Portability Improvements For Mac
The Vulkan working group’s portability initiative has been working with Khronos members Valve, LunarG and The Brenwill Workshop to enable Vulkan applications to be ported to Apple platforms.
The Mac's first foray into portability wasn't auspicious. At just under 16 pounds, 1989's was only about half a pound lighter than the original all-in-one Macs. The only direction to go was up-and, thankfully, Apple went there quickly with only a few missteps. Today it offers a range of laptops, from the MacBook Air to the burly 17-inch MacBook Pro-and the future looks both bright and light. Apple's laptop line has done a lot of evolving since 1989's Macintosh Portable. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)Compare the 2.75-pound lead-acid battery in the Macintosh Portable to the half-pound lithium-polymer power source in the -an admirable improvement, yes, but even the latest and greatest battery technologies run down and need significant time to recharge. Imagine if when your laptop's battery died you simply squirted some fuel into it, much like you refill your car's gas tank, and then got immediately back to work.
That's exactly what you'll do when fuel-cell technology finally comes of age. Power Generation: Safe, portable, and reliable laptop fuel cells have been 'coming soon' for a long time, but recent technology improvements, along with diminishing laptop power requirements, are bringing them closer. Another driving force is the military's increasing use of electronic devices-for you, extra batteries are merely a nuisance to carry; for a soldier, they're a mission-limiting load. Beware the and see why these. Other laptop-power improvements on the drawing board include nanotube-based capacitance devices that don't rely on the chemical interactions of batteries, can be recharged in seconds, and never wear out. Experimental plastic-based solar cells not only are less expensive than current silicon-based solar cells, but also can be painted onto a laptop, so they're very versatile.
And even the holy grail of wireless power transmission is getting closer, with the successful demonstration at MIT of a short-range device based on resonant inductive coupling. Nvidia's GeForce 9400M provides the power-saving integrated graphics for Apple's new line of MacBook Pros. Those same laptops also have Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics. Search best music mixer software for mac. Power Savings: There's a lot more to your portable future than new power sources-there's also, for example, the ability to use power wisely. The can now switch between power-saving Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and power-hungry but better-performing Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics. Whether Apple will eventually incorporate this option into the more affordable MacBook, however, is anyone's guess.
Other potential power-savers include the latest iteration of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays, known as AMOLED (active-matrix OLED) displays. AMOLED technology has the same advantages as OLED displays-no need for power-hungry backlights, good brightness, the ability to bend and flex, and a wide viewing angle-but provides better resolution, faster refresh rates, and the potential for larger sizes. AMOLED displays have been commercially manufactured only in smart-phone sizes so far, but look for them in your laptop's future. Security: Since laptops are now as popular as desktops, laptop security is becoming more important.
To help you sleep better at night, Intel has developed security technology that, when notified that your laptop has been stolen, will remotely encrypt the files on that laptop's drive, use the built-in Web cam (or iSight, of course) to take a photo of the miscreant, track the location of the stolen laptop by means of its built-in GPS, and then allow you to decrypt the files after you get your laptop back. All Apple needs to do is add a GPS chip to its laptops and implement Intel's technology, and this peace of mind can be yours. Rik Myslewski has been writing about the Mac since 1989. He has been editor in chief of MacAddict (now Mac Life), executive editor of MacUser and director of MacUser Labs, and executive producer of Macworld Live. He now writes for The Register. This story, 'The Mac At 25: Portability' was originally published.
Setting up an Apple computer for audio is simpler than a Windows pc because Apple offers fewer options. But it’s still possible to end up with a system that doesn’t perform optimally. Often it’s a case of not getting the machine configured correctly. The following guide will hopefully get you to a reasonable starting point for your Mac computer audio odyssey. For me, the three most important aspects of a computer audio system are stability, reliability, and simplicity of operation. Sound quality comes after these three primary goals are met: ultimately it doesn’t matter how good your computer audio system can sound if you can’t get it to work. If you want to do an audio-only computer system, be aware that there are different levels of audio-only exclusivity.
And there’s always a trade-off of ergonomics lost versus sonic benefits gained. Access to the Internet is not necessary to play back a music file, but it does allow for greater levels of operability, including access to Internet radio (which can be very good), streaming services, and GraceNote for identifying ripped CDs. But a system with Internet access means that more operations will be ongoing and some could have an effect on overall audio quality. The tweakiest and most obsessive sound-quality-first Mac setups tend to be isolated stand-alone systems without Internet access. PreSonus, in its guide to Mac OS use, recommends turning off the airport wireless service while using a Mac for audio.
Portability Improvements For Mac
Obviously this drastically reduces functionality, sort of like supergluing your mouth closed to keep from occasionally drooling. Some Mac audio set-up guides also recommend turning off “Spotlight,” which is the file-searching utility. This is great until you need to find a file. There is no reason that a current-generation Mac needs to be gelded into a barebones operating system to perform optimally for audio.
The Mac operating system and hardware were made for multitasking, and the Mac will be performing background processes while playing music even if it has been stripped-down. While I don’t recommend regularly running a bunch of high-demand processing and disc-access programs such as Photoshop while listening intently to music, the reasons for creating a stripped-down music-only Mac were far more relevant back in the days of the G5 desktop than they are today. How much memory is optimal for audio? Most users find that the right amount of memory is the same amount as for a full-service Mac. Nowadays, that’s 8 Gigabytes.
You can “get by” with 4 Gigs, but given the cost of memory, there’s no reason not to have 8GB. Adding more than 8 Gigs of memory won’t buy you any advantages, and the extra memory will generate more heat and use more power. Music playback doesn’t require very much in the way of processor and memory usage compared to apps such as Photoshop. I use a 2006 MacPro desktop with 16GB of memory. Playing a 29-minute 96kHz/24 music file with Pure Music software used only 1025.4MB of real memory, 3.31 of virtual memory, 996.5 of private memory, and 1.09 of virtual private memory.
The total amount of CPU usage was only 5.37%. With a newer, faster processor the CPU usage would be even lower. If I had only half the memory there would still be plenty left over.
Many storage options are available, but the most common way to go is with a solid-state drive for the OS and user files, then a second conventional larger hard drive for music files and/or Time Machine backup files (I’ll tell you about Time Machine later). The reasons for using a solid-state drive are increased read and write speeds and lower power usage for less stress on the power supply. The second drive can be internal or external, but external is more common. Nowadays portable 1, 2, and even 3TB portable hard drives are inexpensive and plentiful. I use a redundant system where I have two of each external drive, one in service and one as back up. Once a week I copy new files from the one in use to the backup drive, then put the drive away again. Some users opt for a RAID array for their music files, but I’d rather have identical libraries on two separate drives than two libraries on the same drive in a RAID array.
Even with a RAID drive, if it fails catastrophically (which is usually how they go), you lose all your data, which is not an experience I recommend.