These links should take you directly to the Download page, if possible.

EtreCheck – Computer Check

Malwarebytes – Virus Check

Find Any File – better than Spotlight

The Unarchiver – File Opener and Decoder

VLC – Video Player

Handbrake – Video Encoder

Audacity – Audio Editor and Encoder

XLD – Audio Decoder and CD Maker

Libre Office – Replaces Microsoft Word

Cyberduck – FTP application

Mactracker – Mac Computer Specifications

Onyx – Mac Maintenance and Hidden Preferences

BBEdit – Text and Code Editor

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

DaVinci Resolve – Professional Film Editing

Do not buy an old Intel Mac

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 The Future is Apple Silicon

Apple_new-m1-chip-graphic_11102020

The new M1 Macs are blistering fast at every level. An M1 MacBook Air is now as fast in many scenarios as an Intel iMac Pro which costs five times as much. There is no doubt that the Apple M1 Silicon, replacing the old Intel chips, is a masterstroke and a huge step forward for computing. This new generation of processors are System on a Chip (SOC), integrating the CPU, GPU and RAM, a big step forward. They were inspired by by the A14 bionic chip found in iPhones and iPads, this is an evolutionary technology. Soon it will no longer matter which computer you have, they will all be incredibly fast. Computers have finally become a mature technology. Just like a kettle.

The sweet spot at the moment appears to be a 512GB 13 inch MacBook Air with the 8 core chip, which retails for £1,249. The new unified memory appears to make RAM less important, but as usual Apple are still charging a premium for it, 16BG costs an extra £200. This machine is faster and more efficient than any previous laptop – full stop. If you don’t need a laptop the M1 Mac mini starting at £699 is excellent value, just as fast as the base £5449 Mac Pro. In the meantime, Apple are not making too much fuss about all this – they still have to sell off their inventory of old Intel machines. The transition to the new silicon architecture will take some time.

Apple_m1-chip-cpu-power-chart_11102020-1

The only downside is that you have to run Big Sur Mac OS, which prevents old 32 bit apps from running and conceals the actual user interface. Obviously Windows, designed for Intel processors, will no longer run in Boot Camp on these new chips. Another consideration may be that we are now awaiting an M2 processor for the new iMac and MacBook Pro 16”, which should be even better, who knows. Meanwhile apps that have not been optimised for Apple Silicon appear to run well under Rosetta 2, and eventually they will all be translated to the new processor.  Let’s face it, Apple Silicon is now the future of computing.

Just one example, you can now seamlessly edit 8k video on a MacBook Air, which previously required a high end workstation where the video card alone cost as much as one of these new M1 Macs. Meanwhile we await the new iMacs which should have more Thunderbolt  / USB-C ports. The current machines only have 2, although they can be expanded with cheap USB-C adaptors. As we wait, there is no doubt that Apple has once again made a transformative leap in the world of computing.

014
Update 25 October 2021
The new M1Pro and M1Max chips now available for 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pro laptops are showing the amazing potential of these new system on a chip (SOC) designs. They are so far ahead of the game that Intel must be quaking in their oversize (14nm) boots. The highly reputed AnandTech has this to say about the latest M1 (5nm) iterations:

The M1 Pro and M1 Max change the narrative completely – these designs feel like truly SoCs that have been made with power users in mind, with Apple increasing the performance metrics in all vectors. We expected large performance jumps, but we didn’t expect the some of the monstrous increases that the new chips are able to achieve.
The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

45360-88294-m1-chip-family-xl

Update January 2023
If on a budget buy this machine, it can do everything you need!
Mac Mini – 512GB – £1049
Apple M2 with 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
16GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage (256GB is never enough)
Gigabit Ethernet
Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB-A ports, headphone jack

All Hail the Mac Pro

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Apple-Mac-Pro-2009-2019

Well after a decade long wait Apple has finally produced a new high end computer which can be customised until it costs nearly £50,000. It looks a magnificent machine in the tradition of the original 2005 cheese grater Mac Pro, rather than the pointless 2013 black “trashcan” Mac Pro with no PCIe expansion slots or drive bays, which proved to be a dead end. The return of the PCIe Mac has also proven to be a boon for the old 2009-2012 Mac Pro, of which more later.

The 8 core base model of the 2019 Mac Pro costs £5,500 and would be a particularly pointless purchase if you do not intend to upgrade it. You can buy an apparently faster 2019 16” MacBook Pro for nearly half the price, while the entry level iMac Pro at £4,900 is much better specified with a great screen. The minimum configuration for a 2019 Mac Pro would be the 12 core version, after all we had 12 cores in 2010, and the memory runs at the intended high speed of 2933MHz, while the Turbo Boost speed of 4.4GHz is also faster. The base machine comes with only a paltry 256GB SSD, which would soon cause problems, I would regard the next step of a 1TB SSD as the minimum. As for the video card there is not much choice until the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16GB becomes available. The stock video card AMD Radeon Pro W580X 8GB has only 2 HDMI ports and is lower specified than the Vega card in the iMac Pro. Unfortunately the the current next step is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32GB, costing an extra £2,160. For me, a worthwhile and expandable 2019 Mac Pro would have a starting price of about £7,500 for the 3.3GHz 12 core, 1TB SSD, 32GB Ram and currently unavailable AMD 5700X.

