Apple today announced Final Cut Studio. It includes 4 applications, Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 4. Shake 4, was also announced today.
One interesting tidbit from the release is that high definition (HD) DVDs created with DVD Studio Pro 4 will be playable on any G5 Mac, including the 1.6 GHz iMac G5, with OS X Tiger 10.4's DVD Player 4.6 and QuickTime 7. However, playback on any G4 Mac, even the dual G4 1.42 GHz Power Mac, is not supported. DVD Studio Pro 4's HD-DVDs use traditional DVD media, but with H.264 encoded video at up to 1920x1080, 59.94 Hz interlaced.
What's surprising about this announcement was that it was only last year that a dual G5 Power Mac was required to play back progressive scan 1920x1080 at 24 Hz, a form of HD that represents about 20% less data than what the iMac G5 1.6 can achieve today.
2005 is indeed the year of HD.
[Update 2005-04-29]
Nope, we were wrong. The listed G5 specs were misleading, because a single G5 only supports up to 720p playback, and that's with a 1.8 GHz G5. For 1080p playback, a dual G5 2.0 GHz Power Mac is needed. See this article.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Safari 1.3 from Panther 10.3.9 is FAST
Apple on Friday released the 10.3.9 update to Panther. It addresses a number of different issues, but the most noticeable update is to Safari. Safari in Panther is now at version 1.3, and it gets much of the core of Safari 2.0, which is coming soon in OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Dave Hyatt comments in Surfin' Safari weblog about the changes:
One note of concern however, is Test 7. This test calculates the day of the week on which Christmas lands each year. With Safari 1.3, every day listed starting in 2038 is Friday. I don't know if this error is an error in the original JavaScript code, an error in the output by both Safari 1.2 and Safari 1.3, or an error unique to the new Safari 1.3. Unfortunately, I did not notice the error until after I upgraded my machines.
One interesting point of note also is the claim by some that enabling Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger 10.4 can slow down Safari 2.0's BenchJS performance significantly on some hardware.
[Update 2005-04-18]
Thanks to Screed and Squozen for pointing out that the Xmas calculation error is present in Safari 1.2 as well. There is no such problem with Mozilla Firefox in Windows 2000 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 in OS X 10.3.9.
Dave Hyatt comments in Surfin' Safari weblog about the changes:
Those of you running Panther can now update to 10.3.9. This update includes Safari 1.3 and new versions of WebKit, WebCore, and JavaScriptCore that contain thousands of improvements we've made to the engine since Safari 1.2.On my 1.7 GHz Cube G4 7447A, the perceived speedup in real-life surfing is quite impressive, and the speedup as measured by BenchJS is nothing short of astonishing. It's a ten fold change in benchmarked JavaScript performance:
What you are getting is all of the new standards support, new WebKit capabilites, site compatibility fixes and performance optimizations that are also present in Safari 2.0 for Tiger. The layout engines for the two are virtually identical.
Here are some of the highlights:
Page Load Performance
Safari 1.3 loads pages overall 35% faster than 1.2 as measured by IBench. In addition to improving the overall page load, Safari 1.3 will display content sooner than 1.2 did, so that subresources don't hold up the initial display of the page.
JavaScript Performance
We have substantially improved the performance of the JavaScript engine in Safari. I encourage you to check out Safari 1.3 on this benchmark for example to see the improvement relative to 1.2.
Did I mention it's really really fast? :)
One note of concern however, is Test 7. This test calculates the day of the week on which Christmas lands each year. With Safari 1.3, every day listed starting in 2038 is Friday. I don't know if this error is an error in the original JavaScript code, an error in the output by both Safari 1.2 and Safari 1.3, or an error unique to the new Safari 1.3. Unfortunately, I did not notice the error until after I upgraded my machines.
One interesting point of note also is the claim by some that enabling Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger 10.4 can slow down Safari 2.0's BenchJS performance significantly on some hardware.
[Update 2005-04-18]
Thanks to Screed and Squozen for pointing out that the Xmas calculation error is present in Safari 1.2 as well. There is no such problem with Mozilla Firefox in Windows 2000 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 in OS X 10.3.9.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
New Power Mac, iMac, and eMac specs from Think Secret
Think Secret today published pre-release specifications for new Power Macs, iMacs, and eMacs. The machines are to be released soon, with Tiger and iLife '05.
