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IT

Parallels Desktop 16 Supports macOS Big Sur and Smoother PC 3D Graphics (venturebeat.com) 29

As Apple's Mac computers begin their two-year transition from Intel- to Apple-developed CPUs later this year, one feature that's going away is Boot Camp -- the Mac's ability to boot directly into Windows and run PC apps natively. But Corel's Parallels Desktop will still be there to let Mac users run Windows, and in this year's version 16, it will thankfully be faster, more compatible, and easier to use than ever. From a report: Like Parallels Desktop 15, version 16 is an emulator that allows users to load a complete operating system or individual apps within macOS, treating them as windows within the Mac environment. Once again, high-end Business, mid-range Pro, and regular Standard versions are available. With the latest Business version of Parallels Desktop, an IT department can create, deploy, and remotely manage a profile-customized Windows system that Mac users download in a compact file size and expand on their own machines. A simpler Pro version includes the file-compacting feature used to more easily transfer virtual machines between computers, achieving as much as 20 times compression for Linux installs and 75% faster Linux git status executions. The standard version includes a manual Free Up Disk Space feature with archiving and space reclaiming options.
China

Kuo: iPhone Shipments Could Decline Up To 30% If Apple Forced To Remove WeChat From Worldwide App Store (macrumors.com) 80

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a worst-case scenario, Apple's annual iPhone shipments could decline by 25-30% if it is forced to remove WeChat from its App Stores around the world, according to a new research note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo viewed by MacRumors. The removal could occur due to a recent executive order aiming to ban U.S. transactions with WeChat and its parent company Tencent. Kuo lays out optimistic and pessimistic scenarios depending on whether Apple is only required to remove WeChat from the App Store in the United States or if the ban would apply to the App Store in all countries. WeChat is extremely popular with Chinese mobile device users, essentially operating as its own platform on top of iOS and Android for many users, and Kuo argues that a worldwide ban on WeChat in the App Store would be devastating due to the size of the Chinese market.

"Because WeChat has become a daily necessity in China, integrating functions such as messaging, payment, e-commerce, social networking, news reading, and productivity, if this is the case, we believe that Apple's hardware product shipments in the Chinese market will decline significantly. We estimate that the annual iPhone shipments will be revised down by 25-30%, and the annual shipments of other Apple hardware devices, including AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, will be revised down by 15-25%," he wrote in a note. Under his optimistic scenario in which WeChat is only removed from the U.S. App Store, Kuo predicts iPhone shipments would be impacted by 3-6% with other Apple products being affected by less than 3%.

Desktops (Apple)

How an Automated Mistake by Apple Killed All of a Mac Developer's Apps (9to5mac.com) 41

Long-time Slashdot reader philml writes: Popular Mac developer Charlie Monroe woke up to find that none of his users could run his software. Instead, Mac OS was giving a message saying that it "will damage your computer".
Monroe described the ensuing hassle in a blog post titled "A day without business." In a later update he added that Apple "has called and apologized for the complications. The issue was caused by my account being erroneously flagged by automated processes."

But 9 to 5 Mac describes how Apple's mistake affected Monroe's apps: Users were unable to open them, and a message flagged them as malware, advising users to delete the apps to avoid damaging their Macs.

Developer Charlie Monroe, creator of the Downie video downloader, among other apps, said that Apple didn't even send him a message saying it had happened, and for several hours he didn't know whether he still had a business or not⦠He said that it took Apple 24 hours to partly fix the problem, removing the flags, though that still left him having to recompile, re-sign, and redistribute everything... Most app users will never know the story behind this, only that they bought an app, Apple told them it was malware, and they deleted it as instructed.

It also seems unlikely to help Apple's antitrust battles, where many are arguing that the company holds too much power over users and developers alike.

