🎮 Gaming on Sonoma?

It was another quick hit, but what about that segment on gaming in Sonoma? Seeing Snowrunner listed in the Game Mode section got me excited. Is it possible quality gaming will come to the Mac? Gaming is huge on the iPad with more choices than you can imagine. Sure, tons of them are ruined by in-app purchases, but there is no shortage of choices. The iPad is a mobile gaming powerhouse. You also have to remember that when the Apple II made its mark, it was a stellar platform for games. Ultima, A Bard’s Tale, and Wizardry, all got their start on the Apple II. Not to mention, tons of game developers got their start making games for the Apple II. Of course, there are games for the Mac, and some aren’t too terrible, but it’s high time we move on from the Hidden Object and free SimCity ripoffs with indecent amounts in-app purchases. Can we please have some games […]

⌘ Did anyone else notice Safari will create Site Specific “apps”

It was a quick part of the Safari demo, but did others notice the new feature of creating site specific browser apps? It looks like Safari will support the ability to make apps out of websites like we see in Webcatalog, and CoherenceX. It also looked very fast and easy, with a simple drag and drop action, then it appeared in the Dock. I’ve been using that feature with Webcatalog, and Waterfox, and it’s very handy. I can keep things organized and out of the way. It’s easy to replicate in Webcatalog, but obviously there is a fair bit of overhead. I wonder how much ram and disk space Safari uses to pull off the same trick? You have to wonder, how long until Firefox, and Chrome support the feature natively?

🏝️ Mac Studio on the far, distant horizon

Now that an Apple Silicon Mac Pro has returned to the lineup, it’s time to work toward a new Mac Studio. The Studio and Pro are the same machine, except for expansion slots. They have the exact same high end configuration for ram, cores, and GPU. Since the Pro doesn’t support extended ram, or adding video cards, I don’t have a need for the expansion slots. This means a fully loaded Mac Studio is my destination, but it’s going to take quite some time to get there. Even saving $1k per month, a Mac Studio is more than 8 months away (don’t forget taxes, which will be a massive hit at that level). That puts us in 2024 for starters. That also puts a new machine within sight of the M3, or does it? Will there be talk of an M3 Ultra coming in June 2024? Is that model 18 months away? Regardless, a lot can and will happen in […]

The WWDC 2023 – Mac Pro and Vision Pro

The announcements for WWDC were pretty impressive, even though the long awaited, much debated, often leaked, Mac Pro got 2 minutes in the spotlight. It was a quick overview of the specs, then on to the next item. It was a quick update for the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio. The new Mac Pro is basically the Mac Studio with expansion slots. The Mac Studio gets a bump to the same Ultra chip. I expected the Pro to either get 2 Ultra sockets, or 4 of the Max chips woven together. I was being a little nutty. At least they kept the 2019 Mac Pro case, since that’s a good design. At least the questions of what the Mac Pro has to offer has been answered. It supports certain kinds of expansion cards for certain kinds of tasks. Since I don’t have a need for that sort of thing, looks like the Mac Studio will be my next upgrade. […]

📭 SpamSieve, worth it?

Let’s circle back to SpamSieve. To be fair, the initial problem with SpamSieve not detecting spam messages was a configuration issue on my part. Simply put, I missed a step, which prevented the filtering of messages. It’s now up and running correctly, tossing away 40+ messages a day with only two or three being false positives. And to be honest, those are kind of spammy, even though not actual spam. After realizing my mistake, I deleted the Blocklist and started over. None of those rules were worth keeping as they were too specific. They would never catch another message. Checking for a sender of 3CZDP1KyZ@animadelvino.it or bills150@host-91-192-173-197.avantel.ru is pointless. The likelihood of that triggering again? I still think that’s an issue with the way SpamSieve builds rules when you Train as Spam. They are too specific and will work once, then never again. If you keep that up, SpamSieve will be so choked with rules it will suffocate under its […]