I’ve long been a fan of the so-called “Moon Watches,” but owning one is way, way beyond my means. Looks like Swatch is trying to change that with a new, limited-run set of watches.
I don’t have a Swatch store anywhere near me, so hopefully a Mercury or Moon edition shows up on eBay at a reasonable price at some point in the future.
I love how good looking the inside of this machine is — even if no one will ever see it. The ports are mostly modular, meaning repairs to them shouldn’t require a full logicboard swap.
Myke has questions about the Mac Studio, Federico was right about Workflow and Stephen has some suggestions for the Bill of Rickies.
On Connected Pro, the longer and ad-free version of the show, we talked about dreams and bassoons.
This week, we’ve got another Q&A-style support document:
What can cause the below symptoms?
When the computer and monitor are powered on, a green an area on bottom left of the monitor changes colors depending on what is displayed on screen. Another less intense area is directly in the center of the screen. Both distortions are approximately one inch high and 3.5 to 4 inches wide.
The display has been moved in the house and checked for any environmental factors but this didn’t change anything. The monitor was left off for over 24 hours but the discolored areas didn’t change.
For younger readers, this problem will sound super bad. For others of you, it’s probably brought back memories you’d rather not relive:
This sounds like a classic case of magnetic field interference. Evidently the CRT has come in contact with a strong magnetic field that magnetized the CRT screen and thus created the problem you are now having. The magnetic field could have been generated by anything from a small magnet to the electric motor on a vacuum cleaner. The cure is fairly simple. The unit should be degaussed with an external manual degaussing coil, as used by TV technicians. They can be purchased at most good electronic parts stores and cost about $30.00.
I just love this piece by Jason Snell.
Last week, a story went around that at least some Mac Studio models come with unpopulated slots for SSD modules. This led to speculation that the machine could be upgraded with more storage.
I asked around about this, and came to the conclusion that these slots are populated on higher-end models with 8TB of storage, and maybe even the 4TB option. SKUs with less storage still have the slots, just without any modules in them.
Today, there’s confirmation that the Mac Studio freaks out when additional modules are added:
The Mac Studio recognizes the SSD, but Apple’s software prevents it from booting, suggesting that this is a conscious decision by Apple to prevent users from upgrading their storage themselves. On its website, Apple claims that the Mac Studio’s SSD storage is “not user accessible” and encourages users to configure the device with enough storage at the point of purchase.
Let’s look at my 2019 Mac Pro. In it, Apple used a similar design, with smaller, individual SSD modules raided together and tied to the logic board with encryption. Upgrades on those machines were possible but required a bonkers (and more than a little scary) process to set the drives up with the Mac’s T2 chip.
Apple may very well offer an in-store program1 for those wanting to add capacity to these machines, but things aren’t looking good as far as being able to buy additional storage from someplace like Mac Sales and pop it in.2
Don’t miss Quinn Nelson’s Twitter thread on the matter:
Everyone continues to talk about how there are 2 SSD slots on the new Mac Studio. This does *not* mean that the machine is intended to be upgraded.
The Mac Studio is configurable to 8TB and the SSDs themselves are barely larger than M.2 2230 drives that max out at 2TB right now.
— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyQ) March 20, 2022
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This week’s Mac Power Users is a feedback episode. On it, David and I celebrate the Mac Studio and Studio Display before revisiting the Stream Deck, Preview, Day One and more.
Daniel Howley, writing at Yahoo Finance:
Apple says a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra will outperform a Windows PC outfitted with an Intel Core i9 desktop chip and Nvidia’s formidable RTX 3090 graphics card, while consuming less overall power.
That not only means the Mac Studio will run at lower temperatures than competing PCs, but it will also maintain peak performance longer than its PC counterparts.
The M1 Ultra seems incredibly impressive, but then Howley goes on to quote Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush:
“This latest M1 Ultra is a game changer on the graphics front and ultimately is competitive versus Nvidia,” Ives said. “Now it’s about how big Apple goes outside Cupertino and selling its chip to third parties.”
Yes, Ives is suggesting that Apple would sell its custom silicon to other companies for use in their products.
I mean … has Ives ever thought about Apple for longer than about 14 seconds? Since the return of Steve Jobs, the company has done all it can to keep as much of its fate under its own control as possible.1 Apple silicon is the inevitable outcome of that mindset. To consider the company selling Apple silicon chips to the likes of NVIDIA, AMD or PC OEMs is downright laughable.2
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Apple has announced updates to the iPad Air and several iPhones, then launched an entirely new desktop Mac with an accompanying display. As a result, a new Keynote Chairman must be named.
Quite a few people noticed an oddity on the Mac Studio tech specs page:
Turns out, the weight difference between the two specifications of the Mac Studio comes down to cooling. In a statement to The Verge, Apple said:
They [both models] have the same 370W power supply. The additional weight is due to M1 Ultra having a larger copper thermal module, where as M1 Max has an aluminum heatsink.