Recommended Free OSX Apps

Posted on December 16, 2020 by dc

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



Losing control of our computers

Posted on May 17, 2019 by dc

How do you delete a corrupted prefs file in Mojave?

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 !

Posted on August 3, 2018 by dc

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

Posted on March 14, 2016 by dc

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”

So 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Short History of Quicktime VR

Posted on May 25, 2012 by dc

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

Posted on January 10, 2012 by dc

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 ?

I 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.

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!

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.

This 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…
Tha 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

mojave Apple 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.

RX580 To 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.

Well Done Apple !

See All Hail the Mac Pro

Dorénavant

Thoughts on Music, Pictures, Politics et al.

Tag Archives: Apple