Apple’s new expensive line of Mac Pro computers seem to be causing a headache for a tiny fraction of the Mac userbase. According to several professional video editors who have contacted us or posted information to variousonlineforums, the recent OS X 10.9.3 update is breaking compatibility between some Mac Pro graphics cards and video editing applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve…
The most impressive improvements in the new laptops came courtesy of the new Iris graphics. Compared to the HD 4000 graphics in the early 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the Iris graphics posted between 45 and 50 percent higher frame rates in Cinebench r15’s OpenGL tests and the Unigine Valley Benchmark. Unigen’s Heaven benchmark showed the new systems with about 65 percent improvement in frame rates over the earlier model.
CPU performance improvement is slight but the Intel Haswell architecture adds a few hours of (Apple’s estimated) battery life while the machine actually got thinner and lighter. Meanwhile, Apple loaded up faster 802.11ac Wifi and speedy Samsung PCIe SSDs up to 1TB and Thunderbolt 2.0.
VideoLAN has released version 2.1 of its popular open source video player, VLC. The update — codenamed “Ricewind” — brings new audio processing to the app, to improve both processing performance and audio fidelity. There is full support for surround sound outputs in addition to new effects and many new supported metadata formats for audio.
On the video side, the app has ported the OpenGL output to OpenGL ES, making ports to iOS and Android much easier. Notably, VideoLAN says that VLC is now ready for Ultra-HD content (otherwise known as 4K). The app update has also focused heavily on improving MKV compatibility, including better seek performance and subtitle metadata support.
The extremely popular 2012 App of the Year ‘Paper by FiftyThree’ has been updated today with a few notable new features making it even easier to create beautiful sketches, illustrations, and more. Among the new features, developer FiftyThree has added a new “Made with Paper” feature that acts as a feed for inspiration displaying ideas and artwork “from creative minds around the world.”
Other new features in version 1.3.1 include pinch to zoom, and a new ink upgrade that introduces the Expressive Ink Engine built on OpenGL for faster rendering.
• MADE WITH PAPER—Find inspiration in this feed of fresh ideas from creative minds around the world.
• ZOOM—Get closer to your ideas. Pinch to bring up zoom without losing your place.
• INK UPGRADE―Our Expressive Ink Engine™ is now built on OpenGL for faster rendering.
Ars put Parallels 8 against VMware Fusion this week and found there is not much of a contest between the two virtualization powerhouses. Parallels 8 out-gunned VMware across the board (as previous benchmarks have shown) performance-wise and adds full support for Retina displays and dictation among other features.
Neither Parallels Desktop 8 or VMWare Fusion 5 are loaded to the gills with new features, so the PD8 update from version 7 is only a must-have if you are looking for Windows 8 or retina MacBook support in Windows 7 or 8. If you need retina support, this is your best option since Parallels did the extra work and made it a better retina experience than in VMWare Fusion 5. The Mountain Lion dictation and experimental DirectX 10 support show that, while Parallels tends to have more frequent paid updates and a higher price-tag, they try to earn the extra value with well thought out features and engineering. Apart from the bugs I saw in Mountain Lion 8, I think Parallels Desktop 8 earns that extra cost with its solid performance, far superior Linux OpenGL support, and existing feature set. But if your needs are more big-business-oriented, VMWare Fusion 5 Pro might be more your thing.
VMware Fusion might fit better into cross-platform installations or for folks with legacy VMware images.