The rumoured Power Mac speeds are dual 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 GHz. Although TS mentions the possibility of dual-core 970MP chips, the 512 KB L2 cache spec would suggest that these machines in fact utilize the single-core 970FX chips. The top of the line speed boost is not a terribly impressive, at only 0.2 GHz, but is more impressive if the new machines no longer use liquid cooling like the current dual 2.5 GHz. It's nice to see the line more balanced now though. 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 makes more sense for a desktop line than 1.8, 2.0, and 2.5, since the latter line's chip speeds are not evenly spread out.
No quad Power Mac is mentioned, which is not unexpected if the chips used are still the 970FX. PCIe is also a no show. One might expect the next revision of the Power Mac to include both PCIe and 970MP support, with one quad (dual dual-core) G5 model. A new Power Mac line might also support DDR2. However, with an April/May release of this new Power Mac line, we shouldn't expect a new PCIe-endowed 970MP Power Mac revision until fall at the earliest.
The stock Power Mac, iMac and eMac GPUs are all listed to be from the ATI Radeon 9600 series, with the high end Power Mac using the 9650. I suspect the 9600 listed may be the slower non-Pro 9600 GPU, but the version is not specified in the article. The 9650 appears to be ATI's RV351, which is a 110 nm die shrunk 9600 Pro class GPU. These chips will likely be fanless, and probably relatively inexpensive for Apple as well. The adoption of the 9600 series GPUs across these desktop lines is especially important for the eMac, since Core Image requires Shader 2.0 compliance for full GPU acceleration, and the previous Radeon 9200 did not support this feature. One may guess that the Mac mini will also get this GPU (or something comparable) at the next revision, possibly in the fall. The 9600 series GPUs also support Quartz 2D Extreme hardware acceleration, although this feature does not (yet) appear to be enabled in Tiger.
Overall, if the TS pre-release specs are accurate, this is a relatively solid update to Apple's desktop lines, although the Power Mac line is still in definite need of a further boost this year.
The rumoured Power Mac speeds are dual 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 GHz. Although TS mentions the possibility of dual-core 970MP chips, the 512 KB L2 cache spec would suggest that these machines in fact utilize the single-core 970FX chips. The top of the line speed boost is not a terribly impressive, at only 0.2 GHz, but is more impressive if the new machines no longer use liquid cooling like the current dual 2.5 GHz. It's nice to see the line more balanced now though. 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 makes more sense for a desktop line than 1.8, 2.0, and 2.5, since the latter line's chip speeds are not evenly spread out.
No quad Power Mac is mentioned, which is not unexpected if the chips used are still the 970FX. PCIe is also a no show. One might expect the next revision of the Power Mac to include both PCIe and 970MP support, with one quad (dual dual-core) G5 model. A new Power Mac line might also support DDR2. However, with an April/May release of this new Power Mac line, we shouldn't expect a new PCIe-endowed 970MP Power Mac revision until fall at the earliest.
The stock Power Mac, iMac and eMac GPUs are all listed to be from the ATI Radeon 9600 series, with the high end Power Mac using the 9650. I suspect the 9600 listed may be the slower non-Pro 9600 GPU, but the version is not specified in the article. The 9650 appears to be ATI's RV351, which is a 110 nm die shrunk 9600 Pro class GPU. These chips will likely be fanless, and probably relatively inexpensive for Apple as well. The adoption of the 9600 series GPUs across these desktop lines is especially important for the eMac, since Core Image requires Shader 2.0 compliance for full GPU acceleration, and the previous Radeon 9200 did not support this feature. One may guess that the Mac mini will also get this GPU (or something comparable) at the next revision, possibly in the fall. The 9600 series GPUs also support Quartz 2D Extreme hardware acceleration, although this feature does not (yet) appear to be enabled in Tiger.
Overall, if the TS pre-release specs are accurate, this is a relatively solid update to Apple's desktop lines, although the Power Mac line is still in definite need of a further boost this year.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
No Quartz 2D Extreme for Tiger 10.4?
One of the most exciting things to come out of WWDC 2004 was the description of a technology in Tiger called Quartz 2D Extreme.
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Quartz Extreme replaced Quartz to offload portions of OS X's 2D display work from the CPU to the GPU. Quartz 2D Extreme similarly would replace Quartz 2D to further offload work to the GPU.
(Click picture for video. Go to 22'52".)
