As many users saw probably this week, macOS 12 (do we really want yearly OS updates... still?) Monterey was revealed to have Several macOS Monterey Features Unavailable on Intel-Based Macs. John Gruber of daringfireball cleverly observed these features all made use of the imaging pipelines or neural engine.

The chatter in the Mac groups is nail-in-the-coffin, or debating if the features really required an M1 (Spoiler: they don't, they really don't). However, what is truly revealing is how Apple will approach future iterations of macOS akin to iOS. Generally, this has (mostly) limited to iOS camera features that are one part lens but many, many parts software. Could the iPhone XS had night mode? My guess is most likely, but Apple will not spend the energy back-porting the feature to previous hardware configurations. Then, the features are intrinsically hardware related, like the iPhone 12's signal processor, used for Dolby Vision / Smart HDR 3 / temporal noise reduction.

What seems likely is that on macOS we could see old Macs left out of newer features, but not just the latest wifi protocol or faster storage like has always happened. Still, literal features, be it improvements to real-time color correction or perhaps a hypothetical ML library that quickly identifies and highlights elements in a photo.

PC World published Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 5000: MacBook Pro and Asus ROG Flow X13, compared article. While this is entirely leaning on the GPUs found in x86 laptops, it’s also leaning entirely leaning GPUs found in X86 laptops.

Thus far the biggest concern with my M1 is the GPU, I can edit 4k video and its fast long as I stay on the happy path, using Final Cut Pro X. It's easy to scoff at the PC World article for not including web browsing benchmarks, compile times, and other CPU bound tasks but the fact remains Apple's fight for total performance supremacy will be much tougher on the GPU front.

It's been awhile since I've linked a single article, but I absolutely loved the Popular Mechanics article, "How You've Been Conditioned to Love Conspiracy Theories"

"In addition to xenophobia, O’Leary fell victim to “proportionality bias,” the logical fallacy that believes the cause of an event should feel as important as its impact. Proportionality bias lies behind many of the most popular conspiracy theories. For instance, it feels disproportionate that JFK, the so-called most powerful man in the world, could have been assassinated by one disturbed individual, or that Princess Diana,—a powerful, famous, real-world princess—was killed in a car accident."

I wish I could say I had "proportionality bias" as part of my lexicon prior to this as I certainly intuitively understood that many conspiracies are a desire to assert order in a chaotic world and an artifact of the "Tiger in the brush" scenario". It stipulates that it was evolutionarily advantageous to spot false patterns than none at all. If you believed there was a tiger in the brush, then regardless if there is actually a tiger in the brush, you'd still be rewarded with a continuous existence. Thus, evolution tolerates, if not rewards, a baseline paranoia, and overactive imagination. It's this same process that allows many to find meaning in the noise, be it the infamous Virgin Mary in peanut butter to believing that 9/11 was an inside job.

About the only thing missing is that from my (albeit somewhat limited) observations, conspiracies act as currency among the indoctrinated which is its own chaotic agent and generally any rebutal is met as further evidence of the conspiracy as it's just that much deeper. It many ways, conspiracies have filled the void as Americans become increasingly less religious although clearly no more logical.

After a year of being stuck, tethered to social media, the claws of conspirancies turn family members into born-again believers and we're all the worse for it.

Largely ignored by the media outside of a few tech journals, the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors were announced. Operating under the pretense that Bloomberg's reporting was accurate after predicting the latest Apple event, we can expect at least one more iteration of x86 Mac Pros along side Apple Silicon Mac Pros. Many Mac Pro enthusiasts lamented the Mac Pro's lack of PCIe 4.0, even if there isn't a massive point to it beyond future-proofing. There also was a bit of a disconnect. Intel has not had a PCIe 4.0 chipset until very recently, and Mac users were expecting the impossible out of Intel. GPUs simply do not benefit from PCIe 4.0 as the bandwidth requirements just do not require the increased bandwidth (AMD has shipped 8x PCIe 4.0 GPUs, which is equivalent to 16x 3.0), and there's barely a speed penalty still running the latest GPUs in PCIe 2.0. That leaves mostly SSDs as the sole component that benefits from PCIe 4.0, although I'd argue two things:

