WWDC 2023 Thread

[leman]

Regarding hardware ray tracing, when do we think we would have confirmation? Would the A17 on the iPhone be first to have it, or would we need to wait for M3?

We‘ll see it when we see it. But the patents are fairly clear it’s ready to go.

 

[Jimmyjames]

We‘ll see it when we see it. But the patents are fairly clear it’s ready to go.

I suppose what I’m asking is, would it be necessary for it to be in the A17 to then appear in the M3, or could they enable it just for the M3?

 

[leman]

I suppose what I’m asking is, would it be necessary for it to be in the A17 to then appear in the M3, or could they enable it just for the M3?

Until now the A-series and M-series have shared basic processor design, so it’s a reasonable expectation. But who knows really?

 

[Colstan]

Oh boy! Time to bust out the monkeys!

No Mac release is complete until the Max Tech review drops. This time, the brothers are testing out the M2 Ultra Mac Studio, the base 60 GPU core variant with 64GB of RAM, and standard 24 CPU cores.



I know we like to dunk on Max Tech, it's a TechBoards pastime, but testing and reviewing Mac hardware is what they are typically good at. If you ignore Vadim's general ignorance on highly technical matters, and overall bombast, then they have their uses.

Like other testimonials, the thermals and complete lack of fan noise are the standouts. Also, the "scaling issue" from the M1 Ultra, which Vadim spent over a year bloviating about, appears to have been fixed. (Which is good, because it keeps Vadim quiet, at least about that.) I do wonder how Max dealt with him while growing up. Did Vadim spend all of his time trying to impress the other kids on the playground?

Also, I had a hard time concentrating on the video, because of Vadim's face. He looks like he got in a fight at the local bar.

We can expect a review of the M2 Max version of the Mac Studio, along with the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, in the coming days.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Oh boy! Time to bust out the monkeys!

No Mac release is complete until the Max Tech review drops. This time, the brothers are testing out the M2 Ultra Mac Studio, the base 60 GPU core variant with 64GB of RAM, and standard 24 CPU cores.



I know we like to dunk on Max Tech, it's a TechBoards pastime, but testing and reviewing Mac hardware is what they are typically good at. If you ignore Vadim's general ignorance on highly technical matters, and overall bombast, then they have their uses.

Like other testimonials, the thermals and complete lack of fan noise are the standouts. Also, the "scaling issue" from the M1 Ultra, which Vadim spent over a year bloviating about, appears to have been fixed. (Which is good, because it keeps Vadim quiet, at least about that.) I do wonder how Max dealt with him while growing up. Did Vadim spend all of his time trying to impress the other kids on the playground?

Also, I had a hard time concentrating on the video, because of Vadim's face. He looks like he got in a fight at the local bar.

We can expect a review of the M2 Max version of the Mac Studio, along with the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, in the coming days.

Can't wait for the M3 Studio!

I agree with you about MaxTech in terms of their knowledge. I also agree that they are willing to do a great deal of tests. To their credit, they are good to deal with. If you have a question or suggestion, they are usually happy to engage in a positive way. They will usually try and help if you suggest a test you want to see. There is a lack of arrogance which is refreshing. Nonetheless the community is badly missing someone with deep technical knowledge, who doesn't just run tests, but investigates the results and communicates those findings.

 

[Colstan]

Can't wait for the M3 Studio!

I had been leaning toward getting a M(x) Pro Mac mini, but want at least 32GB of RAM, which quickly gets close to Mac Studio territory in price. Now that Apple have adjusted the cooling solution, which was my main concern, I'm almost certainly going to have an M(x) Max Mac Studio as my next Mac. I've only owned Mac minis, currently on number four, so that'll be a move upward.

 

[Jimmyjames]

OT: Just wanted to publicly thank Eric for helping me get my original name back.

Many thanks Eric.

 

[exoticspice1]

ok I admit. The M2 Ultra is very good. In blender its greatly improved. With M3 Ultra and hardware RT cores it can match an 4090 while being the size of a lunch box

 

[dada_dave]

OT: Just wanted to publicly thank Eric for helping me get my original name back.

Many thanks Eric.

Did your two accounts get merged? Nice!

 

[B01L]

ok I admit. The M2 Ultra is very good. In blender its greatly improved. With M3 Ultra and hardware RT cores it can match an 4090 while being the size of a lunch box

I am hoping a M3 Extreme will match or best whatever AMD (CPUs) & Nvidia (GPUs) have out at the time...!

And if Apple could source some ECC LPDDR5X RAM, that would be great...!