Operating Systems

Apple Launches Public Beta of macOS Big Sur, Its Biggest Desktop OS Update in Years (theverge.com) 54

The public beta of macOS Big Sur, the next major release of Apple's Mac operating system, is now available. From a report: The new update brings a big visual overhaul to macOS while also adding a number of brand-new enhancements. If you're thinking about installing the macOS Big Sur public beta, be warned that it's still, well, a beta. That means you could experience some unexpected bugs, and software you rely on may not work with the new OS just yet. Before you install Big Sur, make sure all of your important documents are backed up somewhere safe, and if at all possible, you should only install this on a secondary Mac. But if you do roll the dice and install the Big Sur beta, you'll immediately see that it looks much different than previous versions of macOS, as Apple has made significant design changes across the entire operating system. Windows have a whole lot more white, for example (unless you're using dark mode, in which case, there's still a lot of black). Apple's app icons have received a major facelift and are now rounded squares, like iOS's app icons. And the menu bar is now translucent, blending into your wallpaper.
Firefox

Firefox 79 Clears Redirect Tracking Cookies Every 24 Hours (venturebeat.com) 29

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today started rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) 2.0 in Firefox. While the company technically launched Firefox 79 for Windows, Mac, and Linux last week, it only unveiled its marquee feature today. Firefox 79 by default blocks redirect tracking, also known as bounce tracking, and adds a handful of new developer features. [...] Since enabling Enhanced Tracking Protection by default, Mozilla says it has blocked 3.4 trillion tracking cookies. But the company notes the ad industry has since created workarounds and new ways to collect user data as you browse the web.
iMac

Apple Updates the iMac With New Intel Processors and a Better Webcam (theverge.com) 51

Apple is announcing updates for both the 27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs. It's updating the processors inside to Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake processors and also switching out the webcam to a higher-resolution 1080p HD sensor instead of the low-res 720p found in other Macs. From a report: SSDs are now standard across the line, and there will be a bunch of new configuration options -- including a "nano-texture" version with less reflective matte glass. The 27-inch iMac starts at $1,799, is available to order today, and will ship this week. The 21.5-inch iMac starts at $1,099 and will ship next week. Apple is also giving the iMac Pro a small spec bump, making the 10-core Intel chips the new baseline for $4,999 -- also shipping next week. (Oddly, the iMac Pro is not otherwise getting updated.)

This is not the major redesign that has been rumored (and hoped for), nor is it the first ARM-based Mac. Instead, the 2020 iMacs look identical to the last generation, including the large black bezel all the way around the screen and the big metal chin at the bottom. Apple says that, as it noted at WWDC, it intends to support Intel-based Macs for many years to come. The webcam might be the biggest day-to-day upgrade for most users. It's 1080p, but Apple says that the new T2 chip enables some new features beyond the improved resolution like tone mapping, exposure control, and face detection. Apple says the improved camera features will work in any videoconferencing app, not just FaceTime.

Desktops (Apple)

The 20th Anniversary of the Power Mac G4 Cube (wired.com) 41

Steven Levy from Wired remembers the Power Mac G4 Cube, which debuted July 19, 2000. From the report: I was reminded of this last week, as I listened to a cassette tape recorded 20 years prior, almost to the day. It documented a two-hour session with Jobs in Cupertino, California, shortly before the launch. The main reason he had summoned me to Apple's headquarters was sitting under the over of a dark sheet of fabric on the long table in the boardroom of One Infinite Loop. "We have made the coolest computer ever," he told me. "I guess I'll just show it to you." He yanked off the fabric, exposing an 8-inch stump of transparent plastic with a block of electronics suspended inside. It looked less like a computer than a toaster born from an immaculate conception between Philip K. Dick and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. (But the fingerprints were, of course, Jony Ive's.) Alongside it were two speakers encased in Christmas-ornament-sized, glasslike spheres.