Of course, as stated this is only a starting point. There would have to be other additions to make a Mac Pro worthwhile. Firstly I would purchase an additional 64GB Ram Memory from OWC at $400 (less than half the price Apple charges) to make 96GB total. It also may be worth keeping in mind that Mac Pro’s seem to prefer all the memory to be of the same size, so it might be worthwhile chucking the Apple memory and installing 32GB or larger modules, especially if you want to get nearer to the previously unheard of 1TB limit. Apparently it is also relatively easy to upgrade the processor, Intel sell the 28 core Xeon W-3275 for about £3,500.

mac-pro_interior

A total of 8 PCI Express Gen 3 slots are available in the 2019 Mac Pro

Next on the list is internal storage, and here we have seen a real revolution. While processor speeds have not greatly increased in 10 years, access to data is now 50 times faster in real world terms. To put this in perspective the read rate of a good SATA hard disk in 2010 was 120 MB/s, now with NVMe SSD’s in a fast PCIe slot, read speeds are at 6,000 MB/s or more. Wow. This can be accomplished with 16 lane PCIe cards like the OWC Accelsior 4M2 or Sonnet M.2 4×4, which use up to 4 NVMe modules in a RAID 0 configuration. They are available in sizes up to 8TB, from £500 upwards, but keep in mind that Apple does not recommend installing the startup system on a RAID drive. If that all sounds a bit much, then simple 4 lane PCIe NVMe cards are available for only £25 with a fast M2 drive (from £100 for 1TB) which will give you 1500 MB/s, at least three times faster than the best SATA SSD. However in this case make sure you use a heatsink, NVMe modules can run very hot. For reference, the speed of the 2019 Mac Pro internal NVMe SSD is roughly 3000 MB/s, the same as in a recent iMac and MacBook Pro. If speed is not a necessity then you can still install good old hard disks, now available as large as 14TB and filled with helium, using a Promise Pegasus storage enclosure for the 2019 Mac Pro.

After all that wishful thinking where money grows on trees, back in the land of taxes and insurance, I am here with my 2010 Mac Pro and will be for some time. The good news is that the release of the 2019 Mac Pro has in fact extended the life of my 2010 machine, since all the new PCIe cards mentioned above can be installed in my old warhorse. In addition, the development by Apple for this new machine led to important improvements in  firmware for all PCIe Macs. Finalised in OSX Mojave, Boot Rom 144.0 allows for the use of bootable NVMe disks on these types of computers. So yes, I have a Samsung Evo Plus SSD (latest firmware) running at 1500 MB/s as my startup disk. In order to install Mojave I had already purchased the AMD Radeon Pro RX 580 8GB video card, as used in the stock 2019 machine. A new Sonnet Allegro Pro PCIe card gives me USB-C 3.1 speeds for external drives and accessories. Meanwhile RAM for this old machine is now dirt cheap, so I have 96GB, which cost half as much as the 24GB I installed in 2011. Performance wise, the single core performance of my dual 3.46GHz Xeon X5690 processors is now relatively poor, but as a 12 core machine the multi core result (Geekbench 5: 6954) is close enough to the base model Mac Pro 2019 (Geekbench 5: 7929) for me to use it happily for many years to come. Of course the next step will be to invest in one of the 16 lane PCIe M2 RAID 0 cards. Where’s that money tree?

Update 20 February 2020: 
Apple Mac Pro Technology Overview PDF

Mac_Pro_White_Paper_Feb_2020crop

 

 

In Support of temail

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temail

A temail is a text email. An email in Plain Text. It is what an email should be. Emails were not intended to be gaudy headlines but purveyors of information. That is fast, quick, personal and practical: they are quite simply the mail –  as in a letter – version of the internet. The idea that it could call in other content from another continent is anathema to a considered and personal form of communication. Email should not be trying to emulate the internet browser experience. Never mind also including hidden trackers, that is just plain abusive. Just so you know, most commercial emails contain trackers, and yes it should be banned, and yes we are being abused.

One way of stopping this is to stop “Loading Remote Content”. There is probably an option to do this in your Email Preferences, hidden away somewhere. On OSX Mojave go to Mail/Preferences/Viewing and halfway down the page switch off “Load remote content in messages”. You will then have a button so you can view the remote content if and when you wish. This should be how email works, and in effect it once was – there was no “rich content”. Our internet overlords have allowed email to become a pipeline for spam, random advertising, tracking and malware.

remote

Another problem, which you can cure to some extent, is the false or no-reply address email. To me, any email where you cannot reply to the actual sender should be banned, it is just plain rude. Many spam emails also have a false sender, so make sure the return path of the email is visible in the Header. If it does not match the sender press Delete asap. Edit the “Show Message Headers” option in your email preferences to show the Return-Path. Again this is not usually the default, when it should be.

Emails are of course wonderful things containing the world of letters, discourses and eventually lives. It is still an open medium (although Google and Apple etc. wish it wasn’t) and as a photographer I do use it sometimes to send small photographs. These photographs are not remote content, they are part of the original email. But if it was just temail, a text only medium, I would not object. You would know just what you signed up for, something effective and utilitarian. Nothing hidden.

In more general terms, if you do not have access to a discrete mailbox with your own domain, I usually recommend gmail. Although it has not always played well with OSX, it is still free, deletes spam and is usually reliable. Just remember Google is reading, tracking and in effect censoring your emails. Also remember that with any IMAP email system that most of your email is being stored in the cloud, not locally, unless you specify otherwise. Old emails are likely to be “pruned” (that is deleted) at some point. There are always limits, Google currently allows 15GB of storage which sounds like a lot, but may not be enough after many years usage.

Meanwhile always log out of everything you can, while logged in they are tracking you, ‘cos you invited them! The worst offenders in this regard are Facebook, Google and Amazon. If you don’t believe me, feel free to spend half your life reading Terms and Conditions, Cookie Settings and GDPR documents.

 Support temail !

