Mac Performance Guide

MPG Pro Workstation Solution with OWC PCIe SSD

2012-02-21T00:00:00-08:00

OWC PCIe-based SSD for Mac Pro

Are you a high-end user looking for ultimate performance with ample storage?

Iif you need a solution now, why wait?

Apple might release a new Mac Pro in late March/April, or maybe it will be August. Or maybe. something else. See Buy Mac Pro Now, or Wait?.

New options for SSD

Sometime soon I will be testing the OWC PCIe SSD card, which will open up even more options for Mac Pro users for ultra-high performance internal storage in a PCIe slot. Or more than one PCIe slot. Very exciting stuff.

MPG Pro Workstation

Here’s the ultimate MPG Pro Workstation to build once the OWC PCIe SSD card becomes available—

6-core or 12-core Mac Pro at up to 3.46 GHz.
48GB memory (6-core) or 96GB memory (12-core), using 16GB memory modules.
4 X 3TB hard drives in standard drive bays.
One or more OWC PCIe SSD cards with up to 1.92TB each.
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD (240GB or 480GB), in lower optical bay.
High-end video card.

Assuming OWC loans me the parts, I’ll build up of these puppies using my existing 12-core 3.33 GHz Mac Pro.

MPG Pro Workstation

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Memory Price Trends for Mac Pro, iMac, MacBook Pro, MacMini

2012-02-21T00:00:00-08:00

Updated:

Memory price trend graphs for Mac Pro.
Memory price trend graphs for MacBook Pro.
Mac Mini memory prices are the same as for MacBook Pro.
Memory price trend graphs for iMac.

Given that the cost of 16GB for the MacBook Pro is now 10% or less of the cost of a well-configured 15" or 17" MacBook Pro, it’s a no-brainer upgrade for any performance user.

Apple MacBook Pro memory price history for 16GB (2 X 8GB) 1333 MHz memory

Apple Mac Pro memory price history for 48GB (3 X 16GB) 1333 MHz memory

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How OS X Sandboxing Affects Developers

2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Sandboxing is mandatory beginning in about two weeks for App Store applications. Get ready for loss of useful features. Is is worth it? Perhaps as a preventive measure for the future.

The Apple hammer falls on all nails that need pounding down. Meaning that useful features for some apps, e.g. productivity features used by advanced users just won’t be allowed if a developer wants to sell at the App Store.

The developer of SourceTree discusses the implications for their application.

Complying with the sandboxing rules would force us to change SourceTree in ways that would remove features, damage the usability of the app, and hurt our users; therefore, we will no longer submit SourceTree updates to the Mac App Store after March 1st, 2012.

Here is developer Manton Reece also stating that he will opt out of the App Store.

Whether this is a trend is unclear— some categories of apps are definitely imparied by the new sandboxing rules, and for these apps, the App Store requirements are a nightmare. Other apps are on the fence, and those developers might just weight sales against features— users will lose features, and gain... nothing at present. Sandboxing is a good idea, but at present it is a solution in search of a problem (on the Mac).

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Dinosaur

2012-02-19T00:00:00-08:00

Wil G writes:

I used to read your blog on my Mac Pro... but now am only reading it from my iPhone.

I would hope that you are only creating content using a mobile device. If you are using one of those "work stations" you must be a dinosaur. Who the hell just "sits" somewhere and focuses on work?

You are totally missing the point of our new lives... now I can sit on a toilet AND watch YOU TUBE, when before I was only sitting on the toilet. Now I can be at dinner AND get my fantasy football highlights...AND be shopping for presents...AND be texting the people that I am at dinner with...when before I would have just been at dinner with friends.

The mathematical SUM(ation) of doing "things" AND "things" proves that mobile devices and their IOS's are productively superior... you can never say that you were walking the dog AND working on a Mac Pro... or riding the bus AND using your MAC PRO. Math proves it. IOS is the greatest productivity tool ever...any other devices (Mac Pro) should be abandoned immediately.

I have to go...James Cameron just announced that the next AVATAR film will be completely done using only an ipad and crowdsourcing and will be released exclusively on the new apple tv's that will instantly cloud it back to your iphone so you can watch it while driving in traffic.

DIGLOYD: aw heck, all I do is shit on the toilet.

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ZFS for Mac OS X — ZEVO

2012-02-18T00:00:00-08:00

As drives become huge, the risk of data corruption becomes an ever increasing concern. Corruption can be subtle— “bit rot”, bit flips during file transfers, etc, and these can accrete over time.

The ZFS file system (developed at Sun but open source at OpenSolaris.org) addresses almost all the nasties which can destroy user data— which can be an invisible and silent risk until those files are needed— not just a drive crash or more obvious symptoms.