1. While not ideal, ASM2428 chipsets have allowed NVMe SSDs (based on the 4x standard) more bandwidth by address more lanes. Currently, in the PCIe 2.0 realm, users can achieve 3.0 speeds using an 8x or 16x slot (as well as multiple SSDs on motherboards that do not support bifurcation). It's likely we'll see similar chipsets allowing PCIe 3.0 cards that address more PCIe lanes to attain PCIe 4.0 speeds in regards to SSDs.
2. Latency and random read/write and caching mechanisms will have more perceivable benefits for daily use than increased bandwidth at this point, considering 3000 MB/s is only going to be a prohibited speed in extreme transfers.

The interesting specs

So what will the new Mac Pro specs look like?

• 10 nm, "up to 40 cores per processor" - This is using the Sunny Cove instead of the Cypress Cove variant, which is 14 nm.
• "46% more performance" - As of late, Intel has taken to dubious stats, and it is sad to see. Considering they're moving from 28 -> 40 core maximum, roughly 40% more cores, this isn't a surprising or impressive claim.
• " 8 channels of DDR4-3200" - Same as previous Xeons.
• "64 lanes of PCIe Gen4 per socket" - There's a lot of ways that PCIe lanes can be handled, but this is a beast amount of bandwidth, and with bandwidth switching certainly enough for workstations (servers are a different beast). Each CPU can negotiate a theoretical 128 GB/s of throughput via PCIe, although that might not be entirely accurate.

It's pretty easy to extrapolate that we're going to see a PCIe 4.0 Mac Pro with up to 40-Cores, roughly the same memory ballpark max-memory cap that'll still have the blistering prices we've seen before. I don't expect Apple to expend much energy redesigning the case, but we'll see the (likely) the final x86 Mac Pro setting a very high bar for Apple Silicon to follow. Still, mostly, the consensus is users want PCIe + upgradable memory and storage to continue.

Updating the firmware on a Mac Pro isn't difficult, but it is possible to "miss" firmware upgrades. This guide is for anyone looking to get to the latest (and most likely last) firmware released for the Mac Pro 5,1s, without having to install Mojave 10.14.x, or if you already have installed Mojave, or are looking to install Mojave. My first try, my firmware was stuck at 138.0.0.0.0.x even when running Mojave 10.14.6. Updating the firmware adds key funcitonality to the Mac Pro 5,1s, most notably native NVMe m.2 boot support. To learn more about Firmware and the Mac Pro 5,1s, see the Firmware Upgrades section of my Mac Pro Upgrade Guide.

These aren't the only instructions on the web, as MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread) for firmware upgrading. However, this the method I've found most reliable for users who are having firmware troubles.

Step 0: Remove unsupported GPUs

The biggest change for macOS Mojave is the deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL. OpenGL has been a thorn in Apple's side for quite some time, as it's been nearly dead for years. Vulkan, the OpenGL successor, wasn't quite ready for primetime when Apple originally created Metal for iOS and thus decided to port it macOS. Despite the annoyingness of having to meet the requirements, it was a necessary evil. Mojave will not install if you have a non-metal supported GPU.

Note: some users are reporting they had to remove all PCIe cards sans their storage controller (SATA card) and GPU to install the firmware update. I did not. If you encounter issues, try removing additional PCIe cards.

Step 1: Have a 10.13 drive

Unfortunately, this is the biggest pain if you've already updated. You'll need a separate volume to boot into 10.13. Amazon and Newegg each have 120 GB SSDs for under $20 USD if you need a temporary drive to install macOS 10.13 on. (upside is you can buy a USB case and turn into a very fast USB 3.0 drive afterward or return it). You can get old versions of macOS via the Mac using DosDude1's installer if you can't access it. If you have no intention to upgrade to Mojave or already have it installed., don't worry. We won't be installing Mojave.

Step 2: Boot 10.13

The next step is pretty straight forward, boot into your install of macOS 10.13 if you haven't already.

