Apple : Will Nvidia graphics in future Macs make AMD green with envy? |
- Will Nvidia graphics in future Macs make AMD green with envy?
- Mac Week: All the Macs that mattered: the 20 most important Apple computers ever
- Mac week: 10 best macOS apps to download to your Mac today
| Will Nvidia graphics in future Macs make AMD green with envy? Posted:  It seems that when it comes to Apple's computers, there may soon be a switch in the company providing discrete graphics solutions, with Nvidia potentially set to step in. While the majority of Macs simply run with integrated graphics courtesy of Intel's processors, those beefier models (or custom configured affairs) which do boast a separate GPU have their pixel-shifting power provided by AMD these days, with Nvidia not having been near an iMac or MacBook Pro for some time now. But all that could be about to change according to some job listings. Bloomberg spotted three adverts for positions at Nvidia which mention Apple, all pertaining to software development for the Mac, with the most telling being a job for a 'Metal Compute and OpenCL Software Engineer for Mac'. The blurb says the successful applicant will be working in partnership with Apple to "define and shape the future of Metal and OpenCL on Mac OS X", (we think perhaps the future might be with macOS rather than OS X, mind you), and he or she will "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products". Mac driver teamAnother of the listings apparently calls for a software engineer working in the 'Nvidia Mac graphics driver team'. And interestingly enough, we found a job listing in which Apple said it was 'searching for world-class software engineers to join the Nvidia Mac graphics driver team and help produce the next revolutionary Apple products', dating back almost six months. So, it appears the search for staff has been going on for a little while now, and perhaps we could see Nvidia back inside Apple's computers sooner rather than later. That said, a scattering of job listings is hardly concrete evidence for the switch. But if this move is in the pipeline, it would certainly be a blow for AMD, as the company could well do without losing any turf to Nvidia. Nvidia is the dominant force in graphics, and the clear leader when it comes to desktop PCs – the latest figures we've seen put the company on a market share of 77%, with AMD on 23%. However, AMD did actually claw back some share in the last quarter to the tune of 2.5%, which might not sound like all that much, but it is significant in the fact that it's the first gain AMD has made on its rival since 2012. Via: Hexus
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| Mac Week: All the Macs that mattered: the 20 most important Apple computers ever Posted:  Introduction
The Mac is in its third decade, and it's still going strong: we're expecting to see a radically redesigned MacBook Pro next month, and we're hoping for an updated 2016 iMac too - although there's a good chance we might have to wait until WWDC for that one. Today's Macs are very different from the earliest models, of course. The first Mac had 128 kilobytes of memory; the iMac we're writing this on has 16 gigabytes. It's a bit faster, too. But whether it's a Mac SE or a MacBook Air, most Macs have something that sets them apart from other people's PCs - although even Apple has made the odd duffer. Here are some of Apple's greatest Macs, and a few Mac misses too.
1. Apple Macintosh
The first Mac was the first mass-market personal computer with a graphical user interface and mouse. Apple spent so much money advertising the original Macintosh that CEO John Scully promptly upped the price by $1,000 to try and recoup that money, but despite such tomfoolery the Mac sold well: 50,000 were sold by April, and in the first year Apple sold 280,000 Macs. Its 128KB of RAM proved to be insufficient for many, and a 512KB version was introduced later the same year with a price tag of $3,195. 2. Macintosh Plus
The Mac Plus was a big success, and wasn't discontinued until late 1990. It had a massive 1MB of RAM, expandable to an even more massive 4MB, an 800KB floppy disk drive and a SCSI interface enabling users to add peripherals such as hard disk drives, printers, scanners and other key devices. It was fanless, which meant it ran really quietly. Unfortunately that also made it prone to overheating. 3. Macintosh II
For all its joys, the Macintosh didn't have something even the simplest phone has today: a colour display. The Macintosh II changed that, although if you wanted a fully loaded version with colour monitor, hard disk, keyboard and RAM you could double the already hefty $5.5K price tag. Its modular design meant a more PC-style case instead of the all-in-one designs of earlier Macs. 4. Macintosh SE
For many people, the SE is the Mac that springs to mind when they hear "Macintosh". Introduced alongside the Macintosh II with a cheaper price tag - $2,900, or $3,900 if you wanted a hard disk - the SE could have one or two floppy drives or a floppy drive and a hard drive. It had a fan, too, so it didn't suffer from the heat problems of its more expensive sibling. If you spot a transparent one, snap it up: they were promotional prototypes and Apple only made 10, so they're worth a fortune. 5. Macintosh Classic
