Apple LSP project / open editors

Apple has launched an open source project based on Langage Server Protocol. It is aimed at providing editing features to other code editors (code completion, jump to definition, etc.)/. The SourceKit LSP can be found here.

Apple Music service results / review

Apple reported 10 millions registered users (of its 800 millions iTunes accounts) for its Music service following the first month (June 30 to end of July). We can suppose there were additional 5 millions registrations in August, then 3 millions in September, and 2 millions the first half of September. This could then match with Apple’s announce mid October stating their were 15 millions still opened Music accounts (and 6.5 millions paid accounts among these).

Apple offered an option to disable automatic renewal of Music subscription, then many users diddn’t wait the 3 months trial ending to cancel (or not) their subscription, they just let it stop by itself in case they wouldn’t renew. Did Apple take into account the users that  left the automatic renewal on for its 6.5 paid accounts ?

On one hand their may be 100% of early “subscribers” (the about 5 millions ones that entered trial bewteen June 30 and mid July) that let their subscription stop by mid October, that could explain the 15 millions active accounts (from 20 millions total trials) reported at that time.

On another hand there should have been at least the same amount that would have renewed their subscription to reach the stated 6.5 paid accounts (most of them would have choosed to renew a few days to one week before trial ending, that is early to mid October). Apple offered an option to initially extend and pay for many months, however few users may have opted for this. Then these same users couldn’t both have renewed and let stop their subscription.

Apple then may have taken into account users that let the automatic renewal option enabled. There shouldn’t be more than 2 millions users that did renew their subscription for some months, that is only 10% of users that entered the trial (and 0.25% of Apple’s iTunes users).

Considering the deceiving quality of the service (iTunes Store is much better and many songs or artists weren’t present in Music service), Apple should lower the price, replace the service by access to the full ITMS catalog, and provide songs in lossless format (a new HD audio format is expected by Apple early 2016).

Also many would have used the trial to copy most of songs (using Soundflower), then Apple shouldn’t provide a Trial (as users still can try iTunes Store by listening to long tracks samples).

 

Mac mini / Crucial SSD / fan overspeed

A few days after having replaced an Intel 320 160GB SSD with a Crucial M500 480 GB into my mac mini (mid 2010), the fan was going to run at maximum speed (that is 5500 rpm) time to time, wihtout any reason (the computer was cold, also reported by sensors). Using free MacFans control the HD termal sensor indeed seemed to work fine (SSD temperature ranges from 27°C to 40 °C), or it may be that the software also uses Smart informations (that is temperature reported from SSD internal sensor).

The SMC reset (unplung the mac mini for 15s, then plug it, wait 5s and finally power it up) didn’t helped. It seemed that playing games under Windows 7 (through Bootcamp) leader to more and more fan overuns. It was the same under Mavericks, then not Yosemite related.

I also noticed that the PSU (power unit) temperature was somewhat high (58 to 65°C) – didn’t remember that before -, however some reported even higher values for other mac models.

I finally ended using MacFan Controls (added to launch items), set to manage fan speed based on CPU temperature sensor, with 65°C as start for speed increase and 85°C for max allowed temperature (that is max fan speed). I may however change these values to 70/90°C as the mac is colder than before with these settings when playing games (I also uses the Windows version of MacFan controls).

OSX Yosemite slowdown fix

Yosemite’s UI slowdown seems partly due to too many interrputs coming from ACPI kernel driver.

sudo powermetrics -s interrupts

These news were reported by VMWare and Parallels :

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2440081

http://kb.parallels.com/en/122767

It seems running OSX in debug mode (does not have any hit on performance) allows retrieving some speed (despite not at a Mavericks level) :

sudo nvram boot-args=”debug=0x10″

Also OSX Lion leaded to slow UI performance (same 10 times slower than previous Snow Leopard), that was fixed  by Mountain Lion. We wonder then whether we will have to wait for OSX 10.11 to retrieve acceptable performance or Apple is preparing a fix for next Yosemite update.

Update : there weren’t many interrupts per second (1 to 20) on mac mini (mid-2010) and adding the boot args didn’t helped (only 10 percent performance more in Quartz and OpenGL, no improvement in UI speed results). To remove the boot options, use this command :

sudo nvram boot-args=””

http://www.cnet.com/news/boot-argument-options-in-os-x/

After removing these options some of the slight improvements were still present, however I ended with installing Mavericks back on another drive (as its UI is 10 times faster and OpenGL is 50 percent faster – I also now play games under Windows 7 through Bootcamp).