Step 3: Download 10.14.6 Combined installer

Fortunately, firmware flashing does not require updating in a particular order. I went from 138.0.0.0.0 to 144.0.0.0.0 without any problems. There's several avenues for this, including the Mac App store, but when I used the Mac App Store route, I didn't get the combined OS installer (The Mojave installer + all the updates to Mojave). The easiest way to obtain the final combined update for Mojave is to use Dosdude1's installer. Much like before, download the OS DosDude1's installer, even though we have supported hardware but with the patcher for 10.14.

Clarification: You do not need to use the DosDude1 installer, as you can grab the update via the App store or other sources but I found this easier. Apparently this link was posted this on MacRumors and a few posters didn't read the full instructions and suggested that I was advocating using DOSdude1 on the OS. I am not. The Mac Pro 4,1/5.1 does not need DOSDude1, so do not run the patcher on Mojave. The Patcher just happens to be extremely reliable about fetching the correct version, and skips the hassle of the App Store.

1. Go to DOSdude1 Mojave patcher and download it

2. Launch the patcher.

   

   Depending on your security settings, your mac may suggest it's from an unverified developer. Go to the system prefs, Security and Privacy (general), and allow the app to open.

   

   You'll be bugged one last time.

   

3. The patcher should warn you that you are on supported hardware.

   

   This is fine, ignore the message. Within the patcher, select the download Mojave from the Tools menu.

   
4. Once the download has completed, quit DOSdude1's patcher.

Step 4: Launch the installer and click shut down

The installer should bring up a message about firmware and a shutdown message. This will not start the Mojave installer, only the firmware.

Step 5: Boot the Mac

Using the instructions in the previous image, press and hold the button until it blinks. If you do not have an EFI enabled GPU (see more about EFI in my Mac Pro Upgrade guide), you will not see any video output.

I trimmed down the video, as it took about 15 seconds of holding before the button flashed. After the button flashed, the internal speaker emmitted a long lowfi "boop" sound.

Step 5: Verify

Go to About this Mac, and click system report. Under the first screen, look for the "Boot Rom" text. This should list your firmware version. From here, you can continue using 10.13.6, upgrade, or boot to your 10.14 volume.

The 144.0.0.0.0 firmware works with any version of macOS your Mac Pro supports.

Updated: November 13th, 2019 MacRumors feedback

Updated: November 4th, 2019 based on Feedback from Mac Pro Users user group on Facebook.

Benchmarking a MacBook Air M1's SSD.

Awhile back, I made a video about USBc and the classic Mac Pro but lamented yet ago the terrible benchmarking on macOS. The first commenter on FaceBook pointed out that we finally have a good disk benchmark utility AmorphousDiskMark. While it isn't a direct port, it's heavily inspired by the famed and loved Windows utility, CrystalDiskMark.

So why am I always complaining about BlackMagic Disk Speed Test

BlackMagic's Disk Speed Test only tests one thing, continuous throughput. This is useful but only measures one aspect of an SSD, and doesn't necessarily mimic accurately how most disk interactions occur. Random Read and Write tests are as important, if not more so, as many SSDs can deliver fast maximum continuous read and writes but much less so for random small data blocks. CrystalDiskMark tests random reads and writes both as queued requests and single requests. The default depth is pretty high for the test. Usually, an OS wouldn't have that deep of a queue, but the Q1T1 does mimic a singular request. Also, CrystalDiskMark measures IOPS (Input/Output Operations-per-second), which is similar but also a different measure of disk speed.

Better but not perfect

There's plenty of aspects that aren't covered, such as latency, burst performance, power consumed, and mixed random read/writes, but this is a massive step in the right direction for gauging SSD performance on macOS. Oh yeah, and it's free.

Let's retire BlackMagic's Disk Mark and embrance Amorphous Disk.

Codekit has its own very simple templating language, .kit that's actually quite useful when you're not looking to spin up something like PHP or Python or in the Pug/Jade vain (which latter two I've never been able to commit to). The documentation is straightforward. You can find it here but passing off a project with CodeKit dependency probably isn't viable for many situations. Also, Gulp 4.0 is much easier to read and much more pleasant to work with. You'll need, of course, a current-ish version of Node to run this.