"The Cube," Jobs said, in a stage whisper, hardly containing his excitement. He began by emphasizing that while the Cube was powerful, it was air-cooled. (Jobs hated fans. Hated them.) He demonstrated how it didn't have a power switch, but could sense a wave of your hand to turn on the juice. He showed me how Apple had eliminated the tray that held CDs -- with the Cube, you just hovered the disk over the slot and the machine inhaled it. And then he got to the plastics. It was as if Jobs had taken to heart that guy in The Graduate who gave career advice to Benjamin Braddock. "We are doing more with plastics than anyone else in the world," he told me. "These are all specially formulated, and it's all proprietary, just us. It took us six months just to formulate these plastics. They make bulletproof vests out of it! And it's incredibly sturdy, and it's just beautiful! There's never been anything like that. How do you make something like that? Nobody ever made anything like that! Isn't that beautiful? I think it's stunning!"

For one thing, the price was prohibitive -- by the time you bought the display, it was almost three times the price of an iMac and even more than some PowerMacs. By and large, people don't spend their art budget on computers. That wasn't the only issue with the G4 Cube. Those plastics were hard to manufacture, and people reported flaws. The air cooling had problems. If you left a sheet of paper on top of the device, it would shut down to prevent overheating. And because it had no On button, a stray wave of your hand would send the machine into action, like it or not. In any case, the G4 Cube failed to push buttons on the computer-buying public. Jobs told me it would sell millions. But Apple sold fewer than 150,000 units.

IT

Return and Enter Are Two Different Keys (daringfireball.net) 306

John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: A New York Times mini crossword clue over the weekend was based on the notion that "Enter" is just a synonym for the Return key. It's not. They're two different keys that usually perform the same action, but not always. All keyboards have a dedicated Return key -- it's the big key you're thinking of above the right Shift key. On a Mac, the key code when you press Return is 36 [...].

A dedicated Enter key is generally only present on extended keyboards with a numeric keypad -- it's the key in the lower-right corner and is generally the only oversized key on the keyboard that is larger vertically, not horizontally. Its Mac key code is 76 [...]. Just look at such a keyboard: the Return key says "Return", and the Enter key says "Enter". If your keyboard doesn't have a dedicated Enter key, you can type the Enter key by pressing Fn-Return. That's why some Return keys have "Enter" printed in small type above the word "Return". If your keyboard has neither a dedicated Enter key nor an Fn modifier key, I don't think you can type Enter. [...]

Chrome

Chrome 84 Arrives With SameSite Cookie Changes, Web OTP API and Web Animations API (venturebeat.com) 14

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 84 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Chrome 84 resumes SameSite cookie changes, includes the Web OTP API and Web Animations API, and removes older Transport Layer Security (TLS) versions. First deprecated with Chrome 81 in April, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 have now been completely removed with Chrome 84. This is notable for anyone who manages a website, even if they don't use Chrome at home or at work. TLS is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network -- websites use it to secure all communications between their servers and browsers. TLS also succeeds Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and thus handles the encryption of every HTTPS connection.

In May 2016, Chrome 51 introduced the SameSite attribute to allow sites to declare whether cookies should be restricted to a same-site (first-party) context. The hope was this would mitigate cross-site request forgeries (CSRF). Chrome 80 began enforcing a new secure-by-default cookie classification system, treating cookies that have no declared SameSite value as SameSite=Lax cookies. Only cookies set as SameSite=None; Secure are available in third-party contexts, provided they are being accessed from secure connections. Due to the coronavirus crisis, however, Google paused the SameSite cookie changes, with plans to resume enforcement sometime over the summer. SameSite cookie enforcement has now resumed with a gradual rollout ramping up over the next several weeks for Chrome 80 and newer.

Chrome 84 introduces the Web OTP API (formerly called the SMS Receiver API). This API helps users enter a one-time password (OTP) on a webpage when a specially crafted SMS message is delivered to their Android phone. When verifying the ownership of a phone number, developers typically send an OTP over SMS that must be manually entered by the user (or copied and pasted). The user has to switch to their native SMS app and back to their web app to input the code. The Web OTP API lets developers help users enter the code with one tap. Chrome 84 also adopts the Web Animations API, which gives developers more control over web animations. These can be used to help users navigate a digital space, remember your app or site, and provide implicit hints around how to use your product. Parts of the API have been around for some time, but this implementation brings greater spec compliance and supports compositing operations, which control how effects are combined and offer many new hooks that enable replaceable events. The API also supports Promises, which allow for animation sequencing and provide greater control over how animations interact with other app features.

