Posts by IvaliceResident

Apple-Intel divorce to be final next year

Apple Silicon is great but don't see why Apple didnt just share TSMC capacity with AMD to build them a customised SoC design.

Like they do for consoles.

Then we could still have an x86 SoC and compatibility.

Ex-NASA Admin pick blames Musk ties for pulled nomination

Also it's sad your getting downvoted I've worked on research using similar hyperspectral tech as JWST. The tech would benefit from much more rapid iteration. Jared has the right idea here.

Agreed the idea of rapid iteration makes sense.

A rapid iteration approach to hyperspectral imaging in JWST and its sunshade technology would have been far more economical and lead to much more spin off benefits in remote sensing.

Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

Re: How different is Adobe on a Mac than a PC?

You are talking about 15 years ago.

I use MacOS but MacOS has been so unstable and slow with SMB shares for years its not funny and they deprecated AFP long ago after MacOS classic ended. I use an M3 Macbook Air with 24 gb ram for form factor and battery life but I have to run everything via secondary Windows machine or VM to backup to my corporate NFS.

Your graphics card's so fat, it's got its own gravity alert

Again if a high end gaming rig works for you. Then power to you! You can either go one of two ways with newer hardware. Either more power efficiency or better performance. Each has pros and cons. At the moment I have invested more in power efficiency over better performance on the PC side with some older x86 hardware as backup for Mac incompatibilities. Part of that is because it suits my use cases that extend beyond gaming.

Not saying my setup is best for everyone, but for me it is working fine so I'm okay with it.

Chill my friend. I’m just saying 750ti and M3 Mac suits my gaming interests when it comes to pc focussed titles. Hint pc focussed titles, Alan Wake 2 is designed for consoles. As I have a PS5, I don’t see a pressing need to buy expensive high end GPUs at this time and large bully graphics card that this article talks about make the proposition much less appealing. I like slim and small and ideally silent.

Furthermore there is still a wide variety of games designed to support Xbox Series S, Nintendo Switch 2 and yes PS4 that dampen graphical demands of many games.

Along with this PC game developers also are targeting gamers in emerging markets who don’t have the means to purchase high end gaming pcs or those who simply see it as a big expense they don’t want.

That also is a big dampener on pc system requirements in many games. So I can still eek life out of older hardware or portable options for some time.

AVX2 is now supported in the latest versions of Rosetta and Prism and I do have 24 gb ram so vram isn’t really an issue for me. Though most YouTube reviewers only review 8/16gb versions cause they are not build to order hence I suspect easy to refund.

Yes there are still some incompatibilities with Mac but my point is really more broader. If you already have a high end console anyway then for a lot of titles that are pc focussed you don’t really need a high end graphics card.

Not just MacBook Air but you can also choose x86 options like Steam Deck, Lenovo legion go, asus rog ally handhelds or beelink / geekom mini pcs. Or just a normal pc with a low end GPU. All you really need is something with ps4 or switch 2 performance and you can play most pc focussed games.

But it brings other advantages. You can instead have a computer that’s much more lightweight and is near/entirely fanless.

Never understood this fascination with RGB Leds.

Have a computer with 750ti + i7 2600 (1.7 tflops), it still plays most games just fine. Thats about as good as a PS4.

But for the super high end stuff I have a PS5 (10 tflops). I also now use a Macbook Air M3 (3.6 tflops) which is a little more powerful and with Crossover and VMWare Fusion Windows 11, again most stuff runs fine.

To give some perspective Xbox Series S 4 tflops, Nintendo Switch 2 is 3.1 tflops.

A 5090 is 104 tflops so no wonder its so riduclously large. It's also completely overkill for even the most high end AAA games despite what social media influencers will tell you.

Get something modest like 4060 that has say 15 tflops or an updated sku eventually but for now I'm happy, my setup works fine. The average RTS, or FPS like Age of Empires or Counterstrike 2 doesn't need anything more than 1-2 tflops.

Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

Re: Since when is 8GB "beefy"?

Eh I have Windows 11 running in a VM with 4gb allocated on my Mac. It runs mostly fine and it use it mostly to run 32 bit games. Do edit documents with Word occasionally in it and light browsing. However the increase in ram requirements from win10 seems largely pointless imo other than to sell more stuff.

Steam cuts the cord for legacy Windows and macOS

Re: Forget about games on the Mac

Unlike the original PowerPc Rosetta, Rosetta 2 is developed internally by Apple and is the basis of game porting toolkit a Crossover derivative, virtualization tools and have mentioned Whisky in keynotes in the past.

It's also not the only X86 to ARM translator for Mac. Asahi linux have a linux version that does the same thing and now with the Vulkan drivers you can run x86 games in Asahi linux.

Re: Mac gaming on Steam, even with newer macs, it's casual at best

What games are you talking about? My M3 Macbook Air with 24 gb ram plays almost everything decently apart from graphicaly intensive console focussed AAAs once you get crossover and vmware fusion for 32 bit installed. That's more due to the gpu in a base m4 or m3 being around 4-5 tflops. A PS5 is almost 10 tflops.

But those few select graphical intensive titles is what I use my PS5 for.

Re: Forget about games on the Mac

My macbook m3 with 24 gb ram works just fine for most games. All you need is vmware fusion / parallels for 32 bit games and crossover/otherderivatives for contemporary 64 bit windows games.

Wanna run Windows on an M-series Mac? Fine, buy a license, but no baremetal

So when will Apple change their license to let me dual boot MacOS on a Surface Pro X or Samsung Galaxy Book?

Energy breakthrough needed to build AGI, says OpenAI boss Altman

Re: Wrong way around!!!

This 100%. The real breakthrough needed is less energy requirements.

It also means that we don't need AI "in the cloud" like Altman wants for his own monetary benefit, we can instead have it sitting locally on our PCs and phones.

Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB in a PC

What you call "geeky needs" is actually pro needs that a pro laptop is supposed to have for real work. The bioinformatic R script I ran today won't run on 8GB but it just about works with 16GB ram.

Then there are users of photoshop, video editing, etc... all people who would buy the pro laptop.

Sure maybe the average Apple fan would be okay with 8GB Ram + 256 GB SSD as they just want to check Facebook, Youtube and some basic MS Word/Excel but for actual professional work the "pro" laptop needs more ram.

Australia's 'great example of government using technology' found to be 'crude and cruel'. And literally lethal to citizens

Re: Oz just like UK

I would have thought in Australia it depends more on the structure of the proportionally represented senate rather than who controls the house and is PM which is elected via AV/preferential voting.

They Senate can create a Senate committee to investigate.