Rather than post a git repository, I've created a GitHub Gist for anyone looking to make .kit files work with Gulp. It features a really basic simple set for compiling .kit, Sass, JS and uses BrowserSync for both streaming CSS changes and live reloads after JS/Kit changes. The readme has the default directory structure. All the files land, and in a /dist directory, that's likely something you'd ignore in your .gitignore.

The Tasks

• gulp - runs all the compiling processes once
• gulp watch - launches browsersync server with live compiling/processing

Apologies to anyone using RSS as the embed won't work, but you can view the gist on github.

The Mac Pro 5,1, despite its age, still can run many modern GPUs, so it shouldn't be a big surprise that the Mac Pro can use VR headsets for gaming (under Windows 10). The Oculus Quest 2 is probably the most attractive option as it's inexpensive at $300, includes VR controllers, now supports higher refresh rates/hand controls, and functions as a stand-alone game console. There are a few considerations that you need to be aware of.

• Windows 10
• Oculus Link Software
• Steam VR
• SteamVR Performance Test: Before taking the plunge, you can test your computer to see if it is VR capable in Windows using the free SteamVR Performance test software.
• USB 3.0 card that provides enough bandwidth: Cards with one controller for four ports may not provide enough bandwidth. The Oculus Link software will continue to work (with warnings), but you will experience blurred visuals due to higher video compression
• Proper USBc Cable: This might seem trivial, but USBc cables are not created equally. Many USBc cables use the charging spec but run at USB 2.0 speeds. Finding the correct cable is a huge issue. Oculus recommends its own $80 cable or the Anker Powerline+ USB C to USB 3.0 Cable.
• Active USB extension cable: Longer cables experience signal degradation over long distances. Active USB cables draw power from the USB bus to amplify the signal so data rates can be maintained. I personally used the CableCreation Active USB Extension Cable, but there are other options.
• GPU: Higher-end = better. I have a Radeon VII, but the Radeon 5700 XT is an equally viable option. The Vega 56/64/FE are also decent. Some people have posted usable results with the RX 580. If/When macOS is updated to support later model AMD GPUs, those will be the preferred option

Personal Thoughts

Tethered VR feels like a big step back from untethered, and regardless, VR still feels like it's in its infancy/gimmicky. This is partly because of the low resolution, and I imagine even when we get to 120 Hz and 8k per eye, it'll still feel low resolution. The Quest 2 works pretty well and is easy enough to set up, but with the space considerations, cost, and limited titles, it's hardly a must-have. I tried Skyrim VR, and I have to say, I found it nauseating trying to navigate the world to really bother trying to play it at length. The nausea effect differs person-to-person, and I seem to experience it worse than the average person. Games that do no feature 1:1 real-world movement are almost a no-go.

One of the most exciting features of VR is the ability to exercise while gaming. Boxing games are a huge workout. I found myself hitting 170 BPM while dancing around and swinging wild haymakers. When VR gets better, I can easily imagine many VR gamers being relatively fit.

Every year Jason Snell puts together a round table of opinions from Mac pundits called the Apple Report Card. I particularly look forward to it as I inevitably play the game "How would I score it?" I probably should never be asked by anyone as a panelist for something like this as I'm much too dower.

Mac: 3.5

The M1 is wildly exciting. I've written about it as I'm an early adopter, but there are some curious limitations that aren't appropriate for many mid-tier users, 16 GB of RAM, lack of eGPU support, or more than two displays. These are all things certainly to be addressed (except maybe eGPUs), but it does look like the death of user serviceability. The iMac will be the big canary in the coal mine for the Mac's future.

A computer is nothing without its OS, and Big Sur wasn't nearly as bad as Catalina, but I'd rather see a focus on "when it's done" than yearly OS releases.