Some criticism of Apple here— Apple is intently focused on improving the user experience. But how one creates a quality user experience depends on how one defines it; it is not a quality user experience when the last 5 years of one’s computing life vaporize. Apple has made some steps in that direction (Time Machine for example), but has not addressed the fundamental weaknesses in the file system.

A quality user experience presumes a reliable computing platform , and reliable storage for data. And I’m not talking about mail and contacts and reminders and games and to-do notes, but about photos, video, etc— stuff that cannot be regenerated.

Apple’s HFS+ file system is an aging design that deserves to be retired. That’s where ZFS comes in, and it would be ideal if Apple finally moved to ZFS as the default file system in OS X 'Mountain Lion'. But the focus is elsewhere, on iOS, for which one can hardly blame Apple, given the huge profits involved. Yet the changes in OS X Mountain Lion are almost all application-level changes, not credible operating system improvements.

ZEVO — ZFS for Mac OS X

Technically savvy users might want to check out ZEVO (thanks to the note from Stan H below). It is regrettable that Apple has not taken the lead in making ZFS the default file system on OS X, but at least there is an option.

I have not looked into ZEVO myself, and I probably should. But I also maintain a robust backup strategy as well as my IntegrityChecker program, and to a real extent I need to stay mainstream because of this site. But professionals whose data is their livelihood should at least take a look at ZEVO, and should at least read the ZFS presentation to understand the issues involved in data integrity.

Stan H writes:

You might want to make a little announcement about the recent availability of ZFS for OS X called ZEVO. I am sure you have heard of it. It is a commercial version of ZFS from a company called Ten's Complement started by Don Brady, an ex long-time engineer at Apple who was on the early HFS team and the discontinued internal ZFS project at Apple.

I have been testing the initial release for the last two weeks and it works beautifully. While the initial release has limited functionality, it provides the core protection of complete check-summing of all data, redundancy of metadata and, if optionally enabled, same disk redundancy of data.

ZEVO has a nice simple GUI and integrates quite seamlessly into OS X. Mirroring, RAIDZ and all the other sophisticated stuff is coming soon but for $20 for the initial release I want my data protected now. A must have for anyone, especially photographers, with irreplaceable data.

Tore O writes:

Thank you for a very useful site. I have significantly improved my Macintosh experience by learning from your articles. I have a few comments on the Zevo/ZFS software you just wrote about.

Recently, in the course of two days, I experienced directory corruption on 5 hard drives, including my 4TB Time machine disk. This was due to a stuck address in a RAM block. Thankfully I use Crashplan to backup to a ZFS based OpenSolaris server, so my data were easily restored after replacing the bad RAM block. Granted, RAM errors are presumably rare occurrences and this might never have happened on a Mac Pro which has ECC RAM, but it could happen to anyone else using an iMac or other non-professional Mac. Let us hope Apple does not drop the Mac Pro.

After this incidence I was quite motivated to find a better filesystem for my precious data on the Mac. So I started beta-testing Z410/Zevo and we now own the commercial version. Zevo does a beautiful job of making ZFS transparent with no command line use needed for basic ZFS protection. However, while the developer has brought to market a great product, Ten's Complement is still working on optimizing performance. So if you take it for a spin, know that there are speed improvements coming. Also a few important features are not implemented yet. These include encryption, enabling auto replacing of a failed disk with a hot spare, and booting from ZFS disks.

One caveat to anyone wanting to get started with Zevo: The product that you mention (Zevo Silver edition) offers metadata redundancy which is already a big step forward relative to HFS+, but file redundancy requires you to go to the command line and set a "copies=2" option which will slow down writes significantly (since the drive needs to write the file twice to the same disk) and still will not protect against drive failure.

Photographers and others with critical data will want to use either Zevo Gold or Zevo Platinum edition which should be available later this year and will provide drive-failure tolerant storage. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts if you were to test the Zevo Gold or Platinum edition when they become available. In particular, ZFS has the exciting prospect of allowing you to attach solid state drives as read-cache and write log devices to hard drive based storage pools. This should speed up reads and asynchronous writes. If you test Zevo at some point, it would be very interesting to hear your observations on if and how this would speed up/improve the user experience in database driven applications like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture.

Regards,
Tore

PS: I find your DiskTester product very useful for testing hard drive performance and have successfully reconditioned old SSDs with it. Thank you very much.

DIGLLOYD: Indeed, ECC memory is a Big Deal now that memory can be up to 96GB in a 12-core Mac Pro (more memory = great chance of a bit flip somewhere). Laptops are at far greater risk because users tend to leave them in sleep mode on airplanes, where the chance of a cosmic ray flipping bits is much higher at altitude.

