This is a fantastic do-it-yourself project, inspiration for the maker in you.
The whole thing is fascinating (if you have that DIY gene) but one bit that sticks out: 2:39 in, where Scott has the epiphany to use an iPad mini instead of a small HDMI display. The length of the iPad mini is exactly the same as the width of the Mac mini. Coincidence? Intentional on Apple’s part?
Absolutely love this Twitter thread from 9to5Mac:
https://twitter.com/9to5mac/status/1493957202721357833
So many great Mac tips and tricks. Just start scrolling. And if you have a Mac tip that’s not represented already, reply to the tweet to add it.
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
Apple today released the third betas of macOS Monterey 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4. These updates contain the long-awaited Universal Control feature, and today’s macOS Monterey 12.3 beta continues to iterate on the feature — specifically in regard to controls in System Preferences.
Follow the headline link, scroll through the images to see the latest iteration of the Universal Control settings. These controls are easier to find, more obvious.
Can’t wait until Universal Control hits the public, non-beta releases.
As usual, this Rene Ritchie explainer is a firehose of information, but really well explained. What I found most interesting is the comparison of the iPhone processors, like the A14, to their Mac counterparts.
As you watch Rene walk through the various Apple Silicon architectures, he lays out the similarities between the iPhone and Mac chips, makes it clear how one begat the other, and how the design evolved from the iPhone’s smaller enclosure to the bigger, higher powered, better cooled Mac.
From OS X Daily. Follow the headline link for a detailed walkthrough.
In a nutshell, go to Terminal and enter:
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true; killall Dock
To return to normal:
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool false; killall Dock
This has been around a long time, but I’ve never encountered anyone using it. Would love an option to put all running apps in its own section of the dock, as is done with recently used applications. There a setting for that?
If you use Zoom on your Mac, this is a bit of a must read. Great list of shortcuts.
For me, the most important one is Shift-Command-A, to mute/unmute your audio.
Universal Control is now available in the latest iPadOS and macOS Monterey betas. If you’re not familiar, below is an embedded video of Craig Federighi, from last June’s WWDC, showing how it works (via 9to5Mac). Definitely worth watching.
To make this work, all you need is the same thing required by the Handoff and Continuity features: Bluetooth and proximity. Just enable Bluetooth on your devices and make sure they are close enough for Handoff to work.
Can’t wait for Universal Control to hit the iPadOS and macOS Monterey public releases.
Nice little bit of nostalgia for long time Mac users.
Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:
You’re familiar with low power mode on iPhone (and iPad and Mac), which temporarily disables some features to save battery life. But did you know about high power mode, the polar opposite to low power mode?
And:
To help you squeeze the last drop of power from your Mac’s Apple CPU, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro provides a new feature, dubbed High Power Mode. When you put your Mac into high power mode, the operating system will maximize performance during very intensive workloads by permitting the fans to run at higher speeds to keep the CPU cool.
From Apple’s official support document:
Your MacBook Pro has multiple energy modes you can switch between. By default, your Mac is set to Automatic mode to balance energy use and performance. Low Power Mode reduces energy use to increase battery life. On the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max, High Power Mode allows the fans to run at higher speeds. The additional cooling capacity may allow the system to deliver higher performance in very intensive workloads.
Check out the images in the Apple Support document to see how to turn High Power Mode on and how to tell if it is on from the menu bar.
Yes, this feature is limited to the 16″ MacBook Pro M1 Max, but I suspect it’ll become more mainstream as Apple expands it’s M1 product line. Good to know about.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
Intel today unveiled new 12th-generation Core processors suitable for laptops, and as part of the announcement, it claimed that the new Core i9 is not only faster than Apple’s M1 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but is the fastest mobile processor ever.
Importantly:
The high-end Intel chip has a max Turbo Boost frequency of 5.0GHz, but power draw can reach up to 115 watts, which is significantly more power than the M1 Max chip ever uses and not ideal for the thermal envelope of devices like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
From the Intel press release, touting the Fastest Mobile Processor Ever:
Intel announces the 12th Gen Intel® Core™ family of mobile processors led by the launch of new H-series mobile processors featuring the flagship Intel® Core™ i9-12900HK – the fastest mobile processor ever and the world’s best mobile gaming platform – built on the Intel 7 process.