The rumors for the Mac laptops sound amazing. No longer feeling the holy crusade against ports or thinness at the expense of everything else gave us in 2019 both the Mac Pro 2019 (even if its absurd) and the MacBook Pro 15 inch 2019. With Magsafe and SD card slots, rumored the Mac laptop will be at a new all-time high, besting the 2015 MacBook Pro as the best design/feature set. If I can get a 13 inch Mac Pro with 4 USBc ports, SD card slot, one more external display, MagSafe and more RAM in 2021, I'm selling off my m1 Air and dropping serious coin as this has been my dream and may finally be the first time a laptop as my primary computer in my entire life. That said, this in the future and not today and while the Apple Silicon Macs are very impressive, its not enough to ballast the software shortcomings. Also, for the millions of Intel Mac owners, I worry about long tail support.

Desktops? Much less so. Apple's GPU performance is scattershot, and a desktop without the ability to upgrade its RAM or GPU sounds horrible.

Phone: 3.75

The return to hard edges is wonderful, but Apple doesn't offer a pro mini, so yet again, I ended up with a larger phone that I want. As someone who lives an active life, I'd value some even easier to tuck away, but I also want the latest and greatest. There seems to be no compromise. I still miss the headphone jack, and I worry Apple will go portless to no-one's benefit. I have accessories that rely on the iPhone 12 beyond just charging, data, and audio, such as the Shure MV88.

Also, my iPhone XS had syncing issues with iOS14, which never were resolved no matter what I tried until I received iPhone 12. My mom had the same exact issue. The Apple support pages are flooded with people with this issue. If you're not on the receiving end of this, I'm sure you'd score it higher, but it is pretty frustrating that I was hit with some wacky battery issues and syncing in 2020.

The lightning port needs to go. It's a USBc world now. The lightning port is one Apple standard that I begrudgingly admit was a good idea for its time as it was a much more pleasant experience than mini/micro USB. Now we have USBc. The lightning cable standard should have died two years ago.

It still feels utterly suicidal to go caseless on an iPhone. I rolled caseless on the iPhone 4 and 5 without breaking my phone. The iPhone 6 was a different story. While I didn't expect to feel the speed bump from my XS, I did but I'd of traded it for longer battery life and durability.

In what's bound to be my most controversial take, iOS 14 beyond its privacy features, did not impress me. iOS 14 is still a mess. App organization is still the most tedious experience on mobile. The dashboards feel more gimmicky than useful. I relegated the few I like to the feed instead of anywhere on my screen.

iPad: 3.5?

It is kinda a stagnate year for the iPad, although I still wonder if the iPad Pro will be able to run macOS or a modified version of it when using a keyboard mouse combo.

I'm not a tablet person as it's too compromised, and the iPad Pro struggles to really be a pro device outside of its beautiful drawing capabilities. I constantly wonder "Who wants to make these sort of compromises?" Perhaps someone who's life is majority writing but creative professionals to developers, the iPad is a dead end still.

Apple also still has the bizarreness of a device that offers one set on Lightning port (kill already) and USBc (embrace it).

Despite my naysaying, the iPad still remains the best tablet by miles, and I wouldn't lie if I didn't want one for sidecar so I could draw. When I had an iPad 2 I found that I really didn't ever do anything beyond consumption and simplistic games and to this day, it still seems best suited for this. The limitations found on the iPhone are tolerable due to the contraints but nearing a laptop's size, the iPad still feels like a "big iPhone". There's certainly appeal in that but the iPad Pro feels more like a high end consumer device than anything professional beyond its beautiful pencil. Plenty of people love this product, and I do not. Perhaps we'll see the convergence of iPad OS with macOS with the ability to launch macOS apps on the Pro.

Wearables: 3
Watch: 4, Headphones: 1.5

I still hate that Apple has a virtual monopoly on its headphones by locking out other headphones makes from reading text messages and not licensing its pairing chipsets. The Airpods remain one of the most mediocre sounding headphones on the market. I have a pair of the PowerBeats, which I use a lot more out of convenience than actually loving the product. Killing the headphone port meant switching to a lesser bluetooth experience and Apple knew it and thus served up a way to de-suckify Bluetooth without letting anyone else have it. If I sound jaded, I most certainly am as its the Apple tax at its worst as Apple actively blocks people from having a superior experience. I bought a pair fo the AirPods Pro and returned them as they sounded worse than the Powerbeats, and worst than my JVC Marshmellows. I was stunned as I figured I'd be buying into moderately better audio quality. As product, they're exceptionally well designed. As headphones they're bad. The Airpods Pro are only incredible if you're willing to ignore that if on a level playing field, the Airpods would be just "eh".

