Apple Releases macOS Monterey 12.3 With Universal Control, Spatial Audio Dynamic Head Tracking on M1 Macs and More

[TiggrToo]

Thanks to all the test lemmings for leaping into this on day one while the rest of us folks wait to see what the fallout is (if any).

Unless there's a critical 0 day fix, I like to wait until the weekend after to update - figure that'll shake out the most obvious bugs and buglets.

 

[mi7chy]

When running GeekBench the metal score drops from around 195k on 12.2 to 90k on 12.3.

Thanks but I'm not too concerned about synthetic benchmark (Geekbench) vs real workloads (Blender). Have you had a chance to try Blender Metal support with AMD GPU?

 

[tmaxxtigger]

Thanks but I'm not too concerned about synthetic benchmark (Geekbench) vs real workloads (Blender). Have you had a chance to try Blender Metal support with AMD GPU?

It's more than that, the UI locks up, lags heavily while the test is running, which it never did before on earlier versions.

RX6800 slow in OS12.3 Beta

My previously speedy Gigabyte RX6800XT has taken a performance hit in the Beta of 12.3 Monterey👎 Lou

forums.macrumors.com

 

[guzhogi]

Spatial Audio
- Dynamic head tracking is available in Music with supported AirPods on Mac computers with the M1 chip
- Customizable spatial audio settings for Off, Fixed, and Head Tracked are now in Control Center with supported AirPods on Mac computers with the M1 chip

I really wish Apple would release headphones capable of both Spatial Audio *AND* High Definition Lossless. Bluetooth can't do lossless. I've seen 3rd party USB & wifi headphones, but they can't do Spatial Audio.

 

[pshufd]

I think that I'll wait until the weekend. There's one bug that I'd really like to see fixed and it will take me a week with it to determine that.

 

[WaxedJacket]

Universal Control seems really nice. I could see how someone with an iPad and laptop could use it as a second screen for note taking etc. The drag and drop stuff is nice too but to be honest, I just keep everything sorted by dragging the files I want to share into the "files" app on the MacOS side and of course iCloud already shares all changes between devices.

 

[spencecb]

So far, Universal Control seems to be wonderful! I liked Side Car, but full screen video never worked for me. When I had Side Car on, and I had something playing in full-screen on my MacBook Pro in Apple TV, YouTube, anything, my Mac's screen would go black. Now, I can have a video up and continue using mouse and keyboard on my Mac with my iPad. This is definitely a much appreciated user experience!

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Does this version allow the user to disable temporal dithering?

i doubt it ? has there been any news about that ?

 

[blazerunner]

It's more than that, the UI locks up, lags heavily while the test is running, which it never did before on earlier versions.

RX6800 slow in OS12.3 Beta

My previously speedy Gigabyte RX6800XT has taken a performance hit in the Beta of 12.3 Monterey👎 Lou

forums.macrumors.com

Wow. That is a major blunder. How did Apple not address this problem already? It's been a known issue for over a month.

 

[ragedev]

Wow. That is a major blunder. How did Apple not address this problem already? It's been a known issue for over a month.

It's Apple. I've still had that bug where Safari reopens duplicate windows of the same tabs on restarting occasionally, something I've been experiencing since I got my 2016 MacBook Pro.

 

[mi7chy]

It's more than that, the UI locks up, lags heavily while the test is running, which it never did before on earlier versions.

RX6800 slow in OS12.3 Beta

My previously speedy Gigabyte RX6800XT has taken a performance hit in the Beta of 12.3 Monterey👎 Lou

forums.macrumors.com

So, Apple intentionally gimped it to make the M1 Max and Ultra look better otherwise without throttling 6900xt is 3x faster than M1 Max 32GPU and 2x faster than M1 Ultra 64GPU.

Blender Classroom (lower render time better)

M1 Max 32GPU 1m47s (MacOS Metal)
6900xt 35s (Windows HIP)

 

[Phantom iCloud tabs]

Another update day where the Mac update file downloads at a crawl (and yeah, earlier the download went normally on my desktop Mac; also tried rebooting the modem, etc.). This is the sort of thing that NEVER happened before the employees worked in their underwear from home. Get back to the damn office already, like the sales people who earn a tiny fraction of your salary.