Chrome

WSJ: 'Quit Chrome. Safari and Edge Are Just Better Browsers' (wsj.com) 253

The Wall Street Journal's senior personal tech columnist just published an article urging readers to "quit Chrome. Safari and Edge are just better browsers." It begins with the reporter pretending to break up with Chrome, adding "I'd say I'll remember the good times — your speed, your superb handling of Gmail — but your RAM hoovering, battery draining and privacy disregarding make it easy to not look back.

"This is the year, people. It's the year I challenge you to pack up your bookmarks and wave bye-bye to Google's browser..."

And the article is even accompanied by a video titled "Four ways to stop Chrome from slowing down your computer," where tip #1 is just: "Stop using Chrome..." "Sure, Chrome has far more browser market share [than Firefox, Safari, and Edge]. But all of them have actually gotten quite good over the last number of years. Heck, the new Microsoft Edge browser even uses Chromium, the same underlying technology as Chrome, and the performance is much improved, across Windows PCs, and Macs. Yes, Microsoft's browser is available for Mac, and it's good.

"In my weeks of testing, Edge used 5% less resources than Chrome on Windows. Safari used up to 10% less in some of my tests on my Mac. That meant up to 2 extra hours of battery life in their respective operating systems. Firefox, unfortunately, took up just as much power as Chrome. Google says it's working on some resource-saving improvements that will come in the next few months.

If you can switch to just one of those, go for it, even if just for their better privacy tools."

The video opens with a cartoon depiction of "Chrome-y," who lives inside your computer and eats your RAM and other resouces. "But don't worry. You can put him on a diet and take back your computer with some of these tips." The other tips including uninstalling extensions, and using Chrome's Task Manager to "spot and kill the RAM gobblers."

But throughout the video, "Chrome-y" continues chomping on your RAM...
Education

Apple To Teach Teachers To Teach Coding For Free 96

theodp writes: From the Home Office in Cupertino: "Apple today announced a new set of tools to help educators teach coding to students from grade school to college. In addition to significant enhancements to the Develop in Swift and Everyone Can Code curricula, Apple is also starting a new professional learning course for Develop in Swift, available to educators at no cost. The course is designed to supplement the need for computer science educators in the US, and helps instructors of all skill levels build foundational knowledge to teach app development with Swift. In addition, with many institutions operating remotely, Apple is adding resources for educators and parents to help ensure they have the tools they need to help students learn and grow from anywhere. [...] To support parents with kids learning to code at home, Apple is adding a new guide to its set of remote learning resources. 'A Quick Start to Code' is now available and features 10 coding challenges designed for learners ages 10 and up, on iPad or Mac. [...] In 2016, Apple launched Everyone Can Code, a comprehensive program and curriculum to help students of all abilities, from kindergarten to college, learn coding to solve problems and prepare them for the workforce. Develop in Swift was released in 2019, and today more than 9,000 K-12 and higher education institutions worldwide are using the Everyone Can Code and Develop in Swift curricula from Apple."