The Classic is significant, not because of its specs but because of its sticker price: it was the first Mac to be sold for less than $1,000. Macs had been getting pricier and pricier - the Macintosh IIfx was $9,900 before you added a keyboard or monitor - and with Microsoft's good-enough Windows 3.0 selling like hotcakes, Apple's sales started to decline. The Classic was an attempt to change that, and it was particularly popular in the educational market. 6. Macintosh LC
LC stands for "low-cost color" and the Elsie was effectively a Mac Classic with a color-capable video card. Like the Classic it was priced to sell, this time at $2,500, but to hit that price Apple had to cut some corners - and while it was a huge success with over 500,000 LCs sold in the first year it was compromised from the outset. 7. PowerBook 100
The PowerBook 100 wasn't the first portable Mac - that was the Macintosh Portable in 1989 - but it was the first popular portable Mac, raking in $1 billion in sales in its first year. It was a collaboration between Apple and Sony, who also manufactured the computer. PC World called the 100 the tenth-greatest PC of all time back in 2006, and the portable won stacks of design awards for its brilliance. 8. Macintosh Quadra
The Quadras were the Mac Pros of the 1990s, using Motorola's whizzy 68040 CPU and aimed squarely at power users. The Quadra 700 could be upgraded to 68MB of RAM, had 512KB of video memory expandable to 2MB and was capable of displaying 1152 x 870, or 832x624 in 24-bit colour if you maxed out the VRAM. Eagle-eyed, moviegoing Apple fans may have spotted its guest appearance in Jurassic Park. 9. Power Macintosh 6100
The Power Mac was the Quadra's replacement and used the new AIM (Apple, IBM and Motorola) PowerPC processor to run the latest Mac OS, Mac OS 9. The Power Mac would hang around for more than a decade - Apple didn't stop selling PowerPC Power Macs until 2006 - and the models fall into two camps: Old World ROM models, which featured the Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, and New World ROM models, which didn't and which used third, fourth and eventually fifth generation PowerPC processors (the G3, G4 and G5 respectively). 10. iMac G3
Apple was in trouble. Sales were in freefall, the product range was a mess and there was only one person who could sort it out: the newly returned Steve Jobs. Jobs slashed the product portfolio, canned projects across the company and presided over the launch of one of the most extraordinary computers ever made, the MacMan. Luckily for Apple, Jobs was persuaded to call it the iMac instead. Jonathan Ive's design influenced not just computers, but all kinds of products ranging from steam irons to sex toys, and the controversial decision to kill off the floppy drive proved to be sensible rather than the act of madness many observers said it was. 11. iBook G3
The iBook wasn't just one of the most lovable computers ever made. It also popularised a relatively obscure technology known as Wi-Fi. The fun design wouldn't last - the iBook became considerably more sober with the launch of the "Snow" dual-USB iBook in 2001 - but it was another very visual indication that Apple was really thinking different from the rest of the PC industry. 12. Power Mac G4 Cube
The Cube was fascinating and flawed: it cost significantly more than similarly-specced Power Macs, its acrylic case suffered from a manufacturing fault that caused cracks in the acrylic case and to some eyes it looked a bit like a toaster. It wasn't a huge success but it retains a cult following, and a few have been made into "macquariums". Apple would try the small-PC thing again a few years later with considerably more success. 13. PowerBook G4
The PowerBook was a radical departure from Apple's previous pro-laptop designs, dropping dark plastics in favour of shiny titanium and reversing the Apple logo so it looked the right way up to other people. You can see the PowerBook G4's DNA in all of Apple's current laptops, from the ultra-thin MacBook to the Retina MacBook Pro: the Titanium Powerbook, or TiBook for short, is clearly the grandparent of the Apple portables of today. Titanium proved to be problematic, so later PowerBooks - and their descendants - were machined from aluminium instead. 14. iMac G4
The original iMac was limited design-wise because it needed to include a huge CRT tube. Not so with the G4, which had a digital LCD instead. The candy colours of the first iMac had been so widely copied that they'd become a design cliché, so Apple went in a different direction for the new model. Some people see sunflowers; we see Luxo Jr, Pixar's anglepoise mascot. The LCD made the iMac considerably more expensive, so Apple kept a CRT model for the education market and called it the eMac. 15. iMac G5
Looking at it now, the iMac G5 sits perfectly between the anglepoise G4 and the aluminium iMacs we have now, but at the time it looked really futuristic. It may seem porky compared to today's ultra-thin iMacs, but in 2004 Apple was able to claim that it had made the thinnest desktop computer on the market. It's a masterpiece of something Apple has become really good at: squeezing lots of computer into increasingly smaller spaces. 16. Mac mini