 

[KingOfPain]

I don't know exactly what I'm going to upgrade to, likely M3 generation, perhaps I could push it to M4. What I do know is that I'll receive a massive boost in performance and features whenever I do finally replace it.

What benchmarks don‘t show is how well macOS works in conjunction with Apple Silicon. With the efficiency cores focusing on background tasks this leaves the performance cores to do anything you want to do right now. Everything just feels smoother independent of the peak performance.
Before I switched to Apple (with a PowerMac G5), I was using BeOS on a PC. I believe BeOS was using a scheduler that interrupted processes much more often. It probably hurt the peak performance of certain applications, but working with it just felt smoother.
This is something that is hard it express in numbers, but the computer just feels faster, even if a benchmark tells you that it isn‘t.
At work I‘m using a Windows PC that is objectively slightly faster than my M1, but sometimes when I‘m typing an e-mail in Outlook, it just seems to freeze and none of the typed characters show up. I often wonder if the USB keyboard is the issue, but when I switch to a standard editor the keyboard works just fine.
Benchmarks are a limited option to show the performance of a system, but what counts for me is how fast it actually feels when I‘m using it.

A (not so slight) tangent here:
Of course there are tricks to give you an impression that something is done.
With the applications bouncing in the Dock, you just know that it is being started (not that you‘ll see much bouncing icons with Apple Silicon). In Windows I often don‘t know if it recognized the click or if I should click again, because there often is no proper feedback that the task I want to be performed has been started.
Some form of feedback is important for the user. I once worked on a floppy emulator, i.e. a piece of hardware that replaces a floppy drive but uses USB flash drives for the disk images. What we noticed is that we probably should have added something to emit the tack-tack-tack sound of the head moving from track to track, because the totally silent operation just felt slower than a real floppy drive, although the measured time was exactly the same. There just wasn‘t any feedback to the user that it was doing something, because it was completely silent.

 

[Colstan]

More user testimonials regarding the M2 Max Mac Studio from this nice fellow.

So, try as he might, he wasn't able to push his M2 Max to hit the same fan speed that the original M1 Mac Studio ran at default.

I've heard criticism that the Mac Studio is "over engineered". We've been using x86 chips for so long that it's engrained in many user's psyche that computers have to make a lot of fan noise when pushed. Apple is now designing machines which are functionally silent, and it doesn't fit with the old reality, resulting in bizarre complaints.

 

[mr_roboto]

Nonetheless the community is badly missing someone with deep technical knowledge, who doesn't just run tests, but investigates the results and communicates those findings.

What we're missing is Anand Lal Shimpi, who used to do amazing in-depth technical reviews of Apple hardware even though his eponymous website was primarily focused on PC.

Of course, we're missing his testing and writing because he quit that career to join Apple's silicon team...

 

[Jimmyjames]

Did your two accounts get merged? Nice!

They did indeed. Eric was kind enough to help me.

 

[theorist9]

More user testimonials regarding the M2 Max Mac Studio from this nice fellow.

View attachment 24378

View attachment 24379

So, try as he might, he wasn't able to push his M2 Max to hit the same fan speed that the original M1 Mac Studio ran at default.

I've heard criticism that the Mac Studio is "over engineered". We've been using x86 chips for so long that it's engrained in many user's psyche that computers have to make a lot of fan noise when pushed. Apple is now designing machines which are functionally silent, and it doesn't fit with the old reality, resulting in bizarre complaints.

It seems puzzling that Apple hardware engineers didn't get the fan curve right the first time, and I'm wondering how much criticism they deserve for this.

I understand there are some things it's not possible to get right the first time. E.g., the early production versions of an OS are always going to have unanticipated bugs, because they are being used under conditions the software engineers can't fully replicate during the beta phase: In the wild by tens of millions of users.

However, I don't see how that would apply to the M1 Studio's fan noise, since this was not something only seen, say, with very specific combinations of apps the engineers didn't think to try in the their testing. Instead, it's something seen under pretty much all conditions of use. The only explanation I can think of is that the Studios were rushed to market, and the engineers weren't given the testing time they requested. But I've no idea if that's the case, and it seems unlikely

I think, if you care about hardware refinement, it's generally safest to buy the 2nd gen or later. With Apple, usually there are no issues—but not always.

 

[Citysnaps]

However, I don't see how that would apply to the M1 Studio's fan noise, since this was not something only seen, say, with very specific combinations of apps the engineers didn't think to try in the their testing. it's something seen under pretty much all conditions of use.

Perhaps that's the result of less than adequate fan stress testing during development, resulting in some Mac Studios being ok and others not? Or fans within a certain range of manufacture date?

