macOS Catalina Brings Back Expansion Slot Utility App Ahead of Mac Pro Launch

[Zdigital2015]

I have been wondering if the Afterburner FPGA will be opened up for other usage.



Well AMD is working hard on ROCm. Or may be it should be Google working more on Tensorflow ROCm rather than focusing on CUDA?

I think ROCm is close, very close. But like everything when the work is 80% done and you thought the 20% is going to be easy, that 20% normally takes the same amount of time as the first 80%. People are aware of the CUDA lock in, and once AMD reaches the point of good enough, more people will switch and more people will help with ROCm

And needless to say Apple by themselves are also heavy user of Machine Learning.

Not being an expert on the intricacies of ML, my take is that Apple does not want NVIDIA to subvert or be able to exert any influence or control over the on device ML that any A11 or A12 equipped hardware can perform. Apple wants its devs using CoreML and writing native for its iOS devices, not letting CUDA get its foot in the door on the Mac side and then developers focus on the largest marketshare or think they can forgo CoreML. It would give NVIDIA an even bigger presence in the market and Apple does not want another company dictating this technology to them as they use it to their competitive advantage when adding features to the iPhone, especially with photo processing. Just my 2¢.

 

[tallscot]

The utility app is $999 extra.

 

[brendu]

it hasn't worked flawlessly? that means you're having trouble? or is that a typo.


Anyways, I did buy the right hardware from a tonymacx86 guide. Even bought the official apple PCI-E wifi/bluetooth combo card from osxwifi dot com. After each macOS update, iMessage would sometimes stop working, so I would need re-register using a new serial number. Sometimes sleep/wake doesn't work. NVME storage support is extremely sketchy. the problems go on and on. AirDrop rarely works. AirPods and other bluetooth headphones rarely work

Lol yeah typo. I should proof read more. Sadly I think your mistake was using tonymacosx86. Did you do a vanilla install or use multibeast or something like that?

 

[MisterAndrew]

Does anyone know how to find the Expansion Slot Utility app in Catalina? I can't find it in beta 3.

 

[Tech198]

I've always had this 'niche' with Apple..

Don't include it if its not available on the model.. Bu i'm guessing this utility will be available of every version of the IS, even those Apple laptops

I just find it always quirky Apple keeps this stuff in all versions despite they have no relation to anything.

Apple just doesn't wanna code in the checks to remove them from system profile or apps not being shows because ......

People may ask, but that's better than an app which you can't use because you machine doesn't have it.

 

[chucker23n1]

I've always had this 'niche' with Apple..

Don't include it if its not available on the model.. Bu i'm guessing this utility will be available of every version of the IS, even those Apple laptops

I just find it always quirky Apple keeps this stuff in all versions despite they have no relation to anything.

Apple just doesn't wanna code in the checks to remove them from system profile or apps not being shows because ......

People may ask, but that's better than an app which you can't use because you machine doesn't have it.

If I’m not mistaken, they’re doing exactly that — the utility will only show up on a Mac Pro.

 

[MisterAndrew]

If I’m not mistaken, they’re doing exactly that — the utility will only show up on a Mac Pro.

That makes sense.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Lol yeah typo. I should proof read more. Sadly I think your mistake was using tonymacosx86. Did you do a vanilla install or use multibeast or something like that?

what do you mean vanilla install? and what do you mean "mistake was using tonymacx86"? tonymacx86 made the MultiBeast tool which I used. i followed the multibeast guide.

 

[brendu]

what do you mean vanilla install? and what do you mean "mistake was using tonymacx86"? tonymacx86 made the MultiBeast tool which I used. i followed the multibeast guide.

Yeah multibeast is garbage. If you still run a hackintosh or are considering it check out the hackintosh subreddit and hackintosher.com.

A vanilla install means you do all the configuring yourself and don’t rely on tools like multibeast which generalize install packages so you are installing kexts and other things you don’t need. Everything I’ve read steers people away from tonymac because they run into exactly the issues you’ve encountered.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Yeah multibeast is garbage. If you still run a hackintosh or are considering it check out the hackintosh subreddit and hackintosher.com.

A vanilla install means you do all the configuring yourself and don’t rely on tools like multibeast which generalize install packages so you are installing kexts and other things you don’t need. Everything I’ve read steers people away from tonymac because they run into exactly the issues you’ve encountered.

this will add even more hours of work compared to tonymacx86. no thanks.

 

[techwhiz]

The 2019 Mac Pro is absolutely aimed squarely at content creators, and anyone else who might need 1-8 PCIe slots or a ton of memory (or I/O) bandwidth. Or lots of RAM and/or cores.

Apple missed no boat. The product you want—a cutdown Mac Pro for $3k—is a loser, for the reasons I laid out in my post #44 above. A three- or four-slot Mac Pro doesn’t give the target customer enough headroom. Those users want to be able to put two or three cards in and still have room to expand over the next 4-5 or 7 or 10 years.

You’ve shelled out 15-20k in specialized PCIe cards for your hobby but now 3k is going to break you? OK, sure; I suppose everybody wants what they want, but Apple doesn’t owe you your ideal Mac Pro. I don’t think you believe you’re entitled to that, and I really can understand the disappointment of not getting what you want. But there are valid reasons for Apple not making a 3-4 slot MP.

As a shareholder, do you really want Apple to substitute the sale of a profitable $6,000 Mac Pro with a $3,000 “Mac Pro mini” sold at a significant loss? That makes no sense (to me). Really, no boat was missed.

Quite frankly, you assume it's a loser but is not.
How do you assume a loss?
The previous machines were not sold at a loss.
You can eliminate one cpu socket, three of the PCIe lanes, fewer memory sockets, lower test costs, lower power supply costs, etc. etc.

It's a loser in "your" opinion.
I didn't say anything was going to break me.
But since the computer is now the peripheral, I don't need or want a $6K peripheral. Thank you.
A three slot or 4 slot Mac not giving enough headroom breaks the case for a iMac with an expansion chassis for the same reason. You can't get enough bandwidth on Thunderbolt 3 to support 3-4 PCIe slots with 4 lanes each.

I don't need support for two double wide GPU cards.
Using two high powered GPUs takes up 4 slots and only leaves you with 4 usable slots for the record.
Big GPU cards occupy two slots and consume the power of two slots, or more.

We can all have our opinions, but opinions are like butts; everyone has one and they all stink.

 

[brendu]

this will add even more hours of work compared to tonymacx86. no thanks.

Not really. A couple hours in the front end and then you know what you’re doing and things work properly rather than breaking every update.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Not really. A couple hours in the front end and then you know what you’re doing and things work properly rather than breaking every update.

even then, nvme support is still sketchy. you usually have to wait until RehabMan provides a patched kext. it breaks on every update.

guaranteed it's not couple of hours of work for any new user. only couple of hours of work if you've done this before.


EDIT:
I just checked hackintosher. I actually did follow the Asus z170-pro skylake hackintosh guide one time. The only difference is the nvme drive which i need for Xcode. The nvme support is the problem and breaks on every update. Wasted countless hours on fixing that.

 

[deBaer]

The Expansion Slot Utility app is designed for managing and configuring PCI cards, and its return is clearly meant for the

If Apple wend with Epyc instead of Xeon for the Mac Pro, there'd be enough PCIe lanes directly to the CPU for all the slots and then some, so no configuration app would be nessesary.