PS. I made up the term temail, I hope you know what I mean.

Do Not Install MacOS Catalina

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macOS-Catalina

Warning ! Do Not Install Catalina, the new system software from Apple. Go to System Preferences / Software Update (if using Mojave, other systems may differ) and switch updates off, especially macOS updates.

• The new macOS Catalina (10.15) will break old 32 bit software, which you are using now.
• It is very hard, if not impossible, to go back to an older system.
• If you use iTunes it’s gone, the newer version called Music will be different and designed to promote Apple Music. Most DJ software no longer works.
• Old format videos will no longer play.
• If you sync your phone to your computer, prepare for everything to change – again.
• Your MacOS will now be on a Read-Only system partition. A lot of non Apple apps will have problems because of this.

There are many other changes, the only current benefit will be full compatibility with iOS 13.2 (already patched twice in a week) and new apps like Sidecar.

If you only ever use Apple Apps or have a new computer, think about upgrading to Catalina in a month or two, when it has settled down. Otherwise do not update until you are fully aware of all the changes.

The current system Mojave 10.14.6 works well on most computers made since 2013.

Catalina beta testers said:
• I continue to be stunned by Apple’s failure to significantly announce to its millions of users that lots of their software will simply stop working if/when they “upgrade” to Catalina.
• The new security features are incredibly annoying. Apps are constantly asking for permission to see various folders.
• This is the first OS X version I won’t upgrade until I’m forced to.
• Apple’s documentation says “Beginning in macOS 10.15, notarization is required by default for all software.”
• Ars Technica says give Apple a couple of months to patch Catalina before you install it.

FYI – just my opinion !

Update 12 November 2019
Following lengthy discussions on MacInTouch due to Apple Installers now having out of date security certificates and the disappearance of important software, this is where you can find the hidden Mojave installer on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

If you find an Apple software installer giving you the misleading information that it is “damaged and can’t be used”, try this solution: Reset the date on your computer to 2016 after quitting all apps. Install the software as usual and reset the date back to normal as soon as possible.

The version linked to above is now working, but last week it was not. Apple have not changed either the version number 14.6.06 or the creation date 19 September 2019, yet I now have 2 apparently identical Apple installers for Mojave of different sizes (the slightly larger one at 6,051,048,165 bytes is the new one). One of them works, the other is “damaged and can’t be used to install macOS”. Shameful – and not even true!

Update 29th May 2020
With the latest Security Update 2020-003 Apple is making it harder not to update to Catalina. I now recommend turning off all updates in System Preferences / Software Update. If you are running Mojave 10.14.6 do not keep your Mac up to date!

If you are careful you can apply security and other updates manually. However a safer way of doing this is to use SilentKnight or LockRattler.

This is making life much tougher for Mac Administrators, since it is easy to upgrade accidentally. Apple must be getting desperate, as we have to put up with more nagware without any opt-out. We are losing control of our computers and I find their attitude unnecessary and abusive. This is Apple being hostile to their own users, never a good strategy.

In addition, the latest update to Catalina has a nasty bug which prevents making a bootable backup disk. Remember you cannot easily revert to a previous system, or even update, yet updates with bugs are being forced upon us..

For more information and a list of installers try this Diskmaker X page.
Meanwhile here is a revised list of previous system installers, now hidden in the App Store:

Get macOS Mojave 10.14

Get macOS High Sierra 10.13

Get macOS Sierra 10.12

PS Download installers with Safari browser. These installers are still not reliable and often spawn random errors. Keep trying!

Update 27th October 2020
Well I hope you followed my advice, since Apple are now issuing rogue MRT files which are supposed to protect your computer. These are “invisible” files and are not supposed to affect your own usage, just protect you. However MRT 1.68 has caused serious damage and has been withdrawn, but you cannot replace it.

In addition the last security update 2020-005 caused serious issues for many users, it was also withdrawn and replaced with an update with the same name, so who knows where you are! Apple as usual refuses to comment on any of these issues.

Meanwhile to quote Ric Ford of MacInTouch:
Apple is now secretly hiding its phone-home connections from firewall software, which is completely and totally unacceptable and will cause some customers and partners to abandon the Mac platform.

David Dudok de Wit says starting with macOS Big Sur, users can’t:

  1. View a full, uncensored list of apps trying to access the Internet on their Mac — as Apple is hiding 56 of its own apps.
  2. Know how much data these Apple apps upload or download.
  3. Know which domains or IP adresses these Apple apps interact with.
  4. Block or allow traffic from these Apple apps.

Security by obscurity is not a thing, never has been.

Losing control of our computers

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How do you delete a corrupted prefs file in Mojave?

corrupt

With a vast and previously unnecessary amount of difficulty.
This is when security combined with nannying the user becomes abusive.

  • You cannot find the file using Spotlight
  • You cannot rename it
  • You cannot change permissions
  • You cannot drag it to the Trash
  • You cannot replace it
  • You cannot compress it
  • You cannot delete it using Secure Delete in Cocktail or Onyx
  • You cannot even delete it when started up in Target Disk Mode on another computer
  • You cannot delete it using Terminal in the standard manner
  • It is not visible in Time Machine

 What do you do? Apple say nothing on the subject.
First of all you should make the hidden Library folder visible.
Find the corrupt file using Find Any File, not Spotlight.
It was identified in this case because of a bad creation date.

Then I used the dangerous rm -f function in Terminal. When I dragged the recalcitrant file dated 1 January 1970 into the Terminal window it gave the name Library/Preferences/com.apple.ResourceFork, which was wrong. Naturally the reply from Terminal was No such file or directory. This was an OS error, perhaps related to APFS.