Directory corruption is the worst possible case, since it can affect everything on a drive. That is bad luck indeed.

I will likely test ZFS / ZEVO at some point, but I think I will let it mature.

As for SSD caching, that's a worthwhile idea, but more complex (complexity has to be weighed against real benefits), and wholly irrelevant to my work: I just always work off the SSDs anyway, migrating older material to hard drives.

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Apple Account Hackers

2012-02-17T00:00:00-08:00

I cannot login when I need to, but I should not worry about it. That’s useful.

What I want is a security setting that turns off this nonsense (I don’t need or want security questions).

An ongoing Apple hassle

Wil G feels less than gruntled:

Dude!!!! Amen to this post... it just chaps me indefinitely...

I don’t know if somebody with Alzheimer's has an account name similar to mine or if it is hackers... but I am so inconvenienced by having to keep resetting my password once a month... what gets me is that it is a very secure password (nobody has gotten it yet!!) but yet I still have to keep changing it.

It’s so tedious, and I love how somebody else being a jacka** means I get to do some more work...

Ok... I am going to go find my chi... glad to know that I am not the only one...

On a last note... you almost seem to have the same tone as I do...

Apple was once an inspiration to my work flow and I only sang its praises to every single person I met... Slowly, they started changing things...

- Slower updates on the MAc Pro...
- Then they truncated Final Cut Pro
- And then they told me I couldnt have a hard copy disc of a purchased program/app
- and then they thought that everybody can work off a mini...
- and then they started to IOS the hell out of everything... (hey if it cant fit on a phone then why have it?)

I am still with apple... but I no longer enjoy bragging about them...and if they abandon the mac pro... I will break up with them altogether

I feel like they forgot who sang their gospel all these years...remember hearing or saying... "if you’re a professional... you use a mac..." or " all the pros use macs". Now it seems as if they are abandoning these people... the ones who held/propped them up in the lean years...

Oh well, how much do I owe you for the therapy?

DIGLLOYD: Ah, the wonders of technology. But I’m glad I’m not a farmer.

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Tested: 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 'Coolspin' Hard Drive

2012-02-17T00:00:00-08:00

See my review of the 4TB Hitachi 5K3000 'Coolspin' hard drive.

Sequential read/write performance of 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 'Coolspin' hard drive
MB/sec for 1000 files across the 4TB capacity

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What Are the Implications for Application Signing?

2012-02-16T00:00:00-08:00

Digitally signing an application means that a cryptographic certificate is used to mark it as trusted. Trust here means not only trusting the signer, but also the authority signing the signer’s own certificate.

Digital signing is one means of defeating malware, at least certain types of malware . In this regard it is a big move forward, though I see it as increasingly less important, because more and more infections originate on malware sites and by phishing, not from applications. Still, it is a very good thing in terms of locking down one vector of system compromise.

Apple is apparently moving in a direction where applications will be signed, with an apparent feature to disable (worldwide) any application it cares to, by building into the operating system a feature whereby an application can be prevented from running if it is deemed Bad (somehow, by someone, for any reason, at any time).

If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed.

Read that again: Apple will possess the ability (subject to government demands or pressures (legal or not), court orders, arbitrary whim, hacker intrusion) to disable any application. Or perhaps in the future to not just disable, but to remove the application. That’s a powerful tool to silence some forms of speech given Apple’s market dominance: what developer would dare throw away 100% of sales?

Apple is a private party. Constitutionally-guaranteed (ha ha) free speech rights apply to the government versus citizens, NOT to private parties, a point many people are unclear on. So there is no free speech protection with a private company like Apple.

Remember also that free speech in the future might mean almost exclusively digital free speech— online, not printed matter. And that a digital device might be your only practical means for all your expression outside your immediate personal interactions.

Consider the following, which is hardly a complete list:

Apple disables, removes or forbids an application because of Congressional pressure. No Rule of Law, no due process, just arbitrary removal or shut-down of an application. This already happened once last year. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with what any particular app does; that’s not the point. Policies regard can change at any time.
A repressive country (Iran, China, Syria, etc) decides that it doesn’t like the certain apps being used by Undesirable Elements. So it demands that Apple disable those apps. Apple doesn’t want to risk its commercial market there, so it disables those apps.
Hackers penetrate Apple’s systems. All applications of any kind worldwide could be suddenly disabled and/or removed. If a key cryptographic provider (RSA) can be compromised, it can happen anywhere. Or consider this article. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or thousands of others. And that’s just what has been made public; assuming all such compromises are disclosed would be extremely naive. An exploit of this magnitude would be like an Olympic gold medal for hackers— highly attractive.