I won’t argue “world’s best mobile gaming platform”. Besides the PC being dominant in desktop gaming and high end Intel laptops drafting on that platform, Apple has not made gaming a priority.
But here’s the footnote Intel attached to “Fastest mobile processor ever”:
Based on superior performance of 12th Gen Intel Core i9 12900HK against Intel Core i9 11980HK, AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Apple M1 Max.
Read the press release for details on the benchmarks they ran.
It’ll be interesting to see real world benchmarks once laptops with these processors actually ship. More importantly, I look forward to seeing the real life battery performance of those laptops. If you look at the second image in the headline linked MacRumors post, you’ll see the Apple M1 Max topping out (in terms of SoC Power, the left-to-right part of the chart) about where the new Intel chip begins.
Once these laptops hit the streets, I expect the power consumption to be the real story here, with the Intel chip sucking power as the M1 Max sips. If so, no way to hide that.
Jeff Johnson:
The madness in this case is Safari background tabs spontaneously coming to the front again, an obviously undesirable behavior.
Read the blog post for the specifics on what causes this (props to Jeff for figuring it out). To give this a try, follow the headline link, click the “Start 5 second timer” button, then click another tab to bring it to the front. After 5 seconds, the background tab will jump to the front. Works every time.
Turns into an ad for the highly regarded StopTheMadness browser extension. Worth a look.
Apple’s retail price for the base model 14″ M1 MacBook Pro is $1999.99. Follow the headline link to B&H Photo and save $200, a pretty great deal.
Interestingly, the discount only applies to the Space Gray model. Want Silver? Pay full price. Not sure why.
Quantities are limited, so jump on it.
The video embedded below starts with an Intel version of Reason, running on a specced out M1 Max MacBook Pro, duplicating tracks until the app stutters and then fails.
If time is short, jump to about 3:54 in to start with 5 tracks (details in the upper-right corner). The tracks are duplicated 5 at a time. At 40 tracks, the performance hit starts to become obvious.
Frankly, I was surprised by this result. Rosetta 2 is such an incredible piece of engineering, I just expect it to succeed at every task.
Now we switch over to the same track, but running in the M1 native Logic Pro. Go to 6:11 to start with 5 tracks. Take a guess how many tracks it processes before the Mac comes to its knees. No spoilers. Worth watching.
Here’s a link to the Mac App Store feature story, which highlights shows, the X-Ray feature, and Downloads.
And here’s a link to the app itself, which offers a bit more detail:
App features:
- Download videos to watch offline.
- Continue to watch your favorite movie, TV show or a live event via Picture-in-Picture (PiP) while interacting with other apps or websites.
- Rent or buy new-release movies and popular TV shows (availability varies by marketplace). Multi-user profiles allow creating personalized entertainment experiences.
- Go behind the scenes of movies and TV shows with exclusive X-Ray access, powered by IMDb.
- Watch on iPhone and iPad by downloading the separate iOS app (requires iOS 12.1 version or later).
- Watch on Apple TV by downloading the separate tvOS app (requires Apple TV 3rd generation or later).
To me, this app is a huge improvement over watching Amazon Video on the Amazon web site. It’s miles more focused, without the retail clutter (do I want to buy a DVD of a movie or just watch it?) and search and show management is much better than the Apple TV interface.
This is also a big step for the Mac, a sign of recognition that a native app is worth the investment.
Watch Andrew Huang showing off the quality of the built-in mic in the new M1 MacBook Pro. Don’t miss that bit right at 1:35 where he gives a sense of the mic’s location under the left hand speaker grill.
A few weeks back, I posted a tweet showing how macOS Monterey lets you customize your mouse cursor pointer color. If you did that, might want to go back and tap the reset button (it’s just to the right of the color wells).
Here’s Howard Oakley on why:
You will no doubt have heard of the claimed memory leak in macOS Monterey 12.0.1. Thanks to the work of the engineers at Mozilla, its cause has now been identified.
And:
The cause has now been isolated to a single group of settings in one preference pane, Accessibility. All Macs which appear to suffer this leak are using custom pointer controls in the Pointer tab of the Display, specifically a larger than normal Pointer size and custom outline and fill colours.
Guessing this’ll soon be fixed, but good to know. Read Howard’s post for more detail.