In the 1990s, Apple lost market share to Windows. In the 2000s, Apple went on the attack. Designed specifically to tempt price-conscious Windows users, the Mac mini eschewed keyboard, monitor and mouse to keep the price below $500. Essentially a laptop in the body of a very small desktop, the Mini wasn't as quick as its siblings - but it was an awful lot cheaper. 17. iMac (Core Duo)
Hell froze over: Apple was using Intel processors, and the iMac was the first recipient. Apple had grown increasingly frustrated with the slow improvements in the PowerPC processor, and PowerPC Macs were lagging further and further behind PCs in the performance stakes. Swapping the G5 for a Core Duo nearly tripled the iMac's speed, and Intel processors would go on to power all Macs by the end of 2006. 18. MacBook Air
Steve Jobs introduced it by pulling it out of an envelope. The MacBook Air was the world's thinnest laptop, and while the specs weren't brilliant the portability more than compensated for it. The Air made other notebooks seem massive, and subsequent iterations ironed out some of the niggling issues such as processor performance and battery life. It was, and remains, a best-seller for Apple. 19. Mac Pro
Darth Vader's Dustbin is an extraordinary piece of engineering, with no visual similarities to the Mac Pros it replaced: the first-generation Mac Pro looked like the Power Mac G5, but the current model is one-eighth of the size despite supporting up to 12-core Xeons, four DDR3 RAM slots and dual GPUs. It's the most powerful Mac ever made. 20. MacBook
Thirty-two years after the first Macintosh, it's clear that Macs can still excite and delight. The 2015 MacBook isn't just a beautiful piece of engineering. It's also the clearest indication of where Apple is right now, with a design that's clearly related to the latest iPhones and iPads and an operating system that brings Apple MacBook, Apple Watch, Apple iPhone and Apple iPad together in perfect harmony. The lines between Macs and iOS devices are getting awfully blurry, especially here: choosing between the MacBook and the iPad Pro is a genuinely tough decision. |
| Mac week: 10 best macOS apps to download to your Mac today Posted:  Introduction
Whether you've just ordered yourself a new MacBook running the latest macOS 10.12 Sierra update or are looking to give your old Mac a new lease of life, there's plenty of useful software for Apple's platform out there. The App Store offers a convenient route to download a huge number of apps, and there's even more out there on the web. If you instead plan to grab some apps from the web, don't forget to head over to your Settings > Security & Privacy > General panel first to set 'Allow apps to download from: Anywhere'. Before changing it back afterwards, obviously. From note-taking apps to image editors, windows managers and music production suites, check out our list of the best macOS apps that you can download today.
1. Amphetamine
Sometimes you might want to save space on your desk by putting your MacBook to sleep and slipping it into a vertical holder. The problem there is that macOS automatically enters sleep mode when the lid is closed — and there's no way to prevent this from happening without a third-party app. Caffeine used to be the best solution doing the rounds, but it has been usurped by Amphetamine. Not only does Amphetamine look better in your Mac's Menu Bar (in Dark Mode, anyway) and features support for Retina displays, you can set hotkeys to turn it on and off, activate it using keyboard shortcuts, receive alerts when it deactivates (via the Notification Center) and, best of all, it's 100% ad free. It's better than that first coffee in the morning, in other words. 2. HyperDock
Windows received the ability to snap windows and programs to the edges of the screen way back in Windows 7, so we're quite surprised Apple took so long to replicated it with Split view in OS X El Capitan. But it still isn't quite as full featured as Microsoft's solution. The good news is that third-party apps to fill in the gaps, with the best being HyperDock, which covers window management and Dock functionality. For windows, you can drag an app to the left or right edges of the screen (or the corners) and it'll automatically fill that space. This makes it much easier to be productive on the desktop without wasting time dragging windows from the corners. For the Dock, hovering over apps activates something similar to Windows 7's thumbnail previews, providing overviews of windows that can be accessed by a click or closed directly from the preview. Handy. 3. Parallels Desktop 12
If you've bought a Mac and miss some of your old Windows programs, don't worry - Parallels Desktop 12 can make it happen. Instead of having to dual-boot your Mac into a Windows partition, Parallels Desktop 12 allows Windows and macOS Sierra to co-exist side-by-side, and you can even run Microsoft-only programs such as Visual Studio 2015, or the Windows versions of the company's Office 365 apps, alongside your native macOS ones. All you need is a Windows 10 license - so prepare to buy one if you haven't already. Or, alternatively, you can use Parallels to try a handful of free operating systems including Chromium (a free distribution of Chrome OS) or Linux Debian. This year's version of Parallels is the most useful yet thanks to a new addition called the Parallels Toolbox, which allows you to easily carry out common tasks — from taking a screenshot to downloading YouTube and Facebook videos, and password-protecting all of your files. 4. Duet