In short, does the alleged security improvement make matters better, or perhaps hold the potential for calamity on a wide scale as in a software “nuclear meltdown”?

Trust requires transparency. I would feel better about Apple’s signing initiative if it were removed from Apple’s control and implemented by a 3rd party, along with rigorous and explicit legal protections, designed to preclude government meddling. Good luck with that.

Having been part of PGP in its earlier days, I would also favor a strong public key infrastructure based on multiple trusted parties, not a conventional single point of failure that when compromised takes down everything. This has long been technically feasible, but it won’t happen unless Apple throws its weight behind it as part of its signing initiative.

Highly recommended: http://www.schneier.com/

Reader Comments

My readers really seem to dislike what I wrote. But I am writing at a conceptual level, and not one email has addressed the core issues, which I feel are the real issue.

John R writes:

Let's start by examining the reasons why iOS doesn't allow you to run unapproved third-party software.

Thirty percent. Apple certainly benefits from taking a 30% cut of software sales made through the App Store. (It should be noted, of course, that you can publish free software via the App Store as well)

Carrier network limitations. If iOS users run bandwidth-intensive apps on wireless networks, there's a real potential for iOS users to overwhelm wireless networks already struggling to keep up with demand. This is why applications such as Skype, or even Apple's own FaceTime, don't let you videoconference over cellular networks. Apple has extraordinary leverage with carriers, but Apple simply can't sell a device that would overwhelm the networks it relies on.

Because they can. iOS is a new platform, with no history of allowing you to run unapproved third-party software.

I agree that concentrating too much power in the hands of Apple is a very dangerous thing. I also partially agree with your recent assertions that Apple is de-prioritizing the pro market. (I say "partially" because I'm a developer, so I'm coming from a different perspective than a photographer or videographer)

However, I don't think Gatekeeper represents the kind of threat you think it does:

http://www.macworld.com/article/165408/2012/02/mountain_lion_hands_on_with_gatekeeper.html:

From a technical perspective, it would be very easy for Apple to disallow unsigned apps. It doesn't look to me like they have any intention of doing that. It's almost like a more permissive version of File Quarantine, which has been in OSX since 10.5 or 10.6.

Even we assume Apple is acting in maximum self-interest and with zero goodwill towards customers (always a good assumption for any business) I still don't think it'd serve them to lock down OSX ala iOS. I just fail to see how it would benefit them.

Clearly, funneling a larger percentage of OSX software through the App Store is in their favor. But developers won't work on a locked-down OS, and if nothing else Apple needs iOS developers to write their software on OSX. Apple also values its image, and I believe there smart enough to know that if "early adopters" and "intellectuals" start turning their noses up at a locked-down OSX, others will follow.

I'm unsubscribing from your news updates. I'm a satisfied customer of your digLloyd Tools, but I think a lot of your current assertions are unfounded and sensational.

DIGLLOYD: That MacWorld article is non-conceptual, talking only about the here and now specifics, reassuring to be sure, but that is its very weakness if one takes a longer term view. If there is no issue, the article need not have been written at all.

Wishful thinking is not a substitute for conceptual thinking.

What the current Apple policy is, what actually makes it into Mac OS X Mountain Lion, and what future changes will be, no one can say. It’s only a small step to locking down the OS in a future (even minor) revision. The iPhone and iPad are clear enough in that regard. And the electronic world is converging into one huge interconnected device.

Future predictions often look wrong, though I am not predicting what will happen, I am only saying what could happen, and I doubt I have scratched the surface.

Should Apple remove the app-signing feature? That’s a much harder question, since it does have benefits. A lot depends on how it actually works, and whether it can withstand security scrutiny and whether the structure can be made secure from arbitrary whims: a software “kill” switch is a very real possibility for abuse.

Apple policies can and do change, but are also subject to governmental edicts around the world. Now that Apple has such huge market strength with iPhone and iPad, what might be the juicy possibilities for the control freaks in government? And the fact that Mac OS X is not locked down the same way right now as iPhone might be looked at in hindsight as a curiousity. And it might never happen too.

The point is to think about the implications of any widespread modern infrastructure of any kind (as an exercise, what if iCloud is wildy successful with 500M users, and terrorists target the 2 or 3 data centers housing it? Or just the power cables feeding them?). All these issues are made much more worth thinking about due to sheer size and scale. The state of things now or 6 months from now is not the concern.

Markus H writes:

OS X 10.8 still allows you to disable application signing completely at any given moment.

And how many iOS apps have been pulled from actual devices so far?

DIGLLOYD: Still and so far.