Howard Oakley:
As it’s getting towards the end of the year, I’ve been on the look out for nominations for the title of the most improved utility of the year. I’m delighted to announce not just a nomination, but an outright winner: Disk Utility 21.0, bundled with Monterey. After four years in which it had offered frustratingly limited support for the new features of APFS, Disk Utility is now complete: this version has excellent support for snapshots, no matter which app created them.
If you’ve got Monterey installed, fire up Disk Utility (it’s in Applications > Utilities). Take a look at the various menu items, most importantly:
To engage its new powers, select a volume and use the Show APFS Snapshots command in its View menu. This opens a new table view in the lower part of the main view in which the selected volume’s snapshots are listed.
Those snapshots will appear in a new section at the bottom of the main pane. Jump back to Howard’s walkthrough to get a sense of what you can do with these.
José Adorno, 9to5Mac:
Apple introduced the new line of MacBook Pro last October during its “Unleashed” event. With impressive improvements over the most recent Intel chips and even the M1 processor, the company has been very successful with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.
With that in mind, lots of tech companies are upgrading their staffs’ Macs with the incredibly powerful M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64 GB of RAM.
The reasoning is captured in this tweet from Twitter’s John Szumski:
https://twitter.com/jszumski/status/1456715133615579140
Read José’s post for more examples but, in a nutshell, this is tech companies doing the math and recognizing that a new, high-end MacBook Pro would easily pay for itself in time savings.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this sort of no-brainer purchase equation with Apple gear. One example this reminds me of is when Apple first rolled out the LaserWriter, one of the very first mass market laser printers. Back then, loaded Macs and LaserWriters became no-brainer purchases for high-end art departments. Game changers.
Indie musician Mary Spender sat down with a loaded M1 MacBook Pro, using the internal mic, and started recording. An hour and 8 minutes later, song in hand (zero fan noise), it was on to Photo Booth to build a music video.
Very fun to watch, great result.
I found the whole interview interesting, but jump to 1:44 and listen to Rene’s testimonial comparing his experience moving from an Intel i9 MacBook Pro to one of the new models. I’ve heard similar raves from other reviewers, but it really brings the huge performance leap to a fine point.
Sami Fathi, MacRumors:
macOS Monterey, released last week as the latest version of macOS, is bricking older Mac computers, rendering them unusable and unable to even turn on, according to a number of reports from users across social media and online forums.
And:
If this sounds oddly familiar, it may be because last year, with the launch of macOS Big Sur, similar reports surfaced about that update bricking older MacBook Pro models.
No answers here, but plenty of tweets from owners of newly bricked Macs. If you’ve got an older Mac and are considering upgrading to Monterey, definitely read through the post, maybe wait until macOS 12.1 drops.
Follow the headline link for Joanna Stern’s enthusiastic take on the new MacBook Pros. But watch the video below for Joanna’s real-life battery testing.
At about 3:54 in, Joanna tries to duplicate Apple’s battery claims for the new devices. Worth watching to get a sense of what you can expect if you buy one of the new MacBook Pros.
First things first, to be really clear, this is the Mac Pro (NOT an Intel MacBook Pro). Just making sure you get the drift of the comparison.
Follow the link, scroll through the benchmarks, then check out this link for a bunch more benchmarks comparing the same two machines.
Bottom line, the benchmarks showed the M1 Max was pretty close to the 2019 Mac Pro, beating it in some tests, losing in others, but pretty much neck-and-neck overall.
To me, this is incredible, really shows the giant leap Apple made with the M1 Max. Obviously, the Mac Pro brings expandability to the table that a laptop just can’t match. Wonder when we’ll see an Apple Silicon-powered Mac Pro. That’ll be something.
Follow the headline link, start scrolling for a walk through all the different default macOS wallpapers, going all the way back to Mac OS X Tiger, which dropped back in 2005.
See something you like, click the download link. Enjoy.
Some apps, especially those with a lot of menus and custom menus have run into problems with the notch on the new MacBook Pro. Here’s a Twitter thread with a few examples (sound on).
If you do run into this issue, Apple offers an app-specific fix:
You can adjust an app’s settings so that it uses the whole display or uses only the area below the camera housing.
