WWDC 2023 Thread

[Cmaier]

Here’s an important new feature: autofill one-time codes received by email

 

[Jimmyjames]

For those of us who are unfamiliar, what’s dxil and it’s significance?

I imagine almost everyone is more familiar with low level stuff than me, but I believe it's DirectX intermediate language. I assume it makes it much easier to port DirectX from Windows/Xbox

 

[Cmaier]

And another: you can add links to other notes to notes in the Notes app.

 

[dada_dave]

Hector is also confused about how they are getting all this extra PCIe on the Pro:

Hector Martin (@marcan@treehouse.systems)

Attached: 1 image So the weird thing is I don't see the extra PCIe controllers on the M2 Max die. I see 4 x4 lane blocks and 4 Thunderbolt blocks. Two of the x4 blocks would be for storage (8 NAND chips, x1 each). One of them is the regular APCIe which is used for WiFi/USB/SATA/Ethernet/etc (4...

social.treehouse.systems

So the weird thing is I don't see the extra PCIe controllers on the M2 Max die.
I see 4 x4 lane blocks and 4 Thunderbolt blocks. Two of the x4 blocks would be for storage (8 NAND chips, x1 each). One of them is the regular APCIe which is used for WiFi/USB/SATA/Ethernet/etc (4 x1 ports normally). So that leaves 4 lanes unaccounted for. But they have 2xEthernet, WiFi, USB, and SATA on the Mac Pro, so they can't fit that in 4 lanes, so they probably need both blocks for all that, utilizing all the PCIe on the first die.
Okay so maybe they're reusing all the lanes on the second die for GP PCIe. That's still just 16 lanes. Where the hell are they getting 48 lanes from?
Did they hide more PCIe controllers along the bottom edge that they cropped out this time, along with the die2die interconnect? Edit: No, they have an uncropped shot, nothing along the bottom edge.
I hope this is not just cheating with PCIe switches to crank out more lanes from thin air than they really have...

Hopefully these are real slots with their own lanes … otherwise that $3K is even more dubious than it already is.

 

[Eric]

This might be unfair, but it seems like the lowest possible effort possible for the Mac Pro.

I just don't see how they can create the greatest thing since sliced bread on an annual rollout like this. At best, with any of these devices, I think we can really only expect incremental updates. It's also why I typically skip a generation or two with my iPhones now, otherwise it's really hard to even know the difference.

 

[dada_dave]

I just don't see how they can create the greatest thing since sliced bread on an annual rollout like this. At best, with any of these devices, I think we can really only expect incremental updates. It's also why I typically skip a generation or two with my iPhones now, otherwise it's really hard to even know the difference.

That would be fair if this was an Apple Silicon update to an already Apple Silicon Pro, but this was the first AS Pro and in my opinion is underwhelming and overpriced. Not a good start, but hopefully the next generation will be better and indeed be on a yearly or even 18 month roll out as opposed to previously where the Mac Pro languished for many years at a time.

 

[dada_dave]

BTW I know I’m banging on the Pro, but otherwise this was a damn good WWDC release in my opinion - the Studio and Airs are great, some nice quality of life improvements in the OSes (which are hopefully stable and so forth), some nice gaming updates, and I think appleVision looks really interesting, pricey yes, but worth the price if it can deliver (to be seen).

 

[Cmaier]

 

[dada_dave]

View attachment 24184

Oh dear

 

[Cmaier]

Oh dear

Almost may as well get a studio and a thunderbolt PCI enclosure

 

[dada_dave]

Almost may as well get a studio and a thunderbolt PCI enclosure

For $3K less money … yup (okay pci enclosures ain’t cheap but still)

 

[Jimmyjames]

Oh dear

Like I said.

 

[Nycturne]

Hector is also confused about how they are getting all this extra PCIe on the Pro:

Hopefully these are real slots with their own lanes … otherwise that $3K is even more dubious than it already is.

I am curious how the lanes are setup as well. Guess we will find out soon enough as someone orders one of these things.

(EDIT: Ninja’d)

MPX provided more power to the Apple MPX GPUs (no ugly cables that you will not see when the chassis is closed up) and enabled the TB ports on the Apple MPX GPUs...

AFAIK, the MPX slot did nothing to provide more bandwidth to the actual (Apple MPX) GPU itself...?

Correct. The MPX board connector had outbound Display Port (so a GPU could send a display to the onboard TB ports), inbound PCIe (for the card’s TB ports), and extra power.