John W writes:

You've failed on some crucial fact-checking on your recent article on application signing. The code-signing check only applies to applications which are currently quarantined, per Apple's new Developer ID Tutorial. The "quarantine bit" is seen in the now-familiar dialog in OS X (since 10.5) that queries the user whether they're sure they want to open an application file downloaded from the web. Once the quarantine bit is unset, the file is assumed-good forever more.

To rephrase: once an application is installed, Apple has no ability to cause it to stop running remotely. They can only prevent future installs from working, for apps signed with revoked Developer ID certificates. This is precisely what's needed to stop malware propagation, without overstepping into interfering with the operation of a user's system.

In fact, I'll go one further: this is pretty close to the holy grail that knowledgable application developers and users have sought for ages. Prior to now, this required a cumbersome sequence of steps:

The developer must create a public-key encryption key-pair, and publish the public key on known key servers, such as pgp.mit.edu.

The developer signs the distribution packaging for a new release (archive file, disk image file, etc.) with the developer's private PGP/gnupg key. This creates a signature file for the app's released files.

The user must download both the app's file and the signature.

The user must install and use relatively obscure command line utilities (e.g. gnupg).

The user must remember to perform the signature check.

Ideally, the developer's signature should be trusted by some mechanism such as a "chain of trust". Without this, any bad actor could simply follow the steps above to create a "signed" app package, one not signed by the original developer(s).

Most readers' eyes will have glazed over somewhere in the middle of step 1, which highlights the problems that prevented this from being effective in the real-world. First, the process above was suitable, at best, for use by trained professionals such as system administrators and software developers. Many of them didn't even bother. Second, establishing a chain of trust for all the packages one might need to install and use was usually a prohibitive amount of work, which undermines the effectiveness of the whole affair.

With Mountain Lion, Apple has automated this process and put the control over the level of application access into the hands of the end-user. End users may opt-out of the checking process entirely -- any app from any source may be installed. The default is to allow apps which are signed by Apple for the Mac App store, or signed with a free Developer ID provided by Apple. Finally, users may opt-in to the most restrictive path -- only Mac App store applications may be installed.

A summary of Gatekeeper and its implications from an independent Mac developer was written on Panic's blog, which summarizes the state of affairs as well as Apple's positioning regarding these changes (with praise and critique in turns) quite well.

DIGLLOYD: Agreed, Apple is now making accessible to an ordinary user what has been a technically challening app verification process that only geeks have been willing to use. And yes, there is a 'bypass' in place now. And that could never, ever, ever be changed? Blue skies.

This response is concrete-bound thinking in the here and now. But a trend is in motion, and it only takes a little time for infrastructure to develop to a point where some ugly things become real possibilities. What is exactly the case now or even when Mac OS X 'Mountain Lion' is released is hardly relevant to the conceptual issues involved; my concern is with where this is all leading.

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The iOS-ification of Mac OS X — Mac OS X 'Mountain Lion' — Feeling Like Prey Now

2012-02-16T00:00:00-08:00

I wrote about the iOS-ificiation of Mac OS X on Feb 6, and how Apple thinks that that a Mac is an iPad or iPhone:

In my view, 90% of the changes in Lion are useless eye candy (good for marketing), but create their own sticky problems: they degrade the user’s ability to get productive work done.

See the in-depth discussion at DaringFireball.com on 'Mountain Lion'.

Now Apple is surging strongly in the iOS direction. which should make anyone nervous who actually uses their Mac for productive work. Final Cut Pro users know this painfully well, when Apple moved to a “better” product that had no way of opening existing projects. Huge investments in training and hardware were thus devalued. Apple has finally moved to address that issue, but the damage was done, forcing many in the video area to start considering alternatives.

One problem is that “making things as they should be” presumes that the target market are teenagers that like Shiny Objects (I like them too, since the iPhone is the most useful phone I have yet used, but I can't get useful work done on my iPhone or iPad, it is just too tediously slow to accomplish basic tasks).

What if the end user relies on time-proven features that are simply better for getting work done, features that don’t fit the new iOS religion? I could see command key shortcuts being eliminated, because [fill in the blank with specious logic from an iOS user]. I don't think that will happen, but as evidence that too little thought is given to the matter, consider the lack of a command-key shortcut for Duplicate in Apple’s Pages progam. Along with the fact that two “Duplicate” commands make it impossible to add a shortcut that works. But that is just a detail, the real issue is the design failure to realize that the conceptually clean Duplicate command (shortcut or not) forces a Duplicate-Save-navigate-rename workflow that is more error prone and time consuming than the near-instant save-as-Enter (cmd-shift-S, Enter) workflow.