Only when I manually typed in the actual file name Library/Preferences/com.phaseone.mediapro.settings did Terminal finally manage to delete the file, and I got back to normal working. Many hours wasted.

Apple Wins !

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Back in the 90s, when Apple were in their dog-days, few people would have imagined it would become the worlds most valuable company. In 1997, just after the return of Steve Jobs, they were even subsidised by Microsoft to the tune of $150 million, just to prevent Microsoft becoming a de-facto monopoly.

At the time I was fighting for the adoption of Apple’s Quicktime, an amazingly powerful video and multimedia tool. The BBC spent millions trying to replicate it and failed. However most PC Windows users did not download it and many believed that the days of Apple were nearly over. Microsoft had over 90% of the market and had won the fight. It was not until 2001 with the advent of the iPod and iTunes (containing Quicktime) that Apple once again became visible in retail stores, selling the integrated bondi blue iMac and white plastic iBook. All of a sudden Quicktime was everywhere, Macintosh computers were back in the game. I am still using the best one ever made, the 2009 Mac Pro.

Of course the real reason for Apple’s dominance is the iPhone, which launched in 2007. The iPhone was revolutionary for more than just the amazing touch interface design. For the first time the data was bundled with the telecom fees, previously data was only available as very expensive add-ons. Control shifted from the telecom carriers to Apple, who provided a better OS, regular updates and an App store. At one stroke it went from just being a phone to an internet enabled multimedia communicator, the first real pocket computer; the rest is history.

As we now know, Apple became a haughty behemoth, forgetting about their computers – currently selling the 4 year old Mac Mini and 5 year old Mac Pro “as new”. They also forgot about the wonders of Quicktime and the utility of headphone sockets. They plough on into the future, allegedly developing augmented reality and self driving car systems, not forgetting headphones, loudspeakers, watches and iPads. Nevertheless you have to say they are a company with vision: the world is in their pocket as we continue to purchase their premium products, which define our technological age. The best product won.

Why Apple Is Now Apple Car

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The Apple electric car project, codenamed “Titan”, is undergoing research and development. It is rumored a substantial number of Apple employees are working on this project. That’ll probably be too many for me…

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk stated that Apple will probably make a compelling electric car: “It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it”

Apple-CarSo why is Apple now a Car Company and not a Computer Company ?
Simple: They removed Computer from their name in 2007.

Unfortunately the corollary of this is that Apple Computer users are suffering from a lack of true innovation, hardware no longer updated, software full of bugs and vapid cosmetic changes. Apple are no longer making cutting edge computers, they won the battle to become the world’s biggest company and have since become distracted and complacent, their eyes on bigger and more useless things.

So they may have lovely shops selling computers, but consider this:

  • No Pro computer available for over a year 2013-2014
  • No new Display Monitor since 2011
  • The current Mac Mini is much slower than the previous model
  • Still selling computers with slow Hard Disks while the system is designed for SSD
  • An obsession with making thinner, but slower computers
  • 2 Year old systems (Mavericks) no longer fully supported
  • No Thunderbolt 3, now available on Acer, Lenovo and HP laptops (March 2016)
  • Dell and Samsung Computers much faster and cheaper
  • As PC World says “the Mac Pro is an iPhone 4 in an iPhone 6s world”
  • Oculus Rift headset will only be available on OSX if Apple release a “good computer”
  • Computers you can’t upgrade or fix

Screen Shot 2016-03-12 at 17.28.32

Yes 1 out of 10 Repairability Score – Don’t bother !

Forgetting that software is for life, not just for Christmas, Apple have withdrawn the following products in the last few years:

  • Aperture
  • iPhoto
  • Quicktime 7 Pro
  • Quicktime VR – silent update in a hidden folder finally kills it
  • iDVD
  • iWeb
  • iChat
  • iMovie HD
  • Final Cut Pro Studio – withdrawn overnight
  • Front Row
  • Ping
  • Cover Flow
  • Rosetta
  • Mobile Me

In addition iWork was “dumbed down” to iOS level and Disk Utility no longer burns disks or makes RAID volumes. In particularly, R.I.P. Aperture – millions of man hours wasted.

apple-aperture-3

With more than 200 new features and enhancements, it can help you take your photography to the next level. Errr not now…

Apple produce a new system every year but most changes have been cosmetic and confusing, apparently out of a desire to unify OSX and iOS. These new systems have been making changes for the sake of it, removing capabilities, destroying older software and are not faster. Meanwhile a slew of bugs proliferate and important underlying issues are not addressed, while Human Interface Guidelines are ignored. This is a long list…

Recently in El Capitan OSX v10.11:

  • Continuing Finder Errors copying and moving files
  • USB3 code rewritten for no apparent reason, now full of incompatibilities
  • Unable to change bright turquoise folders or grey sidebar
  • Unable to stop Photos opening
  • Unable to remove Games and other apps
  • Mail causing people to lose data
  • Gatekeeper fooled by a faked certificate
  • Being forced to sign into the App Store or iCloud to use apps
  • Constant incomprehensible internet calls to Apple – for apps you have never used
  • Requirement to use Terminal to make computer usable
  • Silent updates which kill your computer – latest was ethernet bug
  • OS X Installers Downloaded Prior to February 14 2016 No Longer Work

oldosxinstaller-800x622

This is the incomprehensible message you receive from Apple when trying to use one of their own installers. There is nothing wrong except Apple mis-management of Certificates.