Back in 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed that most students shunned programming before Apple introduced Swift "because coding languages were 'too geeky.'" As Apple introduced Swift in 2016, Cook called for requiring all children to start coding in 4th grade (9-10 years old), which Cook reiterated to President Trump in a 2017 White House meeting with tech titans.
Portables (Apple)

Apple Advises Against MacBook Camera Covers Due To Display Cracking (appleinsider.com) 126

Apple, in a new support document, is warning users against closing their MacBook lids with a cover over the camera. From a report: Placing a cover, sticker or tape over a laptop camera is a practice adopted by some privacy- and security-conscious individuals to protect against webcam hijacking. Now, however, Apple is explicitly advising against the tactic. In a support document published earlier in July, Apple urges users not to close their MacBook Pro or MacBook Air lids if there's a camera cover installed on it. "If you close your Mac notebook with a camera cover installed, you might damage your display because the clearance between the display and keyboard is designed to very tight tolerances," Apple notes. The support document also outlines some of the privacy and security functions of the camera, including the green indicator light that lets users know when the camera is active and the camera permission settings introduced in macOS Mojave.
Google

A Moment of Clarity Regarding the Raison d'Etre for the App Store (daringfireball.net) 84

John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: Feel free to file Google's release this week of an update to their iPad Gmail app with support for split-screen multitasking under "better late than never," but this is so late it borders on the absurd. It's like the difference between showing up fashionably late and showing up a week after the party. Split-screen multitasking was introduced for the iPad back in 2015 with iOS 9. Five years to add support for a foundational element of the iPad user experience. And an email client is near the top of the list of the type of apps where someone would want to use split-screen. Five years. Google makes a lot of software with terrible user experiences for users who have poor taste. Their iOS software, in particular, has for the most part never suggested that it was designed by people who like -- or even use -- iOS. It's the blind leading the blind. But yet the Gmail app is currently the number one free app in the Productivity category in the App Store.

On the surface, it's tempting to blow this off. To each their own. Whatever floats their boat. Who cares if millions of iPad users are satisfied using an email client that is a poor iPad app, so long as actual good iPad email clients are available to those who do care? But what about those stuck using the Gmail app not because they want to, but because they have to? Who can help them but Apple? I worry that it's not tenable in the long run to expect Apple to continue striving to create well-crafted -- let alone insanely great -- software when so many of its users not only settle for, but perhaps even prefer, software that is, to put it kindly, garbage. There have always been popular Mac and iPhone apps that are objectively terrible apps -- where by "popular" I mean much-used, not much-loved. But what made Apple users Apple users is that they complained vociferously if they had to use a terrible app. Word 6 was a sack of dog shit Microsoft dropped off and set aflame on Mac users' porch, but we all knew it was a flaming bag of dog shit, and even those of us who didn't even use Word were angry about it because it was an insult.

I worry that this sort of "Who cares, it's better than nothing" attitude has seeped into Apple itself, and explains how we wound up with barely modified iPad apps shipping as system apps on the Mac. But more than anything I worry that this exemplifies where Apple has lost its way with the App Store. What exactly is the point of running a strict approval process for apps if not, first and foremost, to ensure that they're good apps? An iPad email app that doesn't support split-screen multitasking for five years is, by definition, not a good app. I'd like to see all the vim, vigor, and vigilance Apple applies to making sure no app on the App Store is making a dime without Apple getting three cents applied instead to making sure there aren't any scams or ripoffs, and that popular apps support good-citizen-of-the-platform features within a reasonable amount of time after those features are introduced in the OS. I don't know exactly how long "reasonable" is, but five fucking years for split-screen support ain't it.

Desktops (Apple)

Apple's ARM-Based Macs To Support Thunderbolt (theverge.com) 137

tlhIngan writes: For those worried that the transition Apple is doing to ARM-based Macs will drop Thunderbolt, Apple has stated that they will continue to support Thunderbolt. This was a worry since Thunderbolt is primarily an Intel design (formerly known as Light Peak) with Apple collaboration, and that none of Apple's ARM based devices support it (not even the ARM Developer Transition Kit).
Security