Now maybe Apple will get things right in the move forward, but also Apple has already proven that (in Lion) that they will be sloppy and will alter the user interface in ways that degrade usability in all sorts of small ways, and thus add tedium to what have been simple tasks. That is what make me feel like prey; I don’t want an iToy for my daily work; I want changes only if they make my work more efficient. I am eager to change when there is a more efficient way to do things, but I am not happy about spending more of my day on the same tasks— I work every day to make a living, and small things add up.

The new and greatly simplified file system based on iCloud holds potential for making a mess of existing file dialog interfaces for productive work, as do the new security features (AppStore or signed app or a headache). And maybe not— it all depends on the thought given to modifications made around those features.

Maybe what is troublesome about the whole thing is that the orientation of the user interface appears to turn from creative productive work to consumption (chatting, listening to music, watching videos, text messaging, etc). Like the malaise of the culture at large. Certainly my perspective is one of constantly producing for my multiple web sites, with no time to spare for passive entertainment.

Apple needs to move forward, but I hope that considerably more thought is applied to Mountain Lion than the flippant changes in Mac OS X Lion. Bringing iOS features forward for a common experience between i* and Mac OS X is the right direction, but should it result in impaired productivity for professional users, then it’s a game of winners and losers. I hope Apple will make it all “win” at all levels— elegance means simple and easy to use, and efficient, not trading off one for the other. That is why iPhone and iPad have succeeded brilliantly. But just as translating a great work from one language to another poses risks to the integrity of the original, so too does iOS-ifying Mac OS X.

Already, one sarcastic reader has emailed me telling me I am “resistant to change” and “how hard is it to...” because his workflow is better for him (it’s not even a workflow as he describes it, and it’s certainly not my workflow), telling me to make a shortcut for Duplicate (doesn’t work and doesn’t solve the issue, as I documented), and this address my point: when useful functionality is changed without thinking it through, it can permanently degrade efficiency for some workflows, and to add insult to injury, one is a labeled a luddite for not agreeing that worse is better. Think FCP.

It does not have to be that way; forward progress can be made without degrading productive workflow. There is no way for me to reclaim the efficiency of one aspect of my workflow that I enjoyed in Snow Leopard, nor is there any alternative, and it’s not like there is an equally efficient alternative for my particular task, which I must do many times a day. One such thing can be tolerated, the risk of 3 or 5 or 10 such “minor” changes presents a greater challenge. That is what I hope Apple avoids.

Reader comments

Anssi from Finland writes:

Read your piece on Mountain Lion and on Daring Fireball.

I understand your point with Lion but maybe you're being a bit prejudiced with Mountain Lion.

What I read on Daring Fireball on Apple's plans those are not to fit Mac and iPad together and make Mac OS run the same OS as iPad.

App signing isn't hurting pro users. I think it's a major plus for computer users in general. You can still sell your tools without Mac App Store and without signing and people can still install them, but average users (non-professionals, like my parents) are better of with just App Store and signed apps so they don't have to worry so much with their computers. They are not using DiskTester anyway.

Professionals (like the pro-photogs reading your sites) and more tech-oriented can keep app signing off and install whatever they want. So you don't need to register with the Apple Developer ID if you don't see it fit.

About iCloud Documents Daring Fireball says it's possible to still use traditional file management and I think that's great. I don't think Apple is going to require apps like Photoshop leave traditional file management, even if their goal is to hide file management from the average user.

And then the app thing. They're making apps like Reminders (to-dos, now in iCal), Notes (now in Mail) and Messages (iMessages, earlier not found on Mac) the same on Mac as on iOS so that every user can expect the same weather using a computer or a mobile device from Apple.

I do get your point about Duplicate and bad interface with iCal and Address Book in Lion. But that's a bit harsh to judge Mountain Lion on. Maybe you just had such a major disappointment with Lion that you're now being prejudicial against Mountain Lion too? I mean, the voice of your tone did sound very frustrated.

Anyway, don't take this as negative feedback. I find you and your photography and Mac sites essential sources for information.

DIGLLOYD: I mean what I write, but that doesn’t mean that I mean what I didn’t write.

So if it’s not clear, I completely agree that offering i* functionality on the Mac is a Good Thing that further broadens the appeal of the Mac and i* platforms. So long as it does not degrade productivity for professionals and users for which the Mac is a tool for getting work done efficiently.

The devil is in the details. Lion showed a sloppiness that impairs my workflow to this day. Frusrated? Certainly and with good reason, because my workflow remains impaired, albeit in a way that is tolerable. It is more such impairments that concern me— why should I not believe that Mountain Lion *could* make it worse, if only for lack of attention to workflow issues for users like myself

It might not, but the design train has left the station. Witness the Final Cut Pro fiasco for video users, where the new version vaporized the investment in training and workflow (which Apple did finally take steps to address). No laughing matter for video production outfits with millions invested in their processes.