And for the last 5 years since Snow Leopard OSX v10.6.8 issues have proliferated:

  • Save As removed for some apps – now 2 entirely different Save paradigms in OSX
  • Documents being Date Modified by the Finder without user input
  • Folders unable to remember how you last viewed them
  • iCloud – Not even Apple can explain what it is doing with your data
  • iTunes – A design quagmire aka shop front which replaces your data with theirs
  • Disk Utility incapable of fixing disks and making a new Disk Directory
  • AirPrint and Airdrop don’t work for anyone I know
  • Bookmarks and Contacts forced to use iCloud
  • mDNSResponder replaced by discoveryd, then replaced by mDNSResponder
  • We are still ejecting drives by dragging them to the Trash as if deleting them
  • Hidden and Incomprehensible Buttons e.g. the x in iTunes opens the window
  • Nannying the User by hiding and locking folders
  • Missing software in the App Store
  • Security Updates casually removing usability
  • Silently “upgrading” drives to core storage – not readable by older systems
  • Disks you can’t eject, Trash you can’t empty, because they are being “used”
  • A Search function which doesn’t find everything and has no preferences
  • Unable to stop upgrade Notifications
  • Malware detection not updated for older systems
  • Software rush released when unfinished e.g. Photos, FCPX, Tags
  • Issues with multiple monitors, perhaps fixed now
  • No CUDA support, no 10-bit video card drivers
  • Enforced system and app updates
  • Apple Discussions are now unusable aka “There’s less to the conversation..”
  • Removal of Help Pages and Undocumented Changes

I hope this list makes chastening reading for Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, 2 Apple Executives who recently claimed software quality has improved significantly over the course of the last five years. Complacency never looks good.

Screen Shot 2016-03-12 at 16.59.31

A silent auto-update by Apple requires use of Terminal to fix their self-inflicted problem, but of course now you can’t access the internet to find out how !

The last thing we need now is for Apple to forget their DNA, their raison d’être: better, faster, more efficient, more usable computers.
There are myriad car makers, there is only one Apple Computer.

References:
Mac Performance Guide: Apple Core Rot
Daring Fireball: Apple’s App Problem
Mac Strategy: Upgrading
MacRumors: El Capitan Bugs Forum
MacInTouch

Postscript 20/12/16
Yes it is sadly all true – there is no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team.
How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

Postscript 14/04/17
Apple eats Humble Pie and admits neglecting Pro Users
Phil Schiller: Apple cares deeply about the Mac… and if we’ve had a pause in upgrades and updates on that, we’re sorry for that, what happened with the Mac Pro, and we’re going to come out with something great to replace it.
Craig Federighi: In hindsight, we would’ve done that differently. Now we are.

Mac Pro Interview

1-4856807a3b

Postscript 01/12/17
Critical “root” security failure in macOS 10.13 High Sierra

The result of Apple re-organizing its software engineering department so there’s no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team was seen in the latest security debacle. In MacOS High Sierra anyone by entering the word “root” and twice entering a blank password could gain full access to any computer, even if using FileVault encryption. This could be accomplished remotely using screen sharing. The magnitude of this error is breathtaking and makes Apple boasts about security into a laughing stock.

While they did promptly issue an update once this issue was publicised on Twitter (several weeks after first being mentioned in an Apple Forum), the update broke file-sharing. They issued an advisory to fix file-sharing using Terminal, incomprehensible to most users.

They updated this broken update. They then proceeded to install the update remotely, but failed to tell people to restart their computer so the update would work.

They also failed to update their system installers, so any user updating their system re-enabled the bug and had to apply the update patches again! Currently the latest MacOS High Sierra system install 10.3.1 contains the root security failure.

Apple said in a statement:
“We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.”

Postscript 18/06/18
Apple WWDC 2018 with no hardware updates

How long has this been going on?
We are being forced to use out of date machines, yet the older computers are still better than the new ones! A succinct article from Rogue Amoeba states “It’s very difficult to recommend much from the current crop of Macs to customers”, hence they are purchasing old, used Apple computers.
On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware

I myself am using a 2009 Mac Pro 4.1 modified to 5.1 with a 6 core 3.46ghz processor, OWC PCIe SSD Drive, 8TB RAID 0 storage disk, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4k video card (Metal supported), Orico USB3 card, 24GB ECC Ram, Blu Ray Recorder and DVD Recorder, Firewire 800, dual Ethernet – all internal. It is easily as fast as the current cylindrical 2013 Mac Pro, and much more productive.

Postscript 01/03/24
Finally proven right!
Abandoned $10 billion Apple Car project referred to as ‘Titanic disaster’ by employees.

*

Largest File Ever ! Not !

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Yes I found this 1.13 Petabyte file while repairing an iMac
There had been backup problems….

A Petabyte is 1015 (1000000000000000) or a thousand billion bytes to you and me.
If this data were mp3 files it could playback for over 2000 years…

Did not have more than a million gigabyte drives spare, so took alternative action.

1pb folder

After some grief, the disk was repaired and the data (c.250mb) recovered.

Sun Ra at Cafe Oto 24/11/14

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Sun-Ra-2014w

Edited iPhone Photo of Sun Ra Arkestra at Cafe Oto

Once again the Sun Ra Arkestra led by the dynamic 90 year old Marshall Allen graced the intimate confines of Cafe Oto with their vibrant presence. This was not one of their crazy barnstorming sets, but built slowly and very lyrically to a beautiful and charming moment at the end of the first set with the whole audience, virtually unprompted, chanting “Space is the Place” as the band wandered through them to take a well deserved interval.