New Apple macOS Big Sur Feature To Hamper Adware Operations (zdnet.com) 16

With macOS 11, also known as Big Sur, Apple has removed the ability to install macOS profile configurations from the command-line. ZDNet reports: This ability was previously a core feature of macOS' enterprise package, which allows system administrators to deploy new configurations company-wide via automated scripts. However, the ability to deploy a new profile config via the command-line has also been abused by malware gangs or adware strains, who used it because it was silent and didn't require any type of user interaction. Hackers or malware authors who gained access to Mac Deployment servers or who infected just one Mac, abused the command-line to deploy their own malicious configurations to hijack proxy settings, change default apps, and more.
Security

New Mac Ransomware Is Even More Sinister Than It Appears (wired.com) 49

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The threat of ransomware may seem ubiquitous, but there haven't been too many strains tailored specifically to infect Apple's Mac computers since the first full-fledged Mac ransomware surfaced only four years ago. So when Dinesh Devadoss, a malware researcher at the firm K7 Lab, published findings on Tuesday about a new example of Mac ransomware, that fact alone was significant. It turns out, though, that the malware, which researchers are now calling ThiefQuest, gets more interesting from there. In addition to ransomware, ThiefQuest has a whole other set of spyware capabilities that allow it to exfiltrate files from an infected computer, search the system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and run a robust keylogger to grab passwords, credit card numbers, or other financial information as a user types it in. The spyware component also lurks persistently as a backdoor on infected devices, meaning it sticks around even after a computer reboots, and could be used as a launchpad for additional, or "second stage," attacks. Given that ransomware is so rare on Macs to begin with, this one-two punch is especially noteworthy.

Though ThiefQuest is packed with menacing features, it's unlikely to infect your Mac anytime soon unless you download pirated, unvetted software. Thomas Reed, director of Mac and mobile platforms at the security firm Malwarebytes, found that ThiefQuest is being distributed on torrent sites bundled with name-brand software, like the security application Little Snitch, DJ software Mixed In Key, and music production platform Ableton. K7's Devadoss notes that the malware itself is designed to look like a "Google Software Update program." So far, though, the researchers say that it doesn't seem to have a significant number of downloads, and no one has paid a ransom to the Bitcoin address the attackers provide. [...] Given that the malware is being distributed through torrents, seems to focus on stealing money, and still has some kinks, the researchers say it was likely created by criminal hackers rather than nation state spies looking to conduct espionage.

Privacy

Zoom Misses Its Own Deadline To Publish Its First Transparency Report (techcrunch.com) 5

How many government demands for user data has Zoom received? We won't know until "later this year," an updated Zoom blog post now says. From a report: The video conferencing giant previously said it would release the number of government demands it has received by June 30. But the company said it's missed that target and has given no firm new date for releasing the figures. It comes amid heightened scrutiny of the service after a number of security issues and privacy concerns came to light following a massive spike in its user base, thanks to millions working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a blog post today reflecting on the company's turnaround efforts, chief executive Eric Yuan said the company has "made significant progress defining the framework and approach for a transparency report that details information related to requests Zoom receives for data, records or content. We look forward to providing the fiscal [second quarter] data in our first report later this year," he said. Transparency reports offer rare insights into the number of demands or requests a company gets from the government for user data. These reports are not mandatory, but are important to understand the scale and scope of government surveillance.

Intel

First Apple Silicon Benchmarks Destroy Surface Pro X (thurrott.com) 218

As expected, developers with early access to Apple silicon-based transition kits have leaked some early benchmarks scores. And it's bad news for Surface Pro X and Windows 10 on ARM fans. Thurrott reports: According to multiple Geekbench scores, the Apple Developer Transition Kit -- a Mac Mini-like device with an Apple A12Z system-on-a-chip (SoC), 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD storage -- delivers an average single-core score of 811 and an average multi-core score of 2871. Those scores represent the performance of the device running emulated x86/64 code under macOS Big Sur's Rosetta 2 emulator.