The Airpods Max is the product that'll certainly have its proponents, and the wireless over-the-ear noise canceling bluetoth market is filled with mediocrity. I've tried and returned Momentum 3s and Sony WH-1000XM4. Thus far I've yet to find over-the-ear headphones that justify the money. For them to be called the best sounding wireless noise-canceling headphones, is a low bar to clear as wired, non-noise canceling headphones will best them at 1/5th the price of the Airpod Max. Apple likely has the best pair, but the price is absurd for the quality as it suggests to an audio connoisseur such as myself the truly high end, but it's clearly not. Then the case? Oy, bafflingly bad, and top it off, heavy and not IPX rated for working out. These are office headphones in a world without offices. If this had been priced even at $400 or truly matched their price class at least with less expensive headphones in the wired world perhaps I wouldn't be as bitter if Apple allowed others to its proprietary pairing. These very much feel like a product waiting for a revision.

The Apple Watch is in a class of its own. As a personal health device, it's unmatched. The blood oxygen sensor isn't medically accurate which makes it more novelty than anything else. It's kept me active during covid, with my 820 calorie a day goal. I also pretty much use my watch minimally outside of exercise or while driving but I still love it even if I use only about 3-4 apps on it. I'd be inclined to give the Watch a 4.5 if it weren't for the syncing issues that plagued it.

The embargo of custom watch faces remains one of the pain points. The iPhone received (mediocre) customization, so why not the Watch? The number of analog watch faces flummoxes me as it feels silly to me on a digital face. Custom faces would be nice for me.

Apple TV: 0.5

Overpriced. Bad Remote. No updates in 3+ years. Yeah, there's the Apple Health app, but that is a tough pill to swallow. I haven't owned an Apple TV since the Apple TV 2, so I can't comment on the OS improvements or lack there of. The remote is still trash. If Apple wants to convince anyone its serious about gaming on the Apple TV, then it should come with a remote.

Services: 4

iCloud is pretty good. I mean really, it is. Apple News more expensive than it needs to be, Apple Arcade turned out to be just ok. Apple TV had a few pretty good TV shows that I enjoyed at no cost with my new iPhone. I really want though Apple to encrypt my iCloud backups.

Apple News' design is still pretty bad but the rest of it is fine to good.

Hardware Reliability: 3.5

Now that we're past the butterfly keyboard, the self-inflicted wounds are over. The iPhones still feel built to break, which is funny as the Apple Watch does not.

I saw plenty of issues in the wild this year, like display issues, but the MacBook Air M1 feels like a mature product despite being a first-gen product.

Software Quality: 3

I'm at the avant-garde, so I tend to find the hard edges being someone who is web developer/UX engineer, which means a large toolset that spans everything: development tools (Docker, Webstorm, VScode, Xcode, Android Studio, Homebrew, Node, Ruby, Git, React, Webpack, Gulp), Visual Design (Sketch, Pixelmator Pro, Photoshop, Adobe XD, Figma, Axure, Illustrator), Video (Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Motion, Compressor, After Effects), Audio (Cubase, Ableton, Logic, too many plugins).

Catalina was utter chaos. Big Sur is much better, although prone to nebulous errors when trying to install or run certain applications like the infuriating "app doesn't have permissions," which requires, at best, chmodding or, worse, self-signing code. I can generally navigate these issues, but I also operate outside of most people, and to require my skillset to just get things to go seems absurd.

As locked down as Catalina was and tossing out legacy like it was going out of style, Big Sur seems content with the field burning and doesn't require much more land. I have many thoughts on Apple's out with the old as Windows 10 can still run on 2006 Mac Pros and run applications written for Windows 98.