A good part of the unique atmosphere of this show came from the commanding musical presence of Farid Barron playing grand piano, singing and unveiling the wonders of the Roli Seaboard. During the gig I could not understand where the new spatial sounds I was hearing emanated from. Of course I knew all about the wondrous use of synths Sun Ra had himself employed, having seen him with his Arkestra at The Venue, Victoria, back in the 80s, but this was something entirely new: both dynamic and luxuriant. There was none of the slight clumsiness and didacticism of the classic electronic keyboard – in fact I could not even see one. No, there was just a beautiful grand piano with what appeared to be 2 keyboards, one of which was taking me somewhere else entirely. If you look at the lo-res photo above you can just make out the light grey stripe (3cm deep) atop the piano, this is a Roli Seaboard GRAND Limited First Edition, with 88 keys which can be stroked, pushed, squeezed and pressed. I started hearing sounds and seeing playing which seemed impossible, but ok this was Sun Ra, so expect the unexpected!

During the second set, orchestrated carefully by Marshall, we had masked dancers, some great sax and EVI (electronic valve instrument) solos, yet the singing and the keyboards seemed to take us back in time to the grace and wonder of a 1930s spaceship, rather than the overheated modern version. This was in fact being accomplished by the unique rubbery and adaptive seaboard which “reimagines the piano keyboard as a soft, continuous surface” and allows “you to sound a note and then take it on a musical journey”. I was indeed transported…

continuous_touch

Roli Seaboard with continuous touch

After the gig I congratulated Farid and discovered the secret (and name) of this unique keyboard. It was a prototype made locally in Dalston which he had never seen before the gig and had only one hour to rehearse with. More information was forthcoming from one of the Roli technical team who was carefully putting away the seaboard, and yes this does indeed appear to be a revolutionary instrument which they intend to be a multi purpose interface with many different applications for music, gaming, you name it!

~

Meanwhile here’s the Arkestra in full infra swing at Cafe Oto in 2011 with an old synth

Sun Ra Arkestra

And an even older panorama at Cafe Oto on the actual Sun Ra website here

~

A Short History of Quicktime VR

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In 1992 Quicktime 1.0 was launched. This was followed in 1994 by Windows friendly Quicktime 2.1 which, along with QuickTime VR 1.0, could play Panoramas and Objects in a discrete QTVR Player or in a browser plugin for Netscape Navigator.
In Quicktime 2.5, with an updated QuickTime VR 2.0, these items were integrated to make a free universal VR Player. Interactive multimedia had arrived!

So the Player was free, but to make this interactive multimedia you required the QuickTime VR Authoring Tools Suite which comprised of 2 huge binders, a video and lots of floppy discs. There was no GUI (graphical user interface), you had to write code in MPW 3.2 (Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop) and use Hyper Card and ResEdit. This Tools Suite cost $2,000 and could only run on a $4,000 Apple computer. Despite regular crashes (normal in those days) and a long learning curve, it all worked.

Panorama made using MPW 1997, but the Quicktime VR Player no longer works. Part of a Camden Lock Tour which appeared on a MacWorld cover CD in 1999.

It is worth remembering there was no broadband, only modems working at a fraction of the speed, and that digital cameras were in their infancy, so most projects had to be digitised from film, often using Photo CD.

In late 1997 QuickTime VR 2.0 Authoring Studio with a full GUI and batch mode was released for $500, bringing VR into the mainstream. The Authoring Tools made cylindrical panoramas, object movies and tours with internal and external links. For many years this programme was the default panorama maker, despite later competition from RealViz Stitcher, Powerstitch and VR Worx.

Quicktime was steadily updated, although Quicktime 4.1 notoriously re-numbered all your hotspots so you never actually went where you had intended. At the same time other panorama players appeared, unfortunately including the litigious Interactive Pictures Corporation (IPIX) who threatened to sue anyone who distributed software to create 360 degree panorama images, including the software developer Helmut Dersch and also Live Picture’s PhotoVista. IPIX, which charged $25 per panorama created, were to go bankrupt in 2006, hoist by their own petard: patent violation.

Apple supported Quicktime VR with special Showcase pages and a vibrant Apple QuickTime VR mailing list. The flexibility of Quicktime VR allowed the creation of true multimedia experiences. These 2 huge tomes in the Quicktime Developer Series illustrate the potential power of this technology.

Perhaps inspired by Helmut Dersh’s Panorama Tools, in 2001 Quicktime 5 introduced the spherical (360ºx180º) panorama player which we know today. By this time Quicktime supported mp3, Flash 4, streaming and “wired” movies. These wired movies allowed an authoring application to unlock the power of Quicktime, of which the prime example was Livestage Media Pro, allowing you to skin Quicktime and integrate different media and players interactively. Sadly this example no longer works as it did from 2004 to 2015.

Console Tour with panoramas, video, audio, text, hotspots, controls

With the advent of spherical panoramas new software appeared such as PTMac, IBM Hot Media, Cubic Converter, PhotoWarp and finally PTGui, the current stitcher of choice. Apple never updated QTVRAS (QuickTime VR Authoring Studio) to stitch spherical images or run in OSX except under emulation.

During the early days of Quicktime VR a large amount of effort was spent persuading PC owners to download Quicktime, so they could view the media. This problem evaporated after Apple launched iTunes in 2001 (after buying Soundjam) and in effect Quicktime became the de facto music player. It was all looking rosy, but in retrospect it was at this time that Apple started to lose interest in Quicktime VR, and now iTunes can now no longer play interactive media.