 

[dada_dave]

I still maintain that the rest of WWDC was good. I gotta think they must’ve planned on releasing M3 with the Pro originally and the delays in N3 meant that became impossible so they released a substandard M2 product just to get something out the door. I can’t believe this is what they would have had initially planned for this space. Well at least they didn’t violate both principles of Apple’s typical product strategy as Gurman said they would and also not released a Studio Ultra. That would’ve sucked. Hopefully there will be a next gen M3 Mac Pro that will substantially improve things.

 

[Cmaier]

I still maintain that the rest of WWDC was good. I gotta think they must’ve planned on releasing M3 with the Pro originally and the delays in N3 meant that became impossible so they released a substandard M2 product just to get something out the door. I can’t believe this is what they would have had initially planned for this space. Well at least they didn’t violate both principles of Apple’s typical product strategy as Gurman said they would and also not released a Studio Ultra. That would’ve sucked. Hopefully there will be a next gen M3 Mac Pro that will substantially improve things.

Definitely not what the original plan was.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I still maintain that the rest of WWDC was good. I gotta think they must’ve planned on releasing M3 with the Pro originally and the delays in N3 meant that became impossible so they released a substandard M2 product just to get something out the door. I can’t believe this is what they would have had initially planned for this space. Well at least they didn’t violate both principles of Apple’s typical product strategy as Gurman said they would and also not released a Studio Ultra. That would’ve sucked. Hopefully there will be a next gen M3 Mac Pro that will substantially improve things.

Indeed. I have to think that a future M3 Mac Pro will be the true one. If it isn’t significantly better then I assume it isn’t long for the world.

 

[Colstan]

Apple Insider got confirmation that the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro doesn't support Radeon cards.

Apple Silicon Mac Pro does not support PCI-E video cards

Apple announced the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, and while it packs a punch with M2 Ultra, pro users won't be happy with a lack of Radeon PCI-E video card support.

appleinsider.com

What is most striking to me is how empty the motherboard is. The Xeon model was overflowing with doohickeys and gewgaws. The Apple Silicon Mac Pro looks sparsely populated. It's like starting SimCity from scratch.

 

[throAU]

“Doesn’t support radeon cards” doesn’t mean anything really.

It’s driver support. Any current or future GPU that speaks PCIe and fits in the power envelope could be supported, it just needs drivers for it.

That said it would not surprise me if apple release some of their own cards (maybe their own GPU or other AI/ML accelerator cards), otherwise there’s not much to go in the slots other than storage adapters and NICs.

 

[dada_dave]

“Doesn’t support radeon cards” doesn’t mean anything really.

It’s driver support. Any current or future GPU that speaks PCIe and fits in the power envelope could be supported, it just needs drivers for it.

That said it would not surprise me if apple release some of their own cards (maybe their own GPU or other AI/ML accelerator cards), otherwise there’s not much to go in the slots other than storage adapters and NICs.

Drivers written by whom? Apple no longer sells any AMD i/dGPUs in its current lineup and the OS won’t even recognize an eGPU being plugged in on Apple Silicon - and that’s not for the lack drivers, Apple literally blocks it (at the software not the hardware level). So any dGPU drivers would be just for the AS Mac Pro and it’s not like Apple partnered with AMD or announced anything despite that the Mac Pro is itself available to buy. That’s a tough business proposition for AMD by itself, never mind that releasing third party drivers for something like GPUs is now extremely difficult on the latest macOSes.

Also, Apple wants people to move to using unified memory so they are very unlikely to release their own discrete cards never mind go out to write support for others. Plus you put one GPU any more powerful than a Radeon 7600 or compute card and you’ve used up all the full bandwidth of the Ultra’s PCIe lanes, anything else and they’re sharing bandwidth. Now many applications may not mind so much but that’s still can matter for the type of user you’re talking about and their applications. Interestingly, the PCIe bar issue stopping dGPUs from working on Linux is just for Linux so yes it’s still technically still feasible on macOS, but for all the reasons above it just isn’t likely to happen. Certainly not this generation - not for compute, not for AI, and definitely not for graphics or video.

 

[Cmaier]

Installed ipados 17 on my old iPad Pro (A12, 12”). Stage manager window sizing/positioning is much better. Health app exists and seems to work (though search isn’t working, maybe because it’s still downloading data from icloud). Lock screen customizing is ok.

Overall, seems stable. Isn’t even breaking my company’s remote device management stuff, so I can read my work email and everything (that often breaks with new betas).

Can’t say in my brief playing-around that anything made me care enough about the new OS to prevent me from putting the old ipad back in the closet, though.