Ye Macce Threade

[Torpedo]

The patch has been already installed, they delivered it yesterday.

[Grahame]

Apple managed to introduce yet another bug in the security fix they shipped yesterday, it's benign but even so.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/29/apple-macos-high-sierra-file-sharing-fix/

Update: Apple appears to have released a revised version of the security update, which is valid for systems running both macOS 10.13.0 and 10.13.1. The revised version may also address the issue in the original version that resulted in file sharing problems.

Is there anyone actually testing things at Apple?

[Hopstretch]

Ta. Updated.

[ironbut]

OSx upgrades have seemed pretty "loose" since Mavericks. 

I don't think it's a good idea to upgrade as soon as the "latest" is available. 

I've always been a version or 2 behind. And I aways check mission critical software forums to be sure the waters are safe before I invest the time to do a clean install.

[ironbut]

You guys know what a cheap skate I am so it should be no surprise when I rave about a significant "deal" from Apple on something I really want.

Apple's always had some piddly ass discounts for students, employees and some pro users (my AES membership gets me the employee discount).

To make a long story shortish, they have a student "package" deal that's kind of awesome.

It's called the "Pro Apps Bundle for Education" and it includes Mainstage, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, and their Compressor. 

All for $200! Normally that's the price for either Final Cut or Logic so we're talking about more than %50 off if you want those two.

 

Back when I was studying Post Production I made the decision to buy Avid's Media Composer but I later wished I'd gone with Final Cut Pro. Don't get me wrong, MC is much more powerful than Final Cut but I feel like I have to take a refresher course everytime I want to import some clips into it. 

Final Cut is much more intuitive for a die hard Mac guy like me.

 

As far as Logic goes, I still love Pro Tools, Ableton, and Reaper but they just aren't as quick and deep as Logic or Cubase are for orchestral or large hybrid compositions. 

So, for me, it's a no brainer. I was going to buy Logic Pro X anyway and now I get Final Cut for the same price.

https://www.apple.com/us-hed/shop/product/BMGE2/pro-apps-bundle-for-education

[luvdunhill]

Recently bought an LG Ultrafine 4K Monitor which uses USB-C (one input and three output). I am curious if anyone makes a KVM with -C output (can’t find any) or what the options are to do input switching on this monitor?

My Intel NUC also has USB-C video output, so all would be good if someone made a switcher

[Grahame]

Meanwhile ...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/01/apple_ios_11_security_downgrade_decried_as_horror_show/

[grawk]

With access to both factors of two factor security, you can access anything secured by that.  That's true of EVERY single high security account I've ever had.

[Hopstretch]

Also, The Register sucks.

[Dusty Chalk]

12 hours ago, grawk said:

With access to both factors of two factor security, you can access anything secured by that.  That's true of EVERY single high security account I've ever had.

But that doesn't sound like two factor security.  That sounds like ... one factor security.  

[grawk]

something you have - specific phone

something you know - passcode

[Dusty Chalk]

Well, no, it's not just having the phone and the passcode to the phone, you're supposed to use the "something you have" to get the other passcode, like a fob or whatever.  The way I've seen it done is, I enter a password, then that sends a second passcode to my phone, which I then enter where I entered the passcode.  I would need the PIN for my phone to get to the text, so just having access to my phone is insufficient.

[grawk]

two factor is something you have and something you know

 

for rsa tokens, the something you have (rsa token) provides you with a number, adn the something you know (your pin) extends that to provide a 2 part answer

for yubikey, its a pin and the yubikey

for iphone to reset your icloud account, you need the passcode for the phone and the ability to receive apple's device specific message to that specific phone

 

you're required to know something, and physically possess something

[ironbut]

You guys let me know when you decide if this is an issue.

I've got work to do.

[Dusty Chalk]

2 hours ago, grawk said:

for rsa tokens, the something you have (rsa token) provides you with a number, adn the something you know (your pin) extends that to provide a 2 part answer

...

for iphone to reset your icloud account, you need the passcode for the phone and the ability to receive apple's device specific message to that specific phone

...

I see the two parts in the first one, but once you enter the passcode, you are able to receive apple's device specific message, so that second one is dependent on the first.  That's not two parts.

[grawk]

without the passcode for the phone, you can't see the device specific messages

so you need both the device and passcode

but really,whatever, if it bothers you, it bothers you.  It doesn't bother me.

 

[HiWire]

So the iMac Pro is supposed to be available to order on Thursday... anybody going to get one?

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/12/16766358/imac-pro-release-days-away-apple-phil-schiller

At those prices, I'm not sure if there is going to be much demand, but I'm probably wrong. I'm curious if they have some kind of exotic cooling hardware (water cooling?) to handle the thermal output from the Xeon CPUs and the Vega GPUs. Both are pretty hot and there has been a lot of online discussion about de-lidding the Xeons for better cooling. Perhaps they'll decrease the clock speeds on the Vega chips and video memory as well.

[Hopstretch]

Normally I'm down, but this is a hard sell.

[morphsci]

I am going to wait for the real Mac Pro for a bioinformatics machine at work.

[HiWire]

Turns out the RAM is not upgradeable:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3242187/macs/imac-pro-shipping-december-14-ram.html

Cash is king... 

[ironbut]

At that price, I'm pretty sure most folks would just max out the Ram anyway (64G).

The whole thing isn't that much more than a 27" maxed out 5K iMac so it doesn't seem that far out of line to me.

Personally, I'm with Mike and I'll wait to see what the come up with in 2018/19.

If it isn't great, I could see a Hackintosh in my future (anyway, I've kinda got the 34 inch curved screen bug now Adam!)

[HiWire]

2018/2019 should be good years to buy. Intel has started laying out the power with the Kaby Lake R chips this fall to compete with a revived AMD, so we can expect to see more cores in even the mainstream products. Weirdly, Intel and AMD have agreed to collaborate on graphics together, while AMD's former graphics chief is joining Intel. May you live in interesting times...

Intel's Optane drives have started to ship – I'm hoping to see those in next year's Macs as well as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe 4.0, etc., which will provide a large jump in performance rather than the incremental improvements we've seen for the last ten years.

One big question mark: where does Nvidia fit in Apple's roadmap? Apple hasn't shipped a Mac with an Nvidia GPU since 2013, but there are enough CUDA apps on macOS (and Windows) that you have to wonder if Apple is sticking with AMD and OpenCL despite overwhelming evidence that Nvidia's current lineup is more powerful and more efficient than AMD's comparable Polaris/Vega products: http://barefeats.com/nv_egpu_hic.html

It's possible that Nvidia will cave and include more OpenCL and Metal support in their new products (they continue to release updated macOS drivers), but I'm not sure if Apple is a big enough customer for them to care, especially if they are locked out of Apple's OEM supplier group.

Another question: will Apple allow a 3.5" hard drive into any future Mac? Part of being a pro, in my opinion, is having access to fast, local storage – they blundered with the 2013 Mac Pro by limiting it to 1TB of flash storage while hard drives are reaching 14TB with the latest helium models. It would be nice to have a case that can hold at least two 3.5" hard drives for 28TB RAID 0/1 rather than relying on an external drive for mass storage.

[EdipisReks1]

From the early reviews I've read, the iMac Pro is way, way faster than the regular 5k iMac. 

[Hopstretch]

So Apple sends me a “minor” security update that takes 30 seconds to download then 40 minutes to install. WTF?

[Grahame]

Apple thanks you for the mined Bitcoins