Compared to modern PCs with native Intel-type chipsets, that's not all that impressive, but that's to be expected since it's emulated. But compared to Microsoft's Surface Pro X, which has the fastest available Qualcomm-based ARM chipset and can run Geekbench natively -- not emulated -- it's amazing: Surface Pro X only averages 764 on the single-core test and 2983 in multi-core. Right. The emulated performance of the Apple silicon is as good or better than the native performance of the SQ-1-based Surface Pro X. This suggests that the performance of native code on Apple silicon will be quite impressive, and will leave Surface Pro X and WOA in the dust.

Desktops (Apple)

Rosetta 2 is Apple's Key To Making the ARM Transition Less Painful (theverge.com) 153

At WWDC 2020 earlier this week, Apple announced that it's moving Macs away from Intel processors to its own silicon, based on ARM architecture. To help ease the transition, the company announced Rosetta 2, a translation process that allows users to run apps that contain x86_64 instructions on Apple silicon. The Verge reports: Rosetta 2 essentially "translates" instructions that were written for Intel processors into commands that Apple's chips can understand. Developers won't need to make any changes to their old apps; they'll just work. (The original Rosetta was released in 2006 to facilitate Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel. Apple has also stated that it will support x86 Macs "for years to come," as far as OS updates are concerned. The company shifted from PowerPC to Intel chips in 2006, but ditched support for the former in 2009; OS X Snow Leopard was Intel-only.) You don't, as a user, interact with Rosetta; it does its work behind-the-scenes. "Rosetta 2 is mostly there to minimize the impact on end-users and their experience when they buy a new Mac with Apple Silicon," says Angela Yu, founder of the software-development school App Brewery. "If Rosetta 2 does its job, your average user should not notice its existence."

There's one difference you might perceive, though: speed. Programs that ran under the original Rosetta typically ran slower than those running natively on Intel, since the translator needed time to interpret the code. Early benchmarks found that popular PowerPC applications, such as Photoshop and Office, were running at less than half their native speed on the Intel systems. We'll have to wait and see if apps under Rosetta 2 take similar performance hits. But there are a couple reasons to be optimistic. First, the original Rosetta converted every instruction in real-time, as it executed them. Rosetta 2 can convert an application right at installation time, effectively creating an ARM-optimized version of the app before you've opened it. (It can also translate on the fly for apps that can't be translated ahead of time, such as browser, Java, and Javascript processes, or if it encounters other new code that wasn't translated at install time.) With Rosetta 2 frontloading a bulk of the work, we may see better performance from translated apps.
The report notes that the engine won't support everything. "It's not compatible with some programs, including virtual machine apps, which you might use to run Windows or another operating system on your Mac, or to test out new software without impacting the rest of your system," reports The Verge. "(You also won't be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on ARM Macs. Microsoft only licenses the ARM version of Windows 10 to PC manufacturers.) Rosetta 2 also can't translate kernel extensions, which some programs leverage to perform tasks that macOS doesn't have a native feature for (similar to drivers in Windows)."
Intel

Former Intel Engineer Claims Skylake QA Drove Apple Away (pcgamer.com) 252

UnknowingFool writes: A former Intel engineer has put forth information that the QA process around Skylake was so terrible that it may have finally driven Apple to use their own processors in upcoming Macs. Not to say that Apple would not have eventually made this move, but Francois Piednoel says Skylake was abnormally bad with Apple finding the largest amount of bugs inside the architecture rivaling Intel itself. That led Apple to reconsider staying on the architecture and hastening their plans to migrate to their own chips. "The quality assurance of Skylake was more than a problem," says Piednoel. "It was abnormally bad. We were getting way too much citing for little things inside Skylake. Basically our buddies at Apple became the number one filer of problems in the architecture. And that went really, really bad. When your customer starts finding almost as much bugs as you found yourself, you're not leading into the right place."

"For me this is the inflection point," added Piednoel. "This is where the Apple guys who were always contemplating to switch, they went and looked at it and said: 'Well, we've probably got to do it.' Basically the bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them to actually go away from the platform."

Apple made the switch official at its developer conference on Monday, announcing that it will introduce Macs featuring Apple-designed, ARM-based processors later this year.

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