Yosemite / mac mini

OSX Yosemite performance on a mid-2010 mac mini (NVidia 320M) reminds first 10.0 version : text rendering is 3 times slower (slow redraw when resizing windows), OpenGL is 2 times slower, and user interface test is 10 times slower ! Also opening windows (files listing) is slower, while the new UI theme shouldn’t require more power (it should be faster as it is simplistic – Googlish / Windowish -, without all previous refinements that ultimately landed into Mavericks, not mentioning still non fixed firewire disks sleep issue and trim issue).

Then Apple may use some new OpenGL 4 only APIs for Quartz, while older macs only support OpenGL 3.3.

The new mac mini have half the CPU cores than previous ones, do not allow adding RAM, and only provide an Iris graphics chipset (Iris Pro would have been at least required). Also new imac’s Nvidia 750M graphics card is old.

We now then have to either buy a retina imac ($2500) or mac pro ($2999), or wait for upcoming Broadwell based hackintosh (that will offer same performance for half power requirements, and then will allow smaller enclosure). Also Intel will release an updated Iris Pro.

We then want Scott Forstall (OS features and design), Jon Rubinstein (hardware leading edge with custom processors – should come with A8x) and Bertrand Serlet (Snow Leopard) back, as new team really isn’t talented (except iPad/iPhone hardware engineering).

Mac mini ARM specifications forecast

Apple may unveil ARM based mac mini running an ARM version of Yosemite this month, as it didn’t release Haswell refresh based mac mini nor would wait next year’s Broadwell processors. The new mac mini may include (many) new PowerVR GX6650 GPU, that is 82x faster than first PowerVR chip in iPhone 3G. It includes 192 FP32 ALU cores with up to 384 FLOPs per cycle, that means up to 250 GFLOPs (384 x 650 000 000) at 650MHz (with 32 bits precision). It is able to process 12 pixels per clock and 12 texels per clock, that is about 8 Gpixels/s and 8 Gtexels/s.

Intel Iris Pro 5200 chipset reachs 832 GFLOPS, 10.4 Gpixels/s and 20.8 Gtexels/s. That is a mac mini fitted with 3 PowerVR GX6650 chips may run as fast, for less than 10W power consumption (about 2-3W per PowerVR GX6650 chip at that frequency), while the Iris Pro requires 47W.

Apple A7 performance reached 75 Gflops at 1.3 Ghz (that is 4W power consumption). The new A8 (also 2 cores hower at 1.4 Ghz) is 25 percent faster and 50 percent more power efficient. As an A7 processor at the same frequency would require 4.3W, the A8 power consumption may be about 2.2W (and that is including a PowerVR GX6450), then an A8 fitted with a PowerVR GX6650 may require 4 to 5W, and reach 94 Gflops.

The new mac mini (or iMac) may finally include 4 A8 chips (that is 8 CPU cores) with a PowerVR GX6650 each, and then reach 376 Gflops for CPU and 1000 Gflops for GPU. It would then be close to a common x86 Intel Corei5 (fitted with HD4400 GPU chipset), that reaches 430 Gflops for CPU (however at 35W power consumption compared to about 18W for a quad A8) and far more less score (about half performance) for GPU. Also the extra GPU resources available on the quad A8 may be used through OpenCL and compensate for the lower base CPU performance.

The new mac enclosure may be a smaller version of new mac pro’s one. It may be priced $500.

Update : since Apple would have to provide some Intel emulation (as with Snow Leopard’s Rosetta for PPC) for existing applications, this would make the switch to ARM useless (Intel cores processors were at least two times faster than PPC processors, while ARM are slower). Apple indeed would have to use twice the A8 processors count than previously stated, that is 8 chips / 16 CPU cores, then exactly the same power usage as Intel’s Core i5.

OSX Mavericks 10.9.1 update

The long awaited first update to OSX Mavericks is available. However it doesn’t fix the Firewire sleep issue with external drives.

Mac mini 2013/2014 coming

New Mac Pro was released only few weeks before holidays, as with pro users these timings don’t count. Also the mac mini isn’t what leads Apple (while more and more are buying it on refurb) and wasn’t updated during October’s update.

Then the new mac mini may be released at any time, and one forum user reported some information that may hint at an upcoming release in the following weeks, bringing Haswell and Iris graphics :

I work in an Apple Reseller and like many of you i’m waiting for the mini 2013 refresh.