If you're anything like us, you'll hate working with one monitor or screen. Portable monitors are still fairly expensive (and not to mention bulky), and luckily you can use an iPad instead using a nifty app called Duet. Developed by ex-Apple engineers, it works by tethering your iPad to your Mac using one of Apple's Lightning cables and firing up the app on both devices. You can then drag windows and apps onto your iPad's display just like you can a second monitor, and if you have a more recent iPad with a Retina display then you'll get the full benefit of all those pixels. Just know that the bandwidth isn't quite what you would get with a proper monitor, so it can be a bit laggy when you notch the quality up. But it's still more than usable for reading websites, typing up documents and watching videos. 5. Atom
Atom is a text editor that's primarily designed for coders, but its flexibility and customization options make it a viable option for many different types of users. That's because of two reasons: first, you can download a number of different Packages - effectively plug-ins - to make it bend to your will. It can be transformed into a Markdown editor for writing blog posts, for example, or you can hook it up to Evernote for storing notes in the cloud. There's at least 10 different word counters out there, and you can even add typewriter sound effects as you hammer out your delicious prose. Atom is also infinitely customizable on the visual side thanks to an editable back-end, allowing you to do anything from changing the font size, line height and colors to giving the caret Word 2016-like elasticity. 6. Logic Pro X
Whether you're an aspiring rockstar or superstar DJ, Logic Pro X is one of the best music creation apps on the Mac. Developed by Apple itself,76 its accessible interface hides a ton of advanced functionality. The latest version comes with a slick new design, 64-bit architecture and new session drummer that will save you having to shell out for a drum machine. It also works in natural harmony with iPads, providing a touch-based alternative method of creating song structures to dragging and dropping blocks in the main visual editor. Whether you're a seasoned producer already (Sia used the app to record her hit song 'Chandelier') or are looking to upgrade from Garageband, Logic Pro X likely has what you need. 7. Wunderlist
A simple app but an important one, to-do app Wunderlist's strength lies in its cross-device functionality. It's available on Mac, PC and Android and iOS, allowing you to pick up where you left off wherever you are using macOS's Handoff feature. Once you've created a list you can schedule reminders, add notes and embed it into the macOS Notification Centre using a widget. Team-based features are unlocked by signing up to Wunderlist's Pro option for a yearly fee, and you can add files of any size without running into limits. 8. Evernote
Evernote has morphed into a mighty note-taking app over the years. While some people will say that it's too bloated, the sheer number of things that you can do with it still makes it best-in-class. You can type up notes, obviously, organizing them using a combination of folders and tags. You can even embed Google Drive documents, which are accessible in a click. There's also the ability to set reminders, share notes with friends, find information related to notes using Evernote's 'Context' feature, create lists, and favorite notes that you frequently return to. Better yet, all of your notes are synchronized using the company's servers, making them accessible on nearly any PC (through a browser or the native Evernote app) or mobile device in the world. The paid version lets you use Evernote with more than two devices while upping the amount of data you can sync each month. 9. GIMP
GIMP (standing for GNU Image Manipulation) is one of the best free image editing apps out there. It's a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop and comes with a massive array of professional-quality functions that let you tweak existing images saved in a range of formats or create fresh ones from scratch. Features include layers, highly customizable brushes, automatic image-enhancing tools and filters. You can do even more with it using plug-ins, which are available to download from the GIMP Plugin Registry. 10. Ulysses
Ulysses is one of the best "distraction-free" markdown editors out there today, balancing features with simplicity and beautiful design. Unlike Word 2016, or even Apple's own Pages, Ulysses hardly features an interface at all. This allows you to get on with writing without being distracted by superfluous buttons and menus. The app uses its own brand of Markdown — a type of text formatting engine — that lets you highlight your writing in a way that makes organizing it simpler, and a vast number of export styles formats it in an attractive way once you're finished. There's a handy attachments bar on the right-hand side that features an attractive word counter and lets you write notes to assist you in your writing. Notes can be accessed anywhere thanks to iCloud support, so you can pick up your iPad and carry on where you left off using macOS's Handoff feature. |
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