My M1 Studio is dead quiet. Yes, I hear a very soft hiss (not tonal) if my head is in back of the computer with ears a foot away. Sitting in front of my desk, with ears 30" away (normal use) I hear nothing. Others have remarked with similar observations.

 

[theorist9]

Perhaps that's the result of less than adequate fan stress testing during development, resulting in some Mac Studios being ok and others not? Or fans within a certain range of manufacture date?

My M1 Studio is dead quiet. Yes, I hear a very soft hiss (not tonal) if my head is in back of the computer with ears a foot away. Sitting in front of my desk, with ears 30" away (normal use) I hear nothing. Others have remarked with similar observations.

That's a good point--some people find the noise so unacceptable that they return their units, while others think the sound levels are great. And I've no idea whether the difference is the users or the units (certainly, there's a wide variation in hearing ability and noise sensitivity among people). It would be really interesting if a couple of users who knew each other had this situation. Then they could compare their units side-by-side.

I will note that the makers of Macs Fan Control did find an issue in their testing:

Mac Studio fan control and fan noise - CrystalIDEA Blog

crystalidea.com

Plus the "loud fan" issue appears separate from the "high-pitched whine" issue—not sure if it was ever determined what the latter was from (theories included bad fan bearings and transformer noise).

 

[Colstan]

It seems puzzling that Apple hardware engineers didn't get the fan curve right the first time, and I'm wondering how much criticism they deserve for this.

While users who tend to experience the problem are far more likely to complain than those who haven't experienced the "whine", I do think it's an issue, and Apple needed to address it.

The only explanation I can think of is that the Studios were rushed to market, and the engineers weren't given the testing time they requested. But I've no idea if that's the case, and it seems unlikely

Seeing the innards of the M1 Mac Studios, I can't possibly see how it was rushed. It was definitely an oversight, but I doubt time was an issue. Apparently, Apple sources its power supplies and fans from different manufactures, which may be part of the problem. The fan curve itself may have been a contributing factor, because the M1 Mac Studio defaulted to a much higher RPM than necessary.

I think, if you care about hardware refinement, it's generally safest to buy the 2nd gen or later. With Apple, usually there are no issues—but not always.

That's the exact pattern I follow. With software releases, at least you can roll back to a previous version. With hardware, I wait until the 3rd generation of any product, at least. Even upon the announcement of Apple Silicon, I knew I'd be waiting until at least the M3. This was before the Mac Studio was announced, which lines up with a third revision. That's probably the device I will end up with, letting everyone else work out the issues with new hardware. Apple Silicon Macs have been, for the most part, well-received, but I'd prefer to make sure any remaining rickets are taken care of before making the jump from Intel.

 

[exoticspice1]

I think, if you care about hardware refinement, it's generally safest to buy the 2nd gen or later. With Apple, usually there are no issues—but not always.

oh no. Apple's first gen products always suck in longivity. The first iPhone, first iPad and first Apple Watch prove this. Now the 2nd gen Studio is much better in quietness. The first gen Mac Pro for AS looks rushed as well.

Always go for 2nd or 3rd gen products

 

[Colstan]

I listened to the latest episode of ATP, so that you don't have to. The main reason to listen to this show is John Siracusa's epic rants, with Marco Arment as the "straight man", and Casey Liss as topic moderator. Siracusa's toaster reviews are legendary. That being said, he's hitting "old man yells at cloud" territory.

Regarding the Mac, they spent about five minutes on the new Mac Studio, and are happy that the sound issue appears to be fixed. Siracusa then spent a half hour ranting about how much he hates the new Mac Pro and it's not what he wants. Marco Arment points out that Siracusa purchased a 2019 Mac Pro with the sole intention of using it as a gaming PC. (Siracusa has stated that he only plays Destiny in Boot Camp.) Speaking of games, Siracusa rants for another half hour about how much he hates Apple's new gaming efforts and that they're going to fail. Then, they spend two minutes on Sonoma, and Siracusa is happy that they fixed his two pet bugs. Finally, Apple execs say that they saw the "Believe" Mac Pro shirts from ATP.

Aside from the bellyaching, they do point out something that I forgot to mention. When comparing the sound levels between the M1 Mac Studio and M2 Mac Studio, Apple's stats claim that, while idle or web browsing, the M1 Mac Studio is 15dB, compared to the M2 Mac Studio at 6dB. Decibels are logarithmic, as seen on this chart, which means that the M2 Mac Studio is approximately ~8 times quieter than the previous generation. That's a notable decrease in sound output at idle, therefore Apple definitely tinkered with the cooling solution.