The implications of digital app signing run much deeper than a first glance. Nothing guarantees that Apple will not remove the capability or running non-signed apps, though why not a locked-down Mac OS X for China or Iran, to enable greater government control?

Sure, developers can forgo sales by not using the App Store. Or use the App Store and risk a 100% sales loss at Apple's whim, at any time, unless the developer complies with any Apple demand, subject to an updated “agreement” that Apple can unilaterally change at any time, for any reason.

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Hitachi Coolspin 4TB Hard Drive

2012-02-16T00:00:00-08:00

A 4TB hard drive offers cavernous space for those looking to store and backup large data sets, such as 36-megapixel RAW files, or perhaps more likely, video footage. I suggest cloning as a backup strategy for such huge collections.

Testing is in progress on the 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 'Coolspin' hard drive, namely DiskTester with the fill-volume command, which provides a complete picture of drive performance across the entire drive.

The DiskTester fill-volume command forces the drive to write to and read from all the accessible space on the drive— a very good idea with a new drive, just in case there are excessive bad block areas, which will show up as oddball performance patterns, which can be seen by graphing the performance data in the supplied Excel spreadsheet (example further below).

The fill-volume tests takes a long time, about 10 hours for the write phase, and another 10 hours for the read phase— and that’s running the drive as fast as it can possibly go! In short, 4TB is an incredible amount of space, which means that anyone using a 4TB drive had better also have a solid backup strategy, since so much is at risk.

The graph provides at-a-glance information on how fast a drive is for sequential transfers; users looking to achieve some guaranteed transfer rate can partition the drive so that there is some known minimum transfer speed. The additional space beyond the first fastest partition usually becomes a separate volume or volume(s), or it can just go unused, depending on the goal. For example, one might partition a 4TB drive into a 2TB volume and another 2TB volume. The first partition will be much faster (on average).

Alternately, the graph confirms consistent performance on the drive, at a glance. Be sure to disable Spotlight and exclude from Time Machine on any volume being tested, or the results will be erratic as those programs thrash the disk heads while the test progresses.

Graphing the DiskTester fill-volume results to look for erratic behavior
(example)

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Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache Hard Drive w/ 5 Year Warranty

2012-02-11T00:00:00-08:00

3TB Seagate XT

3TB drives are currently on short supply; I’ve been forced to stop quoting my usual Hitachi 3TB drives for the MPG Pro Workstation due to lack of supply.

OWC has obtained a supply of the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache Hard Drive, which carries a 5 year warranty. This drive is being discontinued, and similar replacements have only a 1-year warranty.

Grab 'em while they last.

These drives can also be quoted in an MPG Pro Workstation.

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Buy Mac Pro Now, or Wait?

2012-02-10T00:00:00-08:00

What will it be?

Richard S writes:

In your opinion is it worth waiting for a Thunderbolt compatible MP or should I bite on an Apple 2010 refurb MacPro?

Worth waiting for whom and for what purposes?

I have written on this general question before in Mac Pro Now, or Wait?, No New Mac Pro Yet, Which Means What?. See also Where to Buy a Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, iMac and ULTIMATE Mac Pro.

I don’t see Thunderbolt as the main issue, since at present there is precious little that it’s good for, and that is likely to remain the case for another 9 months or so. Internal 6G SATA ports and faster Intel CPU chips are much more important concerns for performance.

But here‘s the deal— the speed of my current Mac Pro causes little delay to my work, so while a new and faster one will help, no one should feel buyer’s remorse about the current well-proven and rock solid model, especially configured as an MPG Pro Workstation.

In fact, if I did not have the need to stay current (for this site), I would think it hard to justify a new and very expensive Mac Pro on the basis of work efficiency. Certainly the refurbished option is the way to go in any case, provided that you can find the desired CPU speed.

If you’re a professional for whom productivity matters each day, then move ahead and get your work done— get a Mac Pro now, because every day your work is impaired, you lose.

With no pressing need, I’d say wait until late March/ early April, which is the most likely time for a new Mac Pro to appear (once the new Intel chips are out). But there is no saying what Apple will do— in 2010 the April release was delayed until August.

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diglloydTools beta Now Available for Download

2012-02-10T00:00:00-08:00

diglloydTools

Just posted is version 2.2b1 of diglloydTools (DiskTester, MemoryTester, IntegrityChecker).

All users that purchased within the last two years are entitled to a free update, older than that will be $10 for diglloydTools or $20 for users that never acquired diglloydTools but did buy DiskTester long ago.