Follow the headline link for details but, in a nutshell, Apple added a “Scale to fit below built-in camera” checkbox to the app’s Get Info window. Check it, and the app will run with the menu bar below the notch.
Good to know.
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
In macOS Monterey, you can use an animated Memoji as your Mac user profile instead of a standard static image. Of course you could always use a still photo of yourself to welcome you at startup and on the Lock Screen, but where’s the fun in that?
And, once you’ve made the change:
Next time you login to your Mac, you’ll see your animated Memoji avatar there to welcome you. And if you get your login password wrong a few times, just watch the expression on their face go from mildly irritated to thoroughly irate.
I followed Tim’s instructions, made the change, can confirm the various “wrong password” interactions. Fun!
iFixit:
Normally we get to the battery last because, well, they suck to remove. But as we peer into the guts, we notice something we haven’t seen in a long time in a MacBook Pro, three words that make our hair stand on end: battery pull tabs.
Even better, it appears the battery isn’t trapped under the logic board. That could mean battery swaps without removing all the brains first—a procedure we’ve been dreaming about for a while.
And:
The four outer battery cells have easily-noticeable pull tabs, which are the typical thin white strips we know and love from the iPhone and MacBook Air. But wait, we don’t see any pull tabs on the middle cells. Are we screwed—or, worse, glued?
Not entirely! We removed the trackpad and, lo and behold, there are cut-outs to access the pull tabs that hold the middle battery cells in place.
And:
We’ve still got a long way to go with disassembly, but this new MacBook Pro has, at the very least, the first reasonably DIY-friendly battery replacement procedure since 2012.
Great news! I’m looking forward to the detailed teardown.
Tom Warren, The Verge:
Apple hit Intel hard with its first M1 chips, offering a rare step-change improvement in performance with its 2020 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Less than a year later, it’s already starting to compete with the best GPUs from AMD and Nvidia as well. The new MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max offer a first glimpse at how well Apple’s M1 chips can scale to provide raw performance that rivals the discrete graphics cards we typically find inside Windows-powered laptops.
This walkthrough highlights the incredible performance gains made by Apple’s M1 series, especially where the GPU is concerned.
At the core of the review is AnandTech’s Apple’s M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights. Jumping to the GPU analysis page:
Traditional OEMs have been fine with a small(ish) CPU and then adding a discrete GPU as necessary. It’s cost and performance effective: you only need to add as big of a dGPU as the customer needs performance, and even laptop-grade dGPUs can offer very high performance. But like any other engineering decision, it’s a trade-off: discrete GPUs result in multiple display adapters, require their own VRAM, and come with a power/cooling cost.
And that’s where Apple’s gains are coming from: The new M1 series, by being incredibly space efficient, runs much more coolly than a traditional discrete GPU laptop can, and consumes far less power.
The gains here are obvious, especially when Apple’s pro apps, or third party apps specifically built for the M1, are involved. As to PC gaming, Apple is still not there. Scroll through the AnandTech post for benchmarks to get a sense of this. But my gut (I’m no expert) tells me that if game developers make it their mission to develop with the M1 Max in mind, that could change.
One last bit from the AnandTech post:
Overall, it’s clear that Apple’s ongoing experience with GPUs has paid off with the development of their A-series chips, and now their M1 family of SoCs. Apple has been able to scale up the small and efficient M1 into a far more powerful configuration; Apple built SoCs with 2x/4x the GPU hardware of the original M1, and that’s almost exactly what they’re getting out of the M1 Pro and M1 Max, respectively. Put succinctly, the new M1 SoCs prove that Apple can build the kind of big and powerful GPUs that they need for their high-end machines. AMD and NVIDIA need not apply.
Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:
Apple has finally released macOS Monterey to the public. The update comes with several new features, including Focus mode for notifications, SharePlay, Live Text, and more. Another new feature is the ability to AirPlay from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac without having to install any third-party apps, so read on as we detail how to use this feature.
If you’ve ever used AirPlay, you can probably figure this out by yourself, but nice to know this exists, and nice to have the walkthrough handy.
I gave AirPlay from iPhone to M1 MacBook Air a try and it was flawless and easy.
This is a great intro to Shortcuts on the Mac. Don’t miss adding a shortcut to your menu bar.
More great work from the Apple Support video team.