 

[skippermonkey]

Very interested to find out about the Blender GPU rendering too. Please report back!

Will do. I used to use OctaneX but it's so flaky and it seems like a side project for OTOY. Took them six months to fix the denoising, so glad to be free of the C4D/Octane money pit.

 

[MacHiavelli]

2017 13" MBP ... 11.31GB ... BIG

 

[k_iHac]

Thanks but I'm not too concerned about synthetic benchmark (Geekbench) vs real workloads (Blender). Have you had a chance to try Blender Metal support with AMD GPU?

I've done a bit of testing with Blender and the render performance was impressive on my 6800 XT on 12.3. It takes a good while (4-5 minutes) to compile the render kernel for the first time but once compiled, the Metal render performance was about 4x as fast as my M1 Pro 10-core CPU 16-core GPU Metal rendering on both the CPU and GPU in my tests. I don't recommend updating though because overall system performance and snappiness takes a HUGE hit from 12.2.1 -> 12.3. It's not just Geekbench that suffers, the entire system lags, has graphical artifacts, and slows down to the point where I reinstalled 11.6 on a separate hard drive and have been using that since updating to the 12.3 betas.

 

[Ziperix]

Thanks to all the test lemmings for leaping into this on day one while the rest of us folks wait to see what the fallout is (if any).

Unless there's a critical 0 day fix, I like to wait until the weekend after to update - figure that'll shake out the most obvious bugs and buglets.

Be my guest, waste your time waiting

 

[nvmls]

It's Apple. I've still had that bug where Safari reopens duplicate windows of the same tabs on restarting occasionally, something I've been experiencing since I got my 2016 MacBook Pro.

Pin an atlassian page, logged in. Try reloading it the next day, opens up like 7 different tabs all with the same content.

It's as if Safari was coded by Siri.

 

[foggygray]

I am hoping this fixes a weird bug with my M1 iMac where it randomly wakes up, shows the mouse pointer, and the speakers click for a few seconds then goes back to sleep. Not a big deal but kind of annoying.

 

[zorinlynx]

I have to thank the Safari team, if you're reading, for getting rid of the requirement to type your login password to bypass a self-signed SSL certificate.

Sysadmins like myself really appreciate this; it was annoying enough to make me use Chrome for administrating devices that force https.

 

[bsbeamer]

Installs as 12.3 (21E230) for those who care.

 

[spencecb]

Another update day where the Mac update file downloads at a crawl (and yeah, earlier the download went normally on my desktop Mac; also tried rebooting the modem, etc.). This is the sort of thing that NEVER happened before the employees worked in their underwear from home. Get back to the damn office already, like the sales people who earn a tiny fraction of your salary.

This has nothing to do with people working from home. These updates, not specific to Apple, get released and then are propagated on servers (not owned or controlled by Apple, owned and controlled by your ISP) and then they are distributed. The reason they slow down is because of the demand of users downloading them. That's how that works.

 

[zorinlynx]

This has nothing to do with people working from home. These updates, not specific to Apple, get released and then are propagated on servers (not owned or controlled by Apple, owned and controlled by your ISP) and then they are distributed. The reason they slow down is because of the demand of users downloading them. That's how that works.

Also, sometimes you happen to hit a slow/overloaded server in the CDN by pure bad luck. Just hit cancel, and try again. I did that and went from 180K/sec to 53MB/sec.

 

[thenahon]

Seems like it’s been pulled…? I saw it as available but then it refreshes and it’s no longer available.

 

[jterp7]

i thought i was the only one still stuck on 12.2 on m1 air

 

[macsplusmacs]

So far, Universal Control seems to be wonderful! I liked Side Car, but full screen video never worked for me. When I had Side Car on, and I had something playing in full-screen on my MacBook Pro in Apple TV, YouTube, anything, my Mac's screen would go black. Now, I can have a video up and continue using mouse and keyboard on my Mac with my iPad. This is definitely a much appreciated user experience!

My same use case.

Can't wait to update my devices for this!