Big Sur has been hell to pay as Serato still doesn't have a solution for Big Sur. Adobe doesn't really have workable solutions still for some of its Apps on the M1. Apple seems contented to punch developers of both macOS and iOS in the face repeatedly.

Big Sur works extremely well on M1s and is a mild improvement over Catalina, which is all kinds of impressive.

iOS14 was moving in the right direction but still doesn't address how terrible app organization is on iOS or how bad folders are.

That said, the meaningful updates to Logic Pro and a lesser extent, Final Cut Pro were very welcome. Logic represents the best deal in music production, hands down. It can score a blockbuster movie or record, mix and master an album, and is now encroaching on Ableton. Final Cut Pro X still isn't for Hollywood and has some annoying features like the librarying as opposed to per-project assets, but it's a pleasure to use. Motion needs more TLC as essentially, and it's the same app it was eight years ago. Motion is very good but desperately needs more. Also, the educational bundle at $199 for FCPX, Logic, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage is the best deal in software today.

I still wish Apple would reboot Aperture with tight integration with Photos or at least make a "Photos Pro" app.

Developer Relations: 2

Xcode is still a monstrosity. They gave devs a break for the first $1,000,000 for 15%, which is wonderful. Wildly changing the OS to break app support is frustrating just from the perspective of a user.

Pledging money to help fight racism was nice, and while problematic for free speech, de-platforming Parler was another win for common decency.

Trying to force App transparency for privacy and also causing the cold war with FaceBook to become hot suggests Apple is on the correct side of history. Without Apple, who would champion privacy in the SV? It seems like no one else.

Still, iCloud isn't encrypted, and developer relations aren't great, which mars a solid year with Apple dancing the 2020 shuffle without blundering hard, and Tim Cook was out in front to talk race (even if stifled) in a way none of the other big tech firms were willing to do. It's not perfect, but engagement counts for something in a year where the fabric of reality has been politicized.

Closing:

Apple's software the weakest link for Apple, and the feeling of macOS as a walled garden still persists even if it's more the hardware. After years of Windows playing catch up and offering better performance and longer tail support, its nice to see Apple toss out a beautiful transition to M1, but it also leaves a lot of asterisks around the legacy hardware and upgradability. It feels like the iOSfication of the hardware across the board. What was once only acceptable for MacBook Air is now standard for all Macs.

2021 is going to be one hell of a year for the Mac. The renewed focus on the Mac makes me happy as my professional and creative expression is entirely tied OS X's legacy as the mix of power and the polish of ease of use. I buy Apple computers for macOS entirely.

The info this guide is valid but I written a new one about QEMU screamer which emulates Mac OS 9 - OS X 10.14 with sound.

QEMU is an open-source emulator for virtualizing computers. Unlike VMWare, it's able to both virtualize CPUs and emulate various CPU instruction sets. It's pretty powerful, free, and has a macOS port. There are alternate versions and different ways to install it. Still, in this example, I'm using Homebrew, a package manager for macOS/OSX that allows you to install software via the CLI and manage easily.

Now, this post wouldn't be very exciting if I tried this on my Mac Pro, but I decided to try it on my MacBook M1. Thus far, the community has succeeded in getting QEMU to install the ARM version Windows, so I decided to do the more silly path and get PPC and X86 working on Apple Silicon. I encountered very little resistance, which surprised me as I haven't seen/read anyone trying this route. It's surprsingly very usable but the usefulness is going to be limited. I was able to play Sim City 2000 on Mac OS 9.2 at a fairly high resolution. For the sake of brevity, I'm going to skip over installing Homebrew on an Apple M1, but you'll want to use the arch -x86_64 method, which requires prepending. I've gotten OS 10.0 and nearly gotten Windows 10 working on my M1.