With the advent of Quicktime 7 in 2005 the writing was on the wall when Flash support was dropped in version 7.3 along with several other interactive features due to “security concerns”, breaking many interactive projects. In the same year a very smooth Open GL panorama player called Cubic Navigator was launched using the latest graphics technology, but Apple did not respond. Since Quicktime 7.5 in 2008 the feature set has not been updated apart from security and compatibility updates. Quicktime 7.6 is now an “optional install” on Apple computers. It should be remembered that Quicktime 7 in the Pro version ($30) is a very powerful and flexible movie editor and compressor using the the same codecs as Final Cut Pro Studio ($1,700).

In 2009 Apple dropped support for Quicktime VR with the launch of Quicktime X, which does not play QTVR or edit movies, despite claiming it was “ideal for any application that needs to play media content”, and that it would “advance modern media and Internet standards”. In doing so they handed over the multimedia baton to Flash (now the default panorama player), their alleged opponents. Apple’s eventual response (link now removed by Apple) was an HTML5 player which was an insult to the rich tradition of Quicktime VR. It was an ignominious end for the very technology Apple had invented and promoted so strongly.

So try making this today, it might be possible in Flash using KRPano, but in 1999 we had a cool GUI in SoundsaVR to edit the multiple overlapping loops. This panorama, only 1.2mb so it could be delivered over a modem, was a big hit at MacWorld 1999.

Echo City with Sound Loops, using SoundsaVR

Coda
Of course interactive multimedia plays on, with incredible gigapixel panoramas in Flash and swishy cool HTML5 panoramas on the iPhone and iPad. However to make these we are back hand coding in XML, while the wired possibilities of Quicktime have been abandoned. Quicktime VR still functions (in some browsers) and Quicktime 7 is still available, but for how long?

Update 8/12/15
Today Apple finally destroyed their own creation, Quicktime VR.
In a “Security Update” Apple silently removed the Quicktime Plug-in which played Panoramas.
Apple stated “If you’re using the legacy QuickTime 7 web plug-in to display panoramic images, use an HTML5-based panorama viewer instead. Search the web for a panorama viewer that doesn’t require a web plug-in.”
Appallingly disingenuous since there is no HTML5 player that can play Quicktime VR without the author re-encoding the original panorama. Shame on you, Apple.

PS
To restore the Quicktime VR plug-in on OSX
Go to Library/InternetPlug-Ins
Move these two files from the Disabled Plug-Ins folder to the Internet Plug-Ins folder:
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
nslQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
Hurrah !

All VR examples © z360.com

Thanks To :
Tim Monroe
Ken Turkowski
Joel Cannon
David Palermo
and many others on the Apple QuickTime VR team

World’s Fastest Mac Pro

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Or How to Transform a 2009 Mac Pro into a 2012 Mac Pro

I have installed a 3.46ghz Zeon W3690 (3.73ghz Turbo Boost) processor into my 2009 Mac Pro, replacing the original 4 core 2.93ghz chip, making it a 6 core machine with 12 virtual threads. This chip is faster and better specified than any currently available from Apple (They only sell an older 3.33ghz), yet is a simple replacement job. Hence the headline grabbing “World’s Fastest” claim, along of course with the many others who have doubtless carried out this conversion, so let’s call it first equal.

Rather sad that this processor is not available from Apple and that no improvements were made to the beautifully engineered Mac Pro line in 2011, here’s hoping they will be upgraded in 2012, despite the rumours.

Well when I say simple replacement, I still had to upgrade the firmware to turn my computer from a 4.1 model into a 5.1 2010 Mac Pro, apparently the only actual difference between 2009 and 2010 models. Many thanks to MacEFIRom at netkas.org for his Firmware Upgrade Utility which worked seamlessly and has the side benefit of enabling faster 1333mhz RAM and allowing audio out from the Mini Display Port. Naturally applying any unsupported firmware update or changing the processor will void AppleCare and your Guarantee.

The only tool required was a very long 3mm hex wrench to unscrew the heatsink, and then some Arctic Silver Thermal Compound for the CPU. All went smoothly if nervously and my renewed Mac Pro restarted first time with nary a crash since. The power requirements and temperature limits of the new Xeon chip are identical to the older one. There are some thorough instructions here at MacRumors. This procedure may also be carried out on dual processor machines, but is a little more complicated.

Following this other improvements were made, including 24gb RAM from OWC, an internal RAID 0 hard disk, and a faster graphics card. For me, who needs a machine like this for making gigapixel panoramas (5-10gb files), the biggest improvement in actual usage was the increased RAM. Results for the real world retouchartists.com speed test showed an improvement from 21secs to 11.2secs, which demonstrates the faster processor. To put this in perspective my 2005 dual 2.7ghz G5 Power Mac took 65secs to carry out this test. That’s Progress…

Update 11 June 2012
Apple today updated the dual processor Mac Pro line with some minor improvements to the processor. On the We Want a New Macpro facebook site these improvements were variously called a minor tweak, a joke and an insult. There is still no Thunderbolt, no USB3, nor the latest Intel processors, but they do provide an ancient 2009 video card. A Macbook Air now has faster memory!
Update 12 June 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook apparently says there will be a new Mac Pro in 2013.
Here’s hoping…
Update 19 February 2013
Oh Dear! There is no Mac Pro available in Europe. I thought Apple used to be a computer company… Why not make a serious computer ? No Mac ProI can only say Seriously not Great…
Update 11 February 2014
Aha! Now there is a new Mac Pro, but only in the USA.
It is not available in the UK until April, so that is well over a year with no Mac Pro.
Screen Shot 2014-02-11 at 14.08.44

Well I think it looks small and cool and am relieved it exists. I certainly don’t need one though since it will hardly be any faster for my work, plus it has no internal drive space and so requires an expensive external Thunderbolt drive array for any real work.