From monday the two major Apple suppliers in Italy are suddenly and completely out of stock of minis. I know that this happen from time to time, but the timing is no coincidence.

Trust me, a new mini is coming next week, or at least we have solid evidence to believe it.

New Mac Pro vs iMac

By selecting a custom built 21.5′ iMac though the Apple Store (quad Core i5  2.9Ghz, 16GB ram, 256 GB SSD) we get it only EUR 1000 cheaper than the new entry-level Mac Pro, that provides a quad Xeon 3.7 Ghz (also 10 MB cache vs 6MB for the i5), a faster memory bus (1866Mhz vs 1600 Mhz for the imac), two AMD FirePro D300 with 2 GB VRAM each (Nvidia GeForce GT 750M with 1GB VRAM for the imac) . Moreover the Mac Pro’s graphics cards can be upgraded (also it provides more extensions/ports) and it runs more silent and is likely more reliable.

Apple then does not provide true choice between the mac mini and Mac Pro (iMac processors and graphics cards are mobile versions, that are less powerfull than desktop’s ones).

OSX Mavericks : installation/performance

Following 5,29 GB download, OSX Mavericks’s installer stated 34 minutes total installation time, and while the volume was an SSD, it didn’t install faster than announced (was closer to 45 minutes). Moreover it took more than 5 minutes to complete the installation while stating one minute remaining (we could check it wasn’t stalling by looking at the log file through the menu). When restarting it added a 7 minutes remaining step, however this one completed in 2 minutes.

In fact the installer kept all previous user files and custom system/library components (audio plugins and applications specific libraries and settings) and preferences (even mysql and apache document root), then providing a fully working upgraded system (no backup required).

The new Apple Maps applications is stunning, with perspective varying when looking from top, and even allows full exploring/navigation mode (from sides with various depths). Details and experience are far more better than with Google’s solution.

Finder windows list view use lighter gray for files informations (as to focus on files names) and sort columns labels. It feels even more responsive than Mountain Lion (that was faster than previous versions). Rendered icons in grid view look sharper, that may come from either optimizing or use of a darker background. Also icons in Preferences panel are redesigned and larger.

The new activity monitor shows more usefull informations, and we now see that non running/front applications use minimal resources after a while (including the activity monitor).

Using benchs show huge performance increase in FFT (on par with Snow Leopard – was way slower in Mountain Lion), that may be interesting for audio applcations. The new OpenGL is 44 percent faster than Mountain Lion’s one (was slower than Snow Leopard). User interface tests results were even greater (50 percent increase) than with Mountain Lion.

UPDATE :  php module hase to be activated again (uncomment loadModule in  /etc/apache2/httpd.conf) and php.ini has to be created and edited for mysql socket (sudo cp /private/etc/php.ini.default /private/etc/php.ini,  then sudo vi /private/etc/php.ini and set  mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock in [MySql] part). Finally config.inc.php in phpMyAdmin has to edited to add $cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘user’], $cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘password’] and set $cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘host’] to 127.0.0.1 (socket problem if localhost).

 

MacBook Pro Intel Iris /Nvidia 750M/320M

New MacPro’s Intel Iris video chipset is three times faster than 3 years old NVidia 320M one (and only 20 percent faster that previous Intel HD5000 chipset). Higher end 15″ MacBook Pro models fitted with Nvidia GeForce GT 750M dedicated grahics card provide more than two times better framerate than the Intel Iris chipset.

Apple : executives reorganization

Scott Forstal was forced to leave Apple after the iOS6’s new Maps application problems (great interface and 3D vector rendering – lighter than Google’s -, however data weren’t all reliable). He originated the iOS era (from Core Animation to WebKit’s CSS effects, and more recently Siri and Maps) however there wasn’t much innovating recently in UI design (notably iOS features added to OSX – like the launchBar – didn’t brought real value).

Since Micosoft’s new system (merging desktop and mobile, and inspired from Apple’s old Hypercard from 1988, and OpenDoc from mid-90s), Apple had to rethink its UI design strategy. Moreover there was strong competition with other lead members.

Then Jonathan Ive will take leadership and direction for Human Interface besides his role as leader of Industrial Design.  Eddy Cue will manage Siri and Maps (also iTunes Store, the App Store and iCloud). Craig Federighi will manage both iOS and OSX, and Bob Mansfield will lead the wireless team.