12/19/21 Update

When I originally wrote this guide, there wasn't a native version of QEMU for Apple Silicon, I've updated this guide so it is now correct

Included below is the instruction for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Requirements

• Basic understanding of the terminal in OS X/macOS
• Apple Silicon (M1) computer (or Intel) Mac
• Xcode
• xcode-select (CLI Tools) xcode-select --install
• Homebrew

Step 1: Install QEMU

Now that there's a universal binary for QEMU for x86 and Apple Silicon, we can install it using the same commands on both architectures. Yay!

    brew install qemu 

Step 2: Create a disk image

You can specify a path in fron to fthe image, but I just used the default pathing. The size is 2G which equals 2 GB. You can get away with much less for OS X OS 9. If you'd like more space, change the size of the simulated HDD.

    qemu-img create -f qcow2 myimage.img 2G 

Step 3: Launching the emulated computer and the tricky part: Formatting the HDD

Now that we have a blank hard disk image, we're ready to go.

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 512 -hda myimage.img  -cdrom path/to/disk/image  

Let's break this down so it's not just magic. The first command is the qemu core emulator, you can use things like 64-bit x86 CPU qemu-system-x86_64 or a 32-bit CPU qemu-system-i386 , but we're using a PPC, so we are using qemu-system-ppc.

Next, we're declaring PC bios with -L pc-bios, I'm unsure if this is necessary. This seems to be the default even in Mac QEMU. After that, the -boot flag declares the boot drive. For those who remember the days of yore, C is the default drive for PCs, D is the default for the CD-Rom like a PC. It's weird, I know. -M is the model flag. It's pretty esoteric, but QEMU uses OpenBIOS, and mac99 is the model for Beige G3s. The lowercase -m is memory, expressed in megabytes, but you can use 1G or 2G for 1 or 2 gigabytes like the format utility. -hda is the image we're using. Finally, -cdrom is the installer image

Step 3.5: Special considerations between operating systems

I discovered that OS X 10.0's installer has a significant flaw: It doesn't have a disk utility. The disk images are black disks thus have no file system. If you want to run OS X 10.0, you'll need to first launch an installer that can format HFS like OS 9 or later versions of OS X, run the disk utility, format the image and then exit out of the emulator. The process would look like this:

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 512 -hda myimage.img  -cdrom path/to/disk/macosx10.1 or macOS9  

Then format the drive from the utility, quit the emulator (control-c on the terminal window).

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 512 -hda myimage.img  -cdrom path/to/disk/macosx10.0

Tiger and Leopard requires USB emulation so you'll need to add -device flags for a usb keyboard and a usb mouse, also both like a few extra -prom-env flags.

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99  -cpu G4  -m 512 -hda myimage   -cdrom /path/to/disk  -device usb-kbd -device usb-mouse -prom-env 'auto-boot?=true' -no-reboot -prom-env 'vga-ndrv?=true'  -prom-env 'boot-args=-v'

Power PC Leopard I can get to boot but it crashed twice during installs, this could be

Step 4: after the installer fininshes

You will end up seeing a failed boot screen after the installer finishes. This is normal. Either quit the QEMU instance or use control-c in the terminal to close it. Now that it's installed, we want to boot off the internal drive.

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot c -M mac99 -m 512 -hda myimage.img    

MacOS 9 seems to do slightly better when adding the via=pmu and specifying the graphics.

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot c  -M mac99,via=pmu  -g 1024x768x32  -m 512 -hda os9.img  

Step 5: mounting disk images

There's not a lot to do with an OS without software. You can mount plenty of disk image formats

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot c -M mac99 -m 512 -hda myimage.img  -cdrom path/to/disk

Bonus round: Trying for x86 64 Windows 10

Step 6: Multi CD-Rom Installs or swapping Disk Images

Older applications and OS installers require mutliple disk images. This can be done from via the CLI inside QEMU.

On the QEMU window press:

• Control-Alt-2 to bring up the console
• change ide1-cd0 /path/to/image
• Control-Alt-1 to bring back the GUI

Thus far my Windows 10 experiment has been a lot less successful, I've gotten through the installer (it's unbearably slow) but it seems to hand on booting. It looks very feasible. I might have better luck using the 32 bit verison of windows.

qemu-system-x86_64  -L pc-bios -boot d -m 2048 -hda myimage.img -cdrom  Win10_20H2_v2_English_x64.iso  

QEMU with Sound

Check my guide on QEMU screamer which emulates Mac OS 9 - OS X 10.14 with sound.