However, while the Quartz 2D Extreme code is present in Tiger, rumour has that it is disabled by default in the shipping version of Tiger. Also, there is no mention of it on Apple's public webpages about Tiger. So apparently, even if the hardware includes a Shader 2.0 compliant programmable GPU (which is required for Quartz 2D Extreme), Tiger unfortunately does not use it at this time.
If these rumours are true (and we will only know for sure on the 29th), one can only hope that later point updates of 10.4 will reenable it. In the meantime, one can enable it for testing purposes using the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools.
(Note that Core Image is something completely different from Quartz 2D Extreme, and is included and enabled in Tiger. Core Image's GPU acceleration does share Quartz 2D Extreme's requirement for Shader 2.0 support however.)
[Update 2005-04-25]
Several people who now have the release version of Tiger 10.4 (8A428) are reporting that Quartz 2D Extreme is indeed disabled by default.
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Quartz Extreme replaced Quartz to offload portions of OS X's 2D display work from the CPU to the GPU. Quartz 2D Extreme similarly would replace Quartz 2D to further offload work to the GPU.
(Click picture for video. Go to 22'52".)
However, while the Quartz 2D Extreme code is present in Tiger, rumour has that it is disabled by default in the shipping version of Tiger. Also, there is no mention of it on Apple's public webpages about Tiger. So apparently, even if the hardware includes a Shader 2.0 compliant programmable GPU (which is required for Quartz 2D Extreme), Tiger unfortunately does not use it at this time.
If these rumours are true (and we will only know for sure on the 29th), one can only hope that later point updates of 10.4 will reenable it. In the meantime, one can enable it for testing purposes using the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools.
(Note that Core Image is something completely different from Quartz 2D Extreme, and is included and enabled in Tiger. Core Image's GPU acceleration does share Quartz 2D Extreme's requirement for Shader 2.0 support however.)
[Update 2005-04-25]
Several people who now have the release version of Tiger 10.4 (8A428) are reporting that Quartz 2D Extreme is indeed disabled by default.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Install Tiger and be l337!
From the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Advanced Technology page:
Remappable Modifier Keys:)
Remap modifiers such as control and caps lock to be super elite.
Tiger 10.4 released, Core Image GPU requirements
In case you haven't heard yet, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was formally announced today, and accompanying this is a nice black motif on the front page of Apple.com.
I'll let everyone else expouse the virtues of the various new features in Tiger, but I just want to make a comment about Core Image in Tiger. Many people seem worried that certain recent GPUs are not listed as fully supported on Apple's site:
When a programmable GPU is present, Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you'll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of operations.
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Because of this, people are worried their PowerBooks from last year with the Mobility Radeon 9600 for example do not fully support Core Image.
Two things:
1) Core Image supports Altivec fallback, so if the GPU is not fully supported, any G4 or G5 will be able to take over this functionality.
2) The Mobility Radeon 9600 is indeed Shader 2.0 compliant, and will support Core Image GPU acceleration fully. It seems Apple is simply not listing ALL GPUs with this functionality. They are only listing currently shipping GPUs. The Mobility Radeon 9600, the Radeon 9600 Pro, and the Radeon 9800 Pro are all not listed, because no current Macs ship with them. However, all three cards support the required feature set and are actually faster at this than the listed GeForce 5200 series cards.
I look forward to the 29th of April, for Tiger's arrival. :)
I'll let everyone else expouse the virtues of the various new features in Tiger, but I just want to make a comment about Core Image in Tiger. Many people seem worried that certain recent GPUs are not listed as fully supported on Apple's site:
When a programmable GPU is present, Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you'll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of operations.
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL
Because of this, people are worried their PowerBooks from last year with the Mobility Radeon 9600 for example do not fully support Core Image.
Two things:
1) Core Image supports Altivec fallback, so if the GPU is not fully supported, any G4 or G5 will be able to take over this functionality.
2) The Mobility Radeon 9600 is indeed Shader 2.0 compliant, and will support Core Image GPU acceleration fully. It seems Apple is simply not listing ALL GPUs with this functionality. They are only listing currently shipping GPUs. The Mobility Radeon 9600, the Radeon 9600 Pro, and the Radeon 9800 Pro are all not listed, because no current Macs ship with them. However, all three cards support the required feature set and are actually faster at this than the listed GeForce 5200 series cards.
I look forward to the 29th of April, for Tiger's arrival. :)
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