Since the new Xeon E5 processors only represent a minor upgrade over my current Xeon processor I am happy to wait for a new faster generation, if there is one! Still the new Mac Pro does have PCIe-based Flash Storage, which certainly does speed things up so I have installed an OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2 SSD in my own Mac Pro. It’s great!

Screen Shot 2014-02-11 at 14.10.17
Retouch Speed Artists Test now under 10sec, reportedly much the same as the new Mac Pro. However if I spent my time video editing in Final Cut Pro X I might make an effort to get one of these new machines, due to the power of the AMD FirePro GPU graphic cards.
Update 11 March 2015 Re-Edited 21 February 2016
Nvidia 5k Video Card
In 2015 I said: “However I am much more likely to simply install a better video card, roughly equivalent to the AMD D500 in the current Mac Pro, which can run 4k screens at 60fps on any Mac Pro dating back to 2008 (Mac Pro 3.1): The PNY Nvidia Quadro K5000 Graphics Card for Apple Mac”
This information is now out of date, the K5000 card has now been superceded and was very expensive, explaining why I never actually bought one. Now I have installed a much more powerful card for a quarter of the price, the NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970.
PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 970 OC 4GBThis graphics card has 4095MB of VRAM, HDMI 2.0 and can run a 5k monitor, as well as excellent Open CL, GL and CUDA benchmarks. A new Mac Pro cannot even run CUDA, since it uses AMD cards and in most tests the GTX-970 beats the fastest Mac AMD cards.
There are however some issues since the GTX-970 is not officially supported, so on startup you get a black screen, not a boot screen. This has been the only non-issue so far since Nvidia is now providing a well updated Driver for Yosemite and El Capitan. On installation I had no NVRAM issues as others have reported, having already installed the driver, and I also have an old and unused Nvidia GT120 card installed for backward compatibility.
If you want to spend more money the GTX-980 and 980Ti are also available, but beyond this you may run into power supply issues. Incidentally make sure you have 2 of the slightly obscure pci-e to mini pci-e 6 pin power cables.

I have also installed a cheap Orico USB3 card which works natively and is more reliable than external SATA. So my advice is to buy a second hand Mac Pro 4.1 or 5.1 and upgrade it to your required specification, rather than purchase a new Mac Pro 6.1, which is both expensive and inflexible.

Update 12 February 2016
Still the Fastest!
According to Novabench Benchmark Testing my computer is faster than a new Mac Pro! So much for Moore’s Law, and recent Apple engineering…
943326Tha average modern trashcan Mac Pro scores 1595 and the latest iMac 5k 1250, so unbelievably my 2009 Mac Pro is still the Worlds Fastest in 2016 !

Update 14 April 2017
Apple eats Humble Pie and admits building the wrong Mac Pro
Phil Schiller: We made something bold that we thought would be great for the majority of our Mac Pro users. And what we discovered was that it was great for some and not others. Enough so that we need to take another path.

Phil Schiller: Apple cares deeply about the Mac… and if we’ve had a pause in upgrades and updates on that, we’re sorry for that, what happened with the Mac Pro, and we’re going to come out with something great to replace it.

Craig Federighi: The architecture, over time, proved to be less flexible to take us where we wanted to go to address that audience. In hindsight, we would’ve done that differently. Now we are.

Mac Pro Interview

Update 15 December 2017
Hot Sierra Apple
I have just installed macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on my 2009 computer so I could use the updated Final Cut Pro X 10.4 with support for 360° VR Editing. I must say the transition went smoothly and remembered nearly all my previous preferences and tweaks. FCPX is a great piece of software and I am pretty impressed I am running such a recent system on a computer this ancient, even though Apple says you can’t. I did not have to do any special install tricks, although I had previously updated the firmware to 5.1 as mentioned above. So kudos to Apple.

I have no desire to update further to High Sierra, which still appears to have teething problems with the new and slow APFS file system. Meanwhile the new iMac Pro, while very expensive at £5,000 or more, looks like a serious machine and bodes well for the modular Mac Pro promised for 2018.
Update 15 January 2019
10 Year old Computer running Mojave

mojaveApple have withdrawn support for Nvidia graphics cards, preventing them from running in Mojave. Under Sierra my NVIDIA GeForce GTX-970 was working well and supported Metal. Despite this Apple has forced me to buy a new AMD graphic card to run my 4k monitor on a newer system. The recommended card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 580 8GB, which while rather large works as a direct replacement. Specification wise it is not much better than my previous card, but does have 8gb video ram. The good news is that it works natively with Sierra 10.12.6 and higher, allowing for simpler system upgrades. Also had to buy a new dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin PCIe power connector, previous one was 6 pin of course.

RX580To upgrade my Mac Pro 5.1 (see above) it is advised to update first to High Sierra 10.13.6, to receive the required firmware updates. FileVault should be switched off, since it is no longer compatible with this old computer, fine for me since I never use it. The startup disk is a PCIe Accelsior SSD, which is converted to APFS, no problems so far. (There is a firmware update for this card from OWC, which avoids the need for an extension, I applied this before upgrading). Mojave Installer will crash if you have an additional incompatible video card installed, like the Nvidia GT120 or Radeon HD5770, so remove it first.

I was upgrading mainly to use the latest version of FCPx, a great application requiring a recent system. Still awaiting the new modular Mac Pro, now forecast for 2019.

Update 5 June 2019
The Cheesegrater is Back!
At WWDC 2019 Apple unveiled the 2019 Mac Pro.
It looks awesome and costs as much as a car. Wheels will be available.

mac-pro-2019

Well Done Apple !

See All Hail the Mac Pro

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