Although the existing version works fine with Mac OS X Lion, this update smooth out a few annoyances due to “sandboxing” that Lion introduced. There are also a few minor bug fixes for anything reported, but precious few bugs have been reported, so there is little to fix.

Although this version is technicaly a beta, I am not aware of any reason that it cannot be used as if a release version. Please report any glitches promptly.

Buy diglloydTools Now

Getting it

All current (within the past 2 years) diglloydTools users have access to this beta download. Click through the license agreement to the download page.

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The iOS-ification of Mac OS X

2012-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

Martin D sent me this link to iOS-ification of Mac OS X (meaning the changes to OS X that come from the iPad and iPhone). It’s a good survey of just what is going on with Mac OS X Lion.

In my view, 90% of the changes in Lion are useless eye candy (good for marketing), but create their own sticky problems: they degrade the user’s ability to get productive work done.

This quote from Martin D pretty much sums up my feelings about Lion:

For the most part, I think Lion sucks.

It’s going to suck even more once Apple “sandboxing” foisted upon developers starts forcing the removal of useful features and we get “processed food” applications— baby food in a jar, so to speak.

What to do

While I still advise Mac users to go with Lion (since it’s the future, and the Mac OS X train has left the station), OS X Lion continues to degrade my productivity to this day, especially with the missing “Save As” dialog and You are Not Connected to the Internet and Apple Mail taking accounts down for days. See Mac OS X Lion Hairballs.

Mac OS X Lion usability is not yet this bad, but it portends worse things to come

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Seafood for your Valentine?

2012-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

Valentines day is not far off, and while iPhones and iPads and Macs are all great, you and your valentine need something to eat!

I’m picky about my seafood, see my notes on SeafoodByNet.com from New Year’s.

I like to write out-of-band stuff once in a while, so check out my articles over at diglloyd.com on other stuff I’ve liked, such as cold weather clothing, lights, health and reading.

SeafoodByNet.com

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Working on diglloydTools Update

2012-02-05T00:00:00-08:00

diglloydTools

I am working on an updated version of diglloydTools (DiskTester, MemoryTester, IntegrityChecker).

Although the existing version works fine with Mac OS X Lion, the update will smooth out a few annoyances due to “sandboxing” that Lion introduced. There will also be bug fixes for anything reported, but precious few bugs have been reported, so there is little to fix.

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More Memory With Big Photoshop Jobs = Big Speedup

2012-01-22T00:00:00-08:00

Many users work with modest-sized images, and so 24GB memory in a Mac Pro is a perfectly reasonable amount (and not very expensive at present in the context of a Mac Pro system or MPG Pro Workstation).

At work today in Photoshop

In my own use, Photoshop regularly chews up 10-15GB just for itself, for 24GB is not enough together with the other tasks I’m doing at the same time. So my standard memory configuration has been 48GB for a while, and I have found that it is enough for my everyday use.

96GB OWC memory in 12-core Mac Pro

Then there are those really big jobs, those billboard-size panoramas, gigapixel images, etc. With too little memory, the fastest Mac Pro slows to a crawl.

In my 12-core 3.33 GHz Mac Pro, I tested using the diglloydHuge benchmark using 48GB and 96GB memory (OWC 8GB memory modules and OWC 16GB memory modules).

To be sure, 48GB is already a lot of memory, but the results show that going from 48GB to 96GB cuts the time dramatically.

Enough memory makes all the difference with Adobe Photoshop

It is the problem size versus the amount of memory that determines the benefits, or lack thereof. There is always a threshold at which more memory will help a great deal.

Had there been only 24GB in the Mac Pro for this test, the results would have been far more dramatic. Furthermore, my MPG Pro Workstation setup has an exceptionally fast scratch drive (triple SSD RAID-0 stripe), so that 48GB case actually would be a LOT worse on most setups.

Since a 4-core or 6-core Mac Pro can utilize a maximum of 48GB with Mac OS X Lion, that constraint is one consideration when choosing a Mac Pro model.

Faster save/open

Other speedups are possible that are not memory related— such as the DisallowFlateCompressedPSD plugin for Photoshop 64-bit.

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How to Use the MPG Mailing List

2012-01-22T00:00:00-08:00

Mailing list — opt in

This site and related sites maintain a mailing list segemented by interests.

The mailing list is very low volume, never sold, and 100% opt-in. I use these lists mainly to notify subscribers of updated to my publications.

Use any email you like.
Every time an email is sent, a link is provided to update your choices— no login or account needed, so it’s super easy— just check or uncheck choices.

For more